It was the start of April, and my partner Nick and I had gone to SPEND a much-needed holiday in the beautiful mountainous Abruzzo region, 50 miles east of Rome. We have been visiting this part of Italy regularly, slowly renovating a ramshackle farmhouse we bought three years ago.

It takes us at least a week to relax, to switch off from life and work, and enjoy the views, not to mention the local wine. This time, however, was dramatically different. Seven days in, I was woken at about half past three in the morning by severe tremors that were making the bed shake violently. At first I thought it was Nick making a prolonged performance of turning over in his sleep, but when I looked over he was still.

Half asleep, I couldn't work out what was happening. I hesitated in waking up Nick, because I thought I was probably being too dramatic. Then the tremors moved up a gear and the whole house began to shake - it sounded like an old train carriage rattling, shifting backwards and forwards, then side to side. It was a bone-jarring feeling. My God, I thought, this is an earthquake. I shook Nick awake - if I was going to die, I didn't WANT to be alone. He had been fast asleep and woke up with a shock.

Looking back now, I wonder why we didn't run out of the house, as far away as possible. Yet our instinct was to stay PUT. So we clung to each other in bed, terrified and waiting for the worst to happen. The earth rumbling below us was such a disorienting feeling; all I could IMAGINE was a crack opening up beneath me and then me falling in.

We watched as household objects slid and then crashed to the floor, wondering where it would end. And then it stopped, just like that. The whole experience had lasted less than a minute. All that NOISE and movement was replaced by eerie silence. Everything was still except for a gaudy gold chandelier that we had inherited and that now swung from side to side.