Cook's estranged wife puts on brave face

Media fascination with the extra-marital affair of Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, showed no signs of fading yesterday as sympathy grew for his estranged wife.

Dr Margaret Cook broke her silence over her husband's liaison with his Commons secretary, Gaynor Regan, by refusing to be bitter in public and stressing that he was a good MP and minister.

In a brief statement she said: "Whatever my husband's private life may have been, he has always been a very good Member of Parliament and is a very good Foreign Secretary. These are the only matters of concern to the general public."

But friends and neighbours say Dr Cook, a consultant haematologist, is "devastated" after two attempts in the past year to persuade her husband to repair the damaged marriage.

It was revealed that Mr Cook had planned a riding holiday with his wife in the US state of Montana which he only cancelled because of the impending exposure of his affair.

A friend of Dr Cook said: "Let's face it, he only told her the marriage was over last Friday, when he knew the story was about to break. Until then, he was preparing to go on holiday with her. He was going to fly out on Saturday. She feels publicly humiliated."

Dr Cook, 50, first found out about the affair last summer, said friends. She pleaded with her husband to end it and try to salvage the marriage.

The couple agreed to "work things out". But at Christmas he returned home and admitted he was still continuing with the affair.

Even then, friends claim, Dr Cook asked him to try again, and he agreed. Thinking she had not been with him enough in his professional life, she went with him to Hong Kong for the handover. But last Friday, Mr Cook told her that the News of the World was preparing to publish the story of his affair, and the marriage was over.

It also emerged yesterday that Mr Cook and Ms Regan, who is divorced, went to extra-ordinary lengths to avoid detection. According to reports, she would go into the flat that she shared with Mr Cook in Pimlico, south- west London, and apparently sit in darkness, sometimes for hours, to make it appear unoccupied, until he arrived.

In the morning, carrying a black binbag as though he was putting out the rubbish, Mr Cook would feed the parking meter beside Ms Regan's Renault Clio. He even, it is alleged, took counter-surveillance measures to ensure his Special Branch bodyguards did not run into her.

Having spent the week with his secretary, Mr Cook would return to the family home at weekends. In the past, Dr Cook described her husband as a romantic who bought her chocolates and flowers. She added: "Not many men do, I gather, I should be very grateful. He also buys me gorgeous underwear and nightdresses."

Tony Blair has expressed his sadness at the "personal tragedy" of the marriage split, but party spokesmen have stressed that unlike John Major, new Labour has never made a big issue of "family values" or attempted to campaign on a "back to basics" platform.

One of Labour's female MPs said: "There is a lot of sympathy for Robin Cook's wife and a feeling he has treated her rather badly. This has apparently been going on for at least a year, and what came out shows they [Mr Cook and Ms Regan] made a lot efforts to hide their affair.

"As a woman, I feel quite strongly about this and I know so do some of my colleagues".