Free Playing with the Grown-ups by Sophie Dahl Page A

possibility of these timely exchanges.
    'Bonjour, I mean, 'ullo, I am Francine the secretary of Marina, would you please verify your address, s'il vous plait?'
    As Francine she did not have to have the long annoying chats. As Francine, Kitty idled with honeyed voice, and spent her afternoons,
     and pocket money, on Third Avenue buying stripy tights from Hue.
    On the top floor of the limestone mansion lived their landlord, Mr Frazi. Her mother told her that Mr Frazi was gay but she
     was not to allude to it. Mr Frazi's apartment was smooth and polished and it smelled like birch trees and vetiver. He had
     a butler named Philip who spoke no English, and they conversed through a tunnel of nods and smiles and sighs.
    Mr Frazi usually spent his summers in the South of France or in Mykonos, but he had been hospitalised after a nasty asthma
     attack, and been instructed by his doctors to rest in his fragrant tomb of an apartment.
    Kitty longed for him to ask her to read the classics to him, like an old-fashioned ill person. He never did, but they spent
     the close mornings together, drinking tea from bone china so thin it was almost see-through.
    When her mother was locked away in her studio, Kitty called Hay House reverse charges, Bestepapa's voice billowing down the
     phone, like a proud sail.
    'We accept the charges. Put her through.'
    She told him about Vladimir and Precious, tea with Mr Frazi and Philip. When she said it out loud it became full and round,
     she could experience it again through the telling.
    'Ibsen misses you,' Bestepapa said sadly. 'And Elsie's going out with a French pop singer with a moustache. Can you imagine?
     Disgusting.' Kitty heard Bestemama chiding him gently in the background.
    In New York the buildings were so high that you could see nothing about them but patches of sky. If Kitty looked up too long
     it made her dizzy and anxious and she thought she would pass out.
    'Don't look up then,' her mother laughed when Kitty told her.
    'I have to. I have to know there's sky and grass beyond the buildings, otherwise I feel like a little ant.'
    'My sweet country mouse, you'll get used to it. You just need to practise thinking that you're a New Yorker - they don't notice.'
    Kitty's New York bedroom, up eighty-nine steps, was white as virgin's bones. Her bed was austere, dark-painted Victorian metal.
     She liked it: boarding school had made her orderly. Kitty craved order and neatness and made her bed every morning with hospital
     corners. Her mother found this inexplicably funny. Marina's bedroom was huge and paint-splattered. The bed looked like a confectioner's
     dream. Frothy laced curtains and a sea of soft pillows bobbed around her head. She was a mermaid sleeping in an oyster shell.
    Kitty's room seemed naked and unformed somehow, so she bought a stencil from the hardware store and painted hearts in pink
     above the windows. The result, she thought savagely, looked like Heidi's room. She didn't finish it and five hearts floated,
     unmoored, in the glaring white. In England her bedroom had always been the creative domain of her mother. Now there were choices.
     She did not know what to do with such artistic freedom.
    There was a huge rainstorm the night before Sam and Violet came back. The city was scorching all day, on the brink, like a
     bowl about to break. Kitty lay in bed, between the worlds of dream and wake, where everything had melted, and hovered in magic
     time.
    'Kitty?' Her mother stood at the end of the bed. 'Do you want to come and see the rain? It's incredible. I've never seen anything
     like it.'
    They were both barefoot, and the street was hot and empty. The rain fell in slanted sheets, and the air was smoky, filled
     with the smell of earth and pennies.
    They spun around and around, water pouring down their faces, drenching them, an urban baptism.
    'This is our life, can you believe it?' Faster and faster her mother spun, like a dervish. 'We're so lucky, and it's just
     the beginning,