‘Why don’t you ever call her Adele Markham?’ I demand. ‘Why is she alwaysMrsMarkham, like, Mrs Markham, can Elisa come out to play?’
‘Oh stop it. You’ve demonised her. Adele’s OK. Plus, when the adoption went through, we agreed to visitation so that the Markhams still got to see Lexi. We knew Lexi would be occasionally seeing ...’ He pauses to find the words. ‘... The person who gave birth to her.’
There’s a horrible silence.
I get up, go to the fridge and shakily pour myself some white wine. So much for the sanctimoniousness.
I don’twantElisa to be my daughter’s birth mother. I don’twanther seeing Lexi.
I’d been so happy to be able to adopt her, I’d have agreed to anything and look how that’s backfired.
Meanwhile, Dan is into his explaining mode: his long legs are stretched out, his face is earnest, and you can see the intelligence burning inside him as he tries to help me grasp this knotty problem.
Only thing is, my instinct and not my brain is running me.
‘I understand, darling,’ he’s saying. ‘You think messaging by WhatsApp is not the mostgrown-up way to start a correspondence about the daughter you share but that’s Elisa for you. I’m surprised she didn’t try a message on Instagram ...’ he says, jokily, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘You follow her on Instagram?’ I ask, withnarrow-eyed irritation.
‘I’m not on Instagram,’ he says, horrified. ‘Why would I be? It’s not my thing.’
‘OK. Sorry.’
I sit down beside him. Despite my cauldron of burning rage against all the Markhams, poor Dan is stuck in the middle.
‘Show it to me.’
Dan has very few WhatsApp groups. Mainly family ones: us, his family, my family, the guys he playsfive-a-side football with on a Wednesday night, a few of his mates from college. Nothing that would make an irritated wife go postal. And there in the middle of all this innocence is a message from Elisa. Her tiny avatar is, obviously, a picture of her from the waist up, in a bikini with her boobs shoved up.
‘She’s really getting her money out of those, isn’t she?’ I say caustically. ‘You could do a paper on that. How much money a person can make out of fake boobs.’
‘I don’t know if she’s making much money out of them,’ he says thoughtfully as if he really was considering this for a financial analysis piece. ‘But she clearly paid a lot for them so she wants everyone to see them.’
My husband: the economist.
I read the message which was full of textspeak like the letter ‘u’ for you and ‘talk L8R’.
‘Honestly, considering she hasn’t talked properly to you for, what, four years, you’d think she’d make more of an effort. Would a phone call have hurt? Or actually spelling whole words?’
‘Freya, that’s Elisa. A business like this currentmake-up deal is as close to an effort as she has ever come before to having a job, and I suspect that the current husband has had a bit of a financial meltdown, which is why she’s doing it.’
‘Really,’ I say. I’m a little shocked at how bitchy I sound. I modulate my tone. ‘Really,’ I say again, trying to put a little bit of sorrow into my voice.
‘Yeah, really. Why else would she be doing this? My mother keeps bumping into Adele in the supermarket.’ He pauses while I grin at him at the very thought of Adele Markham hiding behind giant stacks ofspecial-offer loo roll in order to jump out at Dan’s poor mother, Betty.
‘She’s following your mother, you know. That’s why Betty barely dares come here, because she’s sure Adele Markham will be attached to her with superglue.’
‘Surely not?’ he says, in disbelief.
I ignore this innocence. Any woman who can make a business out of flogging hall table lamps worth two grand to people with too much money is not beyond lurking in the supermarket aisles to get what she wants.
Women should definitely be ruling the world: men just don’t get the nuances.
‘Anyway, whatever this new business is, I get the feeling that she wants to come back to Ireland, so that would imply that her marriage is on the skids.’
‘Yes it would, wouldn’t it,’ I say, shakiness coming back into my voice, ‘but she’s not coming back in and messing up our lives.’
He holds up a hand.
