When I was 22, I got my first "proper," job following graduation from university, ( I am now 30). Whilst I have grown in confidence over the years, I was very, very shy/ quiet/ unconfident when I was younger. I was naturally worried about starting my first "proper" job, but tbf everyone there was perfectly pleasant to me.
An older female colleague, "Tina" ( 37 and single parent to a four year old daughter then, 45 and single parent to a 12 year old daughter now), took an interest in befriending me, invited me on days out with her and her daughter etc. Initially, I was very flattered by this, ( I had been anxious about starting and not being liked).
However, it quickly became apparent our morals were different. She told me she'd started dating someone at work, and asked me to guess who. I excitedly went through the names of various single men in the office, and she said no, it was Tim.* I was shocked, as Tim was our 58 year old supervisor, and well known to be married, ( he also had two adult children with his wife). Tina laughed and said she couldn't care less about his wife, and went on to repeatedly make extremely racist remarks about her, as well as derogatory remarks about her appearance. She said it didn't matter that she was having an affair with Tim, as Tim had openly said he would never leave his wife, so his wife wouldn't get hurt.
Her and Tim would secretly engage in sexual activity in the office, and Tim would take her to hotels etc for the evening. She'd often ask me to babysit her daughter at these times. I now regret doing this. She eventually told Tim she'd told me of the affair, and he was very threatening to me about not exposing them, ( not that I had any intention to). Tim eventually ended the affair when his wife developed cancer, ( fortunately she survived and is now in remission), and Tina made a lot of jokey comments about how it was a shame i wasn't a more serious form of cancer, ( she had womb cancer that was detected at a very early stage), as if the wife died, there would be nothing to stop them being together.
Tim went from threatening me to keep quiet to asking me to encourage Tina t start online dating to distract her/ keep her away from him. Tina spent this whole period telling me how she wished Tim's wife was milking the cancer diagnosis for attention which made me very uncomfortable.
Separately to this, it became apparent Tina was getting into lots of arguments in the office with different staff, and was constantly bitching to me about other female colleagues being fat/ stupid/ ugly. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the whole friendship but felt it difficult to pull back as we worked together.
Both Tina and I left for new jobs, ( in different workplaces), eighteen months or so after I started.
Tina immediately started an affair with a married colleague, Adam* at her new workplace, ( within six weeks of starting). The difference was , this guy had two young children, age 6 and 3. Tina would repeatedly search his wife on social media, send me screenshotted photos and bitch about how ugly/ fat/ spotty etc his wife looked. I didn't reply/ changed the subject and eventually told her I didn't like it, but she continued.
Adam appeared to treat Tina terribly. He'd regularly text her, "I'm bored of you now, I will block you and unblock you in a couple of weeks when I'm wanting to have sex with you again." Tina would phone me at least once a month asking how she could get him to unblock her, and wouldn't listen to any reason when I said he was treating both her and his wife horribly, ( in any case he always unblocked her after a couple of weeks and resume having sex with her anyway).
Stuff came to a head when Adam and his wife hired a young, live-in female nanny for their children. The nanny was a good 20 years younger than Adam, and engaged to her own fiance. But Tina was obsessed that the nanny would steal Adam from her, and began bombarding me with sscreenshotted pictures of the nanny's social media to ask me to confirm the nanny was less attractive/ fatter than her etc. She would refuse to listen when I pointed out Adam's behaviour was wrong, and what she was saying about the nanny wasn't nice.
I then got a boyfriend, ( first serious relationship in quite a while). She instantly became very off with me, started making bitchy and xenophobic comments about me/ my boyfriend, and started sending nasty text messages saying that having thought about it, all her other friends were more fun than me. When I eventually said she wasn't being very nice, she sent some extremely abusive messages and blocked me on everything. Three years have passed, and I didn't hear from her. It was a relief, ( in the intervening period, I had a daughter with my boyfriend).
I've now received multiple messages from her, ( she has set up a new Facebook account), and still has my phone number, to say she was sorry she was horrible to me but she was jealous of seeing me get a man's attention so easily, she thinks my daughter is gorgeous and would like us to "pick up where we left off." She says she is still seeing Adam, but he has still not left his wife. She says Adam is still horrible to her.
She is clearly keen to rekindle things, as when I didn't reply to her messages, she contacted my boyfriend, sister and cousin via Facebook and told them to get me to get in touch with her asap. I don't want to rekindle things, but she is obviously very intense and I'm not sure she will take a no well. Tbh, given the extent of her behaviour and her obvious issues, I don't really want her around my daughter.
How would you handle the situation ? How can I say No without it causing a load of trouble ?
This is as succinct as possible, but there were many other examples of extremely nasty behaviour to both wives, Adam's nanny and other female colleagues.