For a long time, she was still.

Legs crossed, hands in her lap, the young woman sat on the grass and didn’t watch as the clouds moved slowly overhead. She didn’t listen to the distant sound of cars, and she ignored the slow stream of tears running down her face.

There were a lot of things Beth refused to notice now – ‘like Alex’, people said. Alex, who never took ‘no’ for an answer – never backed down.

It was when it started raining that she noticed. Not a lot of rain, just the kind of drizzle that brings a chill with it. The kind that goes right to the bones, and makes you wonder why you ever cared, why you ever came in the first place.

The kind of rain that wakes you up, until the sobs are more than water and salt, they’re quakes of pain, echoing through a hollow body, begging for relief.

“I’m broken Alex! Do you know that? I don’t work any more, I don’t function – not in the right way, like a person…”

The kind of rain that runs down the marble of a silent tombstone, and trickles into the mud.