Babyville Page 0,25
was a terrible mistake and Mr. Brennan could be The One?”
Sam looks uncomfortable.
“Oh please!” Julia starts to laugh. “You're not seriously trying to say that, are you?”
Sam squirms, then grudgingly admits that last night, the night before her appointment this morning, she had an erotic dream starring Mr. Brennan; that her crush is now major league and she could barely look him in the eye when she turned up there today.
“Details, details.” Bella is transfixed. “What kind of erotic dream? What happened?”
“I don't remember how I got there, but I was abroad and I think I started off with Chris and we were in bed together, and suddenly Chris turned into Mr. Brennan and it wasn't so much the sex, but he was so tender and he kept cuddling me and . . . well. That's it, really.”
“That's it?” Bella's disappointed.
“No sex?” Julia chimes in, although frankly she too would be more inclined to go for the tenderness at this precise moment in time.
“It was sexual, intimate, without there actually being proper sex, okay? But when I walked into the room today it all came flooding back and I could barely look at him.”
“Did he notice?”
“I don't think so.”
“And did you have to get your knickers off, then?”
“Bella!” Sam shouts.
“Bella!” shouts Julia.
“Well, did you?”
Sam sits back, fanning an imaginary flush. “Thank God not today. I swear, that really would have been embarrassing. Having an orgasm during a routine internal examination with your gynecologist. Jesus Christ. Can you imagine?” They all laugh and then Sam's face turns serious. “And the other thing is he told me I looked really nice.”
“No!” Julia's turn to be mock-shocked. “Was he flirting with you?”
“No. Definitely not. I wish.” She shakes her head, then pauses as she stops to think. “Actually”—she starts to smile, twirling a lock of her hair girlishly as her gaze fixes on to the middle distance—“maybe. Do you think? Could he have been? Oh Christ. I feel like such a teenager. He said that I'd done something different and I just kind of stammered that I'd had my hair done for a party the day before and that really the party hadn't been worth it anyway, which of course was way too much information, but I couldn't stop babbling and I'm sure he knew, and he said it looked nice and now I've spent the last hour analyzing his tone of voice and how he said it and how he looked at me, and whether it means I'm special.”
“You're off your trolley,” Bella says, not unkindly.
“I know, I know,” Sam sighs. “Let's change the subject. But can I just ask one more thing?” She looks both of them in the eye. “Seriously. Do you think he fancies me?”
When Bella was living in London the three of them would regularly meet up for suppers at one another's houses, usually Julia's, as her kitchen was always the most conducive to a girls' night in, plus Julia was the only one who could actually cook at that time, Sam having not yet discovered her culinary skills, and Bella eating primarily in expensive restaurants.
Sam would ring up from her mobile en route, asking, “Anything you need?” and would invariably have to make a stop at Sainsbury's for a packet of pita bread, a tub of Häagen-Dazs, and a couple of packs of Marlboro Lights.
The obligatory bottles of wine would be cooling off in Julia's fridge, and the three of them would chatter nineteen to the dozen as they chopped salads, mixed marinades, poured dips and crisps into bowls.
Food would be eaten around the kitchen table, and depending on their mood they would either sit there into the small hours, talking about their lives, their pasts, their men, their hopes, or gravitate into the living room, sometimes to watch television, sometimes to read the magazines Julia kept in a pile next to the fireplace. Such was the nature of their friendship: easy, natural. As close as family but without the politics.
Now that their lives have moved on, perhaps the one to miss those days most is Julia. Sam is blissfully happy with Chris, and expecting her first child.
Bella has entered another world in New York. She has a new circle of girlfriends who don't go to one another's houses, as they all live in apartments the size of shoeboxes. None of them has seen their kitchen in over a year, they meet up at restaurants and bars, and sit and chew the (metaphorical) fat over Cobb Salads