seeing his wife that evening. He had also made firm plans to rendezvous with his bandmates at Manchester Airport the following day, before their departure for America. Death On the evening of 17 May 1980, Curtis asked Deborah to drop her impending divorce proceedings; she replied that it was likely that he would have changed his mind by the following morning and then—mindful of his previous suicide attempt and also concerned that his state of anxiety and frustration might drive Curtis into an epileptic seizure—offered to spend the night in his company. Deborah then drove to her parents' home to inform them of her intentions. When she returned to the couple's home at 77 Barton Street in Macclesfield, Cheshire, his demeanour had changed and he informed his wife of his intentions to spend the night alone, first making her promise not to return to the house before he had taken his scheduled 10 a.m. train to Manchester to meet up with his bandmates. In the early hours of the next morning, Curtis died by suicide at the age of 23. He had used the kitchen's washing line to hang himself after having written a note to Deborah in which he declared his love for her despite his recent affair with Honoré. Deborah found his body soon after. In her biography, Touching from a Distance, Deborah recalls finding her husband's body and initially thinking that he was still alive before noticing the washing line around his neck. According to Tony Wilson, Curtis spent the few hours before his suicide watching Werner Herzog's 1977 film Stroszek and listening to Iggy Pop's 1977 album The Idiot. Stark notes the significance of this album, as Pop's title was inspired by Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot about the spiritually sensitive epileptic prince who was driven mad by the tragic and violent society in which he lived. His wife recollected that he had taken photographs of their wedding and their baby daughter off the walls, apparently to view them as he composed his suicide note. At the time of Curtis's suicide, Joy Division were on the eve of their debut North American tour. Deborah has stated that Curtis had viewed the upcoming tour with extreme trepidation, not only because of his extreme fear of flying (he had wanted to travel by ship) but also because he had expressed deep concerns as to how American audiences would react