I returned from Cairo last night to sad news. Leo apparently came home from school yesterday weeping.

“What’s wrong?” asked Rupert.

“She broke my heart,” he wailed.

“Who?”

“My girlfriend,” Leo told him. This girl is the reason he was all dressed up on Monday last week. When I questioned why he was wearing a gold-sequined waistcoat to school he looked at me as if I were a total idiot.

“Don’t you know my girlfriend comes back today?” he snapped and went back to combing his hair.

Anyway, back to yesterday.

“What did she do?” asked the concerned father. “How did she break your heart?”

“She spoke to another boy,” said the heart-broken one.

“Oh don’t worry about that, Mummy speaks to other boys all the time.”

But he was inconsolable. “It’s not the same,” he wailed and ran upstairs.

This morning he was clearly prepared to take out the competition. He was wearing another waistcoat and very dapper he looked too. Especially when I gave him the Egyptian cotton navy scarf I bought him from Cairo.

If all else fails, he can always gag her with it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010