Read Online The Girl Who Broke the Rules by Marnie Riches - Free Book Online

jiggling as they danced. Wearing incongruous hats. Dwarves carrying platters of food on their heads which some guests stuffed lasciviously into each other’s mouths. Pyramids of white powder, which most guests were snorting enthusiastically through small tubes. Dancing, smoking, kissing and more. The sort of thing the girl did not want to see and yet, driven by an eleven-year-old’s avid curiosity for all things grown-up, a scene she was compelled to gawp at and consign to memory. It was horrible. It was wonderful. She was not sure what it was.

    To the left, beneath the apartment’s tall windows, with the towers of downtown Manhattan glittering in the background, the old guardsat in their off-the-shoulder dresses, sipping champagne with their stuffy-looking husbands. At odds in this uptown Babylon. She recognised them from the photos of her mother that often appeared within the pages of Vanity Fair. Lunching at Le Cirque with other thin, bouffant women.
    But her mother was not seated among them. Where was she?
    The girl’s gaze wandered to a far corner of the room. And there she was! Sporting enormous shoulder pads and a tiny, cinched-in waist, chatting animatedly to a man dressed in black, whose heavy spectacles and bushy white hair marked him out as some famous artist or other.
    ‘Mama!’ the girl shouted, advancing past a sweaty, topless man. He almost knocked the teddy bear clean out of her hand, as he danced with abandon with a sequin-encrusted he/she/it guest.
    When her mother caught sight of her, her fury was self-evident. Instead of responding in their native tongue, Mama chided her in English; her transatlantic drawl made sluggish and clumsy with alcohol, the girl knew.
    ‘Veronica! You were told to go to bed and stay in bed.’
    ‘But I got woken up.’

    ‘Get back to bed this instant, young lady! You are very disobedient.’
    Her mother grabbed her with bony, iron fingers. Dug her red nails in. The champagne stink of her rancid breath bore down on her. ‘Naughty little girl. What were you told?’
    ‘I miss Papa.’ The girl looked up at her mother with imploring eyes. Part of her acknowledged that she would rather be tucked in bythe homely, loving Gretchen. But she had needed to see what lay beyond The Door. And this was Mama. Her mother. She could not stem an instinctive, primal craving for maternal reassurance after a disconcerting dream, though she realised it would not be forthcoming. Mama took her parties very seriously. Mama had to look glamorous. Mama had to dedicate herself to her friends. It was expected.
    ‘Papa’s at Harvard,’ her mother shouted over the music, digging her nails in deeper. ‘You know that. He’s back next week. Then, we fly home.’ Her affected smile turned into something sinister, making the sinews in her thin, dancer’s neck seem taut and stringy. Speaking to her daughter through gritted, white teeth that seemed somehow sharper, nastier, reptilian. ‘But right now, little miss,’ the glossy brown tresses of Mama’s hair coiled and squirmed like the snakes on Medusa’s head that Veronica had peered at through parted fingers during the premiere of Clash of the Titans , ‘I am having a very important conversation with Andy, here, about my fundraiser for the Museum of Modern Art.’ Mama turned around and beamed warmly at the white-haired man. Gorgon’s head gone.
    Back to bed, annoying little cunt . Veronica found herself being dragged by the belt of her dressing gown. The long walk of shame across the makeshift dance floor, past the great and the good and the downright rotten of New York high society, was punctuated by several photo opportunities. Red light. Hold the front page. And pose! Whenever a flashbulb popped in their faces, Veronica registered that her mother had instantly rearranged herself into a photogenic shape. Hand on hip. One foot forward. One to the side. Knee slightly bent. Easy smile. Arm draped around Veronica’s shoulder, as though she were