When you disconnected your line in October, you relinquished your number and it will - after a period of quarantine - be returned to EE's number allocations pool.
In retrospect, an option would have been to transfer the number to PAYG and just ensure a single chargeable call or text was used at least once every 6months. This would have retained the number, which you could then revert back to pay-monthly when the time suited.
