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. ‘This is 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’m jealous. 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 that miserable mother-son fiasco at the Natural History Museum,’ Millie says. ‘I abandoned ship after half-an-hour, but I think you toughed it out.’

‘If I’d left early, someone would’ve picked up the phone to the Daily Mail, and I’d have been pilloried as a bad mother.’

Millie smiles and holds out her hand. ‘Call me when you’ve spoken to your husband. If you want to go ahead, I’ll let my solicitor know and set things in motion my end.’

Stacey’s sleeve rides up as she reaches across the kitchen island to shake Millie’s hand. She sees Millie notice the ring of livid circular bruises on her forearm: the unmistakable grasp of violent fingers.

Quickly she twitches the sleeve back into place.

chapter 08

tom

Stacey Porter is very much taken by my wife.

As she should be: I put a lot of thought into making sure they’d hit it off.