I talked in a calm voice, no swearing, no visible anger. ‘I love my kids, they are amazing and sometimes I tell them off because I want them to be amazing adults. You aren’t a mother, so please don’t you dare criticise my mothering. As for Jamie and me, that happened a long time ago, I was under a lot of stress, Dan had met someone else and I thought he was leaving me—’
‘Oh, there you go again,’ she interrupted, ‘blaming someone else for what you did – for the life you’re stuck in. I suppose it was her fault, was it… the woman he was seeing? It was her fault you shagged his brother… Yeah, that’s it, Clare.’
‘That’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying things were different then, we were different people, and after it happened, Jamie and I made a decision for it to never be discussed again. Then Freddie came along, and yes, it’s possible that Jamie’s the father. But it was our secret and Jamie shouldn’t have told you.’
‘But I’m his wife! We don’t have secrets,’ she said, repeating the mantra he’d used, that she’d obviously drummed into him. ‘Meanwhile, you stick your head in the sand with the rest of the family regarding your own husband’s inability to keep his hands to himself.’ She paused, to see my reaction, to really hit me with it. ‘You blame “the other woman” and you all move on, don’t you?’ She was reminding me that not only was Dan unfaithful, but she knew about it – she’d made a spot-on assessment of the Taylors too, that’s exactly what they did. Obviously, Jamie knew about Dan’s first affair because I’d told him the night we slept together, and I assume he knew about Marilyn from Joy. He had clearly told Ella about it, along with absolutely everything about himself and his family. After all, as they both said, they had no secrets. I doubted Jamie had any secrets from Ella, but I was convinced she had quite a few of her own that he wasn’t privy to.
I felt like we were on a carousel, going round and round and one of us had to get off. ‘Can we not let it go, Ella?’ I spoke gently, to appeal to her. ‘In the great scheme of things, it doesn’t matter, it’s the past. You’ve got your lives before you – I mean you and Jamie, you can travel, see the world, find somewhere to settle—’
‘We’ve found somewhere, a lovely detached in its own grounds, only about two miles from you and Dan. We thought it would be handy for work – oh, and for the kids to visit.’ She was looking straight at me, waiting for me to bite. And I couldn’t help it.
‘Our kids?’
‘Who else’s? Jamie wants to see more of Freddie.’
My fury rose and I couldn’t keep it in any longer. She tried to seem harmless – with her hair extensions and yoga and clean eating and fake lashes. But it was all an image for Instagram, and tomorrow, next week, next year she would shed it like a snake sheds its skin. Only a week before, she was the blushing bride, a few days ago, the girl in a bikini, and now she was playing at being a mummy. It didn’t add up, there was no substance behind any of it; she was just trying on other people’s lives to see if they fit.
‘I don’t know what you’re playing at Ella,’ I said, ‘but somehow you’ve managed to wrap everyone around your little finger, pretending to be Miss Innocent, but it’s all fake. Instead of setting up a weird account pretending to be a mummy, why not go and be one? Have your own babies with Jamie, be a mummy blogger, or an Insta-mummy, or whatever the hell they call them! Put your own kids on the Internet. Just stop trying to steal mine!’
She’d sat up on the sofa and was just glaring at me.
‘You think you know everything, don’t you, Clare? You think you know me, that you know what I’m about – you haven’t a clue.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I couldn’t begin to know everything about you. But one thing I do know is that it’s all for show and underneath I bet your life is a mess.’
At this, she gasped and started laughing. ‘My life… my life?’
‘Ella, just do us all a favour and do something real for a change. Have a baby, if you want it that much. Trust me, it’ll take your mind off everything else, it’ll give you a real life – it might even stop you obsessing over mine.’
She looked at me like I was mad. ‘Wow.’
‘What?’
‘You really think I want your life? That I want to go from being me to being a fat, stressed, milk machine? Great idea, Clare. I’ll pop out a few kids, get fat, then watch my husband chase other women, but I’ve got the kids so at least he’ll never leave me. I’ll show those pretty young things he thinks he’s fallen in love with – that’s your life, Clare. Yeah, really something to aspire to.’