It’s everyone’s worst nightmare, and this week it happened to me. Not so much a bad hair day, as a catastrophic one. It happened when I was back visiting my cosy little hometown of Shaftesbury in Dorset, super-excited to catch up with my school pals and visit all my childhood haunts. I love living in London, but I’ve been yearning for a bit of simplicity, not to mention my dad’s home-cooked meals (he’s a far better cook than my mother – sorry, Mum, but you know it’s true). I’ve been eating out locally, shopping in cute country boutiques, and I thought while I’m here, I’d visit one of the hairdressing salons – support local businesses, and all that jazz.

I was a little nervous to place my trust in someone else’s scissors, as my own stylist has been cutting my hair for years. You know how it is when you find a good one – you never let them go, you’d follow them to the ends of the earth! Anyway, this particular local salon has a great rating online and I’ve known some of the staff for years, which is part of the reason why I decided to go there in the first place – I knew it would be good for their business to have a customer like me, someone who’s in the public eye.

What I wasn’t expecting was that their jealousy of my success would lead to the situation in which I now find myself. That is, without my trademark mane of hair that I’ve had since I was a teen. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m crying as I type this.

Although I’m still freezing from my earlier soaking, I feel myself break out into a horrified sweat. I daren’t look up at Jennifer, but I feel her distressed gaze boring into me. At this point I’m not sure if I want to continue reading. But of course I have no choice but to keep going.