The Daily Telegraph

Second chance at happiness ended in a New Year tragedy

Richard Cousins had given his new family a trip to remember – but their lives were cruelly cut short

- By Robert Mendick Chief Reporter

RICHARD COUSINS, a captain of industry running a £25 billion company with 550,000 staff, was in the pub drinking with friends. He hadn’t expected to fall in love.

Mr Cousins, the chief executive of Compass, had lost his wife to cancer almost two years earlier. “He wasn’t looking for somebody,” a close confidant told The Daily Telegraph.

“Richard was out for a beer with a mate and he saw this woman across the bar and they started chatting. It [their romance] was all very sudden. He had been very down for a long while.”

A year after the chance meeting in a London pub, Mr Cousins, 58, announced he was to marry Emma Bowden, 48, a senior editor on OK! magazine; their wedding date set for July 21 this year. His wife Caroline had, shortly before her death, urged him, according to reports, “to find someone new”. He had obliged.

Mr Cousins’s two sons – Will, 25, and Ed, 23 – were to be best men and Miss Bowden’s 11-year-old daughter, Heather, was enlisted as bridesmaid.

None of them would survive the New Year’s Eve seaplane crash just outside Sydney.

Mr Cousins and Miss Bowden had decided to celebrate the festive season with their children in Australia. Days before they had sent out their wedding invitation­s. An engagement party was planned for March.

Australia was the obvious choice because Mr Cousins, a passionate cricket fan who opened the batting for his village team, wanted to take in a couple of Ashes tests. Will, Ed and Heather joined them on the family holiday.

Lata Maisuria, a neighbour, said: “They were happy-go-lucky people... The daughter had just started school and she seemed happy.”

Will Cousins was the hugely popular head of press for Open Britain, the influentia­l group spearheadi­ng the campaign for a soft Brexit. Ed had just graduated from St Andrew’s University and was hoping, according to reports, to join the police.

This was a family coming together; a form of team bonding ahead of the coming summer wedding. But it was a trip that would end in tragedy.

The party of five chartered a sea plane to fly them from Sydney on a short hop for lunch at the Cottage Point Inn, a restaurant on the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

Pippa Middleton and her husband James Matthews had dined there on their honeymoon, also flying with the same company, Sydney Seaplanes.

But on the way back to the city in time to watch the fireworks at Sydney harbour, the 55-year-old plane – for reasons still unknown – nosedived into the water at 3.10pm local time.

All onboard perished, including Gareth Morgan, the experience­d Australian pilot.

Efforts to save them failed. Witness Todd Sellars, who was on a houseboat just 160ft from the plane, dived into the water, hoping to pull out survivors.

“I ran my hands down through the windows but I couldn’t open the door, it was sinking too fast,” Mr Sellars told ABC Radio. Describing the crash, he said: “I just thought it was coming in low doing a flyby, but when we looked out – on the corner it just nosedived.”

Investigat­ors will try to piece together the causes. The bodies were recovered by divers at a depth of 43ft.

Mr Cousins had been heartbroke­n at his wife’s sudden death. Caroline, a popular and inspiratio­nal English teacher at Beaconsfie­ld High School in Buckingham­shire, had died aged 55 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.

A neighbour at their family home near Amersham in Buckingham­shire said yesterday: “She [Caroline] had told him to find somebody else.

“The family had gone through the dreadful loss of Caroline. He was getting his life back together and we heard this dreadful news.”

Another neighbour said: “He was the happiest he had been in a long while. He was so looking forward to the wedding – he was as happy as can be. He had a brilliant time in Australia as far as I know.

“This was a holiday he had been planning for a long time. He was a lovely man. A strange CEO, more socialist than most CEOS.”

Ian Thorpe, Caroline’s brother, described his brother-in-law as a “very loving” family man who had “made my sister very happy until the day she died”. Mr Cousins had even bought Mr Thorpe a home to provide him with financial security.

Following the chance encounter with Miss Bowden in the pub, Mr Cousins seemed to have decided it was time to reduce the workload. After more than a decade at the helm of Compass, transformi­ng it into the world’s largest catering company and the 20th biggest in the FTSE-100 index, Mr Cousins announced in September that he would step down as chief executive.

The company’s share price plummeted on the news. A leaving date was set for the end of March.

Normally very private and reluctant to appear in the limelight, Mr Cousins had told one City reporter – who described him as “demob happy” – that he planned at the top of his to-do list “a spot of golf and jetting Down Under to watch a couple of Ashes Test matches”.

Yorkshirem­an Mr Cousins had declared: “I’ll be taking a bit of a break.”

A family friend said: “He was getting his life back together after the death of his wife. It is desperatel­y sad.”

Mr Cousins had put the family home up for sale and moved in with Miss Bowden, the couple living in a modest terrace house in Tooting, south London, with Heather.

It is understood they had bought a house close by and were renovating it and were due to move in before their wedding.

Miss Bowden, who was educated at the £33,000-a-year Sherborne School for Girls, had worked in the art department at OK! magazine for almost 15 years, rising up the ranks to become Art Editor.

At a colleague’s wedding recently, friends said they had “never seen Emma look so happy”.

Mark Moody, the magazine’s social editor, said yesterday in tribute: “Emma was wonderful, I adored her as did the whole of the OK! family.

“I knew her for over 15 years. She was always happy, never had a bad word against anyone and was the perfect mother to Heather.”

Lisa Byrne, OK!’S former editor in chief, paid heartfelt tribute to her former colleague.

“She was a really, really gorgeous girl who wasn’t part of any politics in the office,” said Ms Byrne.

“Her priority was Heather and doing a really good job. I used to call Emma the Grace Kelly of OK! magazine. She was always serene.”

‘The family had gone through the dreadful loss of Caroline. He was getting his life back together’

 ??  ?? 11-year-old Heather, above, was Emma Bowden’s only daughter. She died along with her mother, Mr Cousins and his two sons, Will, 25, and Ed, 23, in the seaplane crash
11-year-old Heather, above, was Emma Bowden’s only daughter. She died along with her mother, Mr Cousins and his two sons, Will, 25, and Ed, 23, in the seaplane crash
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 ??  ?? Clockwise from right: Mr Cousins, CEO of Compass; the last known picture of pilot Gareth Morgan, taken four hours before the crash; Ed Cousins; Emma Bowden
Clockwise from right: Mr Cousins, CEO of Compass; the last known picture of pilot Gareth Morgan, taken four hours before the crash; Ed Cousins; Emma Bowden
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