At the time of our split we lived in England, I was taking my son with me to live in Scotland. Luckily for me I have a great friend who was living alone at the time in his three bedroom house. So it seemed like the best plan to live with him. His house was near a school in a good part of the city.

Because of the differences in term time between the two countries, and as we were moving in the summer, I timed it so he would only miss a short time of schooling, and I felt it would be better if he finished a full year before starting a new one in another school. I don't think I was fully aware of my son's complete trust in me because for the most part he never displayed any distress about what was happening. As long as I was by his side he coped very well. It was at night when his anxiety came to the fore he would not sleep for more than an hour or two then he would awake and come looking for me. He only really slept if I slept next to him.He never was able to articulate what was troubling him but it seemed obvious to me he was missing his mother. This broke my heart and compounded my feelings of guilt but I still felt I was doing the right thing. For in the month leading to us leaving, and after we had formally split, his mother withdrew even further from his care

I only had a small car which I stuffed with as much of our things as possible trying to choose the items that would bring him comfort. The main one being a blanket which he loved me to wrap him in like a Roman senate. I also brought an electric keyboard which he had great fun playing with.I don't know what we must have looked like as we traveled up the motorway in a car filled with stuff almost hiding him, sat in the back in his car seat.Of course he never spoke, content to listen to the 80s music I was playing, and watch the world pass by.I had thought and planned, and thought and planned some more, and as I drove I was thinking and planning  more, but really, there was no amount of preparation I could make ...