You probably know this by now, as it happened three days ago. I hope you appreciate the timing of this letter. By now, I imagine, obituaries will have been written, tweets will have been posted by enemies old and new, expressing regret and moving on, and life will have settled back to normal again. I’m under no illusions about what I meant to the world, a shouty former pop singer who never knew her place. I’m not Bowie, or Prince. Nowhere near. You might have shed a tear and watched a video of me in my young and toothy prime on Tuesday, maybe played one of my songs on the radio. One more day and you’ll be over it. But today, I suspect, you’ll still be listening.

If I know the way you work, oh free press of this noble and just country, certain easy-to-reach-for narratives will have attached themselves to my ageing womanly corpse by now. So let’s clear some things up, while we’ve got the time.

– Despite being female and over fifty, I haven’t killed myself because I’m lonely and never found the right man. I found the right man many times, thank you.

– Nor am I dead of heartache over never having had children. I would have been a terrible mother and unlike some had the good sense to realize it early on. Being child-free has enabled me to live the sort of life I wanted.

– I can’t claim that the decision I’ve made is entirely unrelated to the ongoing mental health issues I’ve experienced throughout the years. Would I still be doing this if I hadn’t suffered depression? Who knows. But is this action that I’m taking – killing myself – motivated by that? No, not entirely. Not even mostly.

Here’s why I’m doing this: Nobody shuts up a dead woman. Well, you do; you will, you’ll trample my memory back into the ground at some point, dust to dust and all that. But when a person is newly dead, let’s say three days or so, she’s interesting again. I thought this was probably my one chance to set the record straight. No voices butting in, no sarcastic commentary from the gentlemen of the fourth estate, no angry tweets from bitter, socially awkward forty-something boys in their mum’s sheds, calling me an overweight past-it old whore as they type one-handed.