It is three months ago since Madeleine was abducted as she slept beside her twin brother and sister in the McCann’s holiday apartment in Portugal. Gerry, her father, has just been to the US to publicise her disappearance. He is said to be keen to go back home to England to rebuild their lives while Madeleine’s mother is reportedly in decline.

Kate McCann refuses to leave Praia da Luz where their daughter vanished. According to her mother she is no better than the day their little girl vanished and just keeps repeating “I need Madeleine back”.

When this story first broke I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. Now I think about it a lot less. But of course for her parents the nightmare is as vivid as it was on day one. I suppose I hoped things would get better for them, that they would start to get on with their lives.

All of us imagine what we would do in their situation. Would we crack up or would we cope? For the sake of the other children you would have to go on. But it would be nearly impossible.

A friend of mine said the other day that in all probability Maddy was taken by a paedophile and killed within the first twelve hours. “That’s the usual pattern,” she said. Just the thought that there are people out there who can commit such heinous acts of cruelty is enough to keep me awake at night. In the UK now a well-known actor is being prosecuted for downloading images from the internet of seven-year old girls being tortured and sexually abused.

All we can do is hope against hope that Madeleine has been abducted by someone desperate for a daughter and not an evil pervert. Let’s hope she hasn’t followed the “usual pattern” and that this unusual case comes to an unusual (and happy) conclusion.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I am happily installed in the Hotel Alla Noce in Limone, a town on Lake Garda. I am here to finish my next book and have chosen this place due to a gene they have that means they live longer. Apparently ten per cent of the population is between 100 and 110 years old.

So far I have seen no old people or evidence of longevity. What they seem to have though is a control freak gene. Staying at the hotel is a little like boarding school. You can’t eat here, you can’t put your feet there, you can’t sit at that table, you can only eat breakfast inside and so on. Maybe it is their control freak nature that keeps them young, in which case I am going to live to 150.

Good news from a reader in England. She was recently divorced but has found a new man, in part thanks to one of my books. “I think Two Lipsticks & A Lover helped me snare him actually,” she writes. They are now going to move, with her young daughter, to Provence where they will spend the winters; I assume investigating her matching underwear.

It was lovely to get such a nice letter. The past week I have had a lot of hate mail due to the latest Sunday Times column. Even from someone called Reginald. Actually the bitterness of his letter was offset by the joy I felt at the fact that there still are people called Reginald alive and kicking. Maybe he has the famous Limone gene?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

My laptop and I have been reunited and are on our way to Lake Garda where we are going to spend a week finishing To Hell in High Heels. I have left Rupert alone with five children. It was six, but one of them went back home today, so he really has nothing to complain about.

It’s a shame he can’t take them all the stay with my friends Norrie and Mary in the Savoie where I took Bea and Leo last week. They have the perfect recipe for a successful summer with children. I am going to reveal it to you.

One large wooden train decorated with flags
One donkey (possibly the most essential ingredient)
Three dogs
Lots of chickens (preferably two breeds)
Lots of ducks
One pond
Some sheep
Countless rabbits in hutches willing to be stroked and stared at
A box full of old toy cars
Fields all around with cows in them
A skinny cat that pops in from next door
Endless patience and interest in children.

It was the first time I had ever stayed anywhere and heard someone say to my children “when you wake up, don’t go bothering mum, come and see us and we’ll give you flying biscuits and milk”.

Are these people too good to be true? No, it gets better. “How can I help?” I asked one evening. “By lying on a sun-lounger,” came the reply. Then a glass of chilled white wine magically appeared. Bea must have seen the look on my face as she skipped past clutching some poor animal.

“Thank you Norrie,” she said. “You’ve saved my mummy’s life.”

For those of you who don’t have a Norrie or Mary, a friend of mine called Tina Richards (who is a holistic dermatologist) is running two workshops in London in August where you can learn all about the best anti-ageing strategies for your skin. You can check her out at www.holdbacktime.com or email team@holdbacktime.com.

I don’t think Rupert will like that idea much, but maybe when I get home I will send him to Norrie’s for a few days to recover. That way by September he may be speaking to me again.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Yesterday Banaz Mahmod’s father and uncle were jailed for life for her “honour” killing. It emerged that not only was the poor girl garrotted and buried in a suitcase, but that she was subjected to a two-hours of rape and torture beforehand.

Her uncle supervised as male members of the family sexually degraded her, beat her and stamped on her neck when the wire used to strangle her proved ineffective. Even after all that it took over half an hour for her soul and life to leave her body according to one of the participants in this orgy of violence and cruelty.

Reading this story my first reaction was one of anger. Fury actually. What kind of culture teaches men to treat women like this? And then call it honour?

Then I started to think about punishment. What can the punishment be for such a heinous act? The uncle and father (pictured) are going to serve twenty-odd years in prison. In my view that’s too good for them. There they will be fed, have a roof over their heads and sent to a doctor should they fall ill. They will live better than many of their Kurdish counterparts do in Iraq and elsewhere in the world.

Is the death penalty the answer? Ideologically I am opposed to it, but in this case….No, even that’s too good for them. So what can one do? In some societies a thief has his hand cut off for stealing an apple. What happens to a father who has organsied the gang rape, torture and brutal murder of his daughter I wonder? Probably not much.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I have arrived in the Savoie with a faulty outlook express. This means I can’t open any emails. This is the sort of thing that makes me so angry I want to throw my laptop at the nearest mountain, but instead I am going to try to stay zen and focus on things I like instead of the one thing that I really, really DON’T like which is my laptop ruining my life.

So here is my list:

Gazing at my son
Sleeping for eight hours in a row
Singing along to bad pop songs with my daughters
Clean sheets
Doing sun salutes by the pool with my husband
Getting on a train with my laptop (until we fell out)
Listening to Bea sing
Hitting a good forehand (even better would be a good backhand but it is unlikely)
The smell of wood burning
Writing
My father’s voice
Children after a long cleansing bath with wet hair
Reading my children Swedish books I knew as a child
Walking, especially at night or late evening
Sitting by the pool with a glass of chilled wine and some fresh almonds in the evening sun
Gossiping with my mother
Sleeping in the afternoon
Finishing an article in the New York Review of Books (or even starting one)
A day when I don’t have to go anywhere

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

At her christening when Olivia was only a few weeks old Mrs Miller, a friend of ours and wife to Olivia’s godfather, took her in her arms.

“This child is a control freak,” she said.

Mrs Miller at the time was running Goldman Sachs legal division globally. She is now running the legal team for the London Olympics. This is a woman who knows a control freak when she sees one.

Olivia as a baby was by far the most difficult of all my children. She would never go to sleep. You could try the ten-minute rule a thousand times but she’d still be awake, demanding attention, even at three months old. Forget the old milk bottle in the cot trick that has worked with the others. She hasn’t touched milk since she stopped breastfeeding.

She was never a child you could distract from a tantrum with some reference to an imaginary sheep or tractor. Once onto something she has always been single-minded and scarily determinded. I can’t understand where she gets it from.

Her character has not mellowed with age. But my stepson Hugo has finally understood how to deal with her.

“I’ve worked it out,” he announced yesterday. “You just agree with everything she says and she’s fine.”

I am on a train with the fashion icon (actually he looks fine but only because I dressed him while he was still asleep. His preferred outfit was brown cords and of course skiiing socks) and Bea. We are going to stay with some friends in the Savoie until Friday.
Although the thought of four hours on the train with two small and very tired children is hellish, I am comforted by the thought of Olivia organising everyone at home. I hope she gets them to do the washing.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Summer is really here. I know this not just because it is extremely hot, but my house is full of children. In addition to the usual three I have my stepchildren Hugo and Julia here, along with Julia’s best friend Annabelle.

My three-year-old son has added a rather eccentric touch to his summer wardrobe. He insists on wearing knee-length skiing socks at all times. With his sandals. He looks like your original mad Englishman abroad but doesn’t seem to care. I have tried in vain to tell him he’ll be too hot and that he looks deranged. “I love them,” he tells me. “They’re so pretty.”

This morning my stepson Hugo started to teach him to play cricket. This is something I am all for. I don’t mind if he becomes a tennis champion or a cricket star as long as I can spend my retirement sitting in a sunny place gazing at him.

Of course he may have lost his ski-sock-wearing habit by then. They certainly won’t go with cricket whites. But at least for now I can improve on the Noel Coward quote. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun wearing ski socks.”

Adds a little something, don’t you think?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Today is the 14th of July and all over France people will be celebrating the overthrowing of the ruling classes and the beginning of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Not me. As a royalist I will be celebrating the birthday of Sweden’s Princess Victoria. She is 30 today and here we will be eating meatballs in her honour.

My most memorable July 14th was in 1989 when I was staying at the British embassy in Paris with my best friend Iona whose father was the ambassador. We were relaxing in the family sitting room after dinner when there was a knock at the door.

“Do you mind if I come in?” said a woman’s voice. It was Margaret Thatcher. She had with her a first edition of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities which she was planning to give to President Mitterrand to mark the bicentenary of the revolution.

“I don’t want to devalue the book by signing it,” she said.

“I don’t think you would devalue it prime minister,” said the ambassador.

“Well, what shall I write?” she looked around the room. “You!” she said pointing at me. “You’re studying English. What should I write?”

I suggested something along the lines of ‘on this occasion of the bicentenary of the French revolution I have great pleasure in presenting you with Dickens’ book A Tale of Two Cities.’

“Perfect, now where’s my pen?”

“I think it’s upstairs,” said her personal secretary. “Shall I get it?”

“Prime minister,” said the secretary as she was leaving the room. “While I’m up there, is there anything else you need?” Upstairs at the embassy was about a four-mile hike.

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs Thatcher. “And if we do, we’ll just send you up again.”

Such a revolutionary spirit and one I intend to emulate.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Home at last. Two things hit me as I walked onto my terrace; the sunshine and the sound of the cicadas. Both comforting sounds that mean heat. I am very happy to be home. My dog is alive and well, as is the cat. So far there are no nasty shocks in the post and the pool is blue. The children are happy to be home; Bea hasn’t stopped singing since we got here. So why did we do it?

“Holidays with your children,” said my husband on the way home, “are designed to make you think that real life isn’t so bad.”

I wouldn’t call what we just had a holiday. My idea of a holiday is lying on a beach reading novels, getting up for a swim when it gets too hot and ordering cocktails from a man with a tray and a naked torso. Stockholm was many things, but it was not that.

The first problem you encounter when on holiday with small children is that they don’t sleep. And they sleep even less when it gets light at 3am. And then there are meal-times. My children may be brought up in France but they lack that special gene that means they can easily sit through a meal, especially whey they’re over-tired. So we had to adapt our eating to where they would cause least chaos. “Just tell them to sit down,” you might say. That’s all very well, but it gets so boring after 25 times that you lose the will to live, let alone the will to eat your meatballs.

So why did we do it? I suppose I did it partly to expose them to Swedish culture (Pippi, meatballs, blueberries, mossy woods etc) but also because I wanted to have some magical moments with them to cherish. There were a couple of moments, like watching them sing ‘har kommer Pippi Langstrump’ for the first time, but mainly it just seemed like hard work and damage limitation.

“Children are happiest in a darkened room watching a DVD,” said one friend when I complained about our trip. I don’t believe this, but I honestly think children are happiest at home. And I know I am.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

So my Swedish fantasy has been fulfilled. This does not involve blond hunks or even meatballs; but my children playing in the Swedish woods and more importantly leaving the woods with dark blue mouths on account of eating too many blueberries.

The weather, it has to be said, has been dreadful. Cold, wet, windy and that was on a good day. But still that hasn’t stopped us having a good time. Although at one stage Olivia did say “you know mummy, the grandes vacances are meant to be warm”.

The Stockholm archipelago is as lovely as I imagined with beautiful houses, stunning nature and more blueberries than you could eat in several lifetimes. We are staying with my cousin Erika and her family in their house on a small island called Edlunda. There are 47 houses on the island inhabited by various eclectic types like Swedish diplomats and pop stars. In fact the archipelago is stuffed full of Swedish celebs. Not that I would recognise them. But apparently Tiger Woods’ wife comes from the nearest place you can buy milk; a ten-minute boat ride away.

Today Bea insisted on Rupert holding her upside down as she picked blueberries in the moss-covered wood. One upside to the rain is that the ground is like walking on a mattress, so if he’d dropped her on her head she would barely have dropped her blueberries. It was a scene I will remember for years to come. It’s a funny thing holidays with small children. Well actually most of it isn’t much fun if I’m honest, but some highlights make it all worth while. Like the blueberries and like Leo saying when he saw his first plate of meatballs: “This was a good idea.” Like Bea and I walking around Vaxholm castle and me showing her how you put a feather in the ground and make a silent wish and her saying; “I wish I knew what you had wished for.”

Obviously I wished it would stop raining. Fat chance. It occurred to me in the middle of the night that if I were a Swedish homeless person I would move to Montpellier immediately. But before I get any more comments about how marvellous Sweden is, I don’t mean that as a criticism of the country, just a reflection on the weather.

As a place to holiday with children it is top notch. And despite my misgivings about the place I still feel emotional every time I see the flag or pick a blueberry. I think I view her rather like a relation I’m allowed to be rude about but still love deeply.

Tomorrow we begin our journey back to France where the forecast for the rest of the week is 39 degrees and sunny. As we Swedes say; Borta bra, men hemma bast.Loosely translated: There’s no place like home.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007