ORANGE juice mixed with hot chocolate. That was the celebratory drink that Ms Catherine Hughes's four year old twins prepared for her yesterday. And the Cork mother was delighted to sip it as it was the first drink she had shared with her children since they were abducted by their father four months ago.
Ms Hughes was reunited with Cheryl and Clint in a hotel room at the airport in Marseilles, France, yesterday afternoon. The twins were found safe in Switzerland on Thursday after Ms Hughes's former partner, Mr Claud Blanc, was arrested by French police.
The children travelled from Switzerland to Marseilles late on Thursday, where they were greeted on Ms Hughes's behalf by Ms Ann Heron, a special adviser to the Fine Gael MEP, Ms Mary Banotti. Ms Banotti is the European Parliament's mediator on abducted children.
Yesterday afternoon Ms Hughes and Ms Banotti joined the children a few hours at the hotel before flying back to Dublin with them.
Ms Hughes discovered that her estranged husband had taken the children to France last July. Last month Mr Blanc failed to appear at a custody hearing in Marseilles, even though he had initiated the action. He was arrested by French police on contempt of court charges on Thursday.
Speaking on the phone from her hotel room yesterday, shortly after she was reunited with the twins, Ms Hughes said it was brilliant that the agonising four month wait had finally ended.
"It's like Christmas," she said, "as the children played noisily in the background. "It's fantastic. They are so beautiful and I love them."
She said the twins appeared to have lost a little bit of weight but were happy and chatty. They had been staying with friends of Mr Blanc in Switzerland.
Ms Hughes and the children stayed with Ms Banotti in Dublin last night. They will return home to Glengarriff, Co Cork, over the weekend.