Snow and Fire

Heavy and widespread snow fell early that February. Due to this, his course in Bedford was cancelled one week, and he travelled to her village instead.

In glorious sunshine and bitter cold, they walked around the field path to the wood, and wandered for some hours in a white wonderland of glittering crystal droplets laced around bare branches like diamond jewellery, like glistening ropes of pearls.They played in the thick soft snow, explored and got lost, stood in awe at the way snow shaped and transformed trees, stumps, undergrowth...

The cold was intense, the sun even stronger. They hugged, kissed, ran around. Coppelia was so happy she felt her heart was actually on fire.

Following a hearty pub lunch in a nearby village they made their way back towards his home, stopping for a while to visit their old friend, the silver birch wood. This, too, was all white quiet splendour. Once more, late that night, remembering the blissful hours earlier, when that old hurt stirred, Coppelia heard her inner voice murmour... 'A day like this'

Portrait of a man

Of the many faces in that exhibition, this was one that each of them was drawn to...Portrait of a Man, by Van Eyck. To Coppelia, the features, the expression, bore no small resemblance to the man by her side. She can still recall that quiet moment when they stood, side by side, reflecting on this face, studying the picture, lost in an exquisite shared concentration and understanding which needed no words.

A day like this...

Coppelia's telling of this story began on January 30th, 2009, and not exactly out of the blue. For some time an inner urge had been growing, to somehow recount, and record, the way her life had been unfolding since they met back in September 2006. She came to believe more and more, that the stringency and uncertainty under which she was having to conduct this relationship, could be countered by the freedom the written word offered.

His reaction to events on Christmas Eve were a warning to her. Now was the time. The story must begin to be told. When she began to write, she was unprepared for the deep feeling of release, the satisfaction of seeing before her, words describing exactly how it had been. Pouring from darkest, forgotten corners of memory, the words slowly unearthed the weight of time, the weight of silence. Today, Coppelia's words continue to help bear her sorrow, to unravel the days and reorder them somehow enabling her to confront a reality that always hurts, no matter how hard she tries. Writing saved her, is saving her.

Hour after hour as the pages were filled, she felt freed to relax and more fully enjoy every moment they could spend together. In early January they took the train to London for a whole day and evening during which they visited the Renaissance Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, going on to enjoy drinks in bars as they wandered around the city at dusk, basking in these long hours of closeness, which came as a great relief after the tensions of Christmas, and the enforced longer separation of the holiday period. How they relished discussing at length the exhibition they had seen, the city surrounding them, the people and places encountered that day. As they always did. Always laughing. Tightly holding hands the while, as if afraid the other may disappear should they let go.
At the start of that beautiful day, as they walked along Tottenham Court Road towards Trafalgar Square, the large mural on the side of a building in a side street was lit by the winter sun, the Post Office Tower by its side. The two of them remarked on how stunning the colours, the shapes were. Coppelia took a picture.
Lying in her bed late that night, once more having had to say goodbye, when the most natural thing in the world would have been for them to remain together through the night, she told herself how lucky they had been.
For, although she may hurt, she could endure it, for a day like this.