In which I flip the script

I text David to tell him I’m so nervous about moving and marrying him that I wake at 4am every day, stomach churning.

Even the dogs are still snoring. I’ve never been vulnerable like this with him before. I have always put on a brave face, leaving him to read about my insecurities later. But he surprises me by being incredibly supportive.

‘I feel I should be with you.

You should feel proud of having overcome such adversity. You never gave up.’

He is coming to see the house the weekend after I get the keys. Meanly, I tell him, ‘I’m so busy with moving, work and all the stuff with the Princess of Wales, the horses and dogs that when you come there won’t be any food.’

‘Don’t worry. I will deal with food and cook for us.’

It is really weird, but for the first time in my life I am accepting help. I am not whizzing round with the Hoover like a nutter and buying artisan gin.

I then text my friend Andrea in Belfast to tell her how anxious I am. That I have lost all confidence. Andrea is tall, beautiful and has a handsome, loving husband. A reader, she got in touch, and we have been close ever since. She is someone

I admire for her strength: she had breast cancer, was married on her deathbed, but miraculously recovered. She is always texting me from some far-flung clime, or yet another pop concert. Once, for her birthday, when she went to see Madness at the O2, I persuaded Suggs to stop the music and to wish her many happy returns. She filmed the moment and sent it to me. She’s the sort of person who takes a suitcase of Dreamies to Greece to feed the stray cats.

She replies, ‘You can cope. Look at all you’ve coped with so far. I don’t do drippy, weak female friends. You are not one of those women.’

And she tells me something that really hits home. She tells me to ‘flip the script’.

‘Think of the move as the best possible thing you could be doing. The very best thing for you, the dogs and your future.

‘You’ll get a whole new perspective on life once you move in. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to write a novel about a woman who lives in an old vicarage and talks to the people in the graveyard who offer her advice. Maybe you’ll just get new gorgeous wallpaper that you love seeing every day, or a view that makes you happy each morning. Soon you’ll feel like you’re in the best place you could ever possibly be – home.’

I think I spend too much time on my own. Most days I don’t speak to anyone bar the collies. A couple of weeks ago, I got wind that a big announcement was going to be made on the six o’clock news. I called Nic to come and watch. ‘We have to witness history!’ We sat, sobbing, hugging cushions, as Kate, the most famous woman in the world, and some would say the luckiest, broke the news that she has cancer.

I was most struck and touched that she still managed to do her hair for us, and to smile. I never smile. Faced with adversity I have mad hair and stop brushing my teeth.

And just like that, Kate flipped the script. If she can cope with what she is facing, and all the surrounding publicity and pressure, then I can cope with moving house. I remember going to the gym once for a sandwich, and a sign struck a chord: ‘Your body is your home. Look after it.’

I have my health, my animals, a career I love and which is fun and engaging, allowing me to glimpse other lives and parts of the world I would never have access to as a civilian. Joseph Fiennes’s downstairs loo. I went to Auschwitz with All Saints.

Prince played the piano for me, and me alone.

I really need to buck up. Perhaps the tombstones that are propped against the walls of my new house will make me realise that life is too short to be miserable.

I really need to buck up. Life is too short to be miserable