
It was 2011 when children's author Helen Bailey joined a Facebook group for widows and widowers.
She had been with her husband John Sinfield for 22 years before he died, drowning while they were on holiday in Barbados in February of that year.
She had been laying on the beach when John waded out into the deceivingly claim, blue water. He was caught in a rip and despite attempts to revive him, died on the shore while Helen watched on in.
As it happened, Helen remembered a little voice in her head: "But I'm wearing a bikini... but I'm wearing a bikini," it repeated, over and over again.
"It was inconceivable," she later recalled, "that something so terrible could happen while I was wearing swimwear. It was the absurdity of it."
After John's death, Helen, deep in the throes of grief, joined an online group with others who had lost their spouses.
Helen and her beloved dog, Boris. Image: Facebook.
It was here she met Ian Stewart, whose wife Diane had died in their garden in 2010.
Author Helen worked through her loss by writing, first on a blog named Planet Grief and then in a book, When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis.
The book also covered the beginning of her relationship with "gorgeous grey-haired widower" Ian. At first, they were simply friends. But shortly after it blossomed into something more, and quickly became serious.
By 2012 the couple had moved in together, with Helen eventually selling her home and buying a new house on the outskirts of Royston, Hertfordshire, south of Cambridge, with Ian. She wrote of their relationship, about how they were planning to marry.
Helen put Ian into her will, giving him power of attorney and meaning he was to inherit all of her £4m (AU$7.2 million) fortune.