Packing our Toys 2

I am taking down pictures from our walls: my parents smiling in Kazakhstan; my brother, mother and grandpa at Chatsworth; my son aged 4 months and unutterably cute. I wrap them in a quilt and in summer clothes we won't need for a few months. I place them in packing boxes to be shipped and add cushions for comfort and safety. Though they will not be submerged in water (I hope), they will be surrounded by sea and it feels like a sort of baptism: they go down as if buried and will come up to a new life, reflecting a different light.

Other things go on a pile for the charity shop. I work fast, slipping clothes off hangers and quick, into the bin liner. I pull pans out of the cupboard and wham into a box with a clatter. The pile is a growing full-stop: no more date nights in that shirt, no more baking in that tray. Cook books are cast aside: my plans to add Cointreau to a trifle and simmer a ham in a sticky sauce have come to nothing.

The coloured wooden blocks go ramshackle into a tub. I quickly unload them in the stock room of the charity shop and leave by the back door, slamming it hard to make sure it locks behind me. There is a lump in my throat. All the cities my children and I have built are now colourful rubble. To look back is to be paralysed, a pillar of salt. I cycle home with an empty trailer. We are moving towards a different city.