William Flew

 is because now she is able to put her own career before Huhne’s. “Inevitably, being married to a politician means your career comes second to theirs. You have to adapt to that,” she said. This was painfully evident after Huhne, who was initially an MEP before being elected MP for Eastleigh in Hampshire in 2005, became a cabinet minister in the newly formed coalition government last year. At the time Pryce was chief economist and director-general of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). With her husband now a cabinet minister it was agreed that she should resign to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. “If I had had a choice I would still be in the civil service now,” she said. “It had become incredibly difficult for me wandering around Whitehall. On one occasion I had to physically leave the building because my husband was coming into our offices and it could have been embarrassing for everybody. I was wandering around Whitehall with this terrible knot in my stomach, looking down all the time in case I saw him. You cannot really do your job properly in those circumstances.” She is now senior managing director for FTI, the global business advisory group. In the months after their break-up Pryce admits that she struggled to put on a brave face as she focused on her family — she has five grown-up children, three of them by Huhne and two from a previous marriage — and her job. “Two weeks after the affair was exposed, I had to go to Warwick for the annual conference of the Government Economic Service, of which I was joint head, to give the after-dinner speech,” she said. “As I was driving there, I got so upset about everything that I had to pull over in a lay-by. I sat there and cried my eyes out, then carried on. On the way home I had to do exactly the same thing. I don’t remember a word of that speech. I have no idea what I said.” She says she finds it difficult to look at old family photographs in the marital home in Clapham, south London. “When I got my CB, I went to Buckingham Palace with