“I haven’t been feeling emotional lately, really I haven’t,” she wails, fluttering her hands like Rachel Green in distress, except that this time it isn’t funny.

“It was extremely hurtful to Jen that he was seen with another woman so quickly after they were separated,” says Andrea Bendewald, an actress who has been one of Aniston’s closest friends since they were teenagers.

Aniston’s intimates note acidly that Pitt could have done more to refute the mean-spirited rumor that his wife wouldn’t bear his child, which reinforced the impression that he had good cause to leave her for Earth Mother Jolie. To some, this looks like sheer hypocrisy.

As I raise my eyebrows, she pauses for a moment, and then adds carefully, “—as far as I knew. We wrote it together, very consciously, and felt very good about it. We exited this relationship as beautifully as we entered it.”

She remains resolutely upbeat nonetheless, casting her current situation in the most positive light possible. “It’s beautiful here; I love it,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a little Malibu beach house, and it feels good. I’m enjoying simplifying things.”