On the surface, ‘meeting the parents’ seems to be going relatively smoothly for Cruz Beckham’s new girlfriend Jackie Apostel.

In the past week alone, there have been two public family outings. First, she sat with the Beckhams – Victoria and Harper included – in the stands at Inter Miami, where patriarch David is the boss, holding Cruz’s hand throughout.

Then, on Wednesday, Jackie – a leggy vision in white shorts, and bearing a definite resemblance to her boyfriend’s high-cheek-boned mother – went sailing with 19-year-old Cruz and Victoria. So far, so cosy.

Indeed, the past month or so has seen progressively more contact between Jackie – who at 29 is a full decade older than her young lover – and the Beckham clan.

And their welcome has appeared warm; Jackie even came to Victoria’s fashion show in Paris last month, wearing a £990 cream dress by the designer herself.

Cruz Beckham with his new girlfriend Jackie Apostel. At 29, Jackie is a full decade older than her young lover

Full of praise on Instagram, Jackie later wrote: ‘The most beautiful show and the most beautiful dress. Congratulations.’

A few weeks later, on October 12, she thanked Mrs Beckham for ‘the laciest dream piece’, a sizzling, black cutaway dress which she wore to the launch party of oldest son Brooklyn’s latest venture, his H๏τ sauce, Cloud 23.

On Instagram, however, where ‘likes’ speak a thousand words, a different story is emerging.

Prolific Instagram user Victoria has yet to like a single post by Jackie. Nor has David engaged with her online. Strikingly, neither of them follow her, and even the two posts by Jackie which refer to and tag Victoria have not been liked by either of them.

While nobody on Mrs Beckham’s team wishes to comment about Jackie’s entrance into the family circle, and sources insist there are ‘no concerns’, others indicate that Victoria is feeling ‘uneasy’ about what’s going on.

Though Cruz has had something of an eventful love life of late – Jackie appears to be his third girlfriend this year alone, more of which later – sources say that the family feel a rapid succession of girlfriends is one thing… but a woman this much older is something else entirely.

A friend told me: ‘Victoria has been in a really bad mood for the past few weeks. It’s not like her.

‘What I hear is that she doesn’t want any difficulties with Cruz, but she is so aghast about the age difference.’

His mother is apparently privately clinging to the hope that this liaison will conclude sooner rather than later.

Jackie with Romeo, Cruz, Harper and David at Victoria’s Paris fashion show in September

Jackie with Victoria Beckham on a sailing trip as they enjoyed a fun day out in Miami this month

‘She and David both think that the whole Mrs Robinson romance will blow over, so they are going to do absolutely nothing apart from keeping them both close and being nice to them.

‘David’s view is that everyone needs to stay very calm. Apparently, David thinks that this is probably going to be a great experience for Cruz. He would not be so relaxed if it was Harper in a few years time but that is another story – he’s so protective of her. But he thinks it’s a boy’s dream to be with a gorgeous older woman.’

Victoria’s worries have been heightened by the fact that Cruz, like older brother Brooklyn, is a soppy all-in romantic and has already written on his new girlfriend’s Instagram that he loves her.

Brazilian-German Jackie’s public profile is obviously much lower than Cruz’s, with just 130,000 Instagram followers to his 2.1 million.

Previously in a girlband called Schutz, who don’t seem to have troubled the charts, their manager said in an interview in 2022 that the band had been put together partly in order to endorse and sell shoes.

Today, Jackie insists she is not a ‘singer’ but a songwriter – an interest she shares with Cruz, who is about to release his debut album.

Notably, the only family member apart from Cruz who has been throwing Jackie some love on social media is the wife of Brooklyn, Nicola Peltz.

This is unsettling because the questions over Jackie certainly raises the spectre of David and Victoria’s upsetting fall-out with billionaire’s daughter Nicola, who married Brooklyn in April 2022.

Tensions over the union have been well documented – from clashes over the planning of the wedding, which was mostly carried out by Nicola’s socialite mother Claudia Peltz, a striking former fashion model who apparently didn’t want advice from Victoria.

Jackie even came to Victoria’s fashion show in Paris last month, wearing a £990 cream dress by the designer herself. And full of praise on Instagram, Jackie later wrote: ‘The most beautiful show and the most beautiful dress. Congratulations’

The Beckhams felt rather cut out of proceedings, especially after Nicola didn’t devote one of her three outfit changes to something from her new mother-in-law’s fashion label. After Nicola told an interviewer that the chatter about a fall-out ‘hurt’ her feelings, Brooklyn, an aspiring chef, said: ‘To be honest, my wife is obviously my first priority and I never want to see her upset, ever.

‘We have each other’s back 100 per cent and we just move on together.’

So much so that both Nicola and Brooklyn today go by the name Peltz Beckham.

Meanwhile, father-in-law Nelson, a corporate raider who has a $1.7 billion (£1.3 billion) fortune, has been teaching young Brooklyn the basics of being a businessman and supported his ambition to launch his range of H๏τ sauces.

Time, thankfully, has been something of a healer. Nicola and Victoria now consider each other close friends. That said, it was all rather bruising for Victoria, who is famously devoted to her children.

A friend says: ‘The whole Nicola Peltz thing was a disaster. It put a dent in the family brand which they had built and ended up being quite a serious headache for quite a long time.

‘This time out they will not be having a re-run of any of those mistakes.

‘Brooklyn’s behaviour was painful as it seemed so disloyal. He got a tattoo of [Nicola’s] granny and of her family name and changed his name. He got totally absorbed into her family.

‘With Nicola, [David and Victoria] had to be the ones who made peace – she and Brooklyn did not come rushing to heel. It was a painful lesson. They had to be the ones to roll over.’

One can entirely understand, then, why Victoria’s baby boy taking up with someone so much older than him might trouble her.

So with so much seemingly against her, can Jackie ever truly make it into the Beckham inner circle?

Certainly, two of Cruz’s past girlfriends aren’t exactly cheering her on.

Just yesterday Cruz’s recently discarded girlfriend, Norwegian singer Viktoria Reitan released her song, The Break Up.

Jackie and Cruz embrace at the MLS soccer match where the pair sat with the Beckhams – Victoria and Harper included – in the stands at Inter Miami

Aimed squarely at Cruz, Viktoria explained to her followers on Instagram that the song came about because: ‘There was this guy that I was dating recently and then I woke up and saw pH๏τos of him with some other girl. I asked him about it and he just did not reply. At least I got a song out of it.’

The song advises her former lover that he ‘forgot’ to break up with her, and the singer, who goes by the name Bby Ivy, adds that this betrayal tore her heart in two.

What makes it all the worse, Viktoria says, is that his new woman, Jackie, could be her ‘twin’ and even writes songs like she does.

In her ongoing campaign to publicise her music, Viktoria has teamed up with another alleged ex-girlfriend of Cruz’s, Issey Moloney, to torment him on TikTok. They posted a video with the caption: ‘When he thought u would never find out about each other but now ur besties.’

Issey Moloney was seen out on two dates with Cruz in London in February. His romance with Viktoria seemed to take off later in the spring, with them travelling to Los Angeles as a couple in May, before Cruz and Jackie made their public debut at Glastonbury this year in June.

Jackie strolled hand in hand through the VIP area at Worthy Farm with her Beckham boyfriend, who at the time had the beginnings of a moustache which he is still sporting.

Family sources say that it’s ‘nonsense’ to suggest Cruz cheated on Viktoria with Jackie – although Viktoria’s song is quite explicit about finding out about his new romance by reading about it in a newspaper.

One can’t help but wonder whether Cruz’s own songs will reference his eventful love life.

After all, the rehearsing of private romantic moments in music is nothing new – look at Taylor Swift’s Out Of The Woods about her romance with Harry Styles, which he replied to with Ever Since New York.

Putting aside the circumstances of the start of the romance, he and Jackie do seem to have been inseparable for months, spending much of their time together in Los Angeles, where Cruz is in the studio with various session musicians and producers putting together an album, which is expected to launch in the coming weeks.

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The blitz of promotion expected to accompany the album will be led by Cruz’s new management C3, after he parted ways with TaP Music in February. They had been keen to sell him simply as ‘Cruz’ (his Spanish name had been chosen by his parents as he was born in the country when David was playing for Real Madrid).

His managers also wanted him to play in a series of ordinary London pubs and then get footage out on YouTube to make his rise look more organic and less ‘nepo-baby’.

However, Victoria then uploaded footage of him singing in Guy Ritchie’s pub in London’s Fitzrovia, Lore Of The Land, which was felt to completely go against the ‘un-Beckhaming’ of the boy.

A source said: ‘The whole point was to distance him from being Posh Spice’s baby boy. She scuppered it.’

A TaP source said: ‘We parted company on friendly terms. We are focused on making music artists as successful as they can be.

It wasn’t possible in the circumstances.’

Regardless, Cruz’s family will be front and centre, cheering his new endeavour all the way, as they were for Brooklyn’s sauce launch, Victoria’s fashion show and David’s Netflix documentary.

Spice Girl turned fashion designer Victoria even joked on a picture of her son’s recording studio on his Instagram: ‘Let me know when you are ready for my vocal.’ Undoubtedly, she is a good sport to reference her famously unimpressive voice in this way.

Friends believe Victoria will try to keep her cool, regardless of what happens to Cruz and Jackie. With the memory of those clashes with Brooklyn’s wife still all too prominent in her mind, a friend says: ‘This time there will be no falling out, only graciousness.’