Last night’s instalment of The Family didn’t fail to entertain and as always, Simon was piggy in the middle of everything, whether he liked it or not. Also much as usual, Emily was the one who was causing all the angst and gnashing of teeth and this week, it was because she’d been wearing Jane’s clothes without permission.

It all began when one of Jane’s favourite skirts went missing; cue a big row and the finger of suspicion being pointed firmly at Emily.

“There’s only one other person who would fit in it” said Simon, coming over all Nancy Drew, but he was soon to find he had to be the peacemaker as Jane was coming dangerously near to the end of her tether with Emily. Jane’s eldest daughter Jess got dragged into the proceedings too because she’d spotted Emily on Facebook wearing the skirt and a much loved jumper of Jane’s and had grassed her sister up to their mum.

But taking her mum’s clothes without permission was to prove the catalyst for a host of other Emily Issues to raise their heads above the parapet.

“You’re not contributing in any way to the running of this house” Simon told her during one of the family’s frequent ‘meetings’. He then decided it was time to lay down some ground rules with Emily and in exasperation at her lack of input on the subject, he told her to write down what rules she thought should be in place. His suggestion was met primarily with stony silence or mumbled ‘yeah but’ or ‘I just…’

By now, Jane looked as if she was going to explode, so the wise woman retreated to bed. Simon wasn’t pleased about her desertion – yet again leaving him to deal with Emily – but she was clearly not going to have anything more to do with Emily just at that moment.

The clothes debacle refused to die and Jane ended up resorting to locking her bedroom door in order to keep jumper-nicker Emily out. Trouble is, the only bathroom is accessed through Jane’s room and Emily needed to wash her hair and brush her teeth. She was fuming that Jane had denied her access and threatened to wash her hair in the sink AND make a mess AND not clean it up. Chilling stuff.

Jane then poured herself a stiff drink and sat at the table to weep quietly. Tom immediately tried to comfort her and then confronted Emily about upsetting Jane but Emily was having none of it and screamed at Tom to get out of her room.

The mood later lightened though when Emily’s new hairdo provoked much laughter and comparisons with Marie Antoinette, but the tension continued to simmer between Jane and Emily.

“I’m just asking you to listen and pay attention to me” wept Emily, to which Jane replied that Emily gets more attention than the other children and Jane told her that she’s, “rude and obnoxious and you take my clothes”.

The row rumbled on with Jane wanting nothing more to do with Emily and Emily complaining that nobody loved her and how unfair it all was. She couldn’t seem to grasp that it was fair enough to punish her for taking things without permission, and saw it as ‘picking on her’ when Jane and Simon tried to do so. But as Simon rightly pointed out to Jane, “The problem is, how can you punish a 19-year-old?”

They soon resorted to thinly veiled threats of kicking Emily out if she didn’t start to behave but it was pretty much water off a duck’s back; Emily knows they wouldn’t actually do it so you could see it didn’t flucutate her give-a-stuff-o-meter in any meaningful way.

By the end of the episode, Simon was in the line of fire for not defending Jane’s right to lock the bedroom and for not understanding her indignation at having her things used without permission.

Poor Simon… roll on next week!