Beloved and Bonk: Diary of a divorce

It's such a funny, unfamiliar little word, "nisi". It looks like a typing error and the only time you are likely to come across it is when you are intimately involved with divorce. Most people know about the decree absolute (absolute is easier to spell because you see it on vodka bottles). That's what characters in fiction tend to celebrate getting - the final release that allows them to go off and live happily ever after with somebody else. But decree nisis are really more important; it's the stage at which you declare effectively, "yes, thank you very much, a divorce ... mmm, yummy yum, just what I always wanted."

It's a word I hadn't given a second thought to before this year. One of those words that I didn't even think of when playing Scrabble. A word I'd never have to spell. Even after I'd seen my lawyer and filled in forms, looked at bank statements and worked out how much we spend on school uniforms a year, I managed to avert my eyes from the word nisi.

Until last Friday. That's when I got acquainted with another odd word - "affidavit". I haven't come across that since I did The Crucible for O-level English. Lots of affidavits in that. I had to go along to the County court and get the affidavit for the decree nisi sworn. I didn't look too closely at the couple of sheets of paper summarising my married life. One of them had Beloved's spider scrawl on it and was therefore almost too scary to even hold; the other said things about divorce on the grounds of finding Beloved's "infidelity intolerable". Which, of course, is nonsense - infidelity in the Media business is an occupational hazard. What's intolerable is that he left me.

Anyway, I trolled up to the County court not feeling too bad. I kind of imagined that there would be some kindly and venerable old judge-cove, like God from primary school, who'd pat my hand and say, "You deserve better my dear", as he stamped my bits of paper. In fact it was a plump and pasty girl behind a glass screen like a bank, who shoved a Gideon Bible out through a slit and asked me to swear on it. I knew exactly the sort of swearing I'd have liked to have done. Damn sight more creative than what the law required. All I had to say was that this is all true and it's my writing on the form, but somehow that suddenly became almost impossible. A tennis ball had jumped down my throat and five pounds of onions behind my eyes. It took me 10 minutes to stand up straight enough to look through the glass. And another 10 minutes and a constant stream of tissues to be able to hold the nasty, little, greasy maroon book and say the words.

I staggered back down the oak-lined corridors, past the security guard with a PhD in unfeeling indifference and outside into the street. Then I had to negotiate one shopping precinct and a pelican crossing to get to the lawyer's office to deliver the sworn over and now rather damp bits of paper. Public crying in Britain is the closest healthy people come to the experience of a medieval leper. No one stops and says, "are you OK?", no one prevents you walking into things because you can't see properly. They just look so frightened that I'm sure a person in full blub could hold up banks.

The thing that amazed me about the whole deal was the surprise expressed by the plump court clerk and subsequently by the lawyer's receptionist. They clearly weren't used to people being so upset. What do people do with all their hurt in these situations? There's no meaty ritual to get stuck into, no equivalent to walking backwards down the aisle with the wedding march played in reverse, so I suppose people just go home and give themselves depression and ulcers and cancer. I think the NHS could save itself money by investing in old plates for people to smash on exit from County court offices, and lawyers' offices, or employ a few kindly old coves to pat hands and say, "there, there". A moth-eaten Bible and a pack of Kleenex just aren't enough.