Stephen Appleby's Channel flight in a Flying Flea – clarity sought

I am looking for further information about Stephen Appleby’s fligh across the Channel, from Lympne to Saint-Inglevert in France, on the 5th of December 1935.

Specifically, I wish to establish clarity on the point whether his then fiancé Zoe Pearson was accompanying him in another Flea.

This may sound like a very quaint question. But I’ve just returned from the University Library here in Gothenburg, Sweden, where I went through their collection of the leading Swedish aeronautical magazine at that period, “Flygning” [rough translation “Flying”, or possibly “Flight”], for material on the Flying Flea Fever as it reverberated through Sweden in 1935-36.

In one of the issues I found the following two photos, plus a caption which just mentioned such a flight with two Pou du Ciels kind of incidentally, like it was common knowledge, and taken from a reliable source. Here’s the clip from “Flygning”, No. 1 1936:

The caption runs like this (tranlation mine):

[INDENT]”At the beginning of December [1935, my remark] two English youth, Stephen Appleby and Zoe Pearson, crossed the the English Channel, each in their own Pou. The flight took 35 min. Left: Appleby in his Pou, powered by a 30 h.p. water-cooled Carden engine.”
[/INDENT]

That’s it, no more, no less.

However, please note that the Pou in the right photo is not the one flown by Appleby (check the engine mounting). Is it the one flown by his fiancé Zoe Pearson?

I have tracked down all the available information I could find about the Appleby Channel flight. This includes Wikipedia’s entry on Stephen Appleby, and the Flight entry of Dec 12, 1935, p. 626.

None of them mentions anything but a single flight by Appleby alone.

Why believe that there was anything more involved? Well, here are some even more quaint facts:

• You may have seen the Movietone clip “The Original Flying Flea” (Youtube). Besides Henri Mignet himself it features Stephen Appleby’s first test flight which ended in a cabbage field, since Appleby had built a 5-meter Pou and used a much too heavy engine. His later Pou, on which he flew the Channel, was a 6-meter one, and modified in many other ways. The point is we see Appleby, his original crash, his walking away from the upside-down Pou laughing, and later his flight over the Channel.

• What happened in between is that Appleby invited a friend to have a laugh watching this very movie. The friend brought his sister, Zoe. The rest is history. Read all about it in an obscure newspaper clipping from the other side of the earth and way after the fact: “Flea” Crash Ends in Romance (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, NSW, Saturday 8 August 1936).

• The result of this visit to the cinema can be read in Flight March 26, 1936:

[INDENT]Mr. S. V. Appleby, managing director of Carden Aero Engines, Ltd., and builder of England’s most successful Pou-du-Ciel, is to be married on April 15 to Miss Zoe Pearson, daughter of Lady Pearson.[/INDENT]

Is it totally out of the question to surmise that the couple four months earlier may have undertaken a flight over the Channel, perhaps celebrating a love-story well under way?

If so, why has nothing of this been reported? Or has it?

I would really be very grateful for anything at all about Stephen Appleby and his wife Zoe Pearson.

Thank you in advance for your trouble.

Leif