Diary of a separation

X and I share our solo-parenting panics and I feel less lonely than I have for weeks
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I'm on the way to the market, to buy bulbs: snowdrops, hyacinths, crocuses. Wrestling with the garden – the purchase of a lawnmower, my neighbours' disapproval as the grass gets long and unruly – has not been my favourite part of living on my own, but I do like planting things. On top of that, bulbs are a statement of intent, a way of saying that we will still be here, in this far-too-expensive house in five or six months to see them flower.

I have a child holding tight to each hand, small nails digging into the back of my hand, which is normal, at the moment. I don't know if it's just a phase, or separation related, but as we walk to school, or around the neighbourhood at the weekend, they both hold on for dear life, as if they might mislay me somewhere between the supermarket and the house. It's lovely but it also worries me slightly; I'm used to seeing them stubbornly independent. They spent half term on holiday with their father, though, so perhaps they've just missed me.

For extra closeness, the eldest is holding on to my upper arm, leaning in chummily, with all his weight on me. He's so big now, it's hard to keep my balance; the top of his head almost reaches my nose. We make slow, erratic progress but finally reach the plant stall and start choosing bulbs.

"When you and Dad separated," starts the eldest, casually, as if it has just occurred to him, picking at the flaky skin of a daffodil bulb under the disapproving gaze of the stall holder, "I cried loads. Then we went to look at your house and ate Maltesers."

"Yes," I say, neutrally. "And next door's cat came round and got in the house and wouldn't leave. I remember."

I remember a lot more, of course. It still makes me feel a bit sick, thinking back. I pause for a moment, and watch him putting garish yellow tulip bulbs in a bag. "It's OK now, though, isn't it? Have you got used to it?"

"Yeah," he says, looking bored as he hands me the paper bag. "Can we go to the bookshop after this?" We move on to the pancake stall, discussion over.

A couple of days later, on the way to school, he says it again: "When you and Dad separated …" followed by something fairly innocuous (about the cat, again, I think).

It sounds experimental, as if he's testing out how it sounds, but the grammar is oddly jarring: "When you separated." It's past tense for him, a historical event. I suppose that makes sense. At his age, 10 months is an eternity, a big proportion of his life. For me and for X, it's not just still fresh, it feels ongoing: we're still in the thick of it, far from any sense of resolution. I cope day to day, more or less, but I'm improvising, far from sure of my own capabilities. Without the mediating influence of another adult, I often feel I'm lacking something essential: I'm not cheerful or expansive or certain enough. At home in the evenings, the three of us don't seem to quite fill the house.

Speaking to X about his holiday with the boys, I can feel that same sense of the vulnerability of solo parenting, though with a different focus.

"On the very first day," he says, "the youngest fell down a set of stone stairs, head over heels. I watched him roll to the bottom and I couldn't imagine what I was going to do."

"Shit," I say, trying to imagine being all alone in a foreign country with a badly injured child.

"He was fine. Just a bruised knee. Amazing. But then a couple of days later," he continues, laughing, but mirthlessly, "we were swimming in the sea and the eldest just disappeared. I turned round and he had vanished."

"Oh God, that must have been awful." I feel a lurch of sympathetic panic.

"He was just hidden behind a boat, but ..." he trails off. "It was really bad."

I nod in fervent understanding. It's an oddly privileged feeling that he still trusts me enough to confide his dark parenting moments: I feel less lonely than I have for weeks.