Quitting £245,000 job for the children

A HIGH-FLYING executive spoke of her decision to give up a £245,000-a-year job to spend more time with her children.

Ann Grafton, 44, took 18 years to climb to the post of creative director with one of Britain's leading interior design companies.

Now the mother of two has resigned from the Colefax Group - which owns the successful Jane Churchill and Colefax & Fowler brands - for the sake of Tom, 11, and Lottie, nine.

Mrs Grafton, who lives with her husband Roy, 49, a computer consultant, in a £700,000 Victorian terraced house in Putney, South-West London, said: 'The development of the Colefax Group and the brands it has acquired has been my life for nearly 20 years.

'But during that time I married and had two children who need to see more of their mother. I look forward to exploring exciting and interesting challenges in the world I know and love but, for the time being, my family comes first.'

Mrs Grafton developed a taste for design at an early age when she took an interest in her father's fashion business. After leaving college, she worked at a London Bhs store as a merchandiser, then went on to join the Colefax Group in a similar role at 26.

She set her sights on making the company an international name, modelling herself on the American design guru Ralph Lauren, who she described as 'one of the best high-end marketeers in the world'.

Mrs Grafton rose steadily through the ranks of the firm, winning the Queen's Award to Industry for Export in her role as head of Jane Churchill. Her design ideas were so successful that she brought out a book, Interior Transformations, in 2001.

A friend said: 'She's been thinking about this for some time. It's the dilemma many women face - the tensions between family life and working life.'