Kimberly Quinn: I knew what I did was wrong

By Genevieve Fox Published: 7:00AM GMT 04 March 2010

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Kimberly Quinn: "When there"s a liaison in your life, the things you depended on are taken afar from you" Photo: Andrew Crowley

When Kimberly Quinn was flourishing up as a Valley Girl in LA, she would arise up in her swanky home and see by the window. Sure enough, the trees would be arrayed in loo paper and messages of devotion would be spelt out on the lawn.

"If you are popular," explains Kimberly, 49, seeking each in. the preppy mama rather than the frolicsome socialite she once was, "the boys hide over to your residence at night and they throw the loo rolls all over the residence and the trees." But Kimberly, dark-haired, pale-skinned and short, was not popular, and the dedications were not for her, the bow-legged, dippy-eyed bookworm of the family. They were for her sister Jenny, blonde, lithe, cheerleading, drum-majoretting, sequin-bathing-suited Jenny. "She was soooo pretty," says Kimberly. "God! Our residence was filled with flowering plants at all times."

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Kimberleys mother, Lugene Solomon, a former Fifties radio star who hung out with Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds, was a doll, too; to this day, people contend how glamorous she is. "People used to ask for her designation at the grocery store," she says, the annoyance still transparent in her voice.

It was years prior to Kimberly got her spin in the spotlight, and for all the wrong reasons. It was some-more similar to a spin in the searchlights, with her behind opposite the wall, and no exit strategy.

In Aug 2004, when she was publishing house of The Spectator, her event with the afterwards home cabinet member David Blunkett was exposed. She had frequency taken off her own Just Married fender plaque when it began in 2001, usually a couple of months after restraining the tangle with millionaire Vogue publishing house Stephen Quinn. Kimberly and her second father (her initial marriage, elderly 26, was to an American banker) were accepted to be carrying flood diagnosis at the time. When a kid was innate in Sep 2002, it incited out be Blunketts, but usually after a DNA exam he demanded valid as much. William is right afar seven. Quinn is the father of Lorcan, Williams brother, usually five, though Blunkett had questioned this, requesting an additional DNA test.

"Nannygate" followed, the overwhelming scandal-within-a-scandal in that Home Office officials were purported to have fast-tracked a visa for the Quinns Filipina nanny. Blunkett, who quiescent from the Government in Dec 2004, denied any personal impasse in the fast-tracking, and Kimberly finished the affair. And all the while, Stephen Quinn, 65, put the grace in to being cuckolded: he didnt shift the thatch of their Mayfair home; he didnt flog afar Blunketts stick; he kept his own counsel.

How could he, I wish to ask, but we are here to plead Kimberlys entrance novel, The Queen Must Die: Chronicles of the Tempus, the initial in a abnormal trilogy directed at 9 to 12-year-olds about a time-travelling small lady called Katie. This dark-haired, lonely, bookworm travels behind in time from � la mode New York to Victorian England. There, she creates a most appropriate friend, Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria, and the span group up to stifle a tract to move down the monarchy.

For Katie, her greatest find is that Mimi, the lively popstar silent she has left behind, loves her for who she is and that Katie loves her in return, notwithstanding their differences. The book, says Kimberly, is "full of messages".Katie is urged to find her own voice, as Kimberly has done, whilst Alice tells Katie: "You are the sister I never had."

"When I was essay this book I had a quite uneasy attribute with my sister. I felt strongly that, even though it [you know, her event with Blunkett] was my fault, I had left by a formidable time and Jenny had not stood by me. Over 45 years I had stood by her and stood by her. When things went wrong for me, she wasnt there for me. And I was unequivocally unfortunate and so I think I combined the sister I wanted.

"But the great thing is that given afterwards the attribute has taken a spin for the improved and she, carrying been unequivocally conservatively and happily tied together and lifted

two immature kids beautifully, has essentially left her unequivocally comfortable, well-upholstered home in northern California and left to Buenos Aires. She is right afar tango dancing."

So, she has left her husband? "Yes." Schadenfreude is a great leveller.

For Kimberly, the book has been her shelter from shame, her equates to of entrance up for air after her open dunking. "I contingency confess the not terribly courageous, but [writing] it was a great escape. It was unequivocally going behind to me as an 11-year-old."

Stephen speedy her to write the novel, that she says has been in her head for twenty-five years she specialised in Victorian studies at Vassar university, the once all-girls Ivy League college that is right afar a guide to savvy immature men with well read pretensions and intelligent girls in cashmere twinsets. Its alumni, Kimberly tells me, embody Meryl Streep, Jackie Kennedy and Jane Fonda, "all unequivocally gung-ho feminist women".

First, after "it" happened, she went behind to The Spectator, that she found "very tough given I didnt wish to have anything to do with governing body or journalists." After a year, she went home to her parents, though her poise frequency chimed with her relatives nation bar values. "My mom longed for a conservative, secure hold up and she has been tied together to my father given she was 18... A lot of tough work went in to that matrimony and a lot of not removing what you want. I think when she sees how tough she has worked to keep that matrimony going and the a unequivocally successful matrimony she doesnt assimilate how possibly of us could just..." and she pauses, prior to observant unequivocally quickly, "throw things away. And shes right, to an extent, but you do have to lead your own life."

Its not a perspective her father, Marvin, who done his income in manufacturing, would find easy to second. "At one point my father had pronounced to me, I would never have stayed with you."

But she had already told Stephen he didnt have to stay. Its right afar she addresses "it", what she calls "the elephant in the room", despite with evil circumlocution. "My immature kids are the thing that have hold up work because, you know, I screwed up my hold up and I know it was me and it was unequivocally tough given it was so open and that was very, unequivocally hard," she says. "I knew what was right and wrong, and I knew what I did was wrong and afterwards not usually to have to face it in myself but to see it hugely twisted and so publicly magnified, in annoy of everything, was unequivocally hard.

"I think what happens when theres a liaison in your life, the things you depended on are taken afar from you and so you worth what you have. I had dual unequivocally great small boys, so sweet, and a unequivocally great husband."

By nature, she is "a happy person. But I have been a very, unequivocally unfortunate chairman over the past 6 or 7 years."

Its a prolonged time to be unhappy. "Well, youre never unfortunate all the time," she says quietly, adding: "I am relaxed now, that is good. I am unequivocally happy with my children." She gets on with things. Everything is fine.

The liaison sifted her allies from her foes. "I know who my friends are now. I know how clever my father is."

If were articulate childhoods, his was frequency peachy, orphaned as he was. Where does he get his strength from? "Stephen regularly looks at the certain side of things. Also, he is singularly someone who does not try the past. Its probably one of his strengths." Theres understatement for you.

Later, as we travel down her gymnasium to her Victorian salon of a sketch room, Kimberly in her maroon twinset, embossed bullion trinket and solemn justice shoes, she says: "I pronounced to Stephen recently, Stevie, because do you love me? and he said: Because you can see in the dull fridge and find something to prepare and because, when you come behind from the beautician you see similar to Jackie Kennedy." She laughs her giggly laugh.

She smiled her winning grin at a celebration this week to symbol the announcement of her book, her initial given the scandal. "Please dont think the a little sort of Victorian try to re-enter society," she pronounced of it. "We usually longed for to have a party. And we would love to pull a line," and she stops for a moment, "behind the past. I dont think the possible."

Because people wouldnt let you? "No," she replies. "I dont think people will." But she and Quinn have. "We have well known each alternative for a unequivocally prolonged time and we know each others weaknesses."

We both giggle a bit, afterwards she says: "You know, I think you reach a theatre in hold up where youre possibly in or youre out. And were in. So, until one of us 10 feet under, were in."

And then, usually when Im about to leave, she drops her guard. "You know, things can never be fine. Stephen cannot pardon me." But he can love her.

The Queen Must Die: Chronicles of the Tempus by KAS Quinn (Atlantic) is accessible fromBooks for �9.99 and �0.99p. To order, greatfully call 0844 871 1515 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk