I’m glad to add some special memories of Matthew Fortune, the lovely son of my friend and teaching colleague Sandra and her husband Roger. It has to start with the evening of the 1983 November fireworks party outside at our friends Terry and Carlos’ house in Edlesborough where you Sandra were very very pregnant and then I remember so soon after that you called everyone sounding so very happy telling us of the safe arrival of your wonderful little boy. On a later occasion I remember Matthew - who was so sensitive and always dared to be his own person - not wanting to be part of the rough and tumble at our friend Terry’s twins’ birthday party in Edlesborough village hall. He sat reading contentedly and quietly in a world of his own, near where I was sitting, and told me how much he was enjoying reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and what he liked about it. I don’t think he was much more than 8 or 9 or years old and maybe younger. Some years later you invited lots of your old friends to your birthday party Sandra in the school where you were working ( were you 40 and was it in the library?)- and I have a great memory of Matthew performing a brilliantly rehearsed entertainment singing and acting with a group of friends - which we all greatly enjoyed. The last time I saw Matthew was at our mutual friends’ Emma and Mark’s wedding a few years ago where I chatted to him in the gardens and sat next to him at the meal. We chatted about lots of things he’d done since I’d last seen him years before - like his time at university and how he loved studying literature with his lifelong love of reading. I reminded him how he’d loved Shakespeare since such a young age and how studying Literature was his destiny! Then he smiled knowingly! After that he opened up and told me about his job with the charity which he liked and his pleasant supportive colleagues there and his flat in London. Such a sensitive gentle soul was Matthew with a quiet dry sense of humour and his endearingly own way of viewing the world and expressing himself, daring in his quiet way to be his own person. I can only imagine how much you as his parents and all his family miss him but you were always the most wonderfully supportive parents and he clearly loved you dearly and felt constantly loved and supported by you both ❤️ xxxx