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I’m chanting my song, even while they wheel me off to have my plugs removed.

I’ve been warned it’s the worst part of the whole process.

I don’t know how it works but I think, essentially, these plugs have acted like scaffolding, holding all the bits of my new nose together, until they’re all set and ready.

But that my new nose has become quite attached to them being there, so won’t give them up without a fight and—

“Oooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

I look down, convinced that my brain must be all over the floor.

As that’s what it felt like, this big gush of…

something… just flooding out of my nose, splashing onto my gown and all over the floor.

But it’s just some blood, and…actually, I don’t want to look at it anymore.

But I do know it’s not my brain. There’s not enough there.

I like to think I have a lot more brains than that. Despite what the papers say.

The worst part is, even after all that pain (and almost losing my brains) I am still not allowed to see my new nose.

Mam drives me home from the hospital, going very slowly over the bumps, as they send shooting pains through my cheeks.

I’m to recover at home, staying in hiding (both from the paps and the neighbours, given I look a fright) until it’s time for the cast and bandages to come off.

“I’m going to be so bored, Mam. Why can’t they just do speed nose jobs, like those flip books I had when I was a kid? One page, flip, boom, brand new nose!”

“Well, they say your nose will keep changing for a whole year until it settles, so maybe life is just going to be slow for a while. Anyway, you won’t be bored, as there’s a surprise waiting back home for you.”

I try not to rush in, desperate to find out what the surprise is, as the new nose demands that I move slowly.

That’s how I’ve started to refer to it, saying to Mam, “The new nose needs a Diet Coke, the new nose needs you to change the channel.” There’s nothing in the living room, apart from Dad who gives me a delicate hug, telling me he didn’t want to see me in hospital as he thinks it would make him cry.

It’s been very hard to explain to Dad that you can be in hospital for positive reasons, too.

He just keeps saying, “I couldn’t bear to see my baby girl on her deathbed.

” Which has really made me realise where I inherited my tendency to be over-dramatic.

Upstairs, my room has been decorated with fairy-lights.

The bed is covered with big cushions, and blankets and bean-bags are strewn all over the floor.

There’s even old movie posters hung on the walls, but the movie star faces have all been replaced with mine!

There I am as Beetlejuice, with lime green hair in a black-and-white suit, Sandy from Grease , hanging off of John Travolta – there’s even one of me as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone , slapping my cheeks in horror.

They’re so funny, unfortunately, that it hurts when I laugh so I try to swallow my giggles down my throat.

There’s also a couple of baskets, bursting with proper movie snacks: popcorn, pick ‘n’ mix in striped paper bags and chocolate bars.

My room has been transformed into the comfiest of cinemas!

As there’s a projector, transforming one wall into a huge screen, where Pumba and Timon from the Lion King are currently singing and dancing to ‘Hakuna Matata’.

“This is amazing! Did you do this, Mam?”

“I wish I was this creative! No, it was your Leo, he popped round earlier to get it all set up. Are you sure you’re just friends?”

“Yes! I told you Mam, he’s not my Leo – he rejected me!” I say the last part in a whiny voice. “It’s bad enough, without me having to repeatedly remind you.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how it went, love. You said he just wants you to be over Damon and, to be honest, I don’t blame him.”

“You’re taking his side? Even after all this,” I flail one arm around the room, pointing out the, admittedly, lovely gesture.

But still! I’m angry at him. It might be because over the last few months we’ve not seen each other.

I wanted my transformation to be a proper surprise to the press, so I’ve turned down almost every invite and launch, and the one time I did venture to one and saw Leo, I found I was clunky and clumsy around him.

I’d go in for a hug, and accidentally stand on his toe or we’d speak all at once, overlapping each other with “no, now you go.” We very much gave off colleagues-who-once-shagged-and-felt-massively-awkward vibes.

I think we both knew it might be easier if we didn’t see each other for a while and realistically, we’ve both been busy anyway.

I’ve been sweating and sipping in the Alps and he’s been, well, everywhere.

I admit I might have spent a bit more time on his Instagram than is healthy for ‘just friends’ but since filming season two was canned, he’s not been short of work.

I cyber-stalked him through the job he had filming a wildlife show at Longleat, then the Hogmanay celebrations up in Edinburgh, and now I thought he was down south doing a show called Candy Man , where people make the most incredible looking sweets.

But it’s been the posts tagged #HomeSweetHome and #BestHousemateEver that have really had me zooming in.

I have to tell myself I’m not jealous that it seems his housemate is one of those laid-back, natural beauty, I-woke-up-this-way types.

She’s called Molly and works in TV too, and I’d be lying if I pretended I’d not asked Madison to find all the inside scoop on her.

He’s stopped replying to my messages as fast lately and I wonder if whatever we had that day between us in the shadow of the angel has fizzled out.

“This is mixed messages!” I yell, flopping down onto a bean bag. “Also he’s got me all these sweet treats when he knows I can’t have sugar!”

“I think you might be on a medically-induced comedown,” Mam says and it’s so annoying when someone tells you why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling.

Like when I’m grumpy and dad says it’s PMS. No, it’s not, people just happen to be behaving like arseholes coincidentally around the same time I am due my period.

This is the same. I was pumped full of painkillers and now I’m not, and Leo is a bastard for doing a really nice thing for me.

I message Madison and Layla. They’ll agree with me.

You just only fancy bastards, so you’re trying to make him into one. L x

For god’s sake let a man do a nice thing for you! You know what Marc got me the other day? THE MORNING AFTER PILL. And I thought it was sweet! M xxxxx

Traitors.

Mam tucks a blanket under my chin and winds the Lion King back to the beginning.

After a good cry at his dad dying, and singing along to ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ but tweaking the lyrics to ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be Thin’ (another one of my songs during training season) I have cheered up.

Which is lucky for Leo, as it’s just as the credits begin to roll that he appears.

“So,” he says, settling down on a bean bag beside me. “Were you fuming at me at first?”

He knows me too well.

“Yeah, yeah I was. I haven’t seen you for months, you’ve cheated on all us North Stars originals by going off filming other shows and now to top it all off, you bring me sweets I can’t eat. Marshall can smell a jelly baby at 200 paces!”

“What?” he says. “So I’m not allowed to do nice things for my friend?”

Friend. Well that settles it, then.

Besides, he has a point. I try to make my nod clear under the cast.

“I felt a bit guilty for being a bit of a dick about the nose job,” he says. “It’s your face so you can do what you want with it. It’s just…I liked your old nose. It was cute.”

“Cute doesn’t make the cover of magazines.”

“I thought you’d say that and, actually, it does…”

He pulls out of his bag a pile of magazines.

There are none of the usual celeb ones I read.

Instead he’s got me ones about psychology and puzzles and right at top: Pup Weekly .

It’s a magazine basically full of puppies with the most adorable chihuahua on the cover.

“Oh my god, I love dogs. I really want one!” I realise this is doing much more for my mental health than looking at pictures of Kady James’ sweat marks or an article about Chad Schmidt’s hairline.

We settle against the pillows and begin flicking through the magazine, assigning names and personalities to each pup. “He looks like his name is Edward and he’s a really funny gay man, who insists everyone calls him Edway,” I say, pointing out a cheeky-looking dalmatian.

“This one looks like a Stewart, and he’s a Chelsea fan—”

“who makes up all the rude chants at the matches!”

The puppies, the Disney movies and the fact my face is literally out-of-bounds, so there definitely can’t be any kissing, helps disperse the lingering sexual tension that’s been hanging between us, ever since that afternoon.

Leo and I might not have seen each other but we’ve since found a way to be sort-of friends over text.

Behind the safety of the screen we can let our guard down and be mates – no awkwardness, no temptation – and I’ve been updating Leo on all aspects of my life, sending him selfies of me beetroot-faced and sweaty after workouts, or showing him videos of Mam, Dad and me when we’re all a bit drunk and re-enacting famous historical moments (Dad’s idea).

I just didn’t know how to translate that fun, relaxed friendship into real life, until now.

Turns out all that was needed was a face cast.

“I am sorry about how much of a dick I was over your nose job,” Leo says again.

“I know, you’ve said. It’s fine, I understand.”

When Leo first heard about my surgery, he sent me multiple messages stressing what a bad idea he thought it was, and that I was beautiful “just the way I am.” He said the same about my fitness journey too, that it was “great” I was enjoying exercise but it should just be about that, my mental health rather than “getting thinner, or whatever.”

“I know you were just being nice, but really, you have no idea what it’s like to be a woman in this unforgiving world, constantly judged for how you look.

I get it, it would be great if I could just ‘love myself as I am’ but do you have any idea how hard that is, when all the messages around you are telling you to be thinner, to be ‘flawless’?

When you get notifications, from strangers, telling you how hideous you look? ”

“You need to turn off your notifications,” he says. Like that’s the solution!

“I can turn off my notifications but I can’t turn off years of crap, being told I have to be thin, but not skinny, or being told our faces are wonky but if we get Botox or surgery then we’re shallow. It’s like all that stuff has seeped into me Leo, convincing me I need to look perfect.”

“But you are perfect,” he says and it’s a load of bull.

I’ve seen perfect, mostly draped over Damon’s arm in the papers.

That’s what I need to be. Obviously I can’t admit that to Leo, so I just scoff and say, “Whatever loser,” and we continue to watch the movie, close enough to be holding hands but not touching.

He says he has to go soon and I just want to enjoy the moment.

I’ve woken up to a national disaster! OK, that’s definitely an overexaggeration. But, my mummified face is splashed across the front page of all the papers. The headlines scream:

SNIFFER SHOCKER, Angelica NOSE best as she undergoes surprise surgery.

My phone will not stop buzzing.

How did these images get out? They look like your own personal selfies?

Are you still asleep? You need to wake up!

Lol, don’t really know why I think typing you need to wake up, would wake you up.

I don’t want you thinking I’m mad at you. I’m not mad at you. I know this isn’t your fault.

Unless, this actually is your fault? No. You wouldn’t do that.

I ring Fliss back as soon as I see her messages.

She sounds out of breath, and tells me this has “totally fucked” the exclusive mag deal she had set up.

“They wanted the befores and afters, all the surgery shots and everything!” she’s yelping, and I’m gutted as I really wanted to look scorching hot in those afters.

I’m trying to think of who I sent the selfies to, but it’s only Madison, Layla and Leo.

Oh wait…and Samantha! When I was still high after the anaesthetic I thought I’d send her them.

“It’s Samantha,” I say. “It has to be. I sent her them, I’m so sorry, she must have passed them to the papers. ”

“That snake! Don’t worry, I’ll sort this…

I always do. But, on the plus side, you’ve been invited to Monaco!

Savage, the vodka brand, is hosting a party on a yacht to coincide with the Grand Prix and they want you there!

I was in the process of arranging your flights before I found out, and really, when you think of it, there’s no better place to get papped with your new nose, is there? ”

I remember the battered Mini I passed my driving test in (on the third attempt if you must know) and can’t believe I’m going to the Grand Prix weekend.

I push away thoughts of what Sam’s done and decide nothing’s going to rain on my parade.

I’m off to Monaco and I’m going to be fast, furious and fabulous.

* * *