In one word, we are devastated. I spoke to a lawyer a few weeks ago and he said not to hang our hopes on this but at least we had some hope. It’s so hard not to have any now, it’s so hard to digest. And now we are facing the reality that I have to leave.

It’s so hard to save the money when you are earning Brazilian currency. The rules about what kind of job you can have are so tricky, if it’s a temporary job or zero hours they won’t accept it.

We met in England in 2003, when I was on a student visa to learn English, but I wanted to go back to my profession in Brazil. He decided to come and live with me after a year of doing long-distance. Martin though is a really English person, he missed it here, he missed his family, the English way of life. I work in IT, it wouldn’t be difficult for me to find a job. And we’d saved some money, so we decided to return. And then we found out about this law.

I’ve got a few more months I can spend here with him and then I have to leave. We are trying to see if he meets the requirements but meanwhile we have to live apart. We have never been apart this much, and it feels like your life is just on hold. How can I get a proper job in Brazil now when I want to come here and live with him?

We had a good life in Brazil, we earned enough to be very comfortable. But now we are two households, paying separate bills, and we can’t save much. We have to spend everything we saved because of all this nonsense. People say: ‘Why don’t you go back to Brazil?’ but then it’s like he’s a second class citizen, not allowed to live in his own country. All our friends in London, they had no idea we would have to go through this. They say: ‘You are crazy, this law can’t exist?’ But it does.