The room had an intimate feeling. There were none of the residual happy-hour office drunks that you'd find on a Friday night. And the see-how-much-alcohol-we-can-consume college bodies had all but returned to Uni in the big city. Saturday nights were generally a little quieter as well so he felt pretty certain that nothing would spoil his evening as he found a stool with some friends at a high table just a few metres from the small stage.

She'd been following the white lines of the black-top across the country and was in the middle of a five week tour that would see her playing about twenty shows. The reviews looked good. He'd seen a video clip of her and wondered if the energy she gave off on the flat screen would feel the same when he saw her live. The anticipation was there, and he began the almost balmy night with a whisky from the top shelf.

When he first saw her he was taken with a small surprise. She was thin; really thin, and she wore a mob of white hair that still had some tinges of the strawberry blonde he'd guessed would've charmed many from her youth. It draped in long spirals over her slight and lined face. She seemed so demure and he almost felt sorry for her, wondering for a moment if this lady was going to make it through the night. She seemed so frail. And then she smiled at a few people in the crowd with a confidence that told him she'd done this many times before. His concerns disappeared as he waited for her to start the show.

She reached for her guitar, undid the strap and threw it over her shoulder with the ease of an expert. She fiddled with some settings on the PA, turned and tapped on a microphone, and then held a look of assured readiness as she moved towards the stool at the front of the stage.

"Hi y'all" she rasped with a mock accent to the crowd. "I'm Abby, and I'm gonna play ya a few songs." Her smile was there again. He smiled with her. She began playing.

The acoustic guitar and her voice filled the room with the clarity and dynamic of someone you'd expect to be playing to a crowd of thousands, and yet here she was, belting it out, the jumbo six string across her tiny frame in a small dim-lit room of about a hundred people. They all sat in silence. They all appreciated her. She appreciated them.

About thirty minutes in he realised that each song was telling a deep story; some kind of true story. He started to wonder about her life, what she'd been through, and with each exposure of her soul he felt drawn closer and closer to some essence he was imagining. She spoke little between each song; only smiles and thanks, and then she came to the song about an old boyfriend.

"I don't normally introduce songs," she said. "I prefer to let them tell the story. But this one is kinda special to me. It's about an old flame. We had a lot of fun together but we also had our tough times. And one day he decided it was time to leave. Anyway, I'll let the song paint the rest of the picture for ya." And she began, now, with the audience a little more alert, a little more intimate: one step further into her soul.

He listened intently, following the lines of her tale. She sang of the love they had, the jewellery they exchanged, days and nights by a river, then the note he wrote, the first time she stood at the doorstep looking at the empty space where his car was normally parked. The hurt. The agony. The tears. He was there with her, listening with every ounce of his body as she built up the tragedy and the emptiness of the loss she'd been through. And then she arrived at the song's refrain and turned it all around with the poetry of an angel and the voice of a tenor. She powered into the microphone with words of forgiveness and acceptance. And it wasn't any sad unrequited-love forgiveness that she was expressing to her audience. She meant it; every word of it. You just knew through the beautiful pain in her voice that she'd come to terms with lost love, and that this song was a personal anthem which had helped her to heal something that many had also been through. He'd been through it too. And that's how he connected as she faded the song out with the repeated line, "I know that one day this hell's gonna die." He sat there open mouthed and emotional, tears battling to stay in, goosebumps covering his arms and body. He knew that in a small way he'd also been healed. The applause from the room of people was ecstatic. She looked at them and smiled.