June 2007: The Blairs leave No 10

"OK, guys, that's it. Let's do the business.” The time had finally come: our goodbyes had all been said, tears wiped away. At a nod from Tony, the custodian opened the famous front door with a little mock bow and the six of us trooped out into the June sunshine to face the cameras: Euan, Nicky, Kathryn, Leo, Tony and me, all of us dressed in what my grandma would have called our Sunday Best, exiting that historic building to “do the business” for the last time.

As protocol decrees, while he was ushered into the waiting car by the door nearest the pavement...I walked round to the other side behind the driver, closer to the waiting photographers shouting my name, and with the renewed frenzy of snapping came the sarcasm. “Miss it, will you?...We'll miss you!” The sunlight glinted on their long lenses and I thought, not for the first time, how threatening they were. How like weapons. I'd just said goodbye to all these people we'd loved and who'd loved us and I thought, Actually, I am going to miss all of them, but not you lot, no. So that's what came out. I couldn't help myself. “Bye, I won't miss you!” And I laughed.

“You can't resist it, can you?” Tony said through clenched teeth as the door closed behind me. “For God's sake, you're supposed to be dignified, you're supposed to be gracious.” Sitting there in the back of the Daimler, Tony stony-faced beside me, I stared out of the window as we passed the Cenotaph. He was right to be angry. Even though I had tossed my remark to the press light-heartedly - or so I thought - I didn't have the right. We had discussed it so often: leaving was to be on his terms and was to be done with dignity and grace, and what I had just done was neither gracious nor dignified. It was not my day, it was Tony's day. I knew it, and he knew it, and I sat beside him feeling both foolish and small.

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Then, just as the car turned into the Mall, he shrugged his shoulders, took my hand and gave me a grin, that infectious grin that I have never been able to resist. He grinned because he loves me. Because he knows that I just couldn't help myself. In the end, part of the reason he loves me is my unpredictable character. I am impulsive and he is not. I am the abrasiveness against which he can spark.

He didn't say anything, nor did I expect him to. When you have known someone for 30 years, a lot of things go unsaid, because you know each other so well they don't need to be said. Tony has a very quick temper, which I have always suspected he inherited from his red-headed mother, but it flares up and is gone in a minute.

In all those years, whatever strain he was under, Tony never lost his temper either in public or with his staff. The one place where he could release his frustration and anxiety was at home. He was under incredible pressure and if he was short-tempered, we knew he wasn't really cross with us.

As the Victoria Memorial came into view at the end of The Mall, I saw once again the jubilant crowd of ten years before. I felt proud of him then, and I feel proud of him now. I remembered the vulnerable young man I first met, who had just lost his mother, and the resilience and determination that took him all the way to Downing Street and across the globe.

But more than anything, I am proud of what he has achieved for us as a family. We went in there together, saw our kids grow up and our family expand, and we had come out the other side still happy and united, all of us, in our different ways, coming to terms with the weight of ten years of experience, and looking forward to the next phase of our lives.

Speaking for Myself is published by Little, Brown today at £18.99. Available from BooksFirst at the reduced price of £16.99, free p&p: 0870 1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

©Cherie Blair 2008

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