Please advise me.
Very shortened version. My best friend and I work together and our families have been close for years. Our two dd's have been in school together since nursery but moved to a new school (together) 2 years ago. They are both 13 and have always got on well. However for the past year they have been part of a larger group of 7 friends - all lovely girls and they all seemed to get on fine. However, two of the girls had some sort of fall out and the group sort of split into 2 although ostensibly they still hang out together...there are underlying tensions!
My friend is convinced that one of the girls who is particularly friendly with my dd, has been unpleasant (side lining) her daughter although no direct bullying or obvious nastiness (just "talking over her"). My dd says that my friend's dd is being over sensitive and is just a bit jealous of the fact that she and this girl are now quite close and meet up outside of the friendship group. My friend and I work together and see each other daily and today she started to "slag off" this girl - and I defended her because I've never seen any evidence of her doing anything awful and she couldn't give any examples other than the fact that her dd was upset that this girl didn't seem to want to include her dd....the discussion escalated. She claimed that her dd has been pushed out by this other girl and was quite horrid about the other girl without having any proof of actual things she's supposedly done. My feeling is that she is just upset (as is her dd) that my dd has become close to this girl and so her dd is more sensitive about things that normally she'd ignore. The bottom line is that I asked her what she thought I should do about it at which point she just shouted at me that she feels my dd has dropped her dd and that it's not fair. I am angry that she made out that it's now my dd being at fault for being friendly with this other girl and I just stormed off without saying anything because I don't want to say something I will regret.
Awkward silences now as we are both in the same office and she and I haven't said a word all afternoon.
I'm cross because she's even told the mother of one of the other girls in the group that this girl is nasty and not being nice to her dd. So she's been stirring up trouble for this girl which I feel is unfair and from what I know, largely untrue. I'm also upset that she blurted out that my dd is at fault - why should she not be friends with another girl? I've never seen my own dd side-line her dd at all - in fact, they seem to get on just fine when they are together!
I am not sure how best to resolve this. I don't think that 2 grown women should be arguing about this crap and I told her earlier that I thought they were old enough to sort it out amongst themselves but she said that not every child was as confident as mine and her dd was a particularly good judge of character unlike mine!!!
Anyway, WWYD? We are clearly now "not speaking" and I don't fancy another argument about this.... but so difficult when working together and we've never fallen about before. I know she'll go home and tell her dh and I don't want my dh involved as I know he thinks she's being ridiculous!
Thoughts very welcome and apologies for the detail!