A little later, when Ella became bored of playing mother, she started on a story about how she basically saved the world – all from the kitchen of a top hotel in rural France.
‘I worked there for a couple of weeks between modelling assignments,’ she explained. ‘The customers all said my vegan avocado flatbread was delicious, the best ever. I came up with new recipes, a whole new menu – the chef asked me to stay, said business was so much better since I’d arrived, but I had a modelling assignment in Rome and had to leave the next day.’
I listened along with the others, who seemed completely charmed by her, but it didn’t sound plausible to me and I wondered just how much of it was real and how much was exaggeration. Unable to take any more, I excused myself and went to the ladies’。 And, as I washed my hands in the stained Carrara bowls, with the swish waterfall taps and the heaven-scented soap, I killed at least ten minutes in there, just wanting it to end.
Once home from the restaurant I immediately disappeared with the children. They were tired and needed to go to bed, and I needed time alone to think. And once they were settled, I lay in bed going over the situation again and again, questioning myself and my own reaction to this stranger in our midst. I’d have welcomed another ‘me’， another daughter-in-law, who would share my perspective, just someone to talk to, like a real sister. I’d always wanted a sister, but from the get-go, Ella didn’t want to get close to me, quite the opposite in fact. She seemed to hate me on sight and had since made it her daily goal to offend or threaten me. All the snide remarks, the smug, knowing smiles, the way she told Joy what I’d said about her on the very first night. Why would she do that? The subtle way she even excluded me from conversations with Violet, the way she tried to ‘mother’ Freddie and the way she flirted with Dan quite obviously in my presence. The way she threatened to tell my ‘dirty little secret’， the comments that my nursing career was ‘bed-making’， the way she referred to my weight, ‘chunky’ and ‘bloating’。 The list was endless.
If I’d tackled her about any of this, she could say I was paranoid – there was nothing tangible there, no evidence, and she could simply accuse me of being ‘touchy’ again. But… I had seen her take the earrings. This was tangible, not subject to my sensitivity or paranoia – and throughout all this, the earrings were keeping me sane. They were tangible proof that she wasn’t the person everyone thought she was, and if I could just prove she had them, then I could confront her and everyone would see what she was.
* * *
The next morning, while they all played around the pool, I went into Ella and Jamie’s bedroom. I quickly checked the en suite first, where high-end face creams sat like fat little soldiers in tubs, no doubt waiting to have their photo taken. I checked the cabinet, the side of the bath, to see if there was a detachable panel, all the time aware that I had probably watched too many thrillers and smiling to myself about Dan saying, ‘Miss Marple goes to Amalfi’。 I also knew （like Miss Marple） that finding stolen earrings in someone’s bedroom was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and unlike the crime thrillers, they wouldn’t suddenly fall into my hands. Ella could have hidden them anywhere, and having climbed over her clothes on the floor, gone through most of her messy drawers and wardrobes, I was about to leave and give up the whole idea, when I had one last look in the drawer of her bedside table. There were a couple of chargers, a lipstick, some tissues, but when I pushed my hand right to the back of the drawer, I felt something – a box? I had to grab it with both hands; it was quite large – a jewellery box. It would be audacious to say the least for her to steal someone else’s earrings and hide them in her own jewellery box, but then that was Ella – audacious. So I opened up the lid, and inside it was as messy as the room. Everything was piled in there, so I rummaged around among the bits of cheap metal, the broken clasps, plastic hoops, nothing of value – until I spotted a glint of diamond, then another. Joy’s earrings! I’d know them anywhere – the shape of the diamond was unusual, and so was the tiny drop. I remember Joy saying, ‘it’s like a tiny tear’。
I couldn’t believe my luck. I sat there holding them for a few minutes, dying to rush outside, shouting about what I’d just found. But if I did that, how could I prove that I found them in Ella’s jewellery box? She could say I planted them there, and the others might believe that, thinking I’d taken them myself to drop Ella in it. No, I had to leave the earrings where I’d found them and later, when the children were in bed and everyone else was present, I would confront her. She’d probably lie and say it wasn’t true but I’d ask one of the others to go upstairs with us as a witness to prove what I was saying was true. I’d be there when she opened the box and she’d have no choice but to own up. Joy would confirm the earrings were hers and Ella would finally be seen for the thief, the fake, that she was. As sad as it would be for Jamie, he would one day thank me for pulling back the curtain on this woman he thought he loved. He’d be fine after a while, probably do what he always does and go off around the world. I was doing this for the family. I was also doing it for my marriage and the business – I had a strong feeling she was a danger to both.