In which I break down completely

The day after my pony Benji died, we let the other horses out. Swirly, my ex-racehorse, galloped to the bottom of the hill, frantically searching for him. She galloped back up again. She kept calling to him. They were so close. I feel for her, but I feel for me, too. The guilt that I had to put him to sleep when he trusted me. I kept telling the vet he looked fine, but she assured me he had sepsis, and would be in agony were it not for the drugs.

Only a couple of days later, I had to travel to Bath to give a talk to third-year journalism students. I’d booked The Pig nearby, and asked David 1.0 to meet me for dinner.

‘Are you still going, so soon after losing Benji?’

‘Of course. There is nothing

I can do for him now.’ Benji had been taken away for an individual cremation. I hadn’t stayed to watch that bit.

I wouldn’t have been able to bear it; I would have been screaming.

I woke the next morning at 4am. Deep snow. The station is an hour away, my train at 6am. I scraped the snow and ice off my car using my Barclaycard: I’m still a Londoner, still unprepared. I drove, the first person out on the roads, like Mrs Magoo. I made it on to the train, water leaking from eyes incontinent with grief. Finally, at 1pm, I got to Bath, and took a taxi to the hotel to get changed.

The lecturer came to pick me up and ferry me to the campus: it’s beautiful, surrounded by parkland, whereas my studies took place on London’s Elephant & Castle roundabout. The students were sweet: so relaxed, so confident, so different to me at their age; I was anorexic, briefly sectioned, suffering from agoraphobia. The main lesson I wanted to instil in them was how hard the career they had chosen was going to be. The 2am starts, the 14-hour days, the deadlines, the RSI, the lawsuits, the trolling, the comments, the death threats. The fact you have to file copy the day your mum dies and all you get in return is, ‘Thanks, Liz!’ You have to catch a train at 6am in deep snow hours after your pony has died in your arms. But I don’t think they believed me. They saw me, dressed in Prada, about to spend a night at The Pig, with its everything-sourced-within25-miles food policy, and I’m sure they thought, yeah, I want what she’s having. What they don’t see is that the Prada skirt was bought with a discount in 1998. That

The Pig, dinner, train and taxi fares mean three weeks from payday

I have £5.94 left in my account. Why would anyone work for 40 years, vomiting with stress, to be where I am now?

The lecturer, who told me her job entails two days’ work a week and four months paid leave every summer, which made me spit with rage, dropped me back at the hotel. I had warned the concierge that David would be joining me, but said on no account should he be allowed in the room. The joy of a hotel is opening the door to find all is pristine. But, of course, he was so keen he’d turned up at 4pm and was ensconced in our upgrade. I found him damp from a bath, in a dressing gown, his stuff everywhere. But it was sweet that he’d driven all that way to spend a night with me. I was desperate for a drink so we went down to the bar, twinkly with Christmas trees and garlands. It was full of beautiful young couples. ‘I hate couples!’ I hissed. ‘But we’re a couple,’ he said sadly. And for the first time in ages I felt normal, as though I might fit in.

The next morning (we didn’t have sex; we watched MasterChef: The Professionals. My bill for just food and drinks was £262.09, not including breakfast, which David paid for), he drove me to London as I had a photo shoot. He didn’t bring up the fact I’d asked him to live with me in the Dales. Perhaps he’d forgotten. I’d been quite saucy during our brief stay. I’d reminded him of the orgasm he gave me the last time we stayed there. But he hadn’t even made a move. He just coughed all night and complained his toast wasn’t buttered.

My travails worsened. After my shoot at the Daily Mail, I arrived at King’s Cross to find all trains were cancelled. I managed to get on board one at 7pm, bagged a seat by paying for first class but, due to an incident, the journey took seven hours instead of two and a half. I finally got to the car park at 2am to find my car frozen solid. I couldn’t unlock it. The wing mirrors were frozen folded back. I stood in my thin London clothes, finally breaking down completely. I seriously thought I might die here, in a car park.

And I wailed, ‘I want to go back to London! I want Benji!!!’

I got to the car park at 2am. My car, frozen solid, wouldn’t unlock. I wailed