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Yes, thanks from me too Bookworm_Girl - two very interesting and illuminating articles.
I made a note while reading when a date was mentioned. The main part of the story was in 1927, therefore making the first section in Chicago 1925 So Irene's and Clare's ways had parted in 1913 when Clare went to live with her great-aunts.
gmw, you asked me if I liked Clare any better on my second reading. Well, I don't think so, but then we see everything, including Clare and her behaviour from Irene's point of view, so it's hard to say. We do know certain things about her: the awful beginning of her life, the great-aunts taking her in but treating her like a servant (or so Clare's said, but it seems plausible), the chance to escape that life. A life of comfort with John Bellew in terms of money and clothes, but always on a knife edge should he find out she was not what she seemed to be.
Another point which was mentioned but then not revisited, was that the man she was with when she and Irene met in the Drayton Hotel was not her husband. We don't know who he was or whether this relationship was perfectly innocent or not, but it could have sown the seed of suspicion about Clare's fidelity to her husband in Irene's mind.
I suppose behaviour in Clare which I don't like is the way she pushes in to Irene's life when not invited, that is, turning up at the house after writing the letter to which she had not received a reply. There is a sense that she did indeed have a "having" nature - she was determined to get what she wanted and didn't consider the feelings of others. Which in turn does make it believable that in envying Irene's life, she should insinuate herself into it, to the extent of starting an affair with Brian.
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