SO there it is, gurning up at me from my desk like a gargoyle in paper form, daring me to get upset, get angry or get arrested again. But the strange fact is that the decree nisi leaves me feeling absolutely nothing - nothing at all.

I'm not making it up, not just saying it as part of the whole brave-face thing. It doesn't even leave me cold or numb, it's just an envelope of big, empty nothingness. In the strictest sense of course it's simply a piece of paper with some words on it, but so's your wedding certificate and that means a lot. But weddings come with happy memories (or in my case memories of your groom spilling beer on your frock, a drunken aunt bitching about your dress and someone else's catty comment about your shoes, but I am TOTALLY over it and hardly brood at all. Well, not often). Marriage certificates have a coat of arms and writing in some proper fountain pen, and cost thousands of pounds and a year to organise and everyone's mothers to keep happy, and lots and lots of shopping trips and a photo album that makes you feel all warm and an anniversary which later turns out to be the only time all year you get to have sex. Nisis, on the other hand, are a matter-of-fact form run off by the court on an inkjet printer which tells you all that shit is over and in fact was such a waste of time and money you'd have been better off digging a hole in the ground, covering yourself with a duvet and hibernating for five years.

The sex would probably have been better, too.

But nevertheless there's a piece of paper sitting on my desk that says it's dead. Oh all right, I admit it's been rather gasping for breath since Fatty had me dragged off in cuffs, frankly had not much chance of recovery thanks to Twatface's buggering about, and had in fact been limping for quite a while before that, in hindsight. But now a judge has signed it off there's no arguing the point any more. It's all over: the dreams, the plans, the babies' names you decided on together and now even though you still quite like Thomas you can't use it even if you fall in love with someone else in case the child is hexed in some strange way, or born with flippers or something. The fact I still have my wedding dress hung up in the wardrobe, which I never dry-cleaned and couldn't even wear in case it somehow used up its magical properties, is no longer a touching reminder of a happy day. Now it's just a bit of silk that smells of beer and makes me sigh, like an old pair of pulling pants when the elastic's gone. I can't even flog it on eBay or give it to charity, in case some other poor cow inherits the curse. So it just hangs there, mouldering.

And despite this piece of paper I'm still married. I still have a husband and I wish like hell I didn't. I still use the phrase 'my husband', only it's no longer said with a sense of togetherness. We still have a house and a mortgage and lots of crappy things to argue about yet at the same time we're supposed to be starting our lives anew. It's like trying to climb a ladder with someone on your back, having to carry them as well as yourself, with the added problem that they're trying to prise your fingers off the rungs and drag you down into an abyss of self-loathing with them. And if I found someone new, technically I'd be an adulterer too, and indeed I already am. I cannot move on as I should. My feet are glued to the floor because I'm still legally and psychologically tied to someone who is the direct opposite of the smiley, sweet man I fell in love with, someone who is such an unbalanced bully I literally hate him.

It came as a surprise to realise that I could quite easily kill him, given the chance and a reasonable weapon. If the bomb were to drop tomorrow and the rule of law suddenly cease, if hordes of desperate looters ran riot in the streets, I'd make sure mum and dad were okay and then I'd hunt him down, chuck him in the cellar and make him hurt. I'd find ways to inflict as much pain as possible, involving a corn-cob fork and a pair of fire tongs. I'd make it last for months, and after that I'd revive him, make him better, and then really go to work on him. There'd be no satisfaction in it, it would make me feel no better in any way, but vengeance would finally be mine instead of this quiet dignity crap which frankly does nothing for me. It would be a lot quicker than karma too, which incidentally if it ever shows up is going to find me tapping my foot and demanding 'what time d'you call this? He's been a cunt for YEARS'.

But there is an unwritten code about these things; that even and especially if you were the wronged party, you will continue to bear the other party's behaviour with nothing more than a grimace and a quiet bitch to your mates over a glass of wine. You're not allowed to send the boys round, despite the many offers my fellow hacks have made (Buff Arnold wanted to do the deed himself, but most were more along the lines of 'I know someone who...'). You're not allowed to haul Twatface into the town square and invite the world to throw rotten eggs at him. And maybe because most of my friends have yet to get married, there comes a point where they turn to you and say 'isn't it time you moved on?' And yes, it is and I'd love to - but we're still married. I find it rather slows you down, like a ten-ton weight.

I rang Maurice the smiling lawyer to find out what was going on and he explained, in his jolly, isn't-all-this-a-lark? and that'll-be-another-£150-thanks way that the decree nisi was "just a formality really, a recognition that you both recognise the situation is irretrievable. You signed the forms last time you came in, don't you remember?"

Well, no, Maurice because mainly I just remember the big cheque I signed at the same time. It left an indelible stain upon my memory. By the time you pressed some other documents into my hand and asked me to daub my mark my brain had spun off into a horrible world of massive debt and Government bail-outs, so I wasn't really thinking clearly. But while it's a surprise it's nevertheless welcome I suppose, like when the end comes for a terminal cancer patient; as much as you wish they didn't have cancer you're kind of glad when death finally arrives.

If the decree nisi is the formal recognition of a marriage's demise, the death certificate stating baldly the cause of death: 'adultery', then there's only one thing which ends it for good and proper, and turns 'my husband' into 'ex-husband'. The decree absolute, the final closure, the end; the funeral, as I am swiftly learning to think of it.

But that, dear reader, is nowhere in sight.

Maurice giggled: "Ooh no, you can have the nisi just to kind of formally recognise the whole thing's over but we haven't agreed a financial settlement yet which can take years in some cases. Some parties never apply for the absolute, they're happy to just have the nisi" - Who are these screaming nutters? Why aren't they locked away? Are they allowed to drive? - "although in your case without children I shouldn't think it will take more than a few months more to hammer everything out."

"Months, Maurice? How many months?"

"Oh, who can tell with these things? Unfortunately your husband's lawyer doesn't see things quite the same way as us."

The main thing Twatface's legal eagle doesn't see is why he owes me any money, because we don't have children. We do however have a house, bought with the help of a small inheritance from my grandad which, as Maurice gleefully pointed out, once I had put into the marital home became, technically, a joint asset.

And Twatface wants it back. Well not back, because it was never his, but he wants five figures in lieu or for us to sell the house and split the proceeds. Which if he was dirt poor I could understand, but a couple of months before we split he had an inheritance himself and that one was about 10 times the size of mine. It was destined for the mortgage and me getting pregnant, but because it was in his bank account and not our house account it's all his, apparently. So now he's shacked up with Fatty whose family reek of money and he's sitting on a big stinking pile of cash and yet he wants to chase me for a few pennies more and make me homeless into the bargain. He's even threatened to have my car off me. What a nice man.

Well I'm not having it. NO. FLAMING. WAY. I hit back with a succession of estate agent valuations, each of which valued the house as the same or slightly less than when we bought it, and which therefore technically means he has to buy his way out of the deposit. Bless the credit crunch! I would tell you that legal letters have been flying, but they've not. They've been limping, slowly, between solicitors with zero result apart from making me worry what'll happen next. It's like water torture, days waiting for a letter to drop on the doormat and slice another few pounds off your bank balance and years off your mental health. So far it's cost more than getting hitched in the first damn place, only without the nice frock. God, why did I get married? If we'd just lived together one of us could chuck the other out and this would all be over.

But then it seemed like the right thing to do at the time; we were in love, once, and while you might think holding on to that thought is a bad idea, it actually helps. It helps you to remember things weren't always like this, and while it might have been a mistake it was something you can't wish away or regret. And I don't - I know that one day the hate and upset and anxiety will pass. Twatface and everything he did will never leave me, for better or worse. It's up to me to make that a lesson to be learned from rather than a scab to be picked over. But in the meantime the corpse of my marriage is still laid out in the living room, waiting for a decent burial and starting to stink.

Just as that thought trundled its way across my frontal lobes and I was toying with the thick vellum of the lawyer' s envelope, there was a whoosh and a thunk as Bish dropped a bundle on to my keyboard.

"It's that time o' year, lass. Personal assessment. Come t'bunker in five..."

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