My best male friend, the man who was best man at my wedding, and gave a speech. I’ve now heard that he loathes me.
My family Not one emailed or texted me when I wrote about selling up, and being left with nothing, not even anywhere to live. The only two people to contact me were the actress Jenny Seagrove, offering me a place for the horses and a room in her farmhouse – ‘a retreat, no one need know’ – and a reader in London, who offered me a cottage near a park for the dogs.
And of course my friend Sue Needleman, whom I have known since we were both 18. ‘Me and my mum are very concerned…’
My friend who was once my intern Not a peep for two years, even though I bought her a Mulberry handbag. It is so weird, being me (but then you know that).
I get invited to the Skyfall gala premiere, and a VIP night of ice-skating to open the Christmas rink at Somerset House, but not for a drink with the girls.
Snoopy and Squeaky I can’t even go there…
My mushroom faux-suede Matthew Hilton club chair Not vastly significant, I suppose, but a symbolic loss. I had to send it to the dump when I moved home, as the cats had weed on it, as though it were a commode, not a designer classic.
I do still own two shocking pink Conran Shop chesterfield sofas, which reside in the London rented cupboard, which I will be forced to give up in February when the lease runs out, as I can’t afford it. One newspaper rang me up last week, after a picture of the sofas was published in a paper, to ask me how much they cost, obviously as some sort of stab at revealing how profligate I am.
But not every picture tells an accurate story. My assistant bought them, then her boyfriend of ten years – her fiancé, in fact – left her. He just walked out, leaving behind all his things.
Suddenly she was left high and dry, and was desperate for money (you wonder why I’d never rely on a man financially; this man was a veritable saint). So I bought the sofas from her. I didn’t want them. I couldn’t afford them. I also bought two lamps from her; the rest of her possessions she sold on Ebay.
I get invited to the Skyfall premiere, but not for a drink with the girlsSo, anyhow, the reason is either the above are angry with me, or that I am uninteresting and boring. Maybe my male friend, Jeremy, whom I loved probably more than I’ve ever loved anyone, apart from my mum and Paul Newman, did just find me a figure of fun.
But then why even come to my wedding at all? I’ve looked back, endlessly, on my succession of six Apple Mac laptops, and cannot find one bad word I’ve written about him, except this, ‘He once spent £400 on a jumper.’ (In my book, that is almost Marks & Spencer.)
Can I blame the RS, then, after all this evidence, this turmoil I have felt over the past few weeks – after I discovered one of my ex-friends was calling me a ‘c***’ online – for falling asleep on his sofa instead of setting off in his vintage car to see me?
He turned up on Saturday morning, of course he did. I was out with the two puppies (Jess is now too old and infirm to walk, so she and Michael go on an amble together instead), being towed through mud like a landlocked water-skier, and arrived back at the house windswept and mud-flecked, to find he had placed the hamper at my door.
He was sitting on the bonnet of his car, arms crossed. The puppies were so pleased to see him, planting potato-print paws on his chest. I’m afraid I became a bit tearful. He planted the strands of my hair behind both big, deaf ears.
‘What’s wrong?’
I told him. About all the abuse, the family, the friends, the loneliness, how I don’t want to just rely on him, because if he lets me down that will be the final straw. I had thought you could rely on friends, if not on your relatives. Isn’t life supposed to be like Sex and the City and, erm, Friends?
Catch up on Liz's diary entries... In which he makes me wait In which he asks me out on a non-date In which I move house