Epilogue

Penny never made it. Despite the hope and the promise in her autobiography that things would get better, she quietly decided to take her own life.

I was in touch with a mutual friend who had earlier visited Penny in Spain (and found Penny to be lively, full of fun and an excellent host) for a vacation and through this older lady I learned of her suicide. Penny, thorough as always, carefully wrote letters to a number of friends and left them with a lawyer. She then, from what I can gather, sold her car and some of her possessions and took an overdose of sleeping tablets. Alone in her own bed and fearing she couldn't go being unloved, Penny slipped from this life one autumn night sometime in 2006.

I have no idea what finally made her move so rapidly from hope to despair. Penny's story, if you have read her autobiography here, tells of a roller-coaster life filled with emotions and fears. It took her from the heights of happiness to the depths of broken dreams. She had shrugged most of it off though clearly there were scars that ran deep.

Of course Penny may have had an illness she couldn't cope with, she may have had echoes from her past that caused her to fear legal intervention, or she may simply have been lonely to a degree few of us might ever want to face. A very good friend of hers (a woman who was straight but understood Penny perfectly) had returned to Australia and that without doubt highlighted Penny's loneliness. I understand Penny had friends, but they were all distant in one way or another; I don't think she had more than rudimentary grasp of Spanish and although Spain has a large number of expatriate Brits for some reason she couldn't relate to them.

I think Penny was always a traveller. She saw the world and even worked as an airline hostess so in a sense no place was ever really home. The life of the wanderer is exciting and intriguing but it comes at a price, and the failure of important relationships finally opened the wounds she must have hoped were healed, or at least could be covered over.

She was an attractive woman: one photo I recall from her blog showed her to be an alluring young woman at art college sometime around 1987 or so. She had the look in her eyes of a person who had a streak of devil-may-care but also the gleam of a person who expected the future to be good. Alas, the few pictures Penny posted of herself were removed after only a short time and I never saved them. All I have is the mental image of a pretty girl in a dark jumper and short hair smiling up at the camera in a black-and-white photo, and I won't forget that in a hurry.

In a way Penny's death still haunts me even seven years later. I am not sure, living as I do in the UK, that I could have gone to her aid even when I suspected that things were about to fall apart. I saw, on her blog, a simple message after the failure of her involvement with a younger woman that made me start. It read: 'So that's it then,' and there was no more. Knowing how happy she had been so recently and fearing the worst, I immediately emailed Penny with an urgent message 'Please don't do anything silly. Talk to me.'

There was no reply. The blog was soon deleted, and before long I got the message from another friend that Penny's time on this planet had come to a premature end.

I am no expert in the human condition and I can only guess what Penny had gone through. I even doubt I could have offered her any advice other than to never give up, and such a well-worn platitude might not have been enough to sustain her. I don't wish to judge her because heaven knows, we all make mistakes and trouble our lives with the misjudgements of others. Whatever Penny did that she regretted I am sure many who knew her would have forgiven her and given her support to make things better. I also believe in the fullness of time she would have found someone to love and they too, on learning of her life's difficulties, would have more than helped her through whatever darkness still engulfed her.

Above all had Penny remained with us I think her star would have risen as a writer. She wrote stories other than erotica under other names but I have no knowledge of them. I wish I did as I might have, with her other friends, have encouraged her to become an established author and even made a living from self-publishing. Sadly it was a revolution that came a little too late for her.

I miss you Penny Lee, but I hope making your story available to others might preserve some of the memory I have of you. You had a story to tell, and here it is.

Wherever you are, Penny, may the light be with you always.

SG, 2013