To dispel it, Andre disappears and comes back with an armload of photographs of his daughters, all beautiful women.Don’t you feel strange, I ask him, marrying a woman younger than your daughters?”No, I feel great. He has slowed down, and has time for me and the baby, and I have been able to give him the son he always wanted.”But when I see him with our baby, I get really emotional. I know he wants to make time stand still, but also to accelerate it. He is frustrated because he wants to teach his son to drive, and to fly, and to see his boy eat steaks, not baby food. If I had known Andre when he was a very young man, I would not have thought him a good husband or a good father.

Now he is both, because he has changed and learned from his mistakes. He thought I’d broken up a marriage.” The family rift was healed two years before the wedding in 1994.It was while on holiday in Mexico that the Baldets decided to try for a baby. Andre says, “People might suggest that I am selfish or irresponsible to have a child at 72. But Marie-Helene and Charles will always be financially secure. It is the men who have babies and leave no financial provision who are truly irresponsible and selfish. I wanted a baby because I wanted Marie-Helene to have something of me after I die.”Marie-Helene has stopped smiling.

She says quietly, “As the third wife, I feel I am getting the best of everything. It’s hard enough for any father when their daughter brings home a boyfriend of her own age, but mine was nearly 50 years older I think at first my father thought it was disgusting He wouldn’t talk to me for months. But we have learned not to take notice of what the gossips say.”Andre’s daughters accepted the relationship So did Marie-Helene’s mother “She understood pretty quickly that we were in love But my father was devastated I was his only daughter, and very shy and reserved. I had never known a Frenchman his age who spoke such fluent English He was exciting He had flown aeroplanes, and he still rode motorcycles His life had been an adventure.

I was captured by his charisma and energy – and I liked his eyes.”Within months, they had become lovers, and Andre bought a flat in Northampton “He was the first man in my life,” she says. “I may not have the dash of a 25- year-old,” adds Andre, “but we satisfy each other.”However, Marie-Helene was bothered by others’ reactions. She was frequently mistaken for his daughter or granddaughter, and she worried that she would be called a marriage-breaker or gold- digger “I suppose I used to think that about such couples myself. My father worked hard all his life, but he’s not adventurous.”When I met Andre, I was intrigued.

“I saw in Andre the kind of man I would have liked my father to be,” she says “I come from an ordinary family. But what did she see in a man approaching 70, a man older than her grandfather?She laughs, and takes a long, appraising look at her husband. She was taking a year off from a Spanish degree, working at the college to improve her English. “I thought she was a lovely girl and wished I was younger so that I could court her… but it happened anyway.”Marie-Helene wanders through the living room with her baby at her hip She has glossy, dark hair and a perfect figure It’s easy to see why he was attracted to her. It was in 1990, at a cocktail party organised by a local technical college, where he was a governor.