OUR much-loved ad­vice colum­nist BEL MOONEY has helped count­less Mail read­ers. Now she has writ­ten a deeply mov­ing mem­oir, re­veal­ing her own heartache. On Satur­day, she told how she learned that her hus­band of 35 years, the broad­caster Jonathan Dim­bleby, was in love with an­other woman. He had be­gun an af­fair with opera singer Su­san Chilcott, but it was to end trag­i­cally just months later with Su­san’s death from breast can­cer. Here, Bel tells how she was con­sumed by sor­row and rage — and how she coped with a sec­ond bomb­shell.

OUR much-loved ad­vice colum­nist BEL MOONEY has helped count­less Mail read­ers. Now she has writ­ten a deeply mov­ing mem­oir, re­veal­ing her own heartache. On Satur­day, she told how she learned that her hus­band of 35 years, the broad­caster Jonathan Dim­bleby, was in love with an­other woman. He had be­gun an af­fair with opera singer Su­san Chilcott, but it was to end trag­i­cally just months later with Su­san’s death from breast can­cer. Here, Bel tells how she was con­sumed by sor­row and rage — and how she coped with a sec­ond bomb­shell.

OUR much-loved ad­vice colum­nist BEL MOONEY has helped count­less Mail read­ers. Now she has writ­ten a deeply mov­ing mem­oir, re­veal­ing her own heartache. On Satur­day, she told how she learned that her hus­band of 35 years, the broad­caster Jonathan Dim­bleby, was in love with an­other woman. He had be­gun an af­fair with opera singer Su­san Chilcott, but it was to end trag­i­cally just months later with Su­san’s death from breast can­cer. Here, Bel tells how she was con­sumed by sor­row and rage — and how she coped with a sec­ond bomb­shell.

OUR much-loved ad­vice colum­nist BEL MOONEY has helped count­less Mail read­ers. Now she has writ­ten a deeply mov­ing mem­oir, re­veal­ing her own heartache. On Satur­day, she told how she learned that her hus­band of 35 years, the broad­caster Jonathan Dim­bleby, was in love with an­other woman. He had be­gun an af­fair with opera singer Su­san Chilcott, but it was to end trag­i­cally just months later with Su­san’s death from breast can­cer. Here, Bel tells how she was con­sumed by sor­row and rage — and how she coped with a sec­ond bomb­shell.

OUR much-loved ad­vice colum­nist BEL MOONEY has helped count­less Mail read­ers. Now she has writ­ten a deeply mov­ing mem­oir, re­veal­ing her own heartache. On Satur­day, she told how she learned that her hus­band of 35 years, the broad­caster Jonathan Dim­bleby, was in love with an­other woman. He had be­gun an af­fair with opera singer Su­san Chilcott, but it was to end trag­i­cally just months later with Su­san’s death from breast can­cer. Here, Bel tells how she was con­sumed by sor­row and rage — and how she coped with a sec­ond bomb­shell.

SU­SAN CHILCOTT per­formed for the last time in pub­lic in June 2003, at a con­cert in Brus­sels. She wore white linen and sang (among other things) the Wil­low aria from Verdi’s Otello, when the doomed Des­de­mona, full of sor­row, re­mem­bers a song from her child­hood.

Later her voice would rise in a crescendo as she begged, ‘ Ch’io viva an­cor, ch’io viva an­cor!’ (‘Let me live longer, let me live longer!’) as death, in the form of her hus­band Othello, stands over her.

J(onathan) was in the au­di­ence, with other friends. You would need a heart of gran­ite not to see how un­bear­ably poignant it must have been. The word ‘heart­break­ing’ is overused, like ‘tragic’ and ‘hero’.

But any­one who watched Su­san Chilcott’s last per­for­mance, know­ing her life was al­ready ebbing away, must surely have felt a break­ing in­side.

Stricken, J asked me if I un­der­stood that he would want to spend time with Su­san in the three months of life she had left.

I told him I did un­der­stand. Be­cause I did — and it makes no dif­fer­ence to me that other women might think me mad.

In my di­ary, I wrote: ‘I can­not be­grudge a dy­ing woman the love of my hus­band. I wish J and I could have been all-in-all to each other and yet — af­ter that first in­ten­sity of pas­sion — it was never to be.

‘I won­der why? He is still the per­son I most like to talk to. Looking back at us in our youth, I marvel at the sheer courage of it all.

‘Yet that swash­buck­ling love stepped side­ways and lost it­self among the al­ley­ways of other peo­ple, other lives, self-in­dul­gence, guilt. And then we never quite man­aged to find the way back.’

On June 20, my par­ents came to lunch to cel­e­brate my mother’s birth­day and the ‘of­fi­cial birth­day’ of Bon­nie, my Mal­tese lap­dog who had come to live with us on that day a year ear­lier.

Lunch was out­side in the court­yard, un­der the cream um­brella. I tied rib­bons on Mum’s chair, on Bon­nie’s bas­ket and round her neck.

J’s ab­sence was un­re­marked be­cause it was un­re­mark­able. He was a busy man. The dog’s pres­ence made it all much eas­ier. By fo­cus­ing on Bon­nie and the meal I could de­flect any anx­i­ety my per­cep­tive mother must have felt, looking at my face.

J and I had been through much in our long mar­riage, but we recog­nised that this earth­quake was truly ter­ri­fy­ing, like noth­ing be­fore.

Too painful to re­call the hope we shared that af­ter it was over (it was not pos­si­ble to ut­ter the bru­tal words ‘af­ter she is dead’) we could put it all back to­gether.

I asked my­self if I would be able to live with a hus­band for ever haunted by that amaz­ing voice.

I won­dered — when I fi­nally told our chil­dren and the three of us talked ob­ses­sively about the sub­ject, rag­ing over bot­tles of white wine late into the night as moths slammed at the kitchen win­dow — if I could re­cover the man I had known.

Su­san Chilcott died in J’s arms on Septem­ber 4. The obit­u­ar­ies were unan­i­mous. The In­de­pen­dent noted: ‘Her death came three months af­ter she made her op­er­atic de­but at the Royal Opera House, in which her “ra­di­ant” and “glo­ri­ous” per­for­mance out­shone even that of her co-star, Placido Domingo.’

The Guardian said: ‘Su­san Chilcott, who has died of can­cer aged 40, was one of the most com­pelling and in­tense English op­er­atic stars to emerge in the last decade. [She] made an in­deli­ble im­pres­sion on those who saw and heard her, or worked with her.’

The Guardian said: ‘Su­san Chilcott, who has died of can­cer aged 40, was one of the most com­pelling and in­tense English op­er­atic stars to emerge in the last decade. [She] made an in­deli­ble im­pres­sion on those who saw and heard her, or worked with her.’

On the day of her fu­neral at Wells Cathe­dral in Som­er­set, hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered to pay their re­spects. By this stage, I had be­gun to feel en­raged that — in the eyes of all those peo­ple — J was ‘al­lowed’ the role of wid­ower.

In fact, Su­san was mar­ried to her man­ager, al­though they were not liv­ing as man and wife and he was not the fa­ther of her four-year-old son. But what do such de­tails mat­ter?

I had packed my bag, said good­bye to the dogs and cats, felt the (in­creas­ing) pang at leav­ing Bon­nie — and was off to Heathrow.

At the very hour of her fu­neral I was high above the At­lantic, en route for my beloved United States. I had work to do, but also needed to es­cape. I’ve al­ways loved the story of the doomed Mary Queen of Scots, who was re­paid for her life­long love of dogs by the last ser­vice of her faith­ful pet.

On the morn­ing of Fe­bru­ary 8th, 1587, Mary was led into the Great Hall at Fother­ing­hay Cas­tle to be ex­e­cuted. Af­ter the ter­ri­ble, bun­gled hack­ing was over, an eye­wit­ness recorded: ‘Then one of the ex­e­cu­tion­ers no­ticed her lit­tle dog, which had hid­den un­der her clothes. Af­ter­wards it would not leave her corpse but came and lay be­tween her head and her shoul­ders.’

The blood-spat­tered an­i­mal lay whim­per­ing and re­fused to leave its mis­tress or eat. It pined and died.

Dogs are bet­ter at loy­alty than we are. If I had worn a vo­lu­mi­nous gown, Bon­nie could have crept with me to the scaf­fold. In a sense she did.

Sum­mer over, au­tumn tum­bling down into win­ter, J con­tin­ued to be ab­sent, un­able to shake off his grief.

I would watch him on tele­vi­sion, lis­ten to him on the ra­dio and marvel that he could still be pro­fes­sional, still be cour­te­ous to some­times men­da­cious politi­cians.

I thought he would come back, but he did not. In that dark time, while I ex­isted in a sort of limbo, I would reach out at night to the space he used to fill — and my fin­gers would clutch the small, soft shape of my dog.

For jour­nal­ists, J and I were both naive. I was still try­ing to keep his ab­sence a se­cret. But in­evitably peo­ple talk. One day, as I hosted a fundrais­ing re­cep­tion at the farm out­side Bath that was our home, a re­porter ar­rived on the doorstep, want­ing to know the state of my mar­riage.

I ut­tered stac­cato lies about my friend­ship with Su­san Chilcott, try­ing to con­ceal what ev­ery­body knew.

An­other night I had to go to a sim­i­lar party, hosted by a friend and held at the great house St Cather­ine’s Court, which was then owned by the ac­tress Jane Sey­mour.

As the evening dragged, I made small talk and gazed at the ac­tor Bill Nighy across the room, aware that my old self would have rocked up to meet him, but this new self did not have the met­tle.

When your mar­riage is crack­ing (at that stage I did not yet con­sider it ir­re­triev­ably bro­ken) you see the peo­ple around you as aliens, won­der­ing how they can drink, talk and laugh as the world is fall­ing apart. But, of course, it is not their world.

At last it was over and at about 11.30pm a friend, Sue, drove me home. It was icy and misty, and my spir­its sank even lower as we headed up the farm drive­way.

I saw the eyes first, chips of emer­ald in the head­lights. ‘Look!’ said Sue. Bon­nie was stand­ing on her hind legs, paws rest­ing on the gate, wait­ing. See­ing the car, she yapped fran­ti­cally.

I could tell by the ici­ness of her paws and the chill of her head that she had been wait­ing there since I had left. Four hours in a bit­ter wind, 700ft above sea level.

I could tell by the ici­ness of her paws and the chill of her head that she had been wait­ing there since I had left. Four hours in a bit­ter wind, 700ft above sea level.

Bon­nie’s vigil was balm for the wounded spirit; to be adored so much by this sin­gle, small breath­ing crea­ture was so­lace for the soul.

In need­ing me so much she was throw­ing me a life­line — al­though I did not know it.

The year was mov­ing to­wards Christ­mas. But J was not com­ing back. This would be the first Christ­mas for 35 years that we would spend apart.

The sit­u­a­tion was barely tol­er­a­ble. How were we to cope? Who would carve the turkey? What about the sweet, silly rit­u­als?

Christ­mas had to be di­luted. I in­vited two old friends, Gaynor and Ernie. When they ac­cepted I ac­tu­ally wept with re­lief, for the gap left by J was so shock­ing, so enor­mous it had to be filled.

In the event, Christ­mas 2003 saw a sur­pris­ingly con­vivial gath­er­ing at the farm. My chil­dren, Daniel and Kitty, then in their mid-20s, did ev­ery­thing to take their fa­ther’s place, while Ernie, one year younger than J, was an es­sen­tial fa­ther fig­ure.

We all tried so hard we ac­tu­ally suc­ceeded. In the pri­vacy of my study, I opened J’s gift to me. He opened mine some­where else. We spoke on the phone. Noth­ing was as bad for me as it was for him.

At the beginning of 2004, I changed my

ad­vice colum­nist tells of her heart-rend­ing dilemma name and bought a house. Both were acts of al­most ag­gres­sive self-as­ser­tion, al­though I did not re­alise it at the time. I was not think­ing things through, I was re­act­ing.

I was born in Liver­pool in 1946 and chris­tened Beryl Ann Mooney. I thor­oughly de­tested the name Beryl, once I was old enough to care.

Like other names (Hilda, Pamela, Norma) it car­ries im­ages of plain, strug­gling Bri­tain in the For­ties and Fifties. At pri­mary school I was a thin, shy, be­spec­ta­cled child, teased as ‘Beryl the Peril’ and ‘Gooney-Mooney-Four-Eyes’. Those names turned me in on my­self and led me to take refuge in books.

Beryl went to the li­brary, while at home ‘Our Belle’ was grand­fa­ther’s dar­ling, sit­ting on his knees while he plaited her fair hair. She was the princess-shut-up-in-a-tower, whose iden­tity was se­cret from ev­ery­body but who dreamed of be­ing known, of be­ing beau­ti­ful belle.

So when I left home for uni­ver­sity in Oc­to­ber 1966 I de­cided to rein­vent my­self as Bel.

I liked the econ­omy of drop­ping two let­ters from my Chris­tian name and dis­liked the spell­ing ‘Belle’ be­cause of its too flat­ter­ing mean­ing. The new per­sona fit­ted.

But when I mar­ried J in Fe­bru­ary 1968 I took on yet an­other per­sona, chang­ing my name to his.

Hence­forth, my pass­port would be­long to some­body called Beryl Ann Dim­bleby. But when I be­came a jour­nal­ist I had no hes­i­ta­tion in keep­ing my maiden name for pro­fes­sional pur­poses. My hus­band’s sur­name was too well known.

Re­mem­ber that the small, in­signif­i­cant wed­ding of two uni­ver­sity stu­dents in 1968 was cov­ered in news­pa­pers un­der head­lines like ‘Dim­bleby’s son weds’. I was an - or­di­nary girl, but there was no es­cap­ing it — not then or ever.

Be­sides, I could not so eas­ily lose my Liver­pool-Mooney iden­tity, which was, in the end, to prove more durable than the other. It is my essence, a source of pride, which tran­scends aca­demic, so­cial or pro­fes­sional achieve­ment.

I like to think there was some­thing Liver­pudlian about my determination to sur­vive. For by De­cem­ber 2003, I was pos­sessed by rage at a level no­body could see.

I like to think there was some­thing Liver­pudlian about my determination to sur­vive. For by De­cem­ber 2003, I was pos­sessed by rage at a level no­body could see.

On one of his vis­its, J im­plied that I (like my ex-sis­ter-in-law) had been quite happy with the fa­mous sur­name, a sug­ges­tion I thought un­just, since I had never used it pro­fes­sion­ally.

The com­ment prompted me to go on­line to see how eas­ily I could change my name by deed poll.

So, at a stroke (well, not quite, since you have to change all your le­gal doc­u­ments, which can drag on for months), I be­came Bel Mooney in law, for the first time.

This was, in ef­fect, a new iden­tity. I re­ceived my new pass­port on Jan­uary 13, 2004, all too aware of the pow­er­ful sym­bol­ism of what I had done. With this, my third name, I be­came truly my own per­son.

There was also to be a move. J and I had agreed that, af­ter six months without him on the farm, our beloved home had be­come my prison. My hus­band could not re­turn and he ac­knowl­edged that I could not re­main. Im­passe.

My chil­dren were re­signed, on the sur­face at least. (Never be­low it, but that is an­other story.)

‘So what kind of a house do you want?’ they asked. Without hes­i­ta­tion, it tum­bled out: ‘I want big win­dows and a walled gar­den and a house with a door in the mid­dle, like the houses I used to draw when I was a child.’

Our farm had small win­dows, end­less land­scape and a ram­bling shape. I was con­struct­ing a di­a­met­ri­cally op­po­site dream.

They rushed into Bath and Kitty called me 30 min­utes later. They had

seen The House in an es­tate agent’s win­dow. A Re­gency town house, it had big win­dows, a walled gar­den and a door in the mid­dle of an el­e­gant frontage.

What’s more, in the pic­ture of the sit­ting room there was a small white dog on the rug. That was surely a sign. The next day I went to see the house with my mother and daugh­ter. It was spa­cious, but com­pact. All I would need to do was have book­shelves built and change one bath­room.

It was all ter­ri­fy­ing, but the pres­ence of the owner’s dog helped. A West High­land ter­rier called Lily, she sat on a chaise longue in the win­dow of the mas­ter bed­room, wait­ing for her mis­tress (a widow) to re­turn.

The dog stared fixedly at the road, ig­nor­ing (af­ter the first barks) the in­trud­ers on her ter­ri­tory. Her whole be­ing was fixed on the pos­si­bil­ity of re­union. That is what dogs want.

Hu­mans want it, too, but there is a limit to the amount of time you can stare out of the win­dow or wait in the grave­yard. Looking back, I some­times feel sad that I, the en­light­ened hu­man, did not match up to ca­nine ex­am­ple and wait for ever, as dogs will do.

The dif­fi­cult truth is that some hu­mans find it rel­a­tively easy to ‘re­place’ peo­ple they have lost (both J and I were to do this) but the dogs hang in there.

Since Su­san Chilcott died, I had waited for my hus­band to come back (‘come to his senses’ some said) and tell me: ‘That mad­ness is over, let us pick up the threads of our life again.’

But he did not — and I knew that un­less I acted, I would go mad. Of course, I could have given J some more time to be healed and re­turn. But sup­pose that never hap­pened?

Never in­ter­ested in gam­bling, I could not stop my in­stinct for self-preser­va­tion from kick­ing in. I re­alise how priv­i­leged I was to be able to think of buy­ing a new prop­erty, be­cause most peo­ple can­not. The Lon­don base we had bought in 1986 would be sold to buy me this house.

So I was lucky in some ways. Still, it is vi­tal for peo­ple who find them­selves in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion to re­alise that tak­ing even the small­est action to fight their own cor­ner will help.

So I was lucky in some ways. Still, it is vi­tal for peo­ple who find them­selves in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion to re­alise that tak­ing even the small­est action to fight their own cor­ner will help.

Th­ese days, in my role as an ad­vice colum­nist, I re­ceive many let­ters from peo­ple whose mar­riages are at an end and do not know where to go — lit­er­ally as well as fig­u­ra­tively.

I al­ways ad­vise try­ing to take back some sort of con­trol, even if it’s chang­ing the locks or your name. If you are the one who has been left, you feel ut­terly de­mor­alised. You for­get to wash your hair and you take to your bed, only to re­main sleep­less.

You never thought you would meet this per­son in your mir­ror; you can stare at her in dis­be­lief for ages. You pace your home and ev­ery­thing in it mocks you for hav­ing failed. Be­cause you have failed and no­body can tell you oth­er­wise.

The key is not wait­ing for things to be done ‘ to’ you, but to step for­ward and make au­ton­o­mous de­ci­sions, even some­thing as small as book­ing a new hair­cut.

I know some will think such coun­sel triv­ial; they do not un­der­stand that small de­ci­sions and un­dra­matic ac­tions form the bricks which, one by one, can build a new home where the self can learn its changed iden­tity.

J and I were in con­stant con­tact through me­lan­choly emails, phone calls and meet­ings to dis­cuss the divi­sion of prop­erty — at the end of which we would hold each other with word­less sor­row.

Grad­u­ally, we told ac­quain­tances in a wider cir­cle that we had sep­a­rated. Again and again, I saw faces show shock, then sad­ness. I could al­most hear peo­ple think­ing: ‘But you have come so far, ex­pe­ri­enced so much to­gether, sur­vived it all — don’t give up now.’

At this time, most work was im­pos­si­ble. I drifted through the days pack­ing up those books, or­na­ments and pic­tures I would take with me, la­belling the fur­ni­ture which would fit my new house.

At night, curled up with Bon­nie, I

missed J ter­ri­bly. My di­ary spurts sav­age rage at Su­san Chilcott (‘ her self

ish, greedy snatch­ing at our life’) that stemmed, in part, from the need to blame.

I could not bear to re­sent the man I had mar­ried and so I trans­ferred my rage to the woman he had loved. And still loved. One day when J was vis­it­ing I told him if you can love some­one who’s dead, you can hate some­one who’s dead.

Bon­nie and I went shop­ping. Peo­ple in Bath al­ways no­tice her. Maybe it’s the size, maybe the

wardrobe of col­lars and leads that tend to match what­ever the fool­ish woman with her is wear­ing. The girls in the shoe shop fussed over her as I tried on heels higher than any I had worn, sav­age shiny black things with Per­spex sides.

They be­came mine. Three days later I bought some vin­tage red stilet­tos with lethal pointed toes and wrote: ‘I am over­drawn with no work and a new house loom­ing and yet I buy high heels. The sym­bol­ism is ob­vi­ous. I want shoes which have no place on his stupid, stupid farm.’

On March 10, the new house be­came legally mine.

The last thing I did be­fore leav­ing the farm was lay a fire so that when J re­took pos­ses­sion of his home, he would only have to strike a match to be warm. Bon­nie was ever-present, the si­lent wit­ness. As long as my dog was with me, I would sur­vive.

For about three years I had been ad­mir­ing a Chi­nese statue for sale in a Bath gallery, which spe­cialised in Asian art.

She sat on a plinth op­po­site the en­trance: a bod­hisattva (en­light­ened be­ing, fol­lower of Bud­dha) carved from what looked like sand­stone and stand­ing a me­tre high.

This was Kwan Yin, the god­dess of com­pas­sion. When ev­ery­thing be­gan to fall apart, I con­tin­ued to visit ev­ery few weeks to stroke Kwan Yin’s cheek, while chat­ting to the owner about all the other beau­ti­ful works on dis­play. One sum­mer’s day, I was walk­ing Bon­nie to the cen­tre of Bath and went into the gallery as usual to greet Kwan Yin. The statue seemed to me to be a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of uni­ver­sal love.

This was Kwan Yin, the god­dess of com­pas­sion. When ev­ery­thing be­gan to fall apart, I con­tin­ued to visit ev­ery few weeks to stroke Kwan Yin’s cheek, while chat­ting to the owner about all the other beau­ti­ful works on dis­play. One sum­mer’s day, I was walk­ing Bon­nie to the cen­tre of Bath and went into the gallery as usual to greet Kwan Yin. The statue seemed to me to be a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of uni­ver­sal love.

Her down­cast eyes, her glim­mer of a smile spoke to me of ac­cep­tance. Kwan Yin’s seren­ity was what I most wished to at­tain.

Sud­denly, I re­alised if the day came when I walked in only to find her no longer there, bought by a col­lec­tor, I would be over­whelmed by sad­ness. I re­alised I needed her as the icon of my new life.

The gallery owner agreed to take three post-dated cheques and said with a smile: ‘I knew she had to be yours.’

My god­dess-pro­tec­tor soon had her first job. Ex­actly three weeks af­ter she was in­stalled at the end of my gar­den, I heard that J was in a new re­la­tion­ship with a woman one year younger than our son. The news was a bomb­shell.

I had been wor­ry­ing about his wel­fare all the time, but there was no need now. I wan­dered blindly down the gar­den to put my arms around the statue.