‘What was all that about?’ Dan asked as I joined him and his parents waiting for the second taxi, the kids now being driven off with Jamie and Ella.
‘Oh, I just wanted the kids with us. But it really doesn’t matter as long as we all arrive at the restaurant in one piece,’ I said, wondering if Ella had deliberately booked the second taxi later – or not at all. Or was I being paranoid?
‘Rather them than me when Freddie realises Mummy isn’t with him.’ Dan rolled his eyes.
‘Jamie and Ella insisted,’ I murmured, not wanting to involve Joy in this. I still wasn’t sure what her feelings were towards Ella and I was being careful.
I glanced over at Joy and Bob sitting on the steps. Joy looked older somehow, her usually animated face and gossip-laced lips still and quiet for once. It was easy to forget she was seventy, and Bob a couple of years older. They both seemed in their own worlds and I tried to imagine how they felt. The shaky business that had once been Bob’s life was being handed over to his sons, the older of whom was recovering from an affair and trying to rebuild his marriage, the younger newly married to someone they didn’t even know. They were passing everything they’d worked for over to their sons, and they may have had their doubts. All four of us were on new or shaky foundations, nothing was solid or sure, and nothing was ever written in stone. It’s true that no marriage is ever totally secure, but both their children were in the midst of emotional flux, and who knew how that would affect the future of the family, and their happiness, not to mention the livelihoods of everyone involved?
I’d always considered them both to be invincible. Bob, the quiet but solid backbone, and Joy the queen of the family, but here she was, an old lady sitting on the steps, waiting for her lift. It was a shock to see them looking so vulnerable all of a sudden. It made me think about Ella, and if Joy was somehow being taken in by her, manipulated in a way. It was the unknown that bothered me. Ella was a woman who made her living by selling a version of herself; no one really knew her, least of all us, her new family. And if she walked into one of our bedrooms and stole something precious, what might she take from us next?
I thought of Joy and Bob as my parents and I’d do anything for them, and if that meant protecting them from someone like Ella then I would. When Joy supported me through Dan’s affair, I realised she’d do anything for me too, and her actions, as unorthodox as they were, made me appreciate how much she cared about me. And despite her criticisms and, yes, the bossiness – we had a respect and a love for each other. My own mum had been short on love and died too young, beaten up by life. It’s a cliché, I know, but I was determined my life would be different, that I’d provide a better childhood for my kids. I knew I had to have a secure job, a good marriage, and when I left school, I went straight into nurse training. Funny, I had this naïve dream that working incredibly hard in a skilled and vital job would provide financial rewards, but nurses are paid very little for the work they do. Meeting Dan was the high point of my young life. I loved him, he brought the financial security I needed and was the father I wanted for my children. It might not sound romantic to put it like that, but when you’ve come from nothing, it’s everything. And I wasn’t prepared to give up my everything without a fight.
Eventually, the taxi arrived, and we finally reached the restaurant. I ran in, expecting child meltdown and chaos, but it all seemed rather calm.
‘Have they been okay?’ I asked, arriving at the table and settling in next to Alfie. Freddie was sitting between Jamie and Ella, and Violet was on the other side of the table with Alfie and now me.
‘Of course they’ve been okay, Clare,’ Ella answered, like she was bored of saying it to me. ‘I asked the restaurant to bring them some gelato before the main course so they’d shut up.’ She smiled proudly. I looked around to see if anyone else had registered the rather horrible phrase ‘so they’d shut up’, but everyone was too busy sitting down, scraping their chairs, discussing the décor.
‘Oh,’ I said, putting out my arms across the table to my littlest one. Obviously I was horrified about this; it was hard enough to get them to eat properly the best of times, let alone after ice cream for starters. But I wasn’t going to put up a fight, especially not in front of the children.
‘Freddie, do you want to come over here and sit with Mummy, darling?’
He was a mummy’s boy and always wanted me, wherever we were, but he looked at me and just shook his head.
‘Freddie’s fine here with me and Auntie Ella, aren’t you, mate?’ Jamie said, ruffling his hair.
‘Course he is,’ she added, putting down her Martini and kissing Freddie on the top of his head, but never taking her eyes from mine. And when she finally stopped kissing his head, she smiled at me, a little too sweetly, before sinking her teeth into the olive from her drink. I wanted the night to be over as quickly as possible. But I did wonder if perhaps in drawing attention to the earrings, I’d drawn the battle lines with my sister-in-law?
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.