Diary of a separation

No 5 Splitting our stuffI'm moving out. I have removal men, boxes, a date, a knot of permanent panic and sadness in my chest. We don't exactly discuss what I'm taking and what I'm leaving behind ? not systematically, anyway. On the odd occasions we mention it, it's brutal and jars us out of the soft-focus nostalgia and affection we've settled into in our day-to-day exchanges.Negotiations descend quickly into anger or prolonged silences, like a Potsdam conference scripted by Pinter. We do it in tiny bursts when one or other of us has the stomach for it."You can have the little sofa and the big armchair."The little sofa was a gleefully unearthed junk-shop bargain we discovered and restored together. The dog likes to sit in the big armchair."Really? Are you sure? Thank you.""And

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