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idea of moving with us, actually put a plan into motion for once in her life, packed her own stuff up and moved into her boyfriend’s parents’ house. I wasn’t happy with the idea and had been expecting her to change her mind but, as she had so firmly stated, she was 18 and there was nothing I could do.
    Luckily, Huw is lovely; 6' 4" and built like an overly hirsute piece of string, he actually took the time to come and try to allay all my fears and worries, which was very mature for an 18-year-old. It didn’t help at all but I appreciated the gesture.
    We had met his parents who, strangely, seemed to be so convinced that they were taking on ‘a lovely girl, so helpful and polite’ that I came away from the meeting wondering if Amelia had paid a stand-in to cover for her as we seemed to be discussing a different teenager.
    From the very start of the dreaded boxing-up exercise, Geoff had maintained that this was an excellent opportunity to do a major ‘life laundry’ and had blithely thrown away anything either he hadn’t used for a year or that he hadn’t seen me using. In the early days of packing I was more likely to be seen dragging things out of the skip than actually putting them in.
    Things finally came to a head when he tried squeezing past me in our small hall with two very lumpy black bags.
    â€˜What’s in there?’ I asked, failing to inform him that I had noticed a couple of stiletto heels sticking out through the plastic. Geoff’s eyes slid sideways and he took a step backward, ineffectively trying to push the bags behind him.
    â€˜Just some last bits and pieces I found under the spare room bed,’ he muttered. Picking up the bags he tried to slide past me again.
    â€˜Oh, no you don’t,’ I shrieked, ‘those are my shoes!’ I lunged toward him and grabbed one of the bags. Not only was it full of shoes, but boots and bags as well!
    That was the final straw; I was tired, dirty and miserable. I had the choice of living with my mother-in-law, or on a floating coffin that smelled like we would be sharing it with the resident carelessly interred corpse, and as far as I was concerned that was no choice at all. Now this useless, hairy lump was going to throw my Jimmy Choos in the skip.
    It was all his fault we were in this state, and it was his stupid idea that we go and live with his mum or on a boat (reality wasn’t playing a huge part in my life at this point), Sam couldn’t swim, so he was going to fall off the boat and drown about two minutes after we cast off and even if he didn’t die he was going to be so emotionally scarred by all this that he would probably end up with his own counsellor at ChildLine.
    Geoff took one look at this wild-eyed and maniacally angry woman lunging toward him and decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valour. He dropped the bags and fled.
    A couple of minutes later, he called gently up the stairs, his voice following the trail of scuffmarks that I had made in the paintwork as I had stamped past, swearing and dragging two bags with sharp heels sticking out, acting the part of expensive grappling hooks.
    â€˜Are you OK?’
    I stuck my head out through the bedroom doorway. ‘No I’m bloody well not, just leave me alone,’ I shouted down at him and, turning, stamped back into the bedroom, the angry slam from the door echoing around the bare room.
    I leant against the door and stared at the dents and impressions in the carpet; it was as though my beautiful furniture was still there, just invisible, and for a moment I could forget that it was either sold, given away or just dumped.
    Sighing, I emptied the shoes out of the bags and watched them bounce across the floor. I spent the next five minutes arranging the 30 plus shoes and boots into their pairs and placing them around the wall of the bedroom. Staring at them I sat on the carpet in the middle of my invisible bed