I couldn’t sleep last night. I finally gave up at 5am and listened to some hypnosis tracks to try and calm me down a bit. I got out of bed at 7am, fed the dog and made breakfast.

The husband came down about thirty minutes later. He’d not slept well either.

I think we both cried. Neither of us ever expected it to come to this. I might not have really trusted the relationship, but I kept reminding myself all these years of how long we’d been together.

This fucking hurts.

Then he began asking what it was going to do with his old room.

I said that I’d put a bed in there and set it up as a guest room (I’d always wanted somewhere where friends could stop over). He then realised that asking and being told my plans was upsetting him. “Me too,” I replied. In many ways, having the freedom to do with the house what I please is exciting, in others it just feels fucking tragic.

… yet … I feel excited for him: he’s moving into a pristine flat – a home without the history and trauma of the house we have shared together for five years. The house that he chose

I showered, then walked to the place where I was hiring the van.

I was very anxious about driving a van. We were renting the smallest one they did, but I’ve only ever driven small cars and I freak out in large cars, so a van was going to be a challenge.

There was a fellow in front of me in the collection queue getting quite het-up because his rental, arranged through the cruise line, was not going to happen for some technical reason (we live very close to Southampton docks, so we see a lot of disappointed tourists trying to make the best of their time in the city). Poor chap.

My turn came and the handover was smooth, professional, and reassuring: I told the guy my anxieties and he really took his time explaining how to drive it. Basically, it’s thrusters only in spacedock.

I kept to major roads, wherever possible. For them as lives in the States, the roads in Britain have been here hundreds (and in a few places over a thousand) years. Back then, the only travel was by foot, horse, or cart, none of which requires a three-lane motorway.

I’d placed some bins outside the house and parked up.

We worked well as a team loading the van: for such practical things we often did work well together.

His flat was about five minutes drive from the house, and had designated parking, which made the unloading very straightforward.

I let him tell me where he wanted things put. It didn’t take long, although he had much more stuff than either of us expected – we didn’t over-fill the van to try and minimise stress and the risk of damaging his things, so a second trip was required.

Just as we were arriving at the house he started fretting because a delivery scheduled for tomorrow was arriving today. He couldn’t work out where it was being delivered to: the house or the flat. Turns out that he was looking at a map app for directions rather than the delivery app!

He wanted to take a garden table that he’d built himself; I decided to reverse down the back lane so that we didn’t have to take it through the house. The back lane is an overgrown one-hundred metres of going backwards – see, I’m getting more confident in the van!

That’s where the fun began.

I tried to reverse once, and a car came. I didn’t want the pressure of being watched and holding someone up, so I circled the block to try again.

The second time was worse. I didn’t realise, until I was kinda jammed in, that I needed to go much further forward than I would have had to in the car in order to reverse-turn the van into the lane.

This time, cars came from both directions.

Cue meltdown.

I’m shouting and swearing and waving my arms around like an Italian on steroids.

A chap stood outside a nearby garage was in hysterics; “do you have a driver’s license?” he asked.

Once I’d backed up enough to let the cars go past, I calmed down enough to see the funny side – and the other drivers smiling and laughing.

I suppose that was all good fun really.

The actual reversing down the lane was simple enough, I just had to be careful that the various trees and bushes didn’t knock the wing mirrors off … it was made easy by my first ever use of a reversing camera!

After picking up the table, we zipped the van around to the front of the house to pick up the rest of his stuff. Then back to his flat to unload it.

He needed to wait in for a bed base, so I refuelled the van (£30 made zero difference to the fuel gauge).

Handing the van back was simplicity itself and very quick.

“No problems?” the chappie asked.

“Nope!”

My deposit was refunded and I walked back to his flat, which was only fifteen minutes from the city centre by foot.

At his flat we ate some lunch and talked about the houses we’d lived in. The one I live in now and that he has just moved out of (and he chose) was his favourite.

My favourite house was the first one we bought. It was perfect … until that became full of trauma, grief, and bad memories.

After lunch, I setup his WiFi and TV. I tried to show him how to do it, but we were both very frazzled. It’s all working now, but I’m going to need to explain it to him again sometime.

Once again I am reminded that I have my uses.

He thanked me for driving the van and helping him move. It all shows just how good a team we can be in the right circumstances.

It’s crazy that things have come to this.

I walked back to the house. Itself only fifteen minutes walk from his flat.

How empty and forlorn the house looks without all his things!