TV News editor Miles Andrews and his fiancée, TV journalist Carmel Jennings, are collaborating on a biography of the late newspaper mogul Sir Russell Stepney. Andrews, who works for the Central ITV regional station…

My attention lunged at the first couple of sentences. Fiancée? Miles was engaged? Already? We only split up ten months ago!

I examined the picture of them cosied up together. Carmel was gorgeous. She reminded me of Thandiwe Newton.

I didn’t want to read on. I slapped the magazine shut and shoved it to the other end of the kitchen table. Miles hadn’t been prepared to settle down with me. He had been happy enough at the time for me to stay over the odd night at his Glasgow flat, but as for taking things any further, that had been a non-starter. Whenever we passed by a jeweller and my eyes turned misty at the engagement rings, Miles would bundle me away and assure me we would “look to the future at some point, once we knew where life was taking us.” Little did I know that Miles had already decided his life wouldn’t include me.

I propped my chin on my hand and observed Harley scoffing down her chicken and kibble as I pushed and poked my dinner around my plate.

I hadn’t been enough. What Miles and I had shared hadn’t been enough.

When Harley had finished, I jumped up from my kitchen chair. I had to get out of here. The walls were tumbling down, bringing my mood with them. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go for a lovely walk.”

I drove on autopilot, away from my house, past the blue ribbon of the sea and out along the thread of fiery-coloured country lanes, where the last remnants of leaves were hanging by a thread to branches. The ones that had already succumbed to the November chill tumbled and pirouetted in front of the car. We pressed on towards Drummond.

Harley sat secured in her dog seat in the back, like a little China ornament.

I slowed down as I glimpsed the couple of wooden picnic tables and found myself parking up. Once I made sure Harley was secured in her pink harness and lead, I locked up the car and we set off through the field.

It had been an odd, discomfiting week and the news about Miles being engaged had bruised and battered my ego. It had only been January when we split up and already he was engaged to someone else for goodness’ sake! And he was enjoying a successful career in TV news too.

His life was progressing, moving onwards and upwards and taking a different path, whereas mine was stuck in a quagmire. I was writing about colonic irrigation treatments and teeth whitening, in a job that had been offered to me and which I had accepted out of desperation.