Lucinda Finkelstein glimpsed her reflection in the hall mirror. Despite an hour of torturous straightening, her hair was already rebelling back to its natural state of frizz. Lucinda’s mother Gerda had silken black tresses, which her older brothers, Tobias and Ezekiel, had inherited. Lucinda, on the other hand, took after her father. Morrie Finkelstein was proud of the fact that he had never owned a hairbrush or a comb. His wiry greying locks sat atop his head like a Brillo pad.

‘Lucinda, hurry up, your father wants to see how beautiful you look,’ her mother called from the sitting room.

Lucinda tried in vain to flatten the rogue ringlets that were appearing around her forehead but the more she pulled, the more they escaped, mocking her with their springiness.

‘I’m coming, Mama,’ the girl sighed, and headed for her appraisal. But she didn’t need to anticipate her father’s reaction. Morrie Finkelstein was nothing if not predictable. Lucinda would walk into the room where her father would be drinking a strong cup of tea with today’s New York Post on the side table next to him. He would look up and gasp and then he would say the exact same thing that he said every Saturday at 2 pm, just before Lucinda and her mother took the town car to the store for afternoon tea in the Salon, with the usual gaggle of twenty or so of her mother’s friends and their daughters.

Each week her father would say, ‘Oh, Lucinda. Look at you, my gorgeous girl. That’s a lovely dress – you know, I picked it out myself. Come and give Papa a kiss, and you and your mother enjoy your afternoon tea.’

Lucinda entered the room. She looked around expecting 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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘Is everything all right, Papa?’ Lucinda’s stomach twisted. By this time her father should have been midway through his usual farewell speech.

‘Everything’s fine, Lucinda. Now run along. You don’t want to keep your mother waiting, do you?’

Lucinda walked towards her father, leaned down and 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.