Babyville by Jane Green Page A

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 involved.
    The first Saturday they walked to Central Park, hired skates, and stumbled their way around Wolman Rink. A carriage ride round the park was a necessity, as was a hot chocolate in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel.
    Over the course of the following week they managed the Empire State Building, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Statue of Liberty.
    Evenings they went downtown. Wandered around SoHo, sitting on benches in Greene Street and Prince Street, people-watching before going into bars and reveling in the warmth, the friendliness of it all.
    Or down to the Village, to bohemian coffeehouses where they'd sip cappuccinos late into the night, start talking to neighboring tables, ending up in bars, clubs, with people they'd never met before but who felt like lifelong friends.
    They went to the cinema as often as they could, just so they could go back home and nonchalantly claim to have seen everything already. “Oh,
The Silence of the Lambs
? Haven't you seen it? God, I saw it months ago. You mean it isn't even out for another four months? It's worth the wait. Terrifying.”
    They managed to fit in
City Slickers, Fried Green Tomatoes, Thelma and Louise, Madonna: Truth or Dare
and, obviously,
The Silence of the