My personal Hell is her. In my lifetime we had been friends, before we fell out at eighteen, the whole world ahead of us. There was a trip away with a group of friends who didn't realise what had occurred and we spent a week in an apartment where she didn't look me in the eye. So that is my personal Hell: that week-long stay in Prague with a girl who would not speak to me.

I lived it again and again and again. I cannot leave the apartment. I can see the red-tiled roofs from the balcony, and if I open the windows I can taste the impending frost on the chill air. It's like groundhog day; I eat pasta in the evening with an unsmiling girl across the table and at night I cry in the bathtub with a glass of white wine.

In the morning I get to wake up and live it all over again. Every day I get to try different things. Some days I scream at her. Some days I am polite, waiting for the guilt to overwhelm her, for the flicker of normality to return to her eyes. It never comes. I have tried ignoring her back, not meeting her eye either. I try staring her down. She will not speak. She will not address the gulf between us.

I am cooking the pasta, chopping onions and wiping my sleeve under my eyes as I allow the tears to come. She stands motionless in the corner of the kitchen. The knife slices through the onions easily, clicking against the wooden chopping board. I scrape them into the pan and take another from the bag. Now the tears are streaming thick and fast.

I grip the knife under my forefinger and peel the onion. I step towards, onion in hand, and make a comment. She ignores me, continuing to stare out of the window at the red roof-tops.

It would be very easy, I decide. One quick stroke with the knife, and she would be gone.

I place the knife on the table beside her and push the onion into her hand. This time she makes eye contact, confused.

Then I leave the apartment. As I do, it begins to snow.