How can Russell Brand’s wife stand up for a man accused of sending a car to pick up a 16-year-old girl from school?

For days now, the country has been talking about Russell Brand – and Russell Brand alone. The accusations, the allegations and counterclaims, the damning revelations, the faltering defenses.

There has been one person strangely absent from much of this torrent of news: his wife, Laura.

In these pages yesterday, Katie Hind reported that the “comedian’s” wife of six years – who is the mother of his two daughters and is currently expecting another child – is standing by her controversial man… for now.

Laura is the author of a parenting book and a stay-at-home mom who regularly makes his favorite meals.

She seems to have been a stabilizing influence on him: the saint who supposedly exorcised the “devil” within him.

The couple first dated when she was 19 and he was 30, before meeting again years later near a London canal, a moment Laura said: “It was as if he had organized it.”

They got back together in 2015 — and under Laura’s careful influence, Brand seems to have changed.

As far as we know, there hasn’t been a whisper of his previous hell-raising behavior or his endless womanizing since they sparked their romance.

With the help of this beautiful woman – and not before time – he seems to have finally settled down.

Now, as this ugly saga continues to unfold and more allegations about Brand’s historical behavior continue to emerge, I can’t help but feel for her.

How long can she wear this mask of marital stoicism as she watches her world disintegrate around her?

Like so many women before her who suffer enormous public pressure as a result of their husbands’ misdeeds, Laura clearly puts her children first, which is commendable.

Every mother knows that there is no greater love than her own for her child, and no truer instinct than what is right for them.

However, she must face a terrible dilemma.

Suddenly, life at the school gates – the eldest of which is just settling into second year – will be much more difficult than it was.

Certainly thoughts crossed her mind: Should I leave him? But what will it do to my daughters — not to mention my baby on the way?

No doubt she also remembers her six-year marriage to the man she loved. Maybe you feel like there are two Russell trademarks, the minister you barely know – and the family man you live with every day.

Ending the marriage, uprooting the children and withdrawing from their £3m riverside home in Oxfordshire could cause significant, perhaps permanent, upset.

Should she fire him? Well, if Laura wanted Brand to leave and he refused, then the pendulum of the law had swung too far in Father’s favor.

The brand has just as much right to live there. Without a court order, she does not have the automatic right to take him out onto the street.

So it’s not that simple.

However I must say this. As a mother of daughters, I cannot understand how any woman could continue to support a man who allegedly sent a taxi to pick up a 16-year-old girl from school to bring her to his apartment.

The brand denies the allegations against him. But how long can Laura continue to defend her husband when she knows all the graphic details of the sordid allegations – and with multiple ongoing official investigations into his conduct?

How could she lie next to him in the dark of the night, without the painful words of his alleged victims running through her mind?

When Laura’s daughters are old enough to understand the vile accusations against their father, will they understand her decision to stand by him?

I hope the explanation is ready.

If not, she would have to do what I would do to her shoe – and cut it off dead forever.

Get our kids into the garden

Actor Jim Carter, known to most of us as the butler Carson in Downton Abbey, is campaigning for gardening to be added to school curricula, to get young people off their phones and into the outdoors. It’s a wonderful endeavor.

This has been one of the best summers of my life, as I had an enthusiastic deputy gardener tending to my bushes – my two-year-old granddaughter. Armed with a Peter Rabbit watering can, she helped me tend to my vegetables every day.

She supplements the hedgehogs’ food, passes me birdseed while I fill the feeder and sits in the wheelbarrow with the harvested potatoes. This weekend I’ll be making a wildlife pond out of an old trough in Belfast so I can introduce them to tadpoles, frogs and waterfowl.

If only every child could enjoy these enriching outdoor experiences. The benefits are countless, but even if the only benefit was that they spent less time in front of a screen, that would certainly be enough.

In former Conservative minister Rory Stewart’s recent book, Politics on the Edge, he ranked sixth on his list of the worst people in politics. Why? For being a supporter of Boris. Far from feeling insulted, I would consider my inclusion an honour.

And I am not ashamed of being a Brexit-voting Tory, despite what the hardline Rory – the Eton-educated son of a colonial official who tutored the young Princes William and Harry – criticizes me. I find his vile attacks on individuals disappointing for a man of his privilege – but I wish him every success with his book.

…That’s why Kate glows!

Kate Moss reportedly hates Russell Brand so much that no one was allowed to mention his name in her presence after they slept together in 2006.

No wonder she looked positively glowing at a party in London on Monday.

Make peace with your father, Megs

Thomas Markle appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and asked to see his grandchildren… again.

Poor Thomas often begs Megan – who always ignores him.

Is he just an attention-seeker causing trouble, or does this 79-year-old man, in poor health, really love his daughter and suspect that time is not on his side?

If Thomas died and there was no closeness with his estranged daughter – or any happy reunion with his wonderful grandchildren – it would not only be extremely sad, but it would also be a bad look for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

I don’t know who Harry and Meghan are paying for help with their PR these days, but I don’t think it’s working.

During safety demonstrations on planes, we are told: “Ladies, take off your high-heeled shoes, because they may tear the evacuation slide.”

However, when the Princess of Wales visited a Royal Navy air base yesterday, she stepped out of a helicopter wearing £650 Gianvito Rossi pumps with aplomb.

When a technician fitted her with a life jacket, she said: “There might be a little bit of an explosion.” Fortunately, the only explosion here was a first-order explosion.