Doctor Foster has revealed the inner bunny boiler that lives within all sensible women

We may be completely sane, fully functioning women, but inside every one of us is a cottontail assassin ready to strike

Did she or didn't she? Viewers were left with a gripping cliffhanger in the latest episode of the critically acclaimed show (BBC)

Dr Foster. Gemma. Can I call you Gemma? You have, believe me, my deepest sympathy at this difficult time in your life. Your husband has left you for a woman 20 years younger, it seems you are only ever allowed to wear one shade of lipstick and the town of Parminster is clearly God’s waiting room. You have been seen mum-dancing in an unconvincing nightclub with your son’s geography teacher, and you never seem to do any actual doctoring as you are too busy fending off requests to perform fellatio on shady men in nightclub toilets.

It is totally understandable that you have plotted and schemed to destroy your psychotic ex husband; that you have sniffed his new wife’s vibrator and revenge-shagged him after a spontaneous chicken and broccoli pasta supper you took only three minutes to produce from nowhere; that you have taken away his new wife, his baby, his job and his bank account.

If you have indeed run him over, as was the cliffhanger in this week’s episode, that too is understandable. He was very rude about your blouse in the first episode.

But Gemma, please. I may still only be 35, but I have been there. Hasn’t every woman at some point in their lives found themselves in a bunny-boiler moment? We may be completely sane, fully functioning women, but inside every one of us is a cottontail assassin ready to strike. And, Gemma, it never ends well.

The term bunny boiler of course originates from the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction in which Michael Douglas has a brief fling with Glenn Close’s shoulder pads. He dumps her, not realising, inconveniently, that she is a psychopath. The family later came home to find their pet rabbit simmering on the hob, thus coining the infamous term.

It does not end well for Glenn, who ends up dead in the bathtub, with the cooling water doing no favours for her clearly unmanageable frizzy hair. Gemma, your hair seems far less unruly, but even so it will be tricky to style when you’re dead.

So in the spirit of female solidarity – of fluffy bunny sisterhood – let me share my own moments of fleeting psychopathy to serve as a warning to all those already warming the pan for a rabbit supper.

My darkest bunny boiler moments

Manchester University, 1995. I fell deeply in love with the “bad boy” of the year. He had bad skin and a penis-shaped ponytail. We began a deeply one-sided (me) and obsessional (me) relationship, which comprised mainly of late-night shagging and trailing behind him in the university library. On one exceptionally long visit to my flat (45 minutes) he left behind a mug of untouched coffee.

I banned my flatmates from moving or washing that mug. Long after he dumped me at a toga party, and was shortly after seen heavy-petting a fancy dress Cleopatra, I kept the mug on my bedside table, sobbing into its growing mould, licking its rim for where he may have put his lips.

For weeks afterwards I hopelessly prowled the library, hoping to press him up against a first edition of Titus Andronicus. It all ends horribly for all involved (and it is two boys, not a rabbit that end up in the pot). It was not to be. My lost love had clearly sailed off with his Cleopatra, leaving me with only a rancid mug, listening to “I Will Survive” on a loop.

Glenn Close’s unforgettable performance terrified a generation of rabbit-owners (Rex Features) (Rex features)

I once Google street viewed my ex’s house and trawled council records to find his application for planning permission on his new extension.

I have also contacted a “spell-caster” to help me get an ex back. She specialised in “custom spells, hexes and hand made voodoo dolls”. She offered me, for £20, the “Ding Dong Voodoo Hex”, after which she promised: “Every time he gets an erection, it will burn, sting and be left useless.” I didn’t go for it, but worried years later that Husband#1 might have inadvertently caught the hex.

I have lost count of the number of drunk crazy texts I have sent to hapless men brave enough to dump me and the number of nights spent sobbing and sniffing ex boyfriends’ underwear. I have written excruciatingly bad poetry, compiled self-indulgent mix tapes and made botched seduction attempts in crotchless knickers.

None of it worked. I had already been replaced by the next Cleopatra, and the crotchless panties chafed terribly on my cycle to work.

So Gemma, take my advice. Buy yourself a new lipstick and some statement hot pants, grab your son, get in your car and get the hell out of Dodge. Here’s what I now know. There is always one who got away. Which reminds me… maybe I’ll just send him another text…