It was an unexpected moment at Julian Lennon's photography exhibition in New York when The Beatle's first, mistreated wife put an arm around Yoko Ono. She even managed a smile, producing a photograph so bizarre it would make Jeremy Kyle salivate and start sketching out the questions for a whole new show. Can you imagine Princess Diana, had she lived, and Camilla doing the same?
Now, if I were in the same room as the woman who stole my ex-husband - along with our money, our unborn children and my peace of mind - the wish to rip her throat out would be overpowering. It's been four years, I am thrilled with my new life, and I am fully aware that it takes two to tango. But it is the unsisterly act of taking someone else's man that still sticks in my throat. We expect husbands to be idiots, but think a woman really ought to know better.
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As a tabloid hack I deal with love-rats and adultery every day, and each story is the same whether a celebrity is involved or not. Marriage gets a bit boring, man has head turned by woman with longer hair (they always have longer hair) and no idea what a pain he is to live with, wife finds out. And do you know what always happens then?
The wife blames the other woman. Coleen Rooney will blame the hookers, Toni Poole blamed the wannabe-WAGs chasing after John Terry, Di blamed Camilla. If you've ever been cheated on you hate the other woman more than you do the love-rat. No-one ever blames the husband for not sticking to his promises; he is forgiven simply because he has a penis.
But it's the husband at fault. John Lennon, much like my ex, was a pig. He married Cynthia as a penniless student then became a monster when he hit the big time. He hid her away, denied to his fans he was married, and became jealous, possessive and violent. He humiliated her with a public affair, gave her barely a penny in the divorce settlement, and virtually abandoned their son at just five years old to set up home in New York with Yoko.
But he also wrote "Imagine", so the world forgave him all of that. In fact the world tends to blame it all on Yoko - portraying her as an evil imp who enticed John into leaving the Beatles and leaving his wife. She also got the Lennon millions, while Cyn had to flog memorabilia to make ends meet.
Any mother, any wife, in that situation could be forgiven for wanting to throttle the other woman. Or taking financial revenge, publicly and nastily, like Heather Mills when she divorced Sir Paul McCartney - a man who after 40 years as a Beatle is arguably little more than an ego with its thumb in the air.
(And if there had been another woman involved in that divorce, do any of us seriously think Heather, with her notoriously limp grip on sanity, would smile and grin in a picture with the scarlet woman? Only if she was stood on the twitching, bleeding corpse.)
But Cynthia seems to have risen above all that. Did she never care enough in the first place? Is she mad? Has time simply dulled the pain?
Speaking from experience, there's only one thing that makes lessens those homicidal urges - the realisation that the other woman has done you a favour.
John went on to cheat on Yoko, and left her too. If he hadn't been killed he'd be on his third or fourth wife now, and like Macca would be a joke with badly-dyed hair.
When I heard my ex-husband was marrying the woman I threw him out for, I was glad. I can't think of two other people so eminently deserving of being chained to a pig for the rest of their lives, and he'll cheat on her too just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow.
No, Cynthia's not mad. She has put the blame where it belongs - with the husband - and realised that the other woman took a bad husband off her hands. That's a smile of relief she's wearing.
By: Lillys Miles