Hurrying downstairs to grab some breakfast, she gave her mother a big hug. ‘Thanks for putting up with me – and for telling me the truth last night.’

‘Oh, darling! Welcome back.’ Her mother returned her hug and they stood close together smiling mistily at one another, then Stacy picked up her dad’s morning paper and a pen. ‘Let’s see what’s available to rent.’

It took ten days of gruelling house hunting for Stacy to find a suitable flat. The one she settled on was larger than average but old-fashioned. It was part of an old, revamped building in an industrial area, not as smart as new-build flats.

It was quite a way out of the city and the flat was distinctly shabby, but it was cheap and there was generous storage available in some sheds in the backyard for a small extra weekly payment. That tipped the balance. She had too many art things to fit into a small flat, even when they were packed up in various containers, as they were now.

She’d preserved her boxes of ‘stuff’ even during the bad times, and Darren hadn’t counted them among the household goods when they were dividing up their mutual possessions because he’d always considered them rubbish. Well, they were salvaged pieces of metal, all sorts of shapes, from which she built and welded little sculptures, many of them animals or ‘creatures’ out of her imagination.

Darren hadn’t thought much of her finished pieces, either.

Even her parents hadn’t offered more than faint praise for occasional pieces. Well, her mother liked china figurines of ladies in old-fashioned clothing, which were about as far away from Stacy’s pieces as you could get.

She didn’t care. One day she’d show them all. In the meantime, the first thing was to move into the flat, then sort everything out and start practising her welding skills again. She’d thought she could manage to clear a working space in the storage area she’d also hired, as long as she didn’t work on large pieces, but she wasn’t at all sure she could work in such a cramped space.

Well, she would try to sort something out once she got off these horrible antidepressant tablets that made her feel so sluggish.

Being depressed had to be better for an artist than being dopey like this, she told herself firmly on her first day of following the doctor’s instructions for coming off the drug. He wasn’t sure she should even do that, but she was determined not to rely on them any longer, so she insisted.

It took two more weeks for her head to feel truly clear and her artistic imagination to burst into life again. Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks when she realised that the bits and pieces of metal she’d been fiddling around with had turned into a little creature, a bit like an otter. It was so cute, she photographed it then taped the pieces it was made from together. She’d weld it properly when she’d cleared her storage area and had the space.