So it’s all over for Sego. Even more disastrous than the hair-do is the news that Olivia is voting Sarko. On hearing this her godfather Jonathan, a keen Francophile who knows much more about these sorts of things than I do, pronounced Sego “yesterday’s woman”.

I have to say her last speech really annoyed me. “It’s time for a woman,” she roared. “But will France dare? I say to you France: dare, dare, dare.” Last time I looked being President had nothing to do with what sex you are, but how good you are at convincing the electorate you will be good at the job. Imagine if a man had said France needs a man. What an uproar there would have been.

Meanwhile there is a cloud hanging over the household due to the news that a three-year-old has been abducted in Portugal from the hotel room where she slept alongside her siblings. Of course Rupert and I keep thinking about the night the German found Leo (also aged three) wandering around the hotel while we slept. I can’t imagine what her parents must be going through, it is every parent’s worst nightmare. Every half hour I turn on the news in the hope that she’s been found alive and well.

Tomorrow I head off to New York. I am torn between excitement at two days being pampered for an article I am writing for the Express and depression at leaving the little ones. “Don’t be gone go,” said little Leo as I tucked him into bed last night. It’s almost enough to make me want to renounce my free Upper Class ticket and night at the Four Seasons, but not quite.

All being well he will be here when I get back and I’ll have plenty of more nights kissing him goodnight. And I pray (although I’m not really the praying kind) that the same will hold true for little Maddy’s parents too.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007