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and cheese, if you ask me.’

      ‘No no – I don’t think she was an art teacher – I heard she owned a gallery and it went bust.’

      ‘How do you go from paintings to property?’

      ‘Well, it’s all sales, isn’t it.’

      ‘She did work experience here – during the summers when she was at college.’

      ‘Well – obviously that’s how she got this job. Her father is brother to Hutton Senior – apparently they don’t speak. Black sheep. Apparently she’s estranged from her father but really close with our Huttons.’

      ‘Dear God, You Three – you’ve never met the woman!’ Geoff looked up at Belinda, Gill and Steve, to whom he always referred as You Three. Every day that triumvirate of three interchangeable voices gossiped the air into an oppressive cloy around him. Mostly, he was able to filter it out, like dust in his peripheral vision. But not today. Today the talk wasn’t about Z-list celebrities or people he didn’t know, it concerned someone about to walk in through the office door any moment. New blood in the company. It made him more nervous than curious. There’d always been only four agents working here in the Hertford branch of Elmfield Estates, excluding the chairman Douglas Hutton Senior who came into the office infrequently, and Douglas Hutton Junior his son and managing director whose door was mostly closed though he heard everything. With this new person it meant five. And as he was the eldest and his sales were down, he wondered if it was true that she was being brought in to edge him out. New blood. New bloody person.

      Belinda, Gill and Steve’s eyes were glued to the door, not so much a welcoming committee, but a panel of judges. This was the most exciting thing to happen at work since Douglas Hutton Junior sold Ribstock Place for over the asking price last spring. A year, therefore, of dullness and drudgery, with little selling, little coming on, prices falling and commission being squeezed lower than ever. How could Elmfield Estates afford to take on an extra staff member? What was she on, salary-wise? Commission only, Belinda reckoned. What of her bonus structure? They’d had a meeting at the beginning of the year to change from pooled to individual bonuses.

      She’d better bloody well be given only the one-bedders then, this new girl, said Gill. Steve thought to himself he should have taken that position at arch rivals John Denby & Co. when it was offered to him last Christmas. But it would have only been a sideways move. He was on the up, he could feel it in his bones, he could sense it every morning when he tied his tie, when he’d decided to upgrade from polyester to silk. This Hutton niece – nothing but a blip, little more than something new to talk about. Not worth stressing over.

      When she arrived, none of them thought that Stella was Stella. She looked nothing like Messrs Hutton, Senior or Junior. She had small features, a gentle waft of chestnut hair and a willing if shy smile, compared to the expressionless hard edges, the bristles which stuck both to the heads and faces of her relations, like coir matting. She was older than they’d expected – perhaps mid-thirties – but nevertheless, still younger than Belinda, Gill or Geoff were happy about. A pleasant surprise for Steve, though. Quite attractive.

      ‘Can I help you?’

      ‘I’m Stella – Hutton.’

      She was stared at.

      ‘I’m the new girl.’

      Belinda didn’t take her eyes off her when she lifted the phone handset, tapped in four numbers and said, pointedly, ‘Your niece is here to see you.’

      Oh God, please don’t let Uncle Dougie kiss me.

      Douglas Hutton had no intention of doing anything of the sort.

      ‘Welcome, Stella,’ he said with a gravity that was appropriate for any new agent starting with the company. ‘This is the team – Belinda, Gill, Geoff, Steve. This is your desk. You’ll be with Gill this morning – she has three viewings. Geoff will come with you this afternoon. There’s a one-bedder on Bullocks Lane.’

      He went to the whiteboard and added Stella’s name to the horizontal and vertical bands of the chart. A glance told her all she needed to know about the team. Steve storming ahead, Geoff lagging behind. Belinda and Gill side by side, neck and neck, tête-à-tête – thick as thieves, apparently.

      ‘I like your bag,’ Stella said to Gill as they headed out to one of two dinky Minis branded with the agency logo. Gill looked at her, unconvinced. Stella was about to hone in on the woman’s shoes for added praise but she stopped herself. Crazy – it’s like being at school again – agonizing trepidation concerning The Older Girls. She decided not to talk, just to nod and smile a lot at the vendor, at the client, at Gill. The effort, combined with first-day nerves, was exhausting and she was glad of the silence on the drive back to the office at lunch-time.

      ‘I like your hairstyle,’ said Gill just before she opened the car door. But the compliment was tempered by a touch of resentment. ‘Wish mine had a curl to it.’ And then she walked on ahead of Stella, as if to say, that’s as much as I can be nice to you for the time being. And don’t tell the others.

      Stella warmed to Geoff, with whom she was coupled after lunch, even though initially he was as uncommunicative as Gill had been. His silence bore no hostility, instead an air of resignation seeped out of him like a slow puncture. He looked deflated. He didn’t seem to fit his sharp suit; Stella imagined that faded cords and a soft old shirt with elbow patches were his weekend wear. The Mini stalled, seemingly disappointed to have Geoff behind the wheel. She glanced at him as he waited patiently at the lights, as if he never expected to come across anything other than a red light and that now, after years of life being like this, the predictability was acceptable rather than infuriating. She detected a shyness from him towards her that mirrored how she’d felt that morning, sitting by Gill.

      ‘Was art your thing?’ he asked, tackling the main roundabout cautiously.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘That’s what I heard – that art was your thing.’

      ‘Oh. Yes. Yes, it was – I studied fine art. And then I had a little – place.’

      ‘A gallery?’

      ‘That makes it sound so grand. But yes – in as much as there was art on the walls and people came in to see it.’

      ‘And to buy?’

      ‘Not often enough.’

      ‘It went bust,’ said Geoff.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘That’s what we – what I was told.’

      ‘I had to close it, yes. I chose to change career.’

      ‘And that’s why you’re here?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You couldn’t sell art but you think you might be able to sell houses?’ He hadn’t meant it to sound rude. He just couldn’t fathom how someone who wanted a career in art could metamorphose into someone wanting to work as an estate agent. ‘There’s an art to selling houses,’ he said, helpfully, ‘or so we like to lead our clients to believe.’

      ‘In these crap times – financially speaking – I suppose people don’t want to spend money on art. As much as I like to believe that people need art in their lives, there’s no point splashing out on a painting if you haven’t four walls around you and a roof over your head.’

      He looked a little nonplussed and Stella cringed at what she’d said – it sounded like a dictum she might churn out in a job interview.

      ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘that was almost two years ago. I love art – but I also really like houses. And I know you probably all think it’s family favouritism – but I did two years at the St Albans branch of Tremberton & Co. It’s just I moved from Watford to Hertford last autumn.’

      Geoff looked at her quizzically, as if her move from one side of Hertfordshire to the

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