Newly-wed Hear'say singer and classical music star Myleene Klass was shocked to her core when husband Graham Quinn left her after 11 years and seven months of marriage.
Since the talented pianist's husband Graham Quinn walked out on her in April, she's been focussing on looking after their two children, Ava, five, and Hero, 18 months to distract her from the pain.
The musician admits that she had no idea her husband was unhappy in their relationship. She told The Daily Mail:
"It's been the hardest six months of my life. You see, I thought Gray and I were so happy. I had just walked down the aisle, so of course I didn’t see it coming... I hadn’t even got my wedding dress back from the cleaners," she says.
"When it first happened and I was in the middle of the storm I was just so very, very hurt. I felt I would sooner have taken a bullet. Actually, at the beginning, every morning when I woke up, I thought I had taken a bullet to my heart.
"It’s so unfair that people call it 'heartbreak' because that word almost romanticises something that is beyond pain. It is all-consuming, it is debilitating because you cannot move, cannot do or think of anything else for the sake of a wound that you cannot see, that no one can see."
Myleene appreciates that her feelings of pain and rejection are no different to those of non-celebs. She's not looking for sympathy or special treatment from the public, but felt she needed to clear the air after news of the split hit the headlines.
She went on: "Your love for someone isn’t a tap – you can’t switch it on and off. It doesn’t matter who you are or what reasons they give for leaving you – it doesn’t matter if they run off to join a circus or if they run off with Cindy Crawford. It hurts.
"There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed and my mum would say to me, 'It’s OK, you are just grieving.' And she was right – it is a kind of grief, a grief that you have to work through."
Unlike most of us however, Myleene’s experience was played out in public, inevitably becoming the subject of a media storm. It became clear that Gray’s exit had been planned meticulously, when he moved quickly into a bachelor pad.
Rumours soon emerged that two months before the split, while working on security for The X Factor tour, he had become close to 25-year-old dancer Sarah Robinson, who had formerly been linked to X Factor winner Matt Cardle.
Myleen shared her thought on this, too: "I withdrew, I couldn’t grieve in public. I didn’t fall apart because I knew that above everything else the children needed me to be strong for them. I looked at the girls, and I thought, 'I have everything I need; I have got it all here.'
"It was a good lesson in the sense that I think you can lose sight of what you have. I realised looking at my daughters that what I have is massive – as I say now every day to Ava, 'I have one arm for you and I have one arm for Hero and this is our unit.' The children have been my absolute salvation."
Myleene met Irish-born Graham Quinn, 38, in 2001 when he became bodyguard to her band Hear’Say.
Through all the pain, Myleene's kids have been by her side...
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