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Stacey laughs. ‘We did, yes. You seem to know the house awfully well, Mrs—?’
‘Millie Downton,’ the woman says, extending her hand. ‘And this is my husband, Tom.’
Stacey barely gives the man a second glance. ‘Downton?’ she repeats. ‘Oh, as in—’
‘Please don’t,’ Millie says. ‘I nearly reverted to my maiden name when that programme came out.’
Stacey laughs again. She finds herself wanting to know more about Millie Downton: she’s smart and funny, and clearly far more interested in the house than she is in Stacey, which makes a refreshing change.
She’s a beautiful woman, too. Her bold red lipstick and immaculate blonde finger waves make Stacey think of Hollywood film stars from the Forties, an effect enhanced by a form-fitting grey dress and chic two-tone leather Spectator heels. Stacey has never met a woman who exudes such old-school glamour. Ordinarily, she’d be jealous, but Millie’s beauty is oddly unthreatening. Stacey feels like an art student introduced to Van Gogh: there’s no room for any emotion but awe.
She’s pretty herself, in a girl-next-door kind of way. She looks her age, thirty-eight, but attractively so. Chocolate Duchess-of-Cambridge curls, good skin, athletic. Viewers love her. They can relate to her: her prettiness is aspirational and they tell themselves it’s within their reach given the right styling and make-up and money. But Millie Downton’s classic beauty is in a different league.
‘Have you been here before, Mrs Downton?’ Stacey asks. ‘When the previous owners lived here?’
‘In a way,’ the woman says.
She turns from the window. Tiny diamonds catch the sunshine at her ears, and scatter prisms of light across the room.
‘Mrs Porter, your asking price is higher than it’s worth, objectively speaking, given its size and location, but we want this house, so we’re willing to pay it,’ Millie says. ‘If you sell to us, it’ll be a quick, straightforward sale. Or you could hold out for a better offer, and deal with an endless parade of groupies who come to seeyou, rather than the house.’
It’s the first indication she’s given that she knows who Stacey is.
Stacey likes her relative fame. Presenting a national mid-morning TV show four days a week means she gets reservations in restaurants that are booked up three months in advance, and sponsorship deals with brands like Marks & Spencer who pay her to wear their clothes.
But it also means she hasn’t eaten a meal out with friends without being interrupted by someone wanting to take a selfie with her in ten years. In fact, she doesn’t reallyhavefriends: at least, not civilians. The women she meets outside of work – at her HIIT class, on the board of the PTA – pretend her fame is irrelevant, but of course it colours every aspect of the relationship. They’re either star-struck fans, or beneath their veneer of amity they’re envious and resentful.
Stacey can’t post anything on social media without running it past her PR: it doesn’t take much to get cancelled these days. Every time she steps out of the house, she has to look camera-ready for the ‘candid’ pap shots that keep her in the public eye: it takes a lot of effort to make it appear as if she’s made no effort at all.
Her celebrity also means her husband, Felix, lives in her shadow, a position even the most enlightened man would struggle to enjoy.
And Felix is not the most enlightened man.
‘I’ll have to talk to my husband,’ Stacey prevaricates. ‘We’ve only just put the house on the market.’
‘Mrs Downton does have a number of other properties to look at,’ the estate agent adds, keen to preserve the illusion he actually earns his commission.
Millie looks irritated. ‘No, I don’t,’ she says. ‘Thisis the one I want. I recently discovered,’ she tells Stacey, ‘that sometimes you get what you want more easily if you just ask for it.’
Stacey has already decided she’ll accept Millie’s offer in part because the woman is right: she doesn’t want hordes of the great unwashed trooping through her bedroom and poking around her bathroom cabinet. She can only imagine the headlines if information about some of its contents was leaked to the tabloids.
And Millie Downton is perfect for the Glass House.
‘Your son went to Asher Brook Primary, didn’t he?’ Millie says as they walk back downstairs. ‘My youngest, Peter, was in the same year as your boy. Archie, isn’t it?’
‘Gosh, you have a good memory. Archie was only at the school a term. We took him out because my husband wanted him to go to Fettes, where he went.’
‘Eight’s young to board.’
‘Yes, I know, I feel awfully guilty, but—’
Millie laughs. ‘Oh, I’m not criticising you,’ she says. ‘I’mjealous. I’d love to send my two off to boarding school, but Tom won’t hear of it.’
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Tom says.
‘I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember meeting you,’ Stacey tells Millie. ‘And I’m normally so good with faces—’
‘We haven’t met properly, though I saw you on thatmiserable mother-son fiasco at the Natural History Museum,’ Millie says. ‘I abandoned ship after half-an-hour, but I think you toughed it out.’
