Question: At what age can parents stop worrying about their kids? Is it when they finish school, leave home or become parents themselves?

Answer: It’s a trick question because it’s never.

I say this because my 24-year-old son, who works down south, came home the other week and I found myself staying awake until he returned after a night out.

It was 4am when the front door finally slammed and he staggered to his bedroom knocking everything over as he went.

But that is nothing compared to how I’m going to feel when my 21-year-old daughter goes to live in Spain for a year from August as part of her Spanish and English literature degree.

Now this dinky little blonde has survived an intestinal virus in Cuba for which she was hospitalised; a daylight robbery in Barcelona; a forbidden favela visit in Brazil; being followed by some Gallic nutter on the Paris Metro; getting mugged by a child beggar in Vietnam and finding herself lost in Portugal at 2am whilst travelling alone.

A nice Portuguese lady took pity on her and drove her the half hour to her destination because that’s another thing about my daughter – in her fearless endeavours she attracts kindly people who want to look after her.

One would have thought that my worry mechanism should have ground to a halt with exhaustion by now, but no, it chugs on and on feeding off possible dangerous scenarios she will encounter.

And she definitely will because she attracts problems like iron filings to a magnet.

I will be travelling out with her to Bilbao at the end of August to help her find accommodation for the year.

But really I want to be sure that she won’t be initiated into some weird chorizo worshipping cult or join a Hispanic hippy commune because she’ll talk to anybody with a smile on their face.

I know I really shouldn’t worry: she’s survived this long, after all.

But as long as I know that she’s in an apartment with an intercom system and substantial locks on the door, that there’s a supermarket nearby and she knows how to scream “Save me!” and “Phone the Police!” in Spanish, I may be able to relax, although not completely obviously.

But she said something the other day to change all that.

“You know Mum, the thing that scares me most about living in Spain is ....”

What? Being attacked? Having your bank account drained.......?

“No, missing you....”

That’s it, I’m going with her.