So where in the world is the socialite who has very much left the party?

Some say she is holed up in Russia, where the FBI’s tentacles cannot reach. Others point to Israel, France, Brazil, Britain or the US.

Yet every time a reporter raps on the door of a supposed bolthole, she has gone -or, like a desert mirage, was never there.

What is certain is that the woman accused of being paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s pimp -and even of taking part in abuse -has the guile and the contacts to stay one step ahead.

Lady Victoria Hervey -Prince Andrew’s ex and a pal of the socialite -said last month: “Ghislaine is like a James Bond character. I don’t believe anyone is going to find her.”

Ghislaine has been largely invisible since American authorities began re-examining hundreds of criminal complaints against her former boyfriend Epstein in the autumn of 2016.

The Sun has even offered a £10,000 reward to anyone who can provide information which directly results in us successfully making contact with her in person.

The last public sighting was said to have been in August when she was apparently snapped at LA fast-food joint In-N-Out Burger reading a book about CIA spies.

Dressed in a sloppy grey hoodie, she was pictured enjoying a burger and fries, days after Epstein’s suicide.

The images seemed incongruous for a British public school-educated socialite who is used to fine dining and mixing with the rich and famous.

Indeed, it was soon claimed that the pictures were crude, photoshopped fakes.

There were suggestions that adverts in the background did not match the time the photograph was said to have been taken at In-N-Out.

The photos’ metadata -their digital info -was said to bear the word Meadowgate, which is also the name of a company whose president Leah Saffian is a close friend of Ghislaine.

It was further claimed that a dog in one photo looked similar to a pet owned by Ms Saffian. Perhaps Ghislaine or those close to her had laid a false trail to foil her pursuers?

After the apparent burger bar false lead, attention switched to America’s East Coast, with a reported sighting of her in affluent Manchester-by-the Sea, Massachusetts.

It was said she had been living with her then lover Scott Borgerson at his secluded £2.2million seafront home, down a private road.

According to neighbours, Ghislaine went by the initial G rather than her distinctive first name, and would take her dog for walks along the beach.

One said he often saw her and Mr Borgerson out running but that she had not been seen in the area for at least a fortnight.

Mr Borgerson later insisted Ghislaine was not at his home, cryptically describing her as a “former friend”.

Then the chase switched continents, as several sources suggested the Paris-born socialite was in France.

Could she be staying with her sister Christine at her home in the rural village of Meyreuil in Provence?

News teams rushed to the Cote D’Azur -where they discovered Catherine had sold up in 2015. Then in October, Sky News reported that Ghislaine had been seen in Brazil with Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling agent accused of trafficking young girls for Epstein.

The broadcaster said that “information gathered by a former US police officer” showed that Brunel’s phone had been traced to the Infinity Blue Resort and Spa in Brazil’s upmarket coastal resort Santa Catarina.

At the same time, Ghislaine’s phone was alleged to also be connected to a network in Santa Catarina state.

A Sky team was dispatched to Brazil but found no trace of the pair.

So who is this woman who apparently displays an impressive ability to stay one step ahead of her pursuers?

Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell, 57, was the favourite child of media mogul and fraudster Robert Maxwell.

A recent article in society magazine Tatler quoted a childhood friend saying of her: “Nice girl, and her father was a complete c***.”

Maxwell died in mysterious circumstances in November 1991 when he fell to his death from his £15million yacht the Lady Ghislaine -named after his daughter -off the Canary Islands.

Soon afterwards a £460million black hole was discovered in his companies’ pension funds.

Rumours have since swirled that it may have been suicide -or even murder at the hands of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

Ghislaine received the best education money could buy, at Oxford’s Headington School, Marlborough College in Wiltshire and then Balliol College, Oxford.

She moved to New York in 1991 when her father bought the New York Daily News and it is thought she first met billionaire financier Epstein shortly after Maxwell fell from his yacht in the same year.

It has been reported that Ghislaine was first Epstein’s girlfriend before becoming his best friend.

She was soon using her charm and charisma to help him mix with royalty, politicos and Hollywood elite. It has also been alleged she was procuring young girls to feed his lusts and those of his friends.

“Sex slave” Virginia Roberts, now 35, says at 17 she was flown by private jet to London where she was ordered by Ghislaine to have sex with Prince

Andrew at her Belgravia mews house. The Prince denies the allegations.

Ghislaine has never been charged with any crime, and has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s sexual abuses.

Could she be lying low with friends and family in Britain? The £3.7million Belgravia house has been doorstepped by the world’s Press with no sign of Ghislaine.

Family members are not talking and rumours that she might be at a friend’s flat in Oxford have come to nothing. The address of a Wiltshire cottage that was previously listed at Companies House proved simply to be a mailing address.

There have been suggestions that Ghislaine is in Israel, where her father had close business links.

She spent time on a kibbutz there after leaving school and has a good network of contacts. But again, there have been no confirmed sightings.

Another mooted hideaway is Russia, which has no extradition treaty with the US. John Mark Dougan, a former sheriff’s deputy who worked on a 2005 probe into Epstein’s child sex crimes, fled there after he was caught up in a hacking inquiry.

He has kept his records of the Epstein investigation and no trace of Ghislaine has been found there.

Spencer Kuvin, who represents three Epstein accusers, claims the US authorities know where she is.

He said: “Any time she travels, the federal government will know where she is because there are flight logs required for every type of travel. Even if you fly private, they’re required to file a flight log with regard to passengers on board.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of where she is, I think it’s a matter of if and when they decide to file charges and arrest her.”

He added: “Even someone who is on the run or who might have concerns of prosecution, they’re going to go where they feel safest.