When Sir Edward and Lady Downes killed themselves at a suicide clinic in Switzerland last week they transformed themselves, in the eyes of others, from an elderly couple unable to face the inevitably gruelling decline towards death into operatic lovers taking a final stand against time and the cruel world that would separate them. After 54 years of marriage the conductor and the ballerina decided to die together, holding hands, refusing to let Lady Downes’s imminent death wrench them apart.

The rest of us read about their suicide in bewildered awe, glancing at our own spouses over the top of the computer and wondering whether our decision in similar circumstances would be as operatic. Do we, we wondered, love each other enough to die together?

I mean, what if, for example (and this does not apply to the Downeses), you weren’t ill and, sad though it was to see your life partner go, there might be time for a few more audiobooks, a couple more episodes of The Wire or trips to Kenwood House for tea? Time after time throughout our lives the deaths of loved ones send us a message: life is short — suck it up before you have to join in.

When we marry we promise to love each other until death do us part, but there is always that flicker of hope (isn’t there?) that we might not be the one departing; that we might just get another bash.

I remember once negotiating a deathbed suicide pact, gazing into someone’s eyes and promising we’d go together because I couldn’t face the world without him. But I was 18 and hadn’t quite managed to face the world at all at that time. In the end we have limited the undying passion to a more manageable commitment of sushi together twice a year. Much less emotionally wearing than the weeping and promising of 1988. The trouble is that, unless you conduct operas and dance in ballets, the experience of loving commitment is more a kind of grudging, “All right, I’ll put petrol in the car then, but I’m using your card because I’ve been forking out for everything today”, than a soft-eyed, “I would rather die with you than live even a few moments of life without you”.

The devotion of Sir Edward to Lady Downes (for it was she who was dying) forces us all to question what we really mean by our own vows, whether we love each other enough to die together and, if not, what we mean by “I love you”.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote letters to my children for them to read if I die suddenly. I know it sounds mawkish, but it happens. My father was shot dead, out of the blue, in 1989 and I’d have liked him to say goodbye, even preemptively. While I was writing, I found myself hoping that, if I die, they will have a great time and not think about me, except to know that they were unreservedly, unconditionally, joyfully loved. Because you need to say “I love you” only if you are going to die. Real love for someone living doesn’t need to be articulated.

When I am tired, cross and being mean, my son always says, “I love you, Mummy”. Usually I hiss back, “I love you too, but wash your plate before I go completely nuts, OK?” What he means, obviously, is: please be nice and look after me. What he means is: you say you love me all the time but you’re not behaving like it.

People quite often say “I love you” when they fear something is missing — that something is love.

So, while we are worrying about whether our own marriages are as strong as the Downeses and desperately trying to measure the extent of our love (do I love him enough to put his running stuff into the machine? Er . . . ), it is worth remembering that love is wordless.

After all, it is often the people who loudly claim to love you that treat you like s***.

If someone, God forbid, is beating you up regularly it is probably someone who says that he loves you. If someone is leaving you to do all the drudgery and babysitting it is probably someone who says that he loves you. If you are demanding commitments and promises, or, indeed, offering them, perhaps the emotion being expressed is fear rather than love.

The thing that is so often misunderstood, particularly by women who are forever forgiving every aspect of male behaviour and subjugating their personalities to any old abuser they can lay their hands on, is that a declaration of love extremely often means “Please love me”.

For, as the Downeses probably knew, you don’t need telling if someone loves you. They won’t be cruel to you or rude to you.

It will make you happy to have them around and they will obviously be happy to have you around. The question is not, ‘Do we love each other enough to die together?’ The question we should be asking ourselves when faced with the truth of what the Downeses did is, ‘Do we love each other enough to live together?’

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