Beloved and Bonk: Diary of a divorce

Divorce is like a big pile of manure dropped on life's path. You have to dig every last bit of it out of the way before you can move forward: miss any and it'll stick to the soles of your feet and smell for the rest of your journey.

I had imagined that there wasn't that much more shit to shovel: the decree absolute was done, Beloved and I both getting on in new relationships, the kids - Buster's Celtic Soul notwithstanding - settling into some kind of new routine. Somewhere far off I thought I could hear a very fat lady clearing her throat. Come springtime I said to myself she'll be hitting the high notes like Callas before she met Onassis. It will all be over by Easter and we can stop living with constantly elevated pulse rates and a feeling of doom-held-off-for-one-more-day.

Hah! This particular bout of poop clearance is, it seems, like football: a game with two halves. What I thought was the final whistle turns out to have been just half time. In spite of getting the result from this match that he wanted, Beloved still wants to score some more goals.

So when Very Nice Chap (VNC) and I returned home with the kids after our weekend away there was an e-mail waiting for me: small, and as poison- packed as a black widow.

Now, I realise in the wider context of the things ex-husbands do, a nasty one-liner is pretty small beer. Poison pen letters, stalking and threats of physical violence are the order of the day when it comes to recently divorced boys. In fact when I rang my best mate and told her with trembling voice what had happened, she said that I should be thankful that he hadn't come and beaten me up and spat on me, as had her neighbour's ex.

But a single vicious assertion from a man who could only watch Silence of the Lambs fast forward from between his fingers, who can get colicky babies to sleep inside 10 seconds, and lose an egg and spoon race with style, is like a brickbat in the face from an ordinary chap. It's very scary. If he can do something so out of character what else might he do? Plant Semtex round my snowdrops? Have a private detective spy on me from my viburnums?

Now, when I hear our dog growl in the night I wonder if it really is badgers on the compost again, or Beloved, driven by murderous and vengeful intent. I'm scared to go downstairs at night and crossing the yard to the garage in the dark has become as big a deal as it was when I was seven. I've spent the past couple of nights dreaming of Beloved coming after me and VNC with a sawn-off shotgun (also featuring in the dream were some miniature turkeys, flocking around our feet as Beloved finally blew us both away, but that's dreams for you, doing something frivolous to distract you from the main feature). I was woken up by the sound of whimpering and looked for the source all over the house until I clocked that it had been me.

Every friend who has been through divorce told me that I would get indifferent to Beloved. It was like your parents telling you that one day you'd understand why grown-ups just lie down on beaches. I didn't even want to believe it. I still don't want to. I want to believe that our donkey's years of marriage could be put to good use as the basis for at least civility. At best a kind of friendship. I'd like to feel approved of. I'd like to be able to tell Beloved about my new life and hear about his.

Maybe I won't have to believe in indifference if I just wait for the end of the second half and extra time. After all, I was bonkers and angry in the first half, now it's Beloved's turn to kick the ball into an empty goal and throw things; I should just keep my head down. Or maybe by the time Beloved has cleared his own pile of manure from the path, by chucking it at me, things will have changed again, and I'll be glad to regard him with as much interest as a patch of drying paint. I really hope not.