So I came here that January morning with a bottle of vodka and the contents of my mother’s pill drawer. Before I took the pills I left Ben a note, telling him what I was doing and also telling him how much I loved him because back then I believed that what had existed between the two of us was love. I knew I was going to kill our baby too, but what choice did I have?

It was Harry, Ben’s dad, who found me. He was taking their big old Labrador, Tilly, for a walk, and saw me lying unconscious on the riverbank. He called an ambulance and I was taken to hospital. What happened there – I still can’t bear to think about it.

Barbara came to visit and told me to keep my mouth shut for the sake of my reputation and Ben’s. Though really she meant her reputation. But I nodded my head and told her that I wouldn’t cause any trouble; that I was out of her life for good.

When I went home to Larkfields, everything fell apart. I fell behind at school; I stopped eating. I shut myself away in my bedroom and tried to read but the books I’d loved so much no longer soothed me. Instead, they reminded me of everything I had lost. I had nothing. When I tried to kill myself for the second time, with my father’s razor blades, Mum said she couldn’t cope any more and booked me into the psychiatric hospital, where I stayed for three years. I emerged at the age of eighteen to a world that had passed me by. My school friends were all at university; Ben was working for a fashion magazine in the US; my parents had sold Larkfields. Nothing would be the same again.

As I open the box of painkillers I know this is my only option. I deserve to die. I take a handful of pills and swallow them down with the vodka. The river ripples in front of my eyes, its surface glistening in the heat. I stare at the water as I summon the courage to take the next lot of pills and as I do I feel myself getting lighter.