The easiest way to raise a laugh on satirical programmes like Radio 4’s The News Quiz is to make a reference to the disgraced former minister and used fivers, a courtesy which has been extended to his wife in the shape of feeble jokes about paying in cash for copies of her Bumper Book of British Battleaxes. Mrs Hamilton’s foray into publishing may have been ill-conceived, but something curious is going on here. But they are proud of what they have achieved together and are resisting the temptation to flee the scene of the trauma and start their lives again somewhere else. “We don’t want to make any moves that would look like we’ve been defeated,” Mrs Eappen said last week. “We spent our whole lives becoming us, building who we are, making a family.”Her resolve might be tested, however, if she endures the most painful defeat of all and Judge Zobel decides this week to set Louise Woodward free. So he was still expected to live the way he would have been expected to live in India, which would have been arranged marriage.”As for the argument that, instead of working three days a week at a Harvard clinic, she should have stayed at home full time to look after the children, it could equally be said that she had gone some way to resolving the classic modern dilemma of the working mother by paying, within the family’s means, for a nice English au pair with impeccable child-care credentials.One day the Eappens will be well-off, but for the moment they must remain content with inhabiting a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home built next to a busy highway that, by the standards of the leafy and costly suburb of Newton, almost qualifies as a shack.

When CNN’s Larry King asked them on Wednesday why they had taken seven years to get married, her careful reply intimated that the couple had suffered to stay together. “When we got married we wanted to be independent of our parents and not rely on them for support … It’s not really the family itself, it’s really more of a cultural phenomenon Sunil was first-generation here. The impression that she has somehow remained unmoved by her baby’s death has generated vague suspicions about her potential for evil-doing, suspicions amply confirmed in some people’s minds by unconfirmed reports of a videotape that shows her instructing a reluctant young Brendan to incriminate Louise Woodward.Against all that, the picture of a hard-working, driven young American couple who had the courage to battle for their love in the face of parental pressure is no less plausible.

“We think the medical testimony is essentially incontrovertible. This is why we are so devastated that a mob mentality should prevail here, that Louise Woodward has been made into a folk hero and wonderful people like the Eappens have twice been made the victims of all this.”Dr Garfield, who has practised medicine for more than 30 years, works closely with Dr Eappen and has met his wife socially. He described both as people of “the highest values, intelligence and integrity”. Dr Eappen, says his colleague, is a young doctor who has shone among his peers, and is destined to be a future leader in his field. “We think extremely highly of him, clinically and as a person.