Lighter's version with the pack of cigarettes is well-established folklore. Non-smokers will prefer the newspaper, illiterate a bar of chocolate. Like all good urban legends, it sound both spectacular and plausible; this one is more on the plausible side.

The following happened to a lady I knew: on the very morning of her planned wedding, church and everything, her fiancé told her that there was another woman he loved more, and that he had known that for months but had been too much of a coward to confess it.

Normally there is still time to pack a suitcase or two. Those who leave with just a coat - assuming they exist - are either extremely "mad" or want the others to believe they had drowned, been murdered, etc. Some actually have drowned, been murdered, etc.