Splashing vinegar and sugar and warmed-then-cooled water resentfully into a vase. A recipe for flower preservation to ensnare a buyer for the house. I am moving and already the process is driving me out of my skull insane. The house is a dream – for someone else. It is now someone else’s house that I live in to their dictates, the desires of this imaginary buyer. For a woman who arranges the flowers I grew in the garden, a delight of a woman who – I bear her no ill will – dreams of a life that is dreamed by men and women who are not me. I unpick the threads of my life, as unspun as Penelope.

Outside I hack at the ground and wrench out weeds, earth griming and grinding into my skin like a blessing. In the greenhouse are cuttings of hydrangeas whose progress I watch interestedly. Some are going to the new house – wherever that is, although in my dreams I already am building the shed, putting the iron-work table and chairs in the sheltered corner where the morning sun will fall. Others are gifts for the people who help me – paid or not – to move my life. They grow; I hope.

Today is a viewing, an inspection in which the house and me will probably fail to sufficiently demonstrate it is for them. I will sit like an owl in my office loft with the patient cats – they too are not allowed to punctuate the fantasy I must sell them – while they wander through. It feels dishonest; I refuse to repaint, the house is as it is. The flowers though must be done, the bath-towels bagged, clothes shoved under a bed. Then they will leave and the flowers will be put away. Please let them buy – I want to be gone!