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herding passengers onto a hastily procured bus. I spotted two snowmen and a red-faced Christmas pudding heading towards it, weaving from side to side.
    A sigh escaped my lips. I needed to find an alternative.
    “Excuse me, is there a bus stop around here?” I asked hi-vis guy. “I’m not sure I want to take that one.”
    He eyed up the Christmas pudding, who’d got stuck in the bus door and was being tugged free by a shepherd and the Virgin Mary, and gave me a look of sympathy.
    “Sure, love, there’s a bus station just across the street.”
    I traipsed over to the building he indicated, a space-age monstrosity that appeared to have been modelled on a giant slug, and hopped on the first bus leaving. Looked like I’d be heading north after all.
    The bus wound its way through towns and villages for a couple of hours, and I lost track of where I was. I rested my head on the window, staring without seeing anything, my mind blank. The glass misted up, and I was on the verge of nodding off again when the driver came up and tapped me on the shoulder.
    “You’ll have to get off now, I’m afraid. This is the last stop, and I have to take the bus back to the depot for shift change.”
    Where the hell was I?
    In a daze, I followed him to the door and climbed down. The bus chugged off, and as it receded into the distance I found I’d been deposited in a small village. Time warp sprang to mind, and not the Rocky Horror version.
    My stomach gurgled, reminding me it was almost lunchtime. I wasn’t hungry, but as I’d given up on making the breakfast decision, I knew I should have something. I’d lost half a stone over the last couple of weeks through being too miserable to eat, and while I might end up looking like a supermodel, I’d make myself ill if I kept that diet up.
    The tiny high street was terribly quaint. If not for the brand new Range Rover parked outside the post office and a teenage girl texting on her smartphone as she walked, oblivious to everything around her, I could easily believe I’d travelled back a couple of decades.
    I walked past a small supermarket with old-fashioned produce displays stacked in the windows and paused outside a bakery. The delicious aromas drifting out of the door tempted me, but I couldn’t see anywhere to sit down in there. The temperature hovered in the low single figures, too cold to find a bench and eat outside.
    I carried on, barely glancing at the hardware store, the hairdresser or the florist, until I arrived in the car park of a pub. A faded wooden sign creaked above my head, swaying in the breeze.
    The Coach and Horses. That looked like my best option.
    I had to stoop as I crossed the threshold. The inside was dim and dingy, all dark wood and low ceilings studded with blackened wood beams. A nook to my left housed a roaring fire, so I snagged a menu and curled myself into one of the leather wingback chairs set in front of it.
    After I’d been there a few minutes, a kind looking woman in her fifties came over, wiping her hands on her apron.
    “What do you want, love?”
    The grown-up in me knew what I should pick—salad or soup, or maybe a grilled chicken breast with steamed vegetables. But the child I’d regressed to wanted comfort food.
    “I’ll have the macaroni and cheese, with a side order of chips and some onion rings,” I said, feeling a little guilty but beyond caring about it.
    The food came out quickly, piping hot and steaming. If Toby, my nutritionist, saw me now, he’d drag me out by my feet before I could raise the fork to my mouth. I could just imagine him. A sharp intake of breath, followed by, “Girl, that’s got so much oil on it, America’s gonna invade the plate.”
    It was bloody delicious.
    After eating that amount of stodge, I felt tired, so I spent the rest of the afternoon hiding out by the fire, reading the newspapers that were scattered on the coffee table next to me. By 4 p.m. I started feeling guilty. Guilty that I’d just spent