And not forgetting the kids...

Nicola Horlick displayed the family side of her "superwoman" lifestyle yesterday when she put City traumas behind her and went for a walk in London's Holland Park with four of her five children.

She showed she could juggle, handling Georgina, 10, Serena, six, Rupert, three, and seven-month-old Antonia (Alice, eight, had gone out with her father Tim), while fielding questions about her future as a pounds 1m-a-year- fund manager.

She was at ease - but not optimistic that her flight to Frankfurt would enable her to get her job back with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. "As the days go by, reinstatement becomes more unrealistic," she said.

Mrs Horlick, 36, hoped to settle her dispute with the bank out of court and within a week, but added that her priority was to "clear my name", not to regain her job as one of the City's top pension fund managers.

Responding to claims that her career could have been badly damaged when she stormed her old DMG office and the bank headquarters in Frankfurt, she said: "I don't care about that."

She went on: "I did what was right. I had to find someone who was prepared to listen to my side of the story. I was thankful for the people in Germany for offering to mediate."

Mrs Horlick said that her family had been "stressed" by the affair and the media spotlight they had been under. But she and her children looked relaxed as they played in the park, her thick black woollen coat spattered with mud.

Mrs Horlick was suspended from her job on Tuesday. The bank said colleagues had alleged that she was trying to tempt staff into joining a rival City firm.

Yesterday, she repeated her rejection of the claims, and talked darkly of a "vendetta" against her by a senior bank executive, who blamed her for his failure to secure a job at another bank. She also now views an offer of a promotion made by DMG last year as a sham. The bank had been "trying to buy time", she claimed.