One told me to call back at seven in the morning and be physically present by eight, which with a school-age child is not a thing you can do.

The third took my information and said somebody would call me back and somebody did call me back, eleven days later, by which time it did not matter.

I looked at apartments.

First month, last month, security, and a credit check on an applicant with no income and no employer for seven years.

And on the Thursday afternoon I sat in a Honda in a shopping centre in Norwalk with two children in the back and did the thing that I think most people in that position do and nobody admits to, which is I worked out, seriously, with numbers, whether we could sleep in the car for a while.

Not as a dramatic thought.