Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns. Lauren Weisberger

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      ‘I’m moving,’ Lily said, her voice almost a whisper.

      ‘You’re what?’

      ‘Moving.’

      ‘Apartments? You found somewhere? I thought the plan was to finish out the school year here since you only have class twice a week and then start to look for a place in the summer.’

      ‘I’m moving to Colorado.’

      Andy stared at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Lily broke off a microscopic corner of a cinnamon rugelach but left it on the plate. They didn’t speak for almost a minute, which to Andy felt like an hour.

      Finally Lily took a deep breath. ‘I just really need a change, I think. The drinking, the accident, the month in rehab … I just associate so many things with the city, so many negative connotations. I haven’t even told my grandmother yet.’

      ‘Colorado?’ Andy had so many questions, but she was too shocked to say much else.

      ‘UC Boulder is making it really easy for me to transfer my credits, and they’ll give me a full ride for only teaching one undergraduate class each semester. They have fresh air and a great program and a whole lot of people who don’t know my whole story already.’ When Lily looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. ‘They don’t have you; that’s the only part of the whole thing making me sad. I’m going to miss you so much.’

      Blubbering ensued. Both girls were sobbing and hugging and wiping mascara from their cheeks, unable to imagine a situation where an entire country separated them. Andy tried to be supportive by asking Lily a million questions and paying close attention to the answers, but all she could think about was the obvious: in a few weeks’ time, she was going to be all alone in New York City. No Alex. No Lily. No life.

      A few days after Lily’s departure, Andy retreated back to her parents’ house in Avon. She’d just finished scarfing down three servings of her mother’s butter-and-heavy-cream-laden mashed potatoes, washed down with two glasses of Pinot, and was considering unbuttoning her jeans when her mother reached across the table to take Andy’s hand and announced that she and Andy’s father were getting divorced.

      ‘I can’t stress enough how much we love both you and Jill, and how of course this has nothing to do with either of you,’ Mrs Sachs said, talking a mile a minute.

      ‘She’s not a child, Roberta. She certainly doesn’t think she’s the reason her parents’ marriage is ending.’ Her father’s tone was sharper than normal, and if she were being honest with herself, she’d have admitted she’d noticed it had been that way for some time.

      ‘It’s completely mutual and amicable. No one is … seeing anyone else, nothing like that. We’ve just grown apart after so many years.’

      ‘We want different things,’ her father added unhelpfully.

      Andy nodded.

      ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Mrs Sachs’s brow furrowed in parental concern.

      ‘What’s there to say?’ Andy downed the rest of her wine. ‘Does Jill know?’

      Her father nodded and Mrs Sachs cleared her throat.

      ‘Well, just if you … have any … questions or anything?’ Her mother looked worried. A quick glance at her father confirmed he was about to launch into full shrink mode, start interrogating her about her feelings and making irritating comments like Whatever you’re feeling right now is understandable and I know this will take some getting used to, and she wasn’t in the mood for it.

      Andy shrugged. ‘Look, it’s your deal. So long as you’re both happy, it’s none of my business.’ She wiped her mouth with her napkin, thanked her mother for dinner, and left the kitchen. No doubt she was reverting back to teenage brattiness, but she couldn’t help herself. She also knew that the demise of her parents’ thirty-four-year marriage had nothing to do with her, but she couldn’t help thinking, First Alex, then Lily, now this. It was too much.

      As far as distractions went, logging in the hours researching, interviewing, and writing Happily Ever After articles worked for a little while, but Andy still couldn’t fill that interminable stretch of time between finishing work and going to sleep. She’d gotten drinks a couple of times with her editor, a tiger of a woman who mostly looked over Andy’s shoulder at the recent college graduates milling around the happy-hour bars they frequented, and occasionally she’d see a Brown acquaintance for dinner or a friend visiting New York on business, but mostly Andy was alone. Alex had dropped off the face of the planet. He hadn’t called a single time, and the only contact had been a curt ‘Thanks so much for remembering, hope you’re well’ e-mail in response to a long, emotional, and in hindsight, humiliating voice mail Andy left for his twenty-fourth birthday. Lily was happily settled in Boulder and babbling excitedly about her apartment, her new office, and some yoga class she’d tried and loved. She couldn’t even fake being miserable for Andy’s sake. And Andy’s parents officially separated after agreeing that Mrs Sachs would keep the house and Andy’s father would move to a new condo closer to town. Apparently the papers were filed, they were both in therapy – although separately this time – and each was ‘at peace’ with the decision.

      It was a long, cold winter. A long, cold, lonely winter. And so she did what every young New Yorker before her had done at some point during their first decade in the city and signed up for a ‘How to Boil Water’ cooking class.

      It had seemed like a good idea, considering she only used her oven for storing catalogs and magazines. The only ‘cooking’ she ever did was with a coffeepot or a jar of peanut butter, and ordering in – regardless of how frugal she tried to be – was way too expensive. It would have been a good idea, if New York wasn’t the smallest city in the world at the exact times you needed anonymity: sitting across the test kitchen from Andy on her very first day of class, looking supremely hassled and a lot intimidating, was none other than Runway first assistant extraordinaire Emily Charlton.

      Eight million people in New York City and Andy couldn’t avoid her only known enemy? She desperately wished for a baseball cap, oversize sunglasses, anything at all that could shield her from the imminent blaze-eyed glare that still haunted Andy’s nightmares. Should she leave? Withdraw? See about attending another night? As she debated her options, the instructor read the class roster; at the sound of Andy’s name, Emily jolted a bit but recovered well. They managed to avoid eye contact and came to an unspoken agreement to pretend they didn’t recognize each other. Emily was absent the second class, and Andy was hopeful she had bailed on the course altogether; Andy missed the third one because of work. Each was displeased to see the other at the fourth class, but there was some subtle shift making it too difficult for them to ignore each other entirely, and the girls nodded an icy acknowledgment. By the end of the fifth class, Andy grunted a barely discernible ‘Hey’ in Emily’s general direction and Emily grunted back. Only one more session to go! It was conceivable, even likely, that they could each finish out the course with nothing more than guttural sounds exchanged, and Andy was relieved. But then the unthinkable happened. One minute the instructor was reading the ingredient list for that night’s meal, and the next he was pairing the two sworn enemies together as ‘kitchen partners,’ putting Emily in charge of prep work and instructing Andy to oversee the sautéing. Their eyes met for the first time, but each looked quickly away. One glance and Andy could tell: Emily was dreading this as much as she was.

      They moved wordlessly into position side by side, and when Emily settled into a rhythm СКАЧАТЬ