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met lots of my mother’s friends, although my sister and I had no indication that some of these friendships ran a little deeper. She was incredibly discreet,
and by the time I was five my parents had been practising their modus vivendi for a number of years. It was about this time that Daddy’s friend Yola Letellier started to come and stay. They
had met in 1932 at a dance in Deauville, and when my father saw this young, extremely attractive, boyish-looking girl with cropped hair and a little snub nose – a French ‘gamine’
– he wanted to know who she was. ‘
Ah
,’ came the reply. ‘
Elle est la femme de Letellier
.’ My father misheard, thinking she was the hotelier’s wife,
and asked her to dance. In fact Monsieur Letellier was a powerful, much older, businessman, whose family owned and ran
Le Journal
, a daily newspaper with the third-highest circulation in the
world at that time. Sparks ignited between Yola and my father during that very first dance, and as he whirled her around in a fast Viennese waltz everyone stopped to watch and applaud. Always the
showman, my father found this an irresistibly romantic beginning and fell for Yola in a big way. Their relationship was to last for many years, and some time later the renowned French writer
Colette went on to immortalise Yola’s story in her novel
Gigi
. In real life, Yola was as free spirited and youthful as her fictionalised self, though, unlike Gigi, in choosing Henri,
Yola had married the older ‘uncle’ and not the young nephew.
    My father had learned to accept my mother’s boyfriends but my mother found it impossible not to be jealous. The fact that she had been taking lovers for ten years was apparently of no
account. When she realised how important Yola was to my father, she cunningly befriended her and took her off to Austria, just at the time my father had arranged precious leave from his ship for
their romantic assignation. This must have been extremely galling for my father, but it transpired that my mother’s travels with Yola did have one very positive outcome. In 1933, while on
some adventure or other, she met a man who changed her life and enabled my father to find some contentment with Yola.
    ‘Bunny’ Phillips, or Lieutenant Colonel Harold Phillips of the Coldstream Guards to give him his proper name, was thrillingly handsome, with perfect posture – rare in a man of
six foot five – and being half South American, he rode like a dream. From the moment I first met him, it became impossible to imagine family life without him. He even chose my first pony.
Walking on the beach at Bognor, Patricia pointed to a line of little ponies that were giving rides to children. ‘Isn’t that one so sweet,’ she exclaimed, and Bunny took a good
look, patient and interested in what we had to say. While we stopped to have an ice cream, he slipped away to talk to the owner and, a few days later, Sunshine arrived at Adsdean.
    We loved having Bunny in our home. Quite simply, he made my mother easier to be around and he genuinely loved being with my sister and me. He had the imagination for wonderful games into which
she would also be drawn. When he was away he wrote us warm, affectionate letters, addressing each of us ‘The Weewaks’, one of the many pet names he invented for us. My mother kept many
photographs on her dressing table, including the one of my father in naval uniform that she had to frequently replace as he was promoted and decorated. But what never changed was the picture of my
mother, Patricia and me, sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Monte Carlo, all three of us wearing little paper crowns and capes made of the gauzy fabric in which my mother’s clothes were
packed, grinning dopily at Bunny. This image became the official portrait of the alter egos he invented for us: ‘Princess Plink’ and ‘Princess Plonk’, while he and Mummy
were ‘King and Queen of the Moon’. Bunny made up intoxicating stories for