Page 10 of The Girlfriend’s Secret

I look at her incredulously, aghast that she has ignored both mine and my husband’s wishes. What kind of person ignores the requests of her partner’s polite parents? But I’m just as shocked at my son’s behaviour too because he’s always been so well-mannered and well-behaved and has rarely disobeyed me or his father, particularly in public settings like this one.

As Joel takes his seat, I decide this has gone far enough, so I state the obvious.

‘You can’t be in here, Haven, because this is a discussion about my mother’s personal finances and, no offence, but you didn’t even know her.’

Surely she will have got the message now. Loud and clear. Right?

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Haven replies to my astonishment. ‘I did know your mother. In fact, I knew her quite well.’

SEVEN

LIANE

I stare at Haven with a mixture of shock and disgust. I’m shocked because she has just said that she knew my mother and I cannot see how that is even remotely possible. As for the disgust, that exists because it feels like this young woman has just said the most ludicrous thing simply to try and win a dispute that would allow her to stay in this room where she is not welcome.

Why lie about such a thing as knowing my mother when she plainly didn’t?

Such is the strangeness of her statement, I’m not the only one who has been temporarily rendered speechless. That is until Frederik finds his voice.

‘I beg your pardon, but how did you know Valerie?’ he asks our son’s girlfriend as politely as he can.

I have to give him credit for his control. I certainly would not have asked that question in such a calm manner. Then again, it’s not his mother Haven is so brazenly lying about.

‘It’s true,’ Joel says then, and I’m thrown by my son’s sudden show of support for his partner. How can he be in on this nonsense as well? Haven might be crazy, but I thought my son had more sense than this.

‘How can it be true?’ I cry, abandoning any urge to try and stay calm considering we are in a public place, and a well-educated woman is sitting on the other side of this desk watching this family fiasco unfolding before her eyes. ‘You met my son in Australia and Valerie died here in England before you came back. You were on the other side of the world when my mother lost her life, so how can you stand there and spout this nonsense about having known her?’

‘Just because you don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ Haven says plainly.

I swear in this moment I could reach out and slap her. I actually don’t know how I resist, but some part of me holds myself to restraint, which is fortunate because I’m sure if I did strike my son’s partner, then mine and his relationship would never be the same again.

‘I’m sorry. Do we need to reschedule this meeting?’ Jane asks, intercepting this curious conversation as professionally as she can.

‘No, we do not!’ I snap back, though my ire is directed firmly at Haven and not the polite solicitor who was ready to get proceedings underway before we were all rudely interrupted. ‘We are ready to start the meeting, just as soon as Haven has left the room.’

‘I want her here,’ Joel repeats, much to my dismay. This situation doesn’t need to get any harder by being made to feel like I have to choose between my son and what is right. But there’s no doubt that the right thing here is that this meeting only involves close family members and, unless Joel and Haven have got married in the five minutes they seem to have known each other, she does not qualify as a close family member.

‘You’ll understand if you just let me explain,’ Haven says, though I very much doubt that.

‘Then why don’t you explain it to us?’ Scott says with a sigh, my eldest not looking at all angry like I am, just seemingly annoyed that he can’t leave here and go back to working in his garage already.

‘No problem!’ Haven exclaims with a big smile, as if the past sixty seconds of stress didn’t exist at all. ‘But can I take a seat first? It feels weird to stand when we could all sit down.’

Haven doesn’t wait for an invite then, instead dropping herself into a vacant chair as if she well and truly belongs in this important meeting now. But that’s a fact that I would still very much dispute, unless she has an incredible story to tell me about how she did actually know my mother after all. And then the story begins…

‘You are correct, Liane. I was in Australia and Valerie was here, so I never actually met her in person,’ Haven begins.

I feel a sense of relief washing through me because it seems this silly woman has finally acknowledged the foolishness of what she has said.

‘But just because we were never physically together, that doesn’t mean I didn’t know her.’

I’m wondering now if she is going to say something about how Joel told her lots of stories about his grandmother and, from that, she believes she somehow ‘knew’ Valerie after all. If so, that would be quite the stretch and still not qualify her by any metric to be present in this room.

‘We exchanged messages online,’ Haven says next. ‘Quite a few messages, actually. That’s the thing about the world these days. You don’t have to have met somebody in person to have gotten to know them. Not when things like the internet exist.’

Again, I could slap Haven for spelling out something so simple that it seems like she is trying to make me feel stupid. Of course I know the internet exists. I just had no idea it was at all relevant to this discussion.

‘Messages?’ I repeat.