Babyville by Jane Green Page B

Lambs.
    Of course the pair of them had flings. Not sex, not Julia at any rate, the recent HIV and AIDS adverts still positively ringing in her ears, under the misapprehension that she was safe in England and very much in danger in America, but she had delicious snogs with broad-shouldered hunks with thick necks and thicker wallets.
    Julia was overwhelmed by Manhattan, and she'd only seen a tiny slice of it. She'd stayed there for two weeks as a tourist, had done all the touristy things, and had had the time of her life. And now she was going back to stay with Bella! In an apartment! On the Upper East Side! Here was her chance to sample New York as a native, and you know what? She couldn't wait.
     
    Why
the hell didn't I come back before now? she thought, a wide smile on her face as they pulled into the short-stay car park at Heathrow. Why the hell have I waited so long?

8
    Julia opens her eyes
and fumbles for her watch. It's eerily quiet in Bella's living room, and she's not surprised to see it's 3:02 A.M. Eight o'clock in England. Exactly the time she would normally be getting up.
    Four hours' sleep is definitely not enough for her, and she snuggles back down under the covers to try to go back to sleep. Forty minutes later, forty minutes of her mind whirling with the excitement of where she is, she throws back the covers and pads into the tiny kitchen.
    Bella wasn't joking when she said she lived in a shoebox. Her apartment is basically two tiny rooms, with an open-plan kitchen at one end of the living room and an L-shaped bedroom, the missing chunk having become a tiny bathroom.
    “But look at the view,” Bella had said, leading Julia to the window last night. “Isn't it extraordinary?” Julia agreed, looking down over Manhattan from the thirty-fifth floor, not fully understanding the currency of having a view in Manhattan. “I know people who've taken leases on apartments half the size of this one for twice the price,” Bella said. “They just had a great view.”
    Julia opens Bella's cupboard doors, looking for something to eat, some coffee to make, and is astonished by the sparseness of the shelves. There is, quite simply, nothing there. And Julia is used to Mark keeping the kitchen fully stocked, prepared for any eventuality.
    Moroccan chicken with pine nuts and cracked cardamom pods? You'll find the pine kernels in the second cupboard on the right, the cardamom pods with the rest of the spices in the larder. The pestle and mortar is on the counter next to the toaster.
    Homemade sushi? Nishiki rice in the larder (underneath the saffron, cumin, and coriander seeds), nori in the third cupboard on the right, crabsticks in the freezer, and wasabi in the door of the fridge. Bamboo mat lurking somewhere in the bottom drawer, and always, always, avocados in the vegetable drawer.
    Not only does Bella not appear to know what a pestle and mortar is, she doesn't appear to have even the basics. No tinned tomatoes just in case. No five-year-old jar of mixed herbs. No cereal. Eventually Julia finds a stray tin of tuna that expired four months ago, and behind the tuna—thank God—a tin of coffee.
    But no kettle.
    By this time Julia is becoming desperate, and finds a saucepan that she fills with water and puts on the stove. She finds a cup, no saucer, lurking under the sink, and almost starts to cry when she realizes the coffee isn't instant.
    Starting all over again and looking in every cupboard again, she sees that this is a no-win situation, and perhaps she will manage to fish most of the coffee grains out of the cup before she drinks it. She has, after all, found a teaspoon.
    The coffee is revolting. Gray (the milk in the fridge was definitely suspect, but by that time Julia didn't really care), with black coffee grounds floating up to the surface, in any other circumstances it would be undrinkable. She drinks it through a grimace and walks over to the huge picture window, smiling as she pinpoints the Chrysler Building,