Storm

The call came at 10am that Friday.

On returning home the previous evening he had discovered H very distraught. She claimed she had found an unerased answerphone message from Coppelia. She confronted him. He confessed the truth. H became hysterical yet also fierce, making him feel dreadful for what he had done to her.

Then it came, the most devastating sound she had ever heard, disembodied words -

"I won't be seeing you again. I realise I don't love you anymore. I don't know if I ever did. I love H."

How could this be true? - these words must be for H's benefit, she was probably standing behind him as he spoke - Coppelia swayed in disbelief. Yet even if not true, how COULD he? How could the man she had trusted so very much, the man she had, only yesterday, heard say he could not imagine life without her, how COULD he do this to her?

Coppelia felt sick and faint and more afraid than she had ever felt before.
Her world out of control.

For the first time in her life she understood 'heartbreak'.
With those words a vice-like grip descended on her heart; a deep and relentless ache began which is still there today.

Feeling crushed as if gasping for air, she willed herself to remain calm, telling him he could not end it this way, he owed her a face to face explanation. She challenged him to look into her eyes and tell her he did not love her.

Sick at heart she lived through the remainder of that day as if she were half alive.
Sick at heart. Sick at heart and sicker. Sicker and sicker.
How can she write of this? She does not know how .There are no words for pain so deep.
There are no words.

A storm had raged suddenly upon her, she was in its eye, lost, in danger. She knew she was in danger.