The day before New Year’s Eve, Joseph Dewey hung up the phone, unaware it was the last time he would ever hear his wife Cate’s voice.

Shortly after Christmas, Joseph had left the flat he shared with Cate to spend the day with friends. She was preparing a three-course dinner for their upcoming New Year’s Eve party and had asked him to pick up some fresh pasta.

While out, he missed a call from her. The reception was poor, and he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying on the voicemail. Still, he had no idea it would be her final message.

Their love story unfolded like something from a romantic movie. Bored and out of work during the Covid-19 lockdown, actor and director Joseph joined Hinge, where Cate was one of the first people he matched with.

He asked her about her favourite film—Legends of the Fall, which he hadn’t seen—so they watched it together but separately, chatting over WhatsApp about the music, the scenery, and her favourite scenes from their respective homes.

They didn’t know it then, but cinema would become a central thread in their relationship.

Their first date was the next day—over Zoom. Joseph sprayed on cologne unnecessarily, and as soon as they logged on, they realised they had just been watching the same show: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

“We were on the same wavelength from the start,” says Joseph, 37, speaking from Cate’s flat in Ware, Hertfordshire, with their wedding photos behind him.

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“Cate was the most beautiful person in the world. She lit up every room. She was really fun, such a foodie, an amazing cook and just an absolutely loving person. She was the most extroverted introvert. She loved going out and being around people, but then she loved hiding in her room playing Sims.”

Five months after meeting, Cate moved from Ware into Joseph’s London flat. With restrictions still in place, they spent Christmas alone—Joseph cooked turkey while Cate played on her new PlayStation game. The next day, snow began to fall.

“I suggested we went for a walk and we found ourselves standing outside the London Eye in the middle of the day in the snow, with no one around. It was just magical,” Joseph recalls. “I knew then that Cate was the woman I wanted to marry.”

But as Covid restrictions eased, Cate’s lifelong struggle with mental illness began to resurface.

“She always said she had a brain funk, but didn’t really delve into it,” Joseph explains. He started noticing her panic attacks and realised something deeper was wrong.

“The respite of the pandemic enabled her to almost feel as if she could breathe again through that time. And when the world started to open up again, you could just see that it was a struggle for her. She’d find everything very overwhelming.”

In 2023, Joseph arranged a fairytale proposal—inside the King’s Gallery, after asking a friend at Kensington Palace to close it for the occasion. Cate said yes immediately, and the couple started planning a cinema-themed wedding.

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By May 2024, when they married at Screen on the Green in Islington, Cate had already spent nearly a year on an NHS waiting list for therapy. The panic attacks persisted, but their wedding day brought peace.

“She was the calmest I’ve ever seen her on that day. I was an absolute wreck. And she was like, ‘I’ve got you.’ I will always thank her for the happiest day of my life. We had such a good day,” Joseph says.

After the wedding, they went to other friends’ ceremonies and enjoyed a honeymoon in Turkey. But when they returned, Cate’s mental health deteriorated.

“She had tremendous anxiety and was having panic attacks,” Joseph says. “First of all, I would think: ‘Oh my god. What do you need, what can I do?’ But that is completely the wrong thing to do. You learn it is about being with them, distraction techniques, breathing next to them heavily so they can hear your breath and get into a rhythm themselves and having no questions, no shame, no blame about what was happening.”

Joseph began researching everything he could to help her. He suspects Cate may have had undiagnosed ADHD—she would oscillate between intense energy and total exhaustion.

In 2024, she was prescribed antidepressants. Still waiting for NHS therapy, her family eventually paid for private support.

“She was flying high in her career, working as an administrator at the Food and Drink Federation and they absolutely adored her. She was so good at the job, but sometimes she’d work from home, because going into the office would give her anxiety.”

“If we went out and if it was too busy, she would have panic attacks where she would literally be on the floor struggling to breathe, which would then trigger depression. Cate just looked so sad and tired and would spend a lot more time inside.”

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Despite this, Christmas was a joyful time. They spent it with loved ones and made big plans for the future.

“We were going to move back to Ware to get out of central London. We were thinking about buying in Tunbridge Wells. We wanted to own a little cabaret space and Cate wanted to get a bridal shop called Catherine’s. We were going to get a dog, and start a family.”

Joseph hoped that once therapy and an ADHD assessment were underway, things would improve. Cate had mentioned suicidal thoughts—he feared they were a side effect of her medication—so they returned to the GP for support.

But then, on December 30, after a day spent apart, Joseph got a call from Cate’s mum asking where her daughter was.

They soon discovered Cate had checked herself into a B&B and ended her life.

The days that followed were a blur. Joseph was in shock. “Cate’s mum called and said, ‘Cate’s gone.’ And I went: ‘Where’s she gone?’ And she was like, ‘No, honey, Cate’s gone.’”

Cate had left a letter each for her mum and sister, and a voicemail for Joseph: an apology, saying she couldn’t do it anymore.

“She’d just had enough,” Joseph says. “Cate never wanted suicide. No one does – they just want the pain to stop.”

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Amid his grief, Joseph was left to organise a funeral he never imagined for someone so young. “Funerals are geared for older people,” he says. Designing her service and montage was surreal. Official letters that followed were “full of cold language” about her death.

In one year, Joseph attended four weddings and a funeral. “If our story were a film, there would be a resolution. A happy ending. But this is real life,” he says.

Determined to turn pain into purpose, Joseph held a cabaret concert in May. Friends composed scores from Cate’s voice notes. On August 10—Cate’s 32nd birthday—loved ones will run a 10km race. In September, Joseph will walk 70 miles through London in Cate’s memory for Suicide Prevention Day.

He expects they’ll raise £25,000 for suicide prevention charity PAPYRUS by year’s end.

“It’s so important to speak about suicide, and if I can shine Cate’s light through talking about it, then that’s exactly what I want to do,” Joseph says. “Suicide is such a big killer, especially for the under-35s. Men’s mental health is being spoken about, but I don’t know if enough people speak up about young women dying from suicide, and unfortunately, that rate is going up.”

Joseph hopes openness can save lives. “Cate, my wife, dying – I want no one to experience that at such a young age. I miss her incredibly. Speaking about suicide doesn’t make the suicide rate go up. It actually does the opposite. So I want to use Cate’s voice to get people talking – and listening. People are suffering and if we don’t check in with each other, you don’t know what people are up to behind closed doors.”

“And if you are struggling, go and speak to your GP. Go and call the Hope Line. Tell your friends and family. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

(METRO)