got up from the table and strutted angrily to the window, arms folded. Her eyes were bright, her face suffused with indignation. A few months ago Angie’s beautiful face had been terribly drawn, terribly wretched. There was at least some light to it now. Was it a relief, I wondered, not to be quite so firmly in the eye of the storm? For the baton to have passed to me? Not to be the one everyone felt sorry for? Not that she’d relish my misfortune – Angie was a sweet girl – but nobody wanted to be the unlucky one for ever. The one who had the worst time of it.
‘Don’t give her a penny,’ she warned, turning on her four-inch heel to face me abruptly. ‘Not a penny.’
I nodded, mute.
‘And what sort of a man is that bloody organized?’ she asked. ‘Starts to tie up his estate like that, in his thirties?’
‘The sort of man who has already bagged his spot in the churchyard,’ said Jennie without turning, still stirring. Then she did glance back. ‘He would have made it his business, wouldn’t he, Poppy? Not to leave any loose ends.’
I nodded again. It was all so embarrassing. So … demeaning. ‘I can’t believe I made such a catastrophic mistake in marrying him,’ I said softly. I wanted to go on to say, ‘Such a lack of judgement,’ but knew my voice would wobble. Had I been all there, I wondered, six years ago?
Angie studied her nails, which were long and red, and Jennie kindly resumed her inspection of her casserole, which she’d done for some time.
‘I was thinking that today, at the solicitor’s,’ I said, half aloud and half to myself, when I was sure my voice wouldn’t falter. ‘Thinking: what must he think of me, marrying a man like that?’
‘Who cares what your bloody solicitor thinks!’ snorted Angie. ‘The important thing is not to give those grasping witches a penny. It’s all yours, Poppy, all of it.’
‘And if fighting for money goes against the grain,’ added Jennie, waving her wooden spoon at me, knowing I had a lot of Dad in me, ‘do it for Clemmie and Archie.’
Yes, that helped. For them. I’d already told myself that was the way forward. That might propel me. But sustaining the momentum would be nip and tuck. I wondered what I’d think if I was Emma. If the man I’d loved for four years had provided for me, would I want it? Feel entitled? Perhaps I would.
‘But she’s young, for heaven’s sake,’ pointed out Jennie, reading my thoughts. ‘She’s earning, she has no children. You don’t work.’
‘Don’t do anything,’ I said, feeling slightly panicky. Except, I thought, take my late husband’s money: the money of a man who didn’t love me.
‘None of us worked while the children were young,’ argued Angie. ‘God, I don’t work now!’
There was an uncomfortable pause. Then: ‘Exactly,’ Jennie said quickly.
If truth be told, we’d both quietly wondered why Angie hadn’t done something to contribute to the family coffers, now that she could. Jennie had once witnessed Tom coming in tired from work in his suit, standing opening bills in the kitchen and muttering about Angie’s spiralling Harvey Nichols account, to which Angie had airily said, ‘Have you thought about getting a Saturday job?’ Tom couldn’t speak for a moment. When he’d found his tongue he’d acidly asked whether she’d prefer him to have a paper round or be on the till at Tesco’s? Angie had angrily enjoined him to take a joke, for heaven’s sake, and Jennie had downed her wine and crept away.
‘Having two small children is hugely labour-intensive,’ Angie told me hotly. ‘Don’t you go feeling guilty about not working, Poppy. We’re the unsung flaming heroes.’
I sighed. I knew they were trying to make me feel better but, actually, I felt worse. Like a scrounger. Here I was, in the middle of the morning, having coffee yet again with my girlfriends, before going back to the house that Phil had paid for, and which, evidently, he’d have preferred to have lived in with Emma. Before I’d popped round here, a ridiculously simple riffle through the phone book had revealed that Emma Harding lived locally, up the road in Wessington. Meadow Bank Cottage. I can’t tell you how that had shaken me. How I’d almost got under the kitchen table in fright. Somehow I’d assumed that because she worked in London she must live in London, but she didn’t; she was moments away. Must