It was the moment Marnie Pearce had dreamed of, after 174 unbearable days apart from her beloved boys.
Yet as the seconds ticked away before she could hold them in her arms again she was racked with a terrible fear.
The three months of hell she endured in a Dubai jail paled into insignificance  as she was plagued by nagging doubts about how her children would react: Would they still love her?
But as our exclusive pictures show, her fears were groundless.
Eight-year-old Laith and Ziad, five – whose Egyptian father won their custody after framing Marnie for adultery – flew into their mother’s arms and told her: “We want to stay with you for ever.”
Marnie, whose reunion with the boys last week came after a long and desperate court battle, burst into tears. “I felt scared, unsure, anxious and nervous that they might not love me any more,” she says.
“I felt that after so long apart, they might not even remember what I looked like.
“But I will never forget the look on their faces as they saw me. Laith jumped up and said, ‘Mummy, Mummy we’ve missed you so much’ and dived on to me.
“And Ziad raced over and squeezed between us shouting, ‘I love you’. I held them tight. I could feel my heart pounding – and cried tears of relief. The moment I’d dreamed of was happening. My babies were back in my arms… and they loved me just as before.”
Former teaching assistant Marnie, 40, had last seen the boys on February 19 when she handed them over to ex-husband Ihab El-Labban on the steps of a court in Dubai after she had been jailed for three months.
El-Labban had framed her for adultery after she discovered HE was having an affair with an American woman called Tonya Thompson. He had known that, under Dubai laws, he would automatically win custody of the boys if she was convicted.
Marnie faced being deported on her release – but after a Sunday Mirror campaign backed by Amnesty she was allowed to stay in the Arab state to fight for access.
After winning the battle, Marnie, who is now staying on in Dubai in a villa owned by a friend, has been awarded unsupervised access to her children for two hours on a Tuesday and a full day every Friday. But the boys cannot stay with her overnight.
The first visit took place five days ago when Marnie, originally from Bracknell, Berks, drove to her former marital home to collect the boys.
She says: “I had almost convinced myself that I would never see them again. I missed and wanted to be with them so much that I started to believe it would ever happen.
“When I saw them again for the first time my mind flashed back to the days they were born and were laid on my chest in hospital. It was as if that bond, that love, had come back.
“All the terrible thoughts of fear and rejection were gone. I just couldn’t leave them alone. I think I kissed them more that day than I have ever done.”
Marnie took the boys swimming at her friend’s villa and they sat together to watch a DVD.
She says: “We went swimming because that is their favourite thing in the world. They wouldn’t dive into the pool until I held each of their hands and we jumped in together and laughed.
“It felt so wonderful. The whole time I was with them, the boys were really clingy.
“Any time I went out of a room they ran after me and asked where I was going and if I was going to come back.
“Each time I cuddled them to reassure them I would, I had to keep telling myself they were actually with me. I couldn’t  believe it was really happening. We sat on the bed and put on their favourite DVD, The Chipmunks, and ate popcorn and marshmallows. For a couple of hours we felt like a family again.
“I couldn’t believe how much the boys had changed – and I was shocked at Ziad’s affection for me. He kept taking my face and covering it with what he calls ‘little butterfly kisses’.

"When I took my first step outside prison I looked up at the sky and felt the sun and its warmth on my skin," she says. "It felt good for a brief moment.
"Then, suddenly, it hit me... the children weren't there." Six days later, Marnie - the British florist jailed for adultery under Dubai's strict laws - still hasn't seen her two sons, whose locks of hair she had under her pillow in jail when she slept.
Her ex-husband Ihab El Labban, who framed her by making it seem she'd had an affair after she caught HIM cheating, was awarded custody of the boys and refuses to let her see them.
She is now penniless and homeless, living out of a suitcase in a hotel in central Dubai, a short drive from where Laith, eight, and Ziad, four, live with their father.
Marnie says: "I am free, yet I can't just get in a car and go see my boys. It's a desperate situation.
"To have them 10 minutes away and not be able to go and touch them is unbearable.
Being separated from your children is the worst punishment a mother could ever imagine. "It's made freedom bittersweet.
Not being able to wake up with them makes me feel I am serving a life sentence." Marnie was jailed for three months in February, as adultery is deemed a serious criminal offence under Sharia law. A court subsequently ordered her to be deported on her release.
But after a campaign by the Sunday Mirror and human rights charity Amnesty International, she was pardoned over the deportation order.
Marnie can now stay in Dubai to fight for custody of her sons. Her adultery conviction, though, stands.
In a heartbreaking first interview since her release Marnie, 40, says: "I cried so much in prison that I rubbed the skin off my eyelids." And she tells how she was kept going by five precious photos of the boys.
"I used toothpaste and stuck them to the bed above me," she says. "They were the last thing I saw when I went to sleep at night and the first thing I saw when I woke up. I dreamed about them all the time.
"Before I was taken to jail I cut a lock of each of my boys' hair and put them in a mirror compact. Each night I kissed it.
It helped me get through until the morning." Her only contact with the boys so far has been a twominute phone call on Tuesday.
Ziad excitedly told her he had drawn a picture of him, Laith and Marnie. Laith asked: "Mummy where are you? We miss you." Marnie says: "The boys told me they loved me so, so much.
I said I loved them too. "I asked for their father. I begged him to let me see the children. He said we would have to talk about it. Then the line went dead." Marnie last saw her sons on February 19, the day she was jailed and had to hand the children to Egyptianborn El Labban, 41, on the steps of Dubai Central Court.
Marnie, of Bracknell, Berks, says: "Laith started to cry as we approached the court. He said, 'Is this it?' and I said, 'Yes'. The children were clinging to me. We had a final hug. I told them to be brave little soldiers.
"Then Ihab came to the car, with a sickly smile on his face.
I said to him, 'You could stop this now, please - all you have to do is walk into the court and drop your case'. Laith was crying, 'Stop it, Daddy'." But El Labban dragged the screaming boys away. Marnie says: "I staggered to the court and the officers looked at me and started laughing. I was crying, 'Why are you laughing, I've just lost my babies.' I wanted to die." Prison officers then arrived on a bus to take Marnie to Al Awir jail, hidden away in the desert. "When they took me into the prison I was in a daze," says Marnie.
"I thought, 'What am I doing here?' It looked like a hospital - clean, white, new, bright, bare. But then I looked up. There were people in pink suits staring down at me through bars. I felt liked a caged animal inside a zoo."
She underwent a humiliating strip-search and was handed one pair of matching pink cotton drawstring trousers and shirt, which she washed every night. Then a guard barked: "Upstairs! Now!" From that point on Marnie was simply known by the name "British" - she was the only person from UK in the jail.
Marnie made her way up to the first-floor landing, then collapsed. Several prisoners carried her to the 10ft by 6ft cell and lowered her on to a bunk.
She didn't move for two days. Eventually, on her third day, Marnie summoned the strength to get up, to try to phone her sons.