A flash of lamp light

Olivia ran, splashing through puddles, silting her Jimmy Choos with ruinous mud. She clattered into her apartment building and tore up the stairs. In the kitchen, she tremblingly poured a huge Scotch, and swigged it down despite her breathlessness.
It couldn’t be possible.
Not Daddy.
‘Think of the family name,’ had been his mantra, especially when Olivia was negotiating her teens. Every prospective rebellion or lower-class potential boyfriend had been delicately dealt with, usually with crisp wads of banknotes and earnest lectures, and eventually Olivia had come to believe in Daddy’s creed. No scandal, at any cost.
Until this evening, that is, when Olivia had popped in to show Daddy her new handbag. She found him in the kitchen, red-faced, eyes closed and sweating as he rogered Forbes, his Parliamentary secretary. Olivia turned and ran.
She paced her apartment for some minutes. How could he do this to Mummy’s memory? Or to Forbes, for that matter? Mummy at least must be avenged. Olivia contemplated calling the News of the World, but knew no editor would dare cross Daddy with nothing more than hearsay, easily contradicted.
Standing at the window, Olivia cooled her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes against the brightness issuing from the nearby Tiffany lamp. Suddenly she smiled. She’d give Daddy scandal. She left.
Some time later, she returned, placing a few rapidly-printed fly bills on the table. She hadn’t had time to put all of them up, but it was a start. She shimmied into her new outfit (purchased with a shuddering thrill of cheapness from New Look), applied lurid lipstick, and carefully changed the bulb in her lamp. The pavement below the window was suddenly bathed in an inviting glow of red.