Read an extract of The Secret Thread by Eve Chase
Read on for an exclusive extract of The Secret Thread, the page-turning and spellbinding new novel from the million-copy bestselling author of The Glass House and The Midnight Hour
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The Londoner @AroundTown | 1st October 2024 #SoMimiMott Spills Secrets
Gavels at the ready! After the shock announcement that interiors queen Mimi Mott is selling her legend-ary estate, news of a forthcoming memorabilia auction, A Life in Objects, has collectors and gossip col-umns buzzing. The famously private style icon plans ‘a car boot sale of house and heart.’
‘Contrary to wicked rumours, I’ve still got a pulse,’ says Mott, who admits she has barely left her Upper East Side apartment since her husband died more than a year ago. She decamps to London next week. ‘But my old life has gone. It feels like the right time to relinquish its trappings and finally tell my story, on the off chance anyone’s still interested in a dinosaur like me.’
Well, form an orderly queue. With Mott, it’s always been a case of if you know, you know.
A late-twentieth-century tastemaker and decora-tor to the stars, Mott made her name – and her fortune – with Mimi’s House, the brand that was to ’80s interiors what Biba was to ’60s fashion. Think
English-aristo country pile meets Hamptons chic. And it’s having a moment, with #SoMimiMott run-ning hot on the socials.
The sale of Mott’s real estate (Nantucket beach house, anyone?) is set to draw serious money. Impor-tant pieces from a lifetime’s collection of art, rare textiles and furniture are destined for museums and public institutions. But it’s the self-curated selection of personal things – ‘just stuff,’ according to Mott – that promises to lay bare the true story of her life and finally put to rest years of speculation and rumour.
A Life in Objects will be hosted by boutique Mayfair auctioneer Lordats, with proceeds going to charity. Beg, borrow or blag an invite to the December pre-view party, folks.
‘Yes, it’s quite the project, but I could do with one right now,’ Mott tells @AroundTown’s insider. ‘I also need a Girl Friday in London. Someone to help me decide what to put in, what to leave out, and what to hide, naturally.’
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Jo
Chelsea, London, five weeks later
Jo plucks out her AirPods and checks the building number against the improbable address on her phone, the email she’s read so many times it makes less sense, not more. Her breath scrolls in the chilled morning air.
Only three stone steps separate them now. She franti-cally fingers drizzle from her curls – rowdy, red-squirrel brown – then rummages under her coat to straighten her midi skirt, the smart one from Vinted that suddenly feels not nearly smart enough. Her rain-pocked preppy loafers don’t belong on this Chelsea street either. Last night’s emergency super-glue intervention on the left sole is already coming undone.
Craning back, she gazes up at the terrace, the balustrade balcony, the potted olive and bay trees. Nearby, a blacked-out Merc idles, its jacketed driver waiting. A young dog walker dashes past, tethered to six whatever-poos in paint-chart colourways. No old bangers here. No mutts. Even the sun glints through the clouds like the metallic thread in a fifty-pound note.
This is not Jo’s world. Not her London. She can’t imag-ine any vaguely normal human activity taking place behind
its elegant façade. Certainly not the late-night scoffing of Kettle Chips over a laptop, searching for any missed bio-graphical intel about Mimi Mott.
Doubt jabs again. Despite all her preparation – design tomes in the library, back issues of ELLE Décor, World of Interiors, Architectural Digest, trips to the V&A archives – she feels woefully unprepared. Until now, the job interview, even Mimi’s existence, felt theoretical.
She’d never expected to get this far.
Fighting the urge to bolt back to the Tube, Jo checks the time, walks up the steps, and, heart pounding, presses the buzzer, leaving a damp fingerprint whorl on the polished brass. ‘Jo O’Mara, here about the assistant job?’ She doesn’t mean for it to spill out like a question.
‘And not even thirty seconds late.’ A woman’s voice.
Well spoken English, with a husky, thespian depth.
Is that her ?
‘First floor. Lift if you’re feeling lazy.’
Jo’s many things but not lazy, so she hurries up the mar-ble staircase, hand on the wrought-iron balustrade, trying not to clomp, too used to living in Adidas Sambas. At the apartment door, she tugs a stray curl from a gold hoop earring and fixes a smile, but it catches on her drying mouth – that way-too-big, goof smile she’s always had – making her self-conscious about her overbite. Listening to the churn of locks, she steels. The door swings open.
The man on the other side also starts slightly, as if she doesn’t meet his expectations either. Powerfully built, with wavy dark hair and a rough-hewn face, mid-thirties. Infor-mal navy suit, white T-shirt, subtle trainers. She wonders if he’s some sort of bodyguard.
‘Good morning, Jo.’ A London accent. Low, courteous; a big man voice, the volume turned down. His gaze is interrogative but sincere, eyes a scuffed leather brown. ‘I’m Woody. Come in.’ He moves backwards, dipping his head slightly, as if to soften the disparity in their size.
Jo thanks him too profusely, and steps into the entrance hall. A soaring antique mirror throws back her reflection: too tall, all elbows and legs, wild-eyed and bushy-haired, half-throttled by an extra-long stripy scarf, that isn’t giving quite the bookish Parisian vibe she’d intended. On a console table, a pair of classical urns, big as buckets, overflow with ferns and white roses, sweetening the air. Above, a square yellow-and-pink screenprint of . . . Mimi. Warhol. Signed. Jeez.
‘May I take your coat . . . that scarf?’
‘Oh, yes! Thanks. Sorry, it’s a bit . . .’ She grapples with the woolly anaconda around her neck, feeling herself breaking into a sweat.
‘No rush.’ He suppresses a smile. ‘Take your time.’
Jo delivers it to his spade-like hand, then slips off her coat carefully, trying to hide the unsightly rip in its lining. Spotting a pair of midnight-blue velvet slippers on the herringbone parquet floor sparks fresh panic. Should she remove her shoes? She’s worrying whether her opaque tights are up to it when movement draws her eye. Jo inhales sharply.
There. She. Is.
Mimi Mott is both tinier than expected and larger than life. Pin-thin, a paparazzi snap made flesh. Pinterest boards, Google searches, the star of the cult arthouse doc, Mimi’s Rooms, three-dimensional, striding towards her, radi-ating a crackling forcefield and an understated Katherine Hepburn glamour.
Palazzo trousers, navy, a perfect pleat, tan suede flat pumps nosing out the bottom. A cashmere grey tank over a get-shit-done white shirt, big mannish cuffs. Pearls. A chunky gold cuff on a birdlike wrist. Short, layered hair, that expensive ash-silver blond. Lively eyes, robin’s egg blue, undimmed by age. Suspiciously smooth skin stretched over good bones. A compelling face, rather than pretty, with that ageless surgical thing going on, although she must be somewhere in her mid-seventies.
Brought up to distrust the wealthy, with their outsize carbon footprints and tax dodging and selective ethics, Jo tries not to be intimidated. Not to believe in the fairy dust. Yet the air around Mimi Mott really does seem to shim-mer. It’s hard to look away.
‘Ah, Jo,’ she says, with a smile.
‘Lovely to meet you Ms Mott.’ She instantly regrets the pedestrian word, lovely.
‘Mimi, please.’ Her handshake is quick, firm, her skin surprisingly soft.
Jo hears herself mutter, ‘Mimi,’ under her breath, like the starstruck fan she’s not. Maybe she holds that hand a fraction too long, searching the familiar, unfamiliar face, trying to work out if Mimi’s heart is stuffed with dollars and damasks. Or something more human.
‘Coffee?’ Woody asks. ‘Water? Water it is. Mimi, your usual? I’ll let Ruth know.’
Instinctively following his gaze down the corridor, Jo glimpses a black skirt, a sturdy calf, a flash of a broom, and feels a tug of kinship with the hardworking backroom staff. But little with this high-wattage woman sprinkled with diamonds.
As Woody strides away, he glances back with a small double take, and Jo fears she looks guilty, or like she might nick a candlestick.
‘Shall we chat in here?’ Mimi says, nodding at a doorway.
Not a question.
Only then does it strike Jo, with a breath-stealing jolt, that Mimi Mott’s hornet’s nest of a past probably shouldn’t be prodded. Least of all by herself.