My son, Charles, was just four when his father left us to move abroad with a new, much younger girlfriend.

I only discovered later that he had been cheating on me with a motley crew of other women – but by then I was grateful to them for eroding our soul-destroying marriage.

Divorce was, for me, a liberation. Yes, I was run ragged, but easygoing Charles was such a joy that life felt like a festival of lights. Christmas became, as the advertisements say, the happiest time of year. We would sit at the kitchen table making decorations from scratch – hand-stitched bunting, felt animals, ornaments from egg cartons – and I would bake biscuits in the shape of angels and Christmas trees.

We were effortlessly happy without his father’s baleful presence. Indeed, we were the closest mother and son I knew until, in 2021 at the age of 19, Charles met Chloe, an older French girl who studied with him at Bristol University.

Friends at first, I was elated when he told me they had fallen in love two years later. Barely pausing to breathe, he said that she was beautiful, brilliant and destined for great things. ‘You’ll love her, Mum!’ he assured me.

Chloe was certainly very beautiful in photographs, tall and slim and casually elegant with long, dark hair and sparkling blue eyes. I experienced a pang when I saw them together – not jealousy, but that bittersweet feeling known to every parent when they realise a darling child has become an adult.

When Charles told me he would be bringing Chloe home for supper during his mid-term break, I was both nervous and immeasurably excited. I bought peonies and set about making boeuf bourguignon and millefeuille as a nod to her homeland.

Chloe lit a cigarette within minutes of entering the house. When I pleasantly told her I was asthmatic and couldn’t have smoke indoors, she shot me a disdainful look and slouched outside to puff. The shock really set in when Charles followed her out and promptly lit up himself. Since when had my son smoked?

Charlotte Harper has felt distant from her son after he met a girl at university and moved away

The evening only worsened. Chloe made no effort to hide her boredom, drank a bottle of red wine and, when I served the delicacies I’d taken almost all day to make, surveyed me with open pity and made a remark about how ‘sweet’ it was when ‘British people try to cook like the French’.

She then said she didn’t believe in contraception because ‘artificial hormones give you cancer’.

As they drove off, I burst into tears. Chloe had arrived empty-handed, and appeared to have no interest in establishing any kind of relationship. I was, I think, most hurt by the fact that my adored son seemed blind to the way she had treated me.