'I had serious breakdowns': Perrie Edwards claims there was an 'overlap' at the end of Zayn Malik relationship

Perrie Edwards suffered "serious breakdowns" amid her "hellish" split from former fiancé Zayn Malik - and she has claimed there was an "overlap" with someone else towards the end of their romance.

The 32-year-old Little Mix singer and the ex-One Direction star, 33, hooked up in 2011 - after both shot to fame on TV show The X Factor - and while they went on to get engaged in 2013, the pair went their separate ways two years later.

Now, in a rare interview about the break-up, Perrie has opened up about feeling "abandoned" and "ridiculed" at the time.

Speaking on Jamie Laing's Great Company podcast, she said: "Like when you go through heartbreak, it is hellish. It's the worst thing in the world. You can't eat. You can't sleep. You feel horrendous.

"You feel abandoned and you don't feel good enough and you feel like you've been left for something better or whatever it is.

"And then what makes it even worse is, I felt like the world was then looking at me, laughing at me.

"Not my fans, my fans were like, 'We love you, we'll fight your corner no matter what.' But I felt embarrassed. I felt horrified. It was awful.

When asked how she stayed sane through the split, she said: "I didn't. I had like serious breakdowns.

"Because it wasn't just the heartbreak I was dealing with. I was dealing with everybody looking at me and I felt ridiculed. I just couldn't cope with it.

Perrie - who has two children, son Axel, four, and daughter Alanis, four months, with her fiancé, former pro footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain -

also claims there was an "overlap" towards the end of their relationship, and said it was "hard" being the "one left behind".

Quizzed on whether the split affected Zayn in a similar way, she said: "I need to be careful how I say this, but there was, let's just say there was a bit of a ... I'm just going to say it. So there was a bit of an overlap.

"And I think when you're moving on with somebody else you always get on better.

"When you're the one left behind, that's when it's hard because it's like, "Oh s***, they've left me for someone more beautiful than me, someone better than me.' "

Perrie also appeared to reference Zayn featuring model Gigi Hadid - who she went on to date for six years - in the music video for his debut solo single Pillowtalk, which dropped in January 2016, and it felt like the "nail in the coffin".

She said: "Whatever it is, that's how it felt at the time. And then you have a song that they've written about you, but then someone else is in the video.

"It was one thing after the other, after the other. And I remember finding out about that and I just went in and my dad and my brother were at the house at the time and I just moved into my little bungalow in Surrey. So I was trying to get as far away as I could.

"And I just remember finding out about that and it was like the nail in the coffin and I thought this is all getting a bit much and then I started crying my eyes out.

"Then my dad started crying and he was like, 'I don't know how I can take this pain away,' and I'm like, 'You can't. Nobody can. This is hellish.' "