The stockings are hung by the fireside, embroidered with the children’s names. The tree, strung with tinsel and baubles, stands ceiling-height in the corner. All seems bright and Christmas-ready at Lady Isabella Hervey’s home.
But her three young children – Victor, nine, Patrick, eight and six-year-old India – without whom the festivities are empty and meaningless, are absent. There is silence where once the rooms echoed with their boisterous activity.
Yet Isabella has, with customary determination and hope, decked the house as if in expectation of a brief visit from them.
In her heart, though, she is steeling herself for a far bleaker Christmas when she will be permitted to see them only on neutral ground, in a restaurant for lunch.
Such fleeting and soulless meetings are now customary for Isabella, whose aristocratic English family dates back to the 13th century. For, as she reveals in the latest tragic twist to her acrimonious split from her husband, her children have now been removed from her care.
‘Victor asks every time I see him when they’re coming home, and I promise him it’s only temporary.
‘But Patty has lost hope. He thinks he’ll never come home,’ she says bleakly. ‘It is as if their souls have been ripped out. They don’t smile any more.’
Lady Isabella Hervey has decked the house as if in expectation of a brief visit from her three children
Last year Isabella revealed to this newspaper the domestic abuse she says she had suffered at the hands of her estranged husband Christophe de Pauw, whom she is now divorcing. She claimed he used her as a punchbag, hitting her while pregnant and on the day their daughter was born.
As a result, a restraining order was issued under which he can see his children for only an hour a week, under supervision. He faces criminal charges of aggravated domestic violence – a court case is in progress – against both Isabella and their children.
But matters have taken a further disturbing turn since we last met. A family court in Portugal, where Isabella lives in a villa in Villamoura, decreed in September that her children could no longer live with her. Instead, extraordinarily, they are sharing a rented house just down the road from Isabella, with their father’s new partner Florence, 43, and her two children.
De Pauw’s mother Marie-Helene, who lives in Belgium where the family made a vast fortune from property, is now responsible for her grandchildren’s care. But – on the premise that Christophe has moved into a nearby bedsit – it is Florence who assumes day-to-day maternal duties. It seems – at least to Isabella – that a vengeful Christophe was determined that if he was denied access to their children, she would be, too. She feels that at first he tried to break her, then to discredit her as a mother.
Today she recalls the devastating day in September when her children were taken from her.
Knowing what was in store for them following a family court judgment, she had hoped to say goodbye to them before they left. But even this was denied her. ‘I didn’t realise the court order would be implemented so quickly,’ she says. ‘I went to collect my kids from school, earlier than usual, because I wanted at least to explain to them what was happening and to tell them how much I loved them. I asked if I could take them home, but the police arrived and escorted me off the premises.
‘I was told I couldn’t say goodbye. I was distraught because I didn’t want them to think I’d just abandoned them. I was crying as the police marched me off. I was destroyed. Christophe knew how vulnerable I was. He knew at the time I had no lawyer – I couldn’t afford one – and he had an army of top-flight lawyers.
‘Christophe has a long criminal record. I was horrified to discover for the first time that he’s been convicted of arson and a hit-and-run offence and has many convictions for drink-driving. But I’ve never been in trouble with the law. Yet I was made to feel like a criminal, an unfit mother.’
Isabella believes Christophe – with the help of a third party – made her look like a bad mother, and this may have contributed to her being reported to social services.
‘It was alleged that I was suicidal, that my house was a mess and that the children were neglected; all of which I refute absolutely,’ she says.
‘I stood alone in the family court, with no one to defend me, and was basically told I was a disgrace.
Last year Isabella revealed to this newspaper the domestic abuse she says she had suffered at the hands of her estranged husband Christophe de Pauw
Lady Isabella on her wedding day to de Pauw, whom she is now divorcing, in 2014
Lady Isabella (right) with her mother, Yvonne, and older sister, Victoria, in 2000
‘I understood very little. Everything was in Portuguese, and although there was a translator I couldn’t really follow what was happening. But what I knew absolutely was that the allegations against me were completely false.’
I first met Isabella, 43, two years ago when, crushed by what she told me was Christophe’s cruelty, she looked frail and defeated. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the house, bar the bare essentials. She told me he’d taken everything.
Detailing a catalogue of alleged assaults, she described then how de Pauw purportedly hit her repeatedly – once she lost consciousness and was concussed – attacked her verbally, undermined her self-worth, controlled her financially and isolated her from her friends.
‘He could be very violent. He spat on me, threw plates. On the day India was born, he smacked me across the face. Once he gave me a black eye; another time he hit my head with a metal object when I was seven months pregnant.
‘He would call me a ‘bitch’ and a ‘piece of s***’ and would say he was going to ruin my life.’
But Isabella, fired by a new sense of purpose, is determined to fight for the return of her children.
There is something both poignant and admirable about her resolve, because when she married de Pauw in 2014, her modest ambition was to be ‘a good housewife and mum and raise three kids in a settled home’.
It was a dream that had eluded her during her own childhood. Raised by nannies, her father, Victor, the 6th Marquess of Bristol, died on the night of her third birthday and she was sent to boarding school aged six.
In 1999, her half-brother John, the 7th Marquess, died a heroin addict at the age of 44. He’d frittered away £35million on hedonistic living, losing the family’s ancestral home, Ickworth House in Suffolk, in the process. Another half-sibling, Lord Nicholas Hervey had taken his own life, aged 36, less than a year earlier.
Yet on her wedding day in 2014 Isabella – who has a sister, Lady Victoria Hervey and brother Frederick, the 8th Marquess of Bristol – believed the jinxed family fortunes had been reversed.
How wildly misplaced her hopes were. Even when she was separated from her husband, it seemed bad luck continued to dog her.
Isabella was ‘terrified and unnerved’ by two break-ins at night: one in January, the other in March this year, at her home.
‘Nothing was taken but a window was forced and the place was ransacked. Everything was tipped upside down.’
She called the police who, instead of supporting her, reprimanded her for the state of the house, looked in her fridge and concluded ‘the kids weren’t being properly fed’, she says. ‘Of course the house was a mess – it had been ransacked.’ Later, she says, as she began to establish her fledgling business as a fitness instructor and sports nutritionist, her laptop was compromised, her website sabotaged and all the contacts in her phone disappeared.
‘All these things mess with your head. And when my website came down I lost many of my clients.’
When she asked police to investigate, they dissuaded her: ‘They said it would take years and get nowhere.’
There were repeated floods in her garden when trespassers allegedly cut water pipes, leaving her with months of excessive water bills.
‘One day I broke down in tears in the garden and someone, on the golf course behind, took a photo of me.’
She says that Christophe has consistently failed to pay even the minimum ¤1,200 (£1,051 )a month child maintenance, and that she was forced to sell jewellery that had been in her family for generations just to get by. He, meanwhile, claims he always paid child support when the children were in their mother’s care.
In the summer, social services were alerted. Isabella has been told there were claims of opened pill packets scattered round her bathroom sink, a book shredded in Victor’s bedroom and shampoo smeared over the mirror. She has since learned that an allegation was made that she was suicidal.
‘All these things mess with your head. And when my website came down I lost many of my clients,’ said Lady Isabella
Fired by a new sense of purpose, she is is determined to fight for the return of her children
‘I was under constant stress and life was a challenge,’ she concedes. ‘But I’m a good mum and I love my children unconditionally.’
A date was set, in August, for Isabella to appear before the family court in Faro. On the day she was supposed to attend, she was sick with a ‘stress-related migraine’ and went to the public hospital in Faro.
A new hearing was set for September. This time police arrived at 7.30am at her home to escort her.
In court, she says: ‘None of my witnesses – one of them a nurse – was called. Photos were presented of the children with dirty fingernails, of a sock with mud on the sole, a ripped T-shirt. The children had nits – which child hasn’t? – and it was all used against me.
‘When the court made its judgement I wanted to scream. I was so angry and despairing. All the accusations were nonsense. Then, 24 hours after the hearing, my kids had gone. I was devastated.’
Now property consultant Florence – with whom Christophe began an affair while still living with Isabella – cares for her children on condition that Christophe stays away from the home and their grandmother visits regularly.
‘Christophe is supposed to have moved out. But I have suspicions that he goes to his house,’ says Isabella. ‘I don’t understand how my kids’ safety is guaranteed in the home of someone charged with aggravated domestic violence against me and the children. How do the authorities know or check that he doesn’t break the restraining order?’
De Pauw is not permitted to come within 300 metres of Isabella or to see their children, except on scheduled supervised visits at a specified venue for an hour a week. He denies that he visits his home as he says he has the rented flat.
Isabella, who has now engaged a Portuguese lawyer, is appealing the judgement and fighting for the return of her children. She has done psychiatric tests which, she says, prove she is fit to care for them.
Looking rangy and elegant, it is easy to see why her blend of glamorous athleticism won her a place on Celebrity Love Island, aged 23, and why she was voted one of the world’s sexiest women by lads’ mag FHM in 2006.
She speaks with transparent affection about the children who are the centre of her world. Her home is spotlessly – defiantly – clean and welcoming. ‘Look at the children’s artwork!’ she says, showing me framed finger paintings, before confiding her fears for them.
‘Patty used to be the cuddlier of the boys, like a little bear. Now he is a like a robot.
‘India always wanted me to rock her to sleep; that was our thing. I’d always put her to bed first and we loved watching the stars – we’d make a wish – and watch the sunsets too, because they are magical.
‘At home with me I let them make tents and dens in the house. And if they wanted to run around the house they could. It’s healthy for kids to run. They’re not allowed to do any of that stuff now – and of course they’re not with the mum who loves them unconditionally.’
Her weekly hour-long visits to see them are heart-breaking. Her slot, with a social worker present, either precedes or follows Christophe’s. The children feel constrained by the artificiality of the set-up. ‘It is not natural,’ she says. ‘Their spirits are crushed.’
Her most fervent wish is that they will be allowed to visit her at home on Christmas Day and open presents. ‘Their social worker says it will be disruptive and too upsetting for them,’ says Isabella. ‘But what could be more distressing than being taken from their mum?’
‘I force myself to be motivated for their sakes because I’m all they have. They’ve seen me crying, broken, terrified, but I’m strong and determined now.
‘Instead of feeling sorry for myself I see the children as the victims in all this. I’m just so sad for them.’
When approached by the Daily Mail, Christophe de Pauw said the children had been removed from Isabella’s care by Portuguese authorities due to the ‘unsanitary conditions, extremely disorganised home and lack of hygiene’.
Isabella remains resolute: her ex will not break her.
‘He had the kids removed from my care and he thought I’d be in despair, that I’d do whatever he wanted. When I was with him my self-esteem and confidence were destroyed. Now I’m away from him I’m strong, positive, driven. He cannot ever imagine my strength now I am fighting for my children.’