Wing Commander Robin Bamfield’s wife Susan said she could not live without him in her heartbreaking suicide note, which was found by her son at their home in Wokingham, Berkshire

Draped in flowers and a flag with ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ wreaths at the foot of their coffins, Susan and Robin Bamfield were united in death as they were in life.

Their marriage was destroyed by coronavirus in a few short hours. Susan, 71, took her own life just a day after her husband succumbed to Covid-19.

Wing Commander Bamfield, MBE, 76, was taken to hospital at the start of the outbreak to be treated for swelling from a sepsis infection which had left him in intensive care for almost 100 days in 2016.

His family had not wanted him admitted during the pandemic as they believed he was especially vulnerable, an inquest at Reading Coroners Court heard today.

Sarah Bamfield, the couple’s daughter, told a coroner: “We begged them not to take him into hospital but the doctors said that was the only way, so he had a month in hospital.

“They had actually managed to alleviate the problem as such, then – Covid.”