As I deliver Pest n.1 to school this morning I bump into one of the mothers I rarely see, because she works full-time. We exchange pleasantries on the doorstep as the children squabble over hats and lunchboxes.

'We have just moved back to our house, after last year's flooding', she says. 'Spending so many months in my parents' house was no fun. I'm glad we moved out.'

'I shall be looking for a place as soon as I can', I reply. 'I shall be glad to move out too.'

We look at each other, and our eyes meet. In a flash, I read in hers many nights spent in the spare bedroom, and the silent tears; the lost memories and the present desperation; the self-doubt and the pain nobody else can share. All the ghosts that come and haunt me when they have finished with her. I see another death and a new resolution; children to protect and a sewed up soul with throbbing wounds and scabby scars.

'Me too. I shall move out of our family home too.'

'Splitting up?' I whisper, as if it were a secret password to enter a world we do not know.

She nods.

I wish I had the strength to spend my days making the most out of the time at my disposal to chisel away at my new statue, instead of quietly taking a chainsaw to the stumps of my previous one. I know in my heart and my mind the shape I ought to mould, the tools I need to use; but my fingers are frozen and I end up just kicking the past around with my dusty old boots.

It takes a chance encounter like that to freefall into contemplation rather than hearty action. How can I achieve closure if all I do is pull at the loose threads and strangle myself with them instead of tying them up neatly before flinging them over my shoulder?