What really helped to heal my broken heart, though, was the thought of performing again.

During my time at ArtsEd, I worked my arse off, but I wasn’t convinced I was the best fit for it. The teachers there were incredibly professional – they had their ways, they just weren’t the same as mine. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. The training was intense and it definitely made me a better dancer. I reckon if I’d stayed there longer, I would have got a lot better. And they definitely made me a better actor, too. So, don’t get me wrong, I did learn a lot of good stuff.

The real problem was the way they taught singing – I just found it all a bit ‘by the book’. The teachers were incredibly strict and it turned out they didn’t want me to sing the way I naturally sang.

My main course at the college was musical theatre, and that meant two A levels plus other training, but the way I wanted my career to go was never the same way that they wanted. The teachers seemed to want to turn us all into a chorus, like a performing backline, moving and sounding the same, but I was always going to be a little bit different.

Right at the start, they asked us, ‘What show do you want to be in when you’re older?’ and everyone answered with things like Les Misérables and West Side Story. But I threw a spanner in the works from day one when I said, ‘I want my own show, my own world tour.’

One of my mates told me I shouldn’t have said that, but I had to tell the truth. I never wanted to be in the chorus; I wanted to be centre stage. I mean, I’d still love to be in a musical, but only if I was the lead.

Then, when we started training, they didn’t want me to sing the songs I liked. Instead, it was stuff from old-school musicals, and I just found it all a bit boring. It also knocked my confidence a bit, because that wasn’t my natural style – it didn’t bring out the best in me, and then I got lots of criticism, so it was all a bit unhelpful really.

I ended up finishing one academic year at ArtsEd, but I didn’t go back for the second. It taught me a lot, but, before I left, I was finding it harder and harder to train full-time and still be doing my singing, which is what I really wanted to do. I needed to go for loads of auditions and somehow get my big break. It had even got to the point where I was pulling sickies when I couldn’t get the time off to sneak out to an audition.

On one of those afternoons before I left, I was back on the train to my job with Hollister in Kingston, flicking through Twitter, when I spotted a tweet, offering auditions for a girl band. I randomly clicked on it, and it turned out to be for a band called Lola. Apparently, they already had three girls lined up, and were looking for a fourth. Not only that, but the auditions were going to take place in Nu Bar in Loughton, right near my mum’s house in Woodford, so it seemed the natural thing to do to sign up and go along. It seems such a long time ago now, when I was a very different person. But that’s how I ended up in the wonderful world of TOWIE, falling into its dramas for the very first time.

When I got to Nu Bar that day, I had no idea where this could go. The plan was that Lola – which stood for Lovable Outrageous Loud Ambitious – would stand alone as a group, but make cameo appearances on TOWIE, the connection being Jess Wright, who was one of the show’s big stars and also in the group. When I turned up for the audition, I recognised one of the other girls as Lauren Lindsey, who I used to go with to Saturday school, all them years before. She was sitting in a tracksuit, but she looked really exotic, and it took me a while to realise she had a spray tan. It was the first time I’d ever seen one of those. It wasn’t exactly the last though, LOL. (I bet you never thought that, but honestly, I wasn’t used to this. My friendship groups weren’t from Essex any more. I was spending all my time in London.)

The third girl was Amba-Hollie Wood. The band had been formed a year earlier, but one of their original lineup, Linzi Peel, had left, so they were looking for a newbie.

I had to sing a version of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’, and it seemed to go okay. The next day I got a message saying I was through to the next round, which was actually going to be filmed for an episode of TOWIE. At this point, I was still licking my wounds about Mr Venezuela, so all I really wanted was to look as nice as possible, in case he saw me on telly. I turned up for the audition at Faces Nightclub in Gants Hill (God, I basically live in there now), and the first person I saw was Mark Wright. He asked me on camera, ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ which got me buzzing. In my head I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, him saying that comment, this is going to make Mr Venezuela so jealous.’ Mark was the main guy on TOWIE, and he made me feel good about myself. I’d just turned eighteen, everyone there was older than me, and I was kind of making it all up as I went along, but one thing I’ve always had is some balls when it comes to performing. I knew it had gone fine, and they told me there and then I’d got the gig. Literally, the next day, we were in the studio, and life suddenly got really busy.

The four of us girls became really close. We did all sorts of cool things – dressing up for photo shoots, turning up for big events, clubbing together in London. In between all that, we actually recorded an album, met producers, tried out loads of songs and moved between studios, but somehow that side of it never seemed to work. The record companies just thought we were some reality TV joke act, even though we could all actually sing. Jess got a bit more attention because of her TOWIE profile already being quite high, but the rest of us were just wandering around hoping to be noticed.

I was never in it for the reality TV side, though. I was soaking everything up, trying to learn about the music industry, finding out how agents and production companies worked. It was all useful stuff, and the best part of all was the friendship between us four girls. In that sense, it was one of the best times of my life, and it was what did the trick in getting me over the heartbreak of Mr Venezuela when everything else had failed. Being in Lola gave me a focus, a reason to get up in the morning. I’d say to any young girl going through a similar thing:

Don’t fall apart like I did. Don’t panic like I did. Make a plan, get busy, and, if you can, have a laugh about it with your mates. Be open, because everyone’s gone through it. And always, always talk to your mum.

By the time I was having fun with my Lola girls, I’d completely forgiven Mr Venezuela for all that pain. Unlike some I could mention, he never gave me a reason to hate him, and we’re still friends to this day. It was clear at the time that I didn’t really fit into in his future, and it soon became clear that he would have had trouble fitting into mine. I was in a bubble with him back then, always trekking over to West London to see him or to work or something, and our split forced me back to my roots in the east of the city.

Growing up, I’d always associated this area with bullying and illness, and it seemed like I had most of my fun away from it. But for the first time, I got to know my own area properly. Now all my friends are here as well as my family, it’s a different world for me – it makes me really happy, and I can truthfully say I’m an Essex girl at heart.