I was saying, then, a while ago, almost at the beginning of this diary, that I moved into the house of some friends for ten days and stayed there for six months. During that time I tried to look for an apartment, but it wasn’t easy. I flicked through the paper that listed apartments for rent and felt terribly depressed; I couldn’t read it, I didn’t have the strength. When Chl came along I’d been living with the woman who was then my wife for ten years, and although the last few had been very, very hard and we were no longer strictly a couple, just living together, and although at first the separation felt like a relief, like being set free, I still went through a kind of prolonged mourning period. I couldn’t deal with the situation; I couldn’t set myself in motion. I had some savings in the bank and I could see them disappearing by the day; this made me panic, and the panic paralysed me even more. [...]