Either you go and clean my mother's apartment right now, my husband said, or tomorrow I file for divorce — six months out of work, living on my salary, saying it with a beer in his hand. I didn't argue. I took the keys and walked out. What was behind his mother's door turned that threat around on him inside forty minutes.

I lived out of the hotel for six days and then I went home, because it is my apartment and Raisa got the interim order on the Thursday, and I slept badly in my own bed for about four months.

He came for his things twice with his cousin and I was not there either time, by arrangement, and both times I walked into a flat that had been gone through — not damaged, gone through, drawers left open a half inch, which is a thing I noticed and mentioned once to Raisa and which she told me to write down and stop thinking about.

The legal costs were nineteen thousand dollars.

I want that number in here. Nineteen thousand dollars to establish that a man who had lived in my home for three years had spent eight months running a business in his mother's name. The equalisation payment did not cover it.