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In her first interview since the biggest girlband in Britain said their final goodbyes, Sarah Harding explains why the end is just the beginning for her.

Sarah Harding rocks up with her Beats by Dr Dre headphones slung around her neck. She’s full of beans after snoozing the entire way to London from her Buckinghamshire pad where, she explains, snow is thick on the ground. “It’s a miracle I’m here!” she laughs, shaking hands with every member of the Look team before accepting our offer of a cup of tea and hopping into the make-up chair.

She’s about to begin a ’60s hair-over. It’s back-combed into Debbie Harry-esque volume – much to Miss Harding’s amusement – and this cheery mood is a tad surprising. It’s just days since Girls Aloud took to Twitter to announce that after their sell-out Ten reunion tour and 10-year anniversary album, they’re disbanding, confirming split rumours that have dogged the group for years. Soon after, Nadine Coyle, 27, tweeted: “You should know by now I had no part in any of this split business. I couldn’t stop them.” It hinted that despite seeming close on stage, Britain’s biggest girlband are actually locked in a bitter fallout. It was helped little by reports that Sarah, 31, and Cheryl Cole, 29, independently texted Nadine to vent their frustrations. So, what’s the story? Sarah’s smile fades and she is, for the first time today, deadly serious. “I was unaware she even felt like that. At no point did she try and stop us, so you’d have to ask her why she did that,” she explains. “I have to respect her decision.” So there were no fists banging on the table in opposition of breaking up? And what of the alleged text rows?

“What? No, that’s never happened,” insists Sarah. “We all went to Manchester and had the after-party with our friends and family. Then we kind of hugged it out and just danced.”

Sarah says she hasn’t spoken to Nadine or the other girls about the drama surrounding the split, but she’s put some thought into it on her own. “Of course it worries me there are reports of fallouts between us, because it’s upsetting to our fans. We wouldn’t be where we are now without their loyalty.”

When the girls – including Kimberley Walsh, 31, and Nicola Roberts, 27 – announced their comeback in October, they shrugged off suggestions it would spell the end of their time at the top of pop since being put together by ITV show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, and racking up 21 top-10 singles and six top-10 albums.

Sarah struggles to pinpoint the exact moment the “hard” decision was made to call it quits. “That’s a tough one,” she admits. “We all had other things in the pipeline for after this tour and wanted [it] to be the biggest and best show we’d done. We’d rather do that than keep putting out more and more music every year and gradually waning, because music’s evolved so much since we’ve been around. I’d hate to think we’d end on a bad note. Cut and run.”