‘Phil could do no wrong in their eyes,’ I explained wearily, wondering if I’d have to explain these Shillings for ever. Wondering if I was going to make a career of it.

‘They clearly don’t know the difference between right and wrong!’ Angie exploded. ‘And this – this Emma chit – I thought she came to see you? Said she didn’t want anything?’

‘She did. But now the will’s been published she’s realized Phil was probably on the verge of making provision for her, as he was for Marjorie and Cecilia.’ I shrugged. ‘I suppose she feels entitled.’

‘Entitled, my arse!’ Angie stormed. She’d 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 have driven past my house countless times, thinking: that’s where I should be, with him, where we could be together. Perhaps she should have it now? Suddenly Dad’s life, held together with bits of binder twine, appealed. I wondered if he’d got a spare shed. And Clemmie and Archie could go to the local school, not the expensive village Montessori.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said wearily. ‘Sam said let’s wait and see. See if they follow it up. He said they may just be full of hot air.’

‘Sam’s the solicitor?’ asked Angie, and for some reason I bent my head to pull up my sock under my jeans.

‘Yup.’

‘Well, I hope he’s good. Who’s he with?’

‘A small firm in town. Private practice. But he was with a big outfit in London,’ I added, knowing Angie would be impressed by that.

‘Oh, OK. Well, listen, Poppy, April McLean at Freshfields may be expensive but she goes for the jugular. Let me know if you want to meet her. I came out of her office thinking I could rule the world.’

‘No, no, I’m very happy.’ I tried to imagine Sam going for the jugular. It was in the neck, wasn’t it? Baring his fangs across the Old Bailey at Marjorie. I wondered where he went after work. Where he lived now he was divorced. A rented flat in town? Or did he stay with friends, all guys together, meeting them for a pint after work? I couldn’t imagine that, somehow.

‘Anyway, thanks, you two. Good to share and all that. I’ve got to go and get Clemmie. She finishes at lunchtime today.’

When they’d murmured their goodbyes, with staunch messages of support, and kissed me, Angie nearly breaking my cheekbones, I took my leave. Went slowly up the hill. Archie, who’d just learned the words to Postman Pat, was kicking his legs in his buggy, singing his little heart out, but mine was heavy. How much was Angie asking for, I wondered. Half of Tom’s wealth? More? The house? Well, why not? She’d brought the children up there; it was their home. It just didn’t feel quite right. And not because Angie had never worked – oh, she pulled her weight in the community, sat on committees, chaired the council. It wasn’t that. It was just … I wasn’t sure I wanted to join that band of women who took their husbands for all they could. Because they’d been betrayed.

I’d overheard her talking to Tom the other day on her mobile in the street. I’d come up behind her, been about to greet her, when I realized she was on the phone: ‘Yes, Clarissa did meet some boy in London and she probably met him on an Internet site, probably didn’t even know him, but what d’you expect with the example you set? I’m surprised she’s not pregnant!’ There’d been a silence, then: ‘Oh, piss off, Tom!’

As she realized I was there, she’d turned, a look of pure hatred disfiguring her face. ‘Wretched man,’ she said, pocketing her phone. ‘Getting all parental at this late stage. It was only Hugo, incidentally,’ she muttered, ‘who Clarissa met.’

Hugo was Angus and Sylvia’s grandson. He was a lovely boy, who’d just left school and worked occasionally in the pub. I wondered why Angie hadn’t told Tom. I didn’t want to be like that. Vengeful. Spiteful. Taking my ex to the cleaners. You’re not, I told myself, as Clemmie let loose her teacher’s hand at the gate and ran towards me. Because for one thing he’s not an ex, he’s a deceased; and you’re not taking him to the cleaners, you’re preventing his mistress taking you. Do get a grip.

I hugged my daughter hard as she embraced my knees. But on the way home, Clemmie chattering beside me, an egg-box alligator swinging from her hand, I decided that the moment Archie was in nursery, I’d get a job. Go back to work. OK, my PR agency in London were unlikely to take me after such an absence, however sorry they’d been to see me go, and particularly for only a few mornings a week, but might they give me some freelance work? They had rung once, offered, but Archie had been only a few weeks old, and Phil so busy, I’d turned it down. So stupid, I thought angrily. Everyone knew you had to keep your hand in. But maybe it wasn’t too late? And maybe I could bang on some doors locally as well? I wasn’t naive enough to think it would be easy, but I’d inherited Dad’s breezy optimistic gene that said anything was possible. I just had to find it.

Angie had been right about one thing, though, I thought, as I paused to let Clemmie feed the ducks by the pond with some bread I’d brought for her. Child care was hard work, and very much unsung. I remembered last Christmas, when Marjorie and Cecilia had come to stay for four days. And how, with two tiny children, I’d produced one meal after another whilst they barely lifted a finger. They’d sat at the table, straight-backed and prim, Cecilia wearing the blue cashmere cardigan I’d bought her, waiting for me to run in with the plates as if they were in a restaurant. Phil, carefully decanting the one and only bottle of wine we were to have. And I thought of every Christmas when they’d stayed in my spare room, in the sheets I’d changed for them, drinking the tea I’d made for them, all the time knowing about Miss Harding. The Shillings had a terrible tradition whereby we all sat on Marjorie’s bed on Christmas morning to open presents, whilst she sat like the queen in her quilted bed jacket, in my spare room, in my house. And all the time, life was not as I imagined. Earth-shattering betrayal was being played out around me. Part of me had been eager for family traditions, I’ll admit; eager for normality, a different sort of upbringing than my own for my children. I was ready to accept a great deal, not having a lot to hang my own hat on. I’d gone along with the present-opening scene with good grace. I’d even gone along with being led in a little prayer by Marjorie after the last one had been opened, bending my head and giving thanks to God. Jesus. Fuck.

The scale of their treachery suddenly threatened to overwhelm me. I felt so exposed. Had they all been laughing at me? I tightened my grip on the pushchair; felt my head swim. Breathe, I told myself, breathe. Because … perhaps they hadn’t known for years? Sam hadn’t said when. Perhaps they only became aware of Emma’s existence in the last year or so? Last few months? Yes, I preferred to believe that, I decided, waiting for my heart rate to come down as Clemmie told me about Damien, Mummy, who’s got a verruca. Preferred to believe no one could be quite so wicked.

The book club met at Angie’s that evening, Angie having the most beautiful house. And Jennie did the food. Oh, yes, food, not nibbles. No bumper-sized bags of assorted crisps were to be hastily shaken into bowls this week. Instead, bite-sized blinis were piled with cream cheese and caviar, asparagus and Parmesan cheese slivers rolled in Parma ham, and tiny baked potatoes topped with sour cream and chives. And we assembled, not in the kitchen, but in the vast drawing room. A roaring fire had been lit under the marble mantle and Angie’s clever decor – heavy linen curtains, creamy sofas, antique tables topped with enormous stone lamps, fabulous oil paintings on the walls – was softly lit by scented candles everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. Angie’s taste, generally impeccable, had a habit of lurching off-piste when confronted by a shop full of scented candles. Nevertheless the effect was beautiful.