Melania Trump still hasn't emerged from the White House, so it's time to ask the big questions

I’m not suggesting that Melania has had a massive wobbly, but personally I wouldn’t blame her if she hadn’t combed her hair for a month and was sitting in a pair of the old man’s Y-fronts swigging Special Brew

My favourite tweet of last week was a picture of Trump sitting like a giant ginger boar at his oval desk with the other reality TV star Kim Kardashian standing prettily beside him. The comedy caption read, “You are Melania now” because, as we all know, the real Melania Trump hasn’t been seen in public now for over three weeks.

Mrs Flotus was last spotted back in May heading to hospital for a “kidney procedure” which many, more cynical than I, have interpreted as a “facelift”.

OK, I have no idea about the state of her kidneys, but her face certainly doesn’t need lifting: the woman’s cheekbones can be seen from space and she has a jawline sharp enough to slice her husband’s spammy buttocks so thinly that they could fill 1,000 school lunch boxes with presidential Polony. So where is she and what’s she up to?

Because, despite reassuring tweets from both the president and Melania herself (allegedly) claiming she is taking things easy at the White House, there have been no sightings of the woman, not even from a blurry distance, waving from a bedroom window and giving a thumbs-up sign in her dressing gown. In fact, there is something of the Agatha Christie novel about “The Mystery of the Missing First Lady” and in the absence of Miss Marple, I’ve been giving the case some thought.

For starters, she could be hiding under the bed, eating snacks which are slid in on a tray by a loyal aide (rice crackers, mostly, and little cartons of coconut water and hot dogs and crisps when she gets really peckish). There she lies, just biding her time and waiting until Donald is really off guard when she will jump out and give him the shock of his life, leading to a fatal coronary and early widowhood. Listen, it’s just an idea.

First ladies have been under public scrutiny for years and its no wonder some of them find the pressure too much and crack up. It’s well documented that Betty Ford owned up to alcohol and substance abuse during her husband’s presidency and in doing so was hugely instrumental in raising dependency awareness. The Betty Ford Rehabilitation Clinic for addicts opened in Rancho Mirage California back in 1982 precisely because of this consciousness raising.

Now I’m not suggesting that Melania has had a massive wobbly, but personally I wouldn’t blame her if she hadn’t combed her hair for a month and was sitting in a pair of the old man’s Y-fronts swigging Special Brew.

First ladies are renowned for many things. Jackie Kennedy had the best wardrobe and at 31 was the youngest first lady to move in and totally revamp the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt, at 5’11”, tied with Michelle Obama as the tallest first lady; and Michelle, of course, had the best arms.Trivia aside, many first ladies have achieved extraordinary humanitarian work on top of behaving graciously at all times and not turning up at important dos with laddered tights.

However, throughout history there have been incidents of odd and slightly antisocial Flotus behavior including accusations of pipe smoking, lesbian affairs and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Some women just aren’t cut out for the job – for example, poor melancholic Jane Means Appleton Pierce (wife of the 14th president Franklin Pierce, 1853-57) who, in mourning for her three dead sons, all of whom died either in infancy or childhood, wore black constantly and barely left her White House bedroom. Here Jane spent most of her time writing letters to her adored late son Bennie who was killed aged 11 before his mother’s eyes in a tragic rail accident.

Then there was Mary Todd Lincoln (wife of the one who got shot at the theatre) whose erratic behavior, wild spending sprees and vicious temper tantrums earned her the nickname The Hellcat of the White House. Poor Mary, eventually committed to an asylum by her only surviving son, was probably suffering from pernicious anaemia, an autoimmune disease which causes a simple vitamin B12 deficiency that is easily treated today.

But back to Melania. I hope she’s run away, because in a story that is already unreal, I cannot see anything being more unbelievable than what has already happened.

In my head, she has scarpered off to join the circus, because when I close my eyes I can just see Melania doing acrobatics on the back of a white pony. I can easily imagine her flying through the air on a trapeze, her tiny wrists being caught by the strong, slightly hairy hand of a man wearing bulging white trousers and not much else – fly, Melania, fly!

Of course back in real life, when Agatha Christie herself went missing, she was eventually found in Harrogate. Maybe that’s where Melania will eventually pitch up, happily enrolled on one of Betty’s teashop baking courses, folding soft warm dough into her mouth and not caring if the buttons are popping off her pant suit.

All conjecture aside, wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, I hope she’s doing OK.