INTERVIEW
VICTORIA WRIGHT REMEMBERS the week after her husband, event rider Matthew, took his own life as being “surreal”. She wasn't aware of the date, let alone whether it was a Tuesday or a Thursday. She shunned all food, and she barely spoke, not to the family and friends who came to offer condolences, support and practical help, nor to the funeral directors and nor to the police, who arrived at her barn conversion home near Retford to investigate this sudden, unspeakably tragic, unexpected death as they would any suicide. It was only towards the end of the worst week of her life that something her eight-year-old daughter, Isabella, said prompted an emergence from the deep foggy darkness.
“Isabella put her arms aroundme and said: ‘Don't worry,mum, I'll look after you.’ That's when I thought, ‘pull yourself together. I have to look after you'. The children were so young then, and I knew that they needed to think that life was still positive. I didn't want themto end up with the problems Matthew had suffered. They needed to have a normal life.”
Matthew Wright was just 38 years old when, on 15 February 2021, he could see no way forward. Victoria sees
