Now
She'd been so totally blindside by it - their faces splashed across the cover with some appropriately banal headline, their beaming smiles never quite reaching their eyes - that she hadn't paid attention to the percolator's wayward angle, hissed and swore loudly as the coffee dripped onto her skin.
The blow was as precise and devastating as a swift punch to the gut. For seconds she remained bent forward, huddled over in pain as her naked arms slid against the cool marble of her kitchen counter.
It was inevitable, she knew, but it still hurt beyond measure. And all at once that dark abyss that she fought so hard to keep at bay was back to consume her whole. The only way to temper it, that wandering, rudderless feeling of eternal loneliness, of missed opportunity, of an unending sea of emptiness that she was drifting into, being swallowed up by every hour of every day, the only way she knew how to deal with it all when simple actions and everyday living was at the mercy of all these damn feelings and emotions that somehow she just could not control in the way other people seemed able to, was to embrace the pain and the sharp bitterness, transform it into anger. Turn it outward before it destroyed her.
* * * * *
6 weeks earlier
The room felt stiflingly hot as the ceiling high windows magnified the sun's heat, intensifying each golden ray with pinpoint accuracy onto her already burning skin.
She was tense and distracted and could feel another one of her recurring migraines coming on, the pressure bubbling away under her scalp, building to an insistent throb.
She listened abstractedly as Hilary relayed the contents of her diary back at her with all the enthusiasm of an operator reciting the phone book.
It was the off-season, work was largely uneventful. Life too. Life without her.
She grimaced, scrunched up her eyes involuntarily, inwardly berated herself for letting her mind drift again, when she should at least try and give the other woman the courtesy of paying attention.
It was difficult though, focusing on work commitments, mustering the enthusiasm for promotions and appearances and the possibility of a career away from her four best supporters. She wanted them back. All of them. When they had parted ways for a year's respite, she'd imagined spa treatments and poolside holidays, late mornings and even later nights.
But the holiday spirit had worn off after a couple of weeks. It was then that she realised she'd have to deal with herself. She'd never had that before, that time to take stock, to examine and analyse and just breathe out in the open without any constraints. Any real glaringly huge deadlines looming just around the corner.
She'd planned this, worked towards this for so long, the glittering career, the chance to sing, both for the love and for the achievement - that she could turn her passion into a means of support. She had.
But the annual routine that propelled her onwards had been swept from under her. The beat that had pounded out the last six years of her life, relentlessly forcing her through months of recording, promoting, filming, rehearsing, touring, resting and then repeating it all over and over again had just died instantaneously - and she had quickly learnt that she hated the silence.
"OK?" Hilary had said, jolting her back into the sweaty confines of their glass enclosure.
Kimberley exhaled against the tension knotting against her temples, eyes at last focusing as if she'd been interrupted from a long and restless sleep.
"Huh?"
"OK on Monday," Hilary looked up from the diary, evidently waiting for Kimberley to offer her customary precise acknowledgement. Kimberley could usually recite her appointments verbatim back at Hilary. Her behaviour today was seemingly uncharacteristic, but, she reasoned, everyone has their off days. Kimberley was certainly the most contained and, dare she say it, responsible of the group.
