Reece Martindale was my undoing and simultaneously my future strength, the only one who kept me going. The awareness that I owed my life to someone was an overwhelming and inexplicable sensation. All I knew was that every time the horror revisited me, followed by the terror that my intruder would one day find me again, I saw Mr Martindale’s face swim into my mind, and his steady, rheumy eyes calmed me. I really did think he was an angel. What, after all, were the chances of him happening across me in the van, in that remote part of Clapham Common – for that was where it turned out the man had taken me – at 4.00 a.m.?

Mr Martindale died a few months later. Heart attack. I never did find out what happened to his corgi. I still think about that dog occasionally. I should have offered to take it in. It was a nice dog, like he was a nice man.

When I was well enough, I moved out of London, to a tiny thatched holiday cottage in Minstead, for no other reason than it was a small village where nobody knew me. I didn’t leave the house for weeks.

Several months later I sold my London place, for tens of thousands less than the market value. I lied to the band, telling them I’d had enough of fame and had emigrated to New Zealand to start a new life.

Iain McKinnon was the only one who knew about the attack – the police had arrested and interviewed him about his threats that night. He had a solid alibi though – a woman in the pub he’d picked up and taken home that night after I refused his offer. He was released, after being sworn to secrecy. It behoved him to keep quiet about it, because he and I both knew he’d get the sack if it came out he’d tried to blackmail me.

The police never managed to track down my abductor, despite many hours of interviews, trying to ascertain who might hate me enough to orchestrate such an attack. They liaised with their Kansas City counterparts, who went to interview an apparently very indignant Professor Samantha Applebaum in her office at the University of Kansas. She hotly and vociferously denied ever writing a letter demanding hush money from Big World Records in exchange for keeping her secrets about me safe, and had no idea who else even knew about our relationship, apart from Pete and the boys in the band.