Page 42 of Mad About You

Jacqueline snorted. ‘And he couldn’t make you happy, could he? No matter how much money and attention he lavished on you, or how much praise he gave you … No. Not enough.’

She simper-poison smiled like she had a coat made of Dalmatians and Harriet decided that in fact, enoughwasenough. What had Cal said? Asserting yourself doesn’t make you cruel, and by that same measure, setting a boundary didn’t make you rude. Jon’s mother, however, was very rude.

‘Jacqueline, you’ve obviously created a mythical hate figure in my memory, a conceited gold digger who set out to hurt your son. She’s not real or anything to do with me, but feel free to hate her, she sounds awful. In reality, Jon and I are two people who had a relationship that ran its course. You being gratuitously nasty to me after the fact is completely unnecessary.’

Harriet was quite pleased at that succinct summary, given her animal terror at facing off with a woman twice her age who all her social conditioning had told her to try desperately to please.

‘It didn’t “run its course”’ – Jacqueline did air quote marks – ‘you were happy enough bumping along with the fancy holidays right until he wanted serious commitment. At that point you had to come clean that you always thought you could do better than him.’

Harriet twinged. Shehadstrung Jon along, to some extent. These European minibreaks, where Jon wouldn’t let her pay for so much as an apricot Danish at the airport Pret, were not her finest hours.

No point now in saying Jon had insisted, acting as if her financial contribution was some sort of emasculation. Anothervindication for Lorna’s take – those indulgences, as Jacqueline now made clear, were down payments on a future together. Harriet had defaulted on her debt; she was in the dock. She hadgained pecuniary advantage by deception.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline’s indignance was reaching a crescendo.

‘I hope you enjoyed Antigua and the Cotswolds, Miss Hatley, because there’s not going to be a lot of that, in your future.’

‘Isn’t there?’ Was Jon keeper of her passport and the RAC road map?

‘Who do you think will be rushing to commit to a woman on the wrong side of thirty, who won’t run a comb through her hair and dresses like a surly teenager? Do you imagine you’re a femme fatale? You should SEE the young lady who Jon took to prom.’

Harriet mentally filed the last line to quote to Lorna and Roxy, to send them into paroxysms.

‘If we’ve reached the personal insults stage, I think you need to go,’ Harriet said, satisfied to hear no wobble in her voice. ‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what you think about my appearance.’

She could hear how flatly Yorkshire-accented she sounded, in ire, and Jacqueline would no doubt revel in this too.

Jacqueline bristled. ‘One final point. You need to return the jewellery that Jon gave you, while you were together.’

‘What?’

Jon had a habit of buying Harriet sparkly trinkets from Berry’s, which weren’t her taste and for which she thanked him profusely. She kept them neatly stacked, resting on their little silk beds in boxes, and rarely wore them. She’d never investigated their worth, as she guessed it’d give her vertigo.

A polite knock at the living room door sounded while she was still boggling at this.

‘Excuse me, I’m ever so sorry for interrupting,’ Cal ducked into the room. He was wearing a smart Oxford blue work shirt, rolling up the sleeves as if he’d been summoned to give a presentation in a meeting. ‘I want to help, here. Think of me as a mediator.’

They both looked at him in confusion.

‘Who are you?’ Jacqueline said.

‘Cal. I own this house. Carry on,’ he said, making a gesture towards Harriet. ‘She should return the jewellery …?’ He waved his hand.

Jacqueline jutted her chin. ‘Yes, she should.’

‘They were gifts,’ Harriet said.

‘Accepted under false pretences.’

‘What false pretence?’

‘That you weren’t going to treat him like ignominious dirt.’

Cal turned to Harriet, who was shaking her head, and on the verge of laughter.

‘Harriet, what are your feelings on being told you should give your personal property away, based on etiquette guidelines that sound like something from the eighteen-hundreds?’

‘I think she’s taking the bare piss,’ Harriet said, flatly.

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