Read The Girl Who Passed for Normal for Free Online

ever going to be, but she’s fat and her mouth hangs open all the time and she cries when she sees a stranger. If you could just make her move — preferably not in my direction — I’d pay you anything, my dear. But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
    Later at the party Barbara had met a young American man; he was standing with the group that had previously been surrounding Mary Emerson. The same man who had mentioned her name before now said to the American, “You just missed a compatriot of yours who lives in Rome.”
    “Thank God. What’s her name?”
    “Emerson.”
    “Never heard of her. What does she do?”
    “She’s rich.”
    “Do you live in Rome?” Barbara said.
    The American looked at her nervously. “Yes.”
    “I might be coming to Rome soon.”
    “What are you going to be doing in Rome?”
    Barbara smiled. “I don’t know. But possibly teaching this Mrs. Emerson’s daughter.”
    “She has an idiot child,” someone said.
    “My name’s David Jacks,” the American said. “Look me up if you come to Rome.” He wrote his name and address and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Barbara, then more or less turned his back on her and started talking to someone else.
    “Thank you,” said Barbara and moved away.
    Mrs. Emerson had booked her a room at a hotel, and after checking in she took a taxi to the address on the Appia Antica that she’d been given. The city, as she drove through it, was cold and decorated. She had been to Rome for the first time for her not very successful honeymoon. She had been back twice since then, though always in the summer. Now, five days after Christmas, the city looked more serious, less monumental , and more shabby than before.
    Nevertheless, she was excited. She was abroad. She was free. She had spent a terrible, sad Christmas with her mother in a cold flat in London; and that had been the end. Now she was starting something new.
    The taxi stopped by the tomb of Cecilia Metella. On the other side of the road there was a small pine wood with a gravel drive running through it to a high red-brown wall witha green metal gate. Above the wall she could see the roof of a villa that seemed to be long and, from where she stood, windowless.
    She walked up the drive and rang a bell by the side of the green gate. She shivered as she waited, feeling nervous and young. The gate opened.
    Mary Emerson, in a brown mink coat, smiled and said, “Welcome to Rome, Barbara, and docome in quickly. It’s freezing out here.”
    Inside the gate the gravel drive continued; to the left there was a garage with a station wagon parked in it, and to the right, the long villa.
    “It’s like the country here,” Barbara said. No other houses were visible; behind the garage there was a high wall, which ran along the left-hand side of the property; and beyond the house, on the right, a row of cypress trees stretched into the distance. The land behind the house seemed endless.
    Mary Emerson made a face and said, “It is the country.”
    “It’s beautiful.”
    Inside the house, it was warm. It was also, as Barbara was to describe it later, decorated in a style that she could only call Southern Colonial.
    In the hall there were empty white bookshelves from floor to ceiling, white cane chairs, and inside a large white bird cage a myna bird, which screamed when Barbara walked past, “My name’s George,” and laughed a deep laugh when Mary Emerson said, “Oh, shut up.” Turning to Barbara, Mary Emerson said, “That’s Catherine’s bird.”
    In the living room were heavy, dark pieces of Victorian furniture, white rugs, and plants everywhere. They sat down on a sofa and Mary Emerson called languidly, “Iva!” Shehummed, smiling at the floor, until a plump, gray-haired woman in a white apron came in.
    “Iva, this is Barbara Michaels. She’s going to look after Catherine. Barbara, this is Iva, who looks after us all.”
    Barbara stood up, and the two women shook hands and