Last September my husband Kirk Stephenson threw himself under a high-speed train. It seemed as though I had suddenly woken up in the wrong play. For ten years my life had been a light domestic comedy, of interest only to my friends and family. Now it had become a tragedy and was blazoned across the world’s media as the “first credit-crunch suicide”.

I have decided to write my own account of what happened in the hope that it can be of some help to all the men whose wives have told me of their husbands’ fragility, of how they break down in tears at the thought of not being able to be the provider, of troubled work situations that become all-encompassing, of depression and of nervous breakdowns. Although the catalyst for this collective depression is the credit crisis, the causes have to do with the make-up of high-achieving personalities and a culture that exacerbates the problems.

In the early days after Kirk died, seeing the world continue in its routine when the man I loved was gone was an outrage. Even the dog failed to register the change, gambolling round the dining room as the police told me that my husband had died. He then mourned my husband, lying in the study and waiting for him to come home.

Walking the dog during the Indian summer in the weeks after Kirk’s death was a parody of real life. To the outside world I seemed composed. Inside, I veered between the agony of his absence and believing that he would somehow reappear. What sustained me were family — above all our eight-year-old son Lucas — and friends.

I lost my faith after Kirk’s death. He thought that religion was a load of rubbish although latterly, as the financial crisis intensified and our problems mounted, he admitted that he envied me for it. The Sunday after he died I went to Mass in a country chapel. There was a roomful of humankind, but God was not there. Now, my faith has come back and I feel immensely thankful that I had my husband for nearly a decade. They say that your children are on loan as they then leave the nest. Kirk, too, was on loan and I was so very lucky to have him.

I met my husband-to-be over a bridge table in Pimlico. Definitely not my type, I thought, but would make a good fourth for a bridge evening. He thought that I was a loud bit of Eurotrash. For our first date he unaccountably took me to a London Business School dinner hosted by an interim dean whose lack of charisma and conversation settled like a wet blanket over the table. Despite these inauspicious beginnings, we had a marriage that I could only dream of. To find a soulmate is not something granted to everyone. He told Lucas that the happiest day of his life was when he married Mama.

Learning to live without him is very difficult. He was a besotted father and although he was the disciplinarian in the family, our son had him sussed. When he was 2½, some incident prompted Lucas to refuse Kirk a kiss as he left for work one morning. As Kirk moved away, though, Lucas ran after him and gave him a kiss and a cuddle. He then turned to me, the sense of power resplendent on his face. “He happy now,” he said.

On a more mundane level, Kirk dealt with all the bills, all the travel, all the school stuff, all the taxes, all the driving and all the home maintenance. I had relaxed into the cocoon of marriage and, in hindsight, the division of labour seems rather one-sided. He even edited my work as a financial journalist and could spot errors in articles on the Pakistani economy or banking regulation. Knowing about complex international finance, however, does not help me to bleed a radiator or deal with an insurance company.

Kirk was my constant playdate, but to the outside world he was much more than that. New Zealand-born, he arrived in London in 1983 with a first- class brain and strong work ethic to take up a post as a trainee at the merchant bank SG Warburg. He followed that with a stint at the American investment bank Morgan Stanley before leaving banking to work as a chief financial officer and chief operating officer at several large, well-respected organisations including Amersham, Coats Viyella and the international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Latterly he had worked at Olivant, a private equity firm that suffered after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This was the trigger for Kirk’s suicidal crisis and it was so swift that there was very little time to register how serious it was.

The insecurities of the high achievers who gathered this week for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are emphasised by the words of a former central bank governor from Latin America. “Davos is full of people who are more successful than you. It is full of successful people who are used to everyone standing to attention when they walk into a room. But there, no one looks at you,” he says.

Most men share the caveman’s instinct to bring back the food for the family, to provide and take care of them. In the credit crunch, as they face, at best, deep salary cuts and, at worst, redundancy, their masculinity and sense of worth is being chipped away. The depression lies in how they understand what is happening to them. High achievers don’t blame the recession. They tend to blame themselves — if only they had changed firms; if only they hadn’t invested in the banking sector; if only they had sold their house 15 months ago. Because of their intelligence and professional record, they believe that they are in control of their lives and so are quick to condemn themselves.

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