Alice-Miranda In New York 5 Read Free Page A

myself. Come and give Papa a kiss, and you and your mother enjoy your afternoon tea.’
    Lucinda entered the room. She looked aroundexpecting to see her mother but she wasn’t there. The gangly child stood a few metres inside the doorway and waited for her father to greet her. His steaming cup of tea sat idle beside him. Morrie Finkelstein had his head buried in The Post . He didn’t set the paper aside nor did he look up.
    â€˜Hello Papa,’ Lucinda said quietly.
    But there was no response. Lucinda frowned. Every weekend for as long as she could remember, her father had arrived home on a Friday evening with a new dress from the store and admired her in it on Saturday afternoon. The routine was only broken twice a year, when the Finkelsteins went on holiday to their estate in Southampton.
    â€˜Papa? Are you all right?’ Lucinda tried again.
    Morrie finally looked up. ‘Oh, I didn’t hear you come in, Lucinda.’ He folded the paper and put it to the side.
    â€˜Is everything all right, Papa?’ Lucinda’s stomach twisted. By this time her father should have been midway through his usual farewell speech.
    â€˜Everything’s fine, Lucinda. Now run along. You don’t want to keep your mother waiting, do you?’
    Lucinda walked towards her father, leaned downand kissed him on the forehead. The knot in her stomach tightened. It felt strange not to have her father comment on her appearance. And while her hair was misbehaving, her dress was particularly lovely and, she thought, quite flattering for someone whose limbs were growing way too quickly for the rest of her body.
    As she turned to leave, her father picked up the newspaper and in a loud voice said to no one in particular, ‘Just like your father, your grandfather before that and your great-grandfather too. We’ll see who’s boss of this town, Cecelia Highton-Smith!’
    Lucinda was puzzled by his outburst. She knew that the Finkelsteins and Hightons didn’t get on for some reason but her father’s voice was angry. She retreated to the doorway and peered back inside to see him depositing the newspaper into the huge fireplace, where the glowing embers erupted into flame. Lucinda scurried along the hallway to the apartment’s grand foyer to wait for her mother. Her father was acting strangely, for sure.

A lice-Miranda sat in the back of the limousine as it snaked its way from Teterboro Airport to the city.
    â€˜Oh, Daddy, we can’t be far now!’ she exclaimed as the car approached the signpost for the Lincoln Tunnel.
    â€˜No, not far, but I suspect the traffic in the city could slow us down a little,’ her father replied.
    â€˜But it’s not bad at all,’ said Alice-Miranda as the car sped through the tunnel and emerged onto West38th Street and straight into a bank-up of cars a mile long.
    â€˜Oh, I think I spoke too soon.’ Alice-Miranda stared wide-eyed out of the window at the lights of Manhattan. On the flight she and her parents had made lots of plans about the places they would visit and sights they wanted to see. She’d made Mrs Oliver promise to come with them as often as she could, too.
    â€˜Look at all those yellow taxis, Mummy,’ Alice-Miranda observed as their car turned into Sixth Avenue, heading towards Central Park. As far as the eye could see, yellow cabs clogged the street, peppered with black town cars. ‘Does anyone drive their own car in New York?’ Alice-Miranda was trying to spot other vehicles among the bumblebee-coloured swarm.
    â€˜No, most New Yorkers don’t bother with a car. There’s hardly any parking and what there is costs a king’s ransom,’ her father replied.
    A group of pedicabs darted by, weaving their way in and out of the traffic, their young drivers shouting offers of cheap rides to the pedestrians on the footpaths.
    â€˜That looks like fun. Are you game, Mrs Oliver?’Alice-Miranda pointed