Don’t be fooled by the air of respectability – more and more middle-class parents now get up to all sorts of illegal activity after putting the children to bed. Charlotte Edwardes on the new face of Britain’s drug problem
This summer, as soon as the school holidays began, Maxie and Martin Brown, their two children, nanny and housekeeper headed to the same villa in northern Ibiza they have hired for the past five years. A notable characteristic of the ?3,650-a-week retreat, shaded by palms and orange trees, is that it has a self-contained three-bedroomed cottage where the children and staff stay. This is not, after all, an ordinary ‘family’ holiday. On the contrary: while the children build castles in the sand of nearby beaches, Mr and Mrs Brown have been sleeping off a string of private parties at villas and on yachts dotted around the island.
The Browns are members of a breed of glamorous, high net-worth individuals who appear the perfect parents. They send their children to the best primary schools, bring them up to mind their p’s and q’s, drive them to ballet lessons and dress them in Bonpoint. Yet there is one aspect of their approach to parenting that many will find profoundly shocking. Because once the children are tucked up in bed, the Browns will start some serious partying, not with a bottle of wine or two, but with class-A drugs.
