A STORM INSIDE A STORM

I ran to the car, clutching a pack of macaroons. The dark sky exploded with fizzing, crackling light and the night erupted into thunder. Monsoon rain pounded onto the concrete, streaming its way around my feet.

Clunk. Rucksack in the boot. Clack, bip bip, leap in, slam.

Rain hammered onto the windscreen, streaming down the glass and melting the weirdly lit car park into something like an impressionist painting.

Then, suddenly, without any warning at all, I did something I had not expected. Sitting there, in the driver's seat of a Ford Focus, next to a thrown-about packet of macaroons, I placed my hands on the wheel, in the middle of the thunderstorm... and I burst into tears.

I did. I just started crying. It felt as though all the clouds of emotion within me had had enough, could no longer contain their rage, sadness, disappointment, or whatever, and had started sparking each other into a moody maelstrom.

I'm clearly going bananas. What is this? Where does this deep, irrepressible sadness come from? Why am I like this?

I pictured my dad, rolling his eyes and leaving the room. I thought of my Mum, helplessly trying to fix it but not knowing how. I remembered that I, in such times, usually swallow it and carry on.

The sky flickered with electric ribbons of lightning. I wiped my eyes, started the engine, and headed home.