A bad patch

I have spent the last few days in a state of extreme anxiety. I thought the relationship was over and I made a decision that was based on that, at least in part. I feel exhausted. Although Mr G would never lay a finger on me, he is very good at doling out an emotional battering, leaving one bruised inside, rather than outside; the kind of bruises which you cannot see, but oh, how painful they feel. I call it a slap on the soul.

As always when we have a row - and it doesn't happen very often as I walk on broken glass, trying not to say anything controversial that might raise his blood pressure and cause him to have another stoke - I am left confused, wondering what I have said or done that was wrong.

He bought a new piece of kit, some kind of box to enable you to see programmes from BBC I-player on the TV screen. He plugged it into the television then coiled a twiny cable across the doorway and over the hall into his study, where the other end was plugged into his computer. Now, as an insomnia sufferer, I sometimes wander around at night. I go into the kitchen to swig Gaviscon if my ulcer is bad, or open the door and stand on the deck, looking at the moon and stars, enjoying the night-time sounds, stroking Flad if he is around, photographing hedgehogs (as one does)... and I do all these things with the lights out, so as not to wake myself up too much. I am almost sleepwalking.

Here is what I said to cause the monumental row. I posed the question in the mildest, un-naggy, un-moany of voices. "Please could you unplug it at bedtime so I don't trip over it in the night." A fair enough request, wouldn't you think?

Well, Mr G snorted and pawed the ground like an enraged bull. "How dare you speak to me like that! How dare you tell me what to do in my own house!" The tirade went on while I cowered, tears springing to my eyes, a big neon sign with the word UNFAIR on it blinking on and off in front of my inner eye.

"Please," I said. "I wasn't trying to tell you what to do, I was only trying to prevent an accident. What if you'd tripped over it? You know your balance isn't too good since the strokes." But that didn't do the trick and other resentments got added to the mix, such as the fact that I had dared to grumble the other day about not being able to concentrate on my work because of his visitors coming round all the time - the ones with the five kids especially - and that I hadn't written a book for six years because I didn't have enough peace and quiet. Until I moved the computer into my bedroom, I was working on a glorified landing with no heating and not even a door to close. Now I can work in the bedroom, but it faces north, the window is broken and the wind whistles around the panes and the traffic noise is deafening.

He also complained that my 'stuff' was taking over his spare room. "I may as well move out and let you take over my house as that's what you seem to be doing," he said. (It's always 'my house', 'my kitchen', 'my spare room', 'my garden'; his sense of ownership borders on the obsessive.) So my response to that was to tell him I would redouble my efforts to buy my own place.

That remark was greeted by silence. Then I remembered something he'd said at least three years ago, and I mentioned it. "The only reason I haven't found somewhere before now is because you told me that you wouldn't abandon me if I'd had a stroke."

"I never said that. I would never use emotional blackmail. You've invented it," he said. I hadn't. I'd been so upset at the time, caught between my desire to help him and my need for my own creative space that I'd rung my sister and a couple of close friends and told them. I reminded him of another upsetting thing he'd said and of course he denied ever having said that, too. The upshot was that he shouted at me, saying he'd tell his friends never to come round or even ring in case they disturbed me. Then he had the cheek to tell me that I didn't need to work. DIDN'T NEED TO WORK? I am a writer. A poet. A songwriter. And as well as my own work, I edit and critique other people's. And although I don't earn much, I need that extra cash and I also need the stimulation and sense of achievement I get out of what I do. Without work, I would go crazy with boredom here. Totally barking mad.

I had put the dinner I was about to cook back in the fridge because I felt sick, and I didn't want another curry anyway as it was the third in a week and I have digestive problems, as you know. It was he who was insisting on currying the leftover kleftiko. (I think he could happily live on nothing but curry, so why doesn't he f--- off to Mumbai?) He then got the meat out again and cooked it and we ate curry in tense silence. The whole of the next day he went round with his headphones on and didn't speak to me. So I put in an offer on the bungalow I'd seen on Monday, that needed doing up.

By the end of yesterday, when the offer was accepted, he was speaking to me again. Just. I am now walking on eggshells again so as not to upset him. But now the next controvery has begun. This house is my property, my project. I want to design it and find the builders, but I got up this morning to find he had printed out the floor plan and was busy scribbling on it. He is sticking his oar in, telling me that I would be stupid to tile the floor of the half-finished conservatory but I should put in a laminate floor instead (ugh!) and I should use his mate X to do this and his mate Y to do that. I could scream! I want him to butt out and leave me to get on with my project on which I am spending my money. Not ours, not his - mine. I can already see more storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Pass me the Gaviscon!