He doesn’t want to read it but it is on his list of books that he feels he should read before he dies.

He also doesn’t want to die.

102

Not everybody walks past.

You hear about it. Some guy climbs out to the edge of Waterloo Bridge and contemplates jumping to his death. There are people making calls or they’re late for work or their coffee is getting cold too quickly, and they pass the man by.

The prospective jumper doesn’t realise. He’s wrapped up in himself and what he intends to do. But, then, somebody stops. And they don’t really know what they are doing. They’re not a trained negotiator or counsellor.

But they have been a human being for their entire life.

So they say something like, ‘It’s going to be okay, buddy. Everything is going to be okay.’ And those simple words, that interaction is what saves him. It pops the bubble and drags him back from the edge for a moment.

It’s a connection.

Maybe he says, ‘Let’s go for a coffee and we can talk about it.’ He doesn’t have to do this. He could’ve carried on with his own journey. He could have ignored the man on the ledge, who was shaking and stuttering towards an early end.

But it took nothing. A moment in time. A moment of kindness and compassion. It was instinct. To care. To not let somebody make the wrong decision. To take a chance.

And that wannabe jumper climbs back over the railings. They don’t go for coffee because the police have arrived and they’re taking him off. And he doesn’t really remember what his saviour looked like or what his name was but he finds him a decade later through a social-media campaign so that he can thank him properly and tell him how his life has turned around because of that one split second that could have gone the other way entirely.

You hear about that.

Or somebody, another man, hops over the barrier at Blackfriars Bridge but, before he even has the chance for contemplation, two other men have grabbed him by his jumper and hauled him to safety. They don’t try to talk him down. they don’t offer the solace of a herbal tea or motivational platitude. They grab him and save him and hold him down until the police arrive and take him away.

You hear about it.

Then there’s the hotel manager whose wife stepped out on him with her personal trainer. He finishes work at a stupid hour and has half a bottle of red wine before stepping over the edge of the bridge at Putney. He hits the freezing cold water and stays under, drawing water into his lungs. He floats to the surface eventually and is dragged out, to be identified by a relieved, adulterous spouse.

You don’t hear about this as much.

And you don’t hear about the letter he got that morning because he destroyed it before leaving for work.