Babyville Page 0,32
some coffee?” she says, and he stands up just as she brushes past him on her way to the kitchen, and in that split second they look at one another, and both reach out and put their arms around one another. Mark squeezes Julia, who squeezes him in return, both clinging on as if for dear life, both shocked at this intensity, both trying to suppress the knowledge that hugs like this mean only one thing.
Good-bye.
Mark insists on driving her to Heathrow, and even though she was planning on taking a cab to Bella's hotel and driving up with her, she knows that they are both fragile, and somehow being together, even after the night they have had, even though this isn't a breakup, it's just a holiday, somehow this semblance of normality is comforting.
There isn't much to say on the way to the airport, clearly not helped by the fact that the lack of sleep all night has now rendered Julia almost incoherent with exhaustion.
“I used to do this all the time,” she yawns. “Why do I feel like I've been hit with a sledgehammer now?”
“That's what happens when you reach thirty-three,” Mark says, who doesn't feel quite as bad, but thankfully still hasn't had to explain his absence.
“I remember going clubbing,” Julia reminisces. “We wouldn't leave the house until midnight, and we wouldn't come back home until at least ten the next morning, and more often than not I wouldn't even bother going to bed that day. I used to be fine.”
“And you managed to stay awake all night dancing without the help of any, er, illegal substances?”
“Ah yes.” She smiles at her selective memory. “I suppose that might have helped.”
Mark turns the radio on to fill the silence, as Julia stares out the window and remembers the last time she was in New York. She hasn't thought about this in years, and as the memories drift back she finds herself smiling.
She was twenty-three. God. Almost ten years. Where does it go? Working on a documentary about female private investigators mostly catching out adulterous husbands. She had never been to America before, and Mike sent her out there with another researcher called Caroline.
She'd been to W. H. Smith's weeks before, and the pages of her Rough Guide to New York were already bent and creased long before she even stepped off the airplane at JFK. She'd marked all the places she wanted to go, the bars she wanted to visit, the museums she was desperate to see.
It was late November. As soon as they arrived they were blinded by a hard, bright sun, and whipped in the face by an icy wind. Julia hugged her overcoat around her as Caroline shivered and moaned that Bloomingdale's would be their very first stop for thermal underwear.
Everything seemed so exciting, and they hadn't even left the airport. The cabs really were bright yellow, and the drivers as rude as they always were in the films. The driving was terrible. Mustafa (for that was his name) took great delight in slamming his foot on the accelerator, zooming up to within a foot of the car in front, then slamming on the brake.
Caroline and Julia sat in the back, fighting carsickness, praying the journey would soon be over, both of them far too British and polite to complain.
The skyline swept before them as they crossed the Triborough Bridge, taking their breath away and sending shivers of anticipation down their spines.
Rumbling down Lexington through Harlem, neither girl said a word, noses pressed to the glass as they examined fire escapes, gangs of kids sitting on steps, people everywhere.
“I can't believe we're here,” Caroline said, grinning, looking at Julia for only a split second so as not to miss anything. “I feel like we're going to see Cagney and Lacey any second.”
Down through the nineties, the eighties, continuing downtown and watching the neighborhood change. And then into Gramercy, where they had booked themselves into the Gramercy Park.
“I think I could fall in love in New York.” Caroline flopped back on the bed and sighed dreamily. “I've never seen so many gorgeous men in all my life.”
“Never mind the men. I think I could fall in love with New York. This place is amazing.”
The work was hard. They weren't filming, not yet, just doing the recce and ensuring they had found the right subjects. Most of their days were spent on the phone, or shadowing private investigators to have a real taste of what the job