I don’t feel good today. Telling the children has made it all the more real. It seems to be all part of the slow process of leaving.

I’m having concerns about how Tom will cope once we’re gone. He’ll be rattling around in a big house on his own; he currently has no work, no family in this country, and his friends are not nearby. While I know he doesn’t really deserve my concern, on the level of one human being to the next, I can feel some empathy for him. I think these feelings that soar up and crash down are something I must come to expect over the next few months. I know I’m doing the right thing, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

Tom’s trying to make out he hasn’t got the money to give me to leave. He told me a few weeks back he would give me enough for a deposit and a couple of months’ worth of rent; now he’s saying he has no money. I know for a fact he has 10x more in his account than what he offered, but he says they are his savings and are not to give to a landlord to squander and screw him over. Funnily enough, mid-conversation, he took a phone call from a driveway company arranging for them to start the drive in a couple of weeks, for about the same amount of money that he said he’d give me.

I am viewing the house tomorrow, and if I like it, I will be telling him that I need the money. If he refuses, I am going to the council on Thursday morning to see about housing – something I know he wants to avoid at all costs, as he has such an issue with his child being raised in a council house.

Every other word out of his mouth was ‘fucking this’ and ‘fucking that’, yet again shouting at me when I challenged him. Every word that he spoke confirmed a little bit more that I’m doing the right thing.