Bridget Jones's Baby (14 page)

S
UNDAY 19
N
OVEMBER

4.30 p.m. My flat.
Just back from Mark's house. What just happened?

I waited, nervously, on Mark's doorstep, but this time he opened the door looking different. He was unshaven, in bare feet, wearing jeans and a very dirty dark sweater, and holding an open bottle of red wine. He looked at me strangely.

“Can I come in?” I said eventually. He looked startled by this request.

“Yes, yes, of course, come in.”

He walked through into the kitchen and straight out through the French doors into the garden, breathing in through his nose and appearing to take in the air.

I gasped. The whole place was in bohemian-style chaos. There were piles of washing up, takeout cartons, empty wine bottles, lighted candles, and—could that possibly be
joss sticks
?

“What's going on? Why's it all messy? Why hasn't the cleaner been?”

“Given everyone a holiday. Don't need them. Oh!” A wild gleam came into his eye. “Come and look.”

He started leading me into the living room. “I've failed at my work,” he said chattily.

“You have?” I said, surveying the once-formal living room. The floorboards were bare. All the furniture was covered in paint-smeared sheets and there were tins of paint everywhere.

“Yes. Farzad release not happening. Five years' work down the drain. Failed at my life. Failed at my relationships. Failed as a man and a person. But at least I can paint.”

He whipped the sheet off a giant canvas and beamed at me expectantly.

It was absolutely terrible. It looked like the sort of thing you'd buy in Woolworth's or from the railings round Hyde Park. There was some sort of sunset and a man galloping through the surf on a horse, a suit of armour abandoned on the beach.

“What do you think?”

I was rescued by my cellphone ringing. I looked down—
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
—and clicked it off quickly.

“Yes, I suppose that's Cleaver, isn't it? Every time I try to do something good, to stick at life, he pops up and ruins it. Honesty, work, trying to do the decent thing—all pointless, isn't it? Charm, and celebrity, that's all it's about. Is he looking after you?”

“No!”

“So he's not supporting you? Is it money you want?”

He went to a jar and starting pulling out £20 notes. “Here, take it, plenty. Plenty money. Take all you want. Much good it's ever done me.”

“I don't want your money! I'm not some gold-digging single mother coming round to get cash from you. How dare you?” I started heading for the door. “And, for your information, I'm not with Daniel Cleaver.”

“You're not?”

“No. I'm doing this on my own.”

6.15 p.m. My flat.
Gaah! Just looked at Daniel's text.

DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER

My darling, darling, darling, etc., etc. I got your text. Delighted to help, etc. Working today but will call you later. Watch
Arts Next Week Tonight
at 6 p.m. Dx

Honestly. Am furious. There is actually a baby involved in this. They did actually both have sex with me and neither of them had a condom. They don't have to both disappear up their own arses.

6.16 p.m.
Fumbled grumpily with the TV remotes and eventually found
Arts Next Week Tonight
in the nick of time. There was a studio “hello” shot of Daniel. He looked raddled, not his usual suave, glowing self, but nevertheless smug and optimistic.

“And now,” said the presenter, “former publishing executive turned travel show presenter turned arts show presenter and a consistent womanizer throughout. Poacher turned gamekeeper—and I mean poacher in the
broadest
sense…”

There was stock footage of Daniel with various women, and then a cutaway of Daniel in the studio chair looking, now, completely furious.

“Daniel Cleaver has come out with his attempt at a ‘serious novel':
The Poetics of Time.
Tom O'Shea! Bill Sharp! Novelists yourselves, and, of course, distinguished critics: Quick thoughts, what do you make of it?”

“This is the single biggest pile of stinking unreadable shit I've ever had the misfortune to plough through,” said Tom O'Shea.

“Bill?”

The two critics were seated beside the presenter, looking very concerned.

“It's neurybathic, neretic, aureate, platitudinous, egregious, insensate, macaronic…”

“Could you translate, Bill?” said the presenter.

“Total unreadable toss,” said Bill Sharp.

“Well, let's hear a little bit and decide for ourselves, shall we?” said the presenter.

There was a clip of Daniel in front of a bookshelf, reading earnestly from
The Poetics of Time:

“The winds shrieked the devil's shroud as the birds cawed beneath Veronica's splayed legs. We gorged, raw. Her eyes were all big.”

There were snorts of laughter from the studio. The show cut to Tom O'Shea and Bill Sharp, helpless with mirth in the studio, and Daniel squirming between them and the presenter.

6.30 p.m.
OMG. There is the sound of a key in the lock. Maybe burglars?

“Coo-ey!” My mother. I forgot I gave her a spare key. “Hello, darling,” said Mum, bustling in with armfuls of carrier bags. “Well, pop the kettle on!”

Mind started whirring. “They're electric, they're lethal…”

“I was just in Debenhams doing some shopping and I wandered into the maternity department and ta-ta!”

She pulled out a giant maternity smock—in the style of the late Princess Diana when she was expecting Prince William and everyone thought you were supposed to conceal your bump instead of spray-tanning it and exposing it on the cover of
Vanity Fair.

“You see?” she said, holding it up against me. “You'll look much better in something which covers you up, then you'll look…”

“Fat?” I finished for her.

“Well, Mummy has piled on the pounds a bit, hasn't she? Of course I never had that problem. The doctor was telling me to eat Birds custard and blancmange to put on a bit of flesh.”

“The baby needs to graze.”

“He says, ‘It's not me who wants the food—it's Mummy!' ”

“Mum. Stop. Why do you always make me feel like I've done something wrong? Why are you always trying to change what I wear…”

She sank down on the sofa and burst into tears.

“Mum, what's wrong?” I said, putting my arm round her.

“It's just this whole baby business. I mean, of course I want to be there for you, darling, but if only you could have done it like normal people. It's just thrown everything into disarray. Everything! I just really, really wanted to sit next to the Queen.”

“It's all right, it's all right,” I said, patting her hand. “But why is it so important to you to sit next to the Queen?”

“It would mean that I meant something if the Queen sat next to me. I've never meant anything. And I've worked really hard for the village all my married life with all the baking and the preserves and everything and it would have meant…”

“Like being a hundred or something?”

“Not a HUNDRED, darling!”

“No, I mean like a CBE or a Queen's Guide or something. Like an official stamp of being worthwhile?”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. “The Admiral says the Queen's table is going to be decided by a vote. I mean, I was hoping you could just sort it out and find out who the father IS—perhaps the baby IS Mark's, and it would be so wonderful for all of us if you were to come to the pre-vote debate and say it was Mark's. Will you? Will you, darling? And will you come to the seating plan event?”

“Mum, I've got an important work meeting tomorrow morning. I need to go to sleep.”

“All right, I must get back to Daddy, anyway. You will come, darling, to the debate?”

“I'll try.”

“…and wear the smock?”

Mercifully, the phone rang.

“Better take that, probably work,” I said. “Bye, Mum.”

She gave me a quick kiss and scuttled out, leaving the smock.

9 p.m.
Phone call was from Daniel.

“Christ, Jones, did you see that bloodbath? It was an assassination attempt from the start. Bill Sharp's entire life goal is to prove he's read
The Oxford Dictionary of Incomprehensible Defunct Long Words to Slag People Off With
from cover to cover. As for O'Shea: envy, Jones, the green-eyed monster. They had no understanding of the concept…”

By nine-thirty p.m. Daniel was still going on “this whole baby thing has thrown me off kilter. I could have taken them on if I'd been at the top of my game.
The Poetics of Time
can't be represented by a ten-second sound bite and a couple of resentful goons. It will set the tone, it's all over the wires, and now I have the reviews to face. It's like going over the top, I feel…”

There was a texting ping—

MAGDA

Audrona is taking a job designing new Airbus propeller shafts. I have no nanny. Help! Can I call you?

This was followed by another text.

TOM

I've just had a blazing row with Shazzer about the baby thing. She says I AM a horrible person. Am I? Can I call you?

11.20 p.m.
Just got off the phone with everyone and a text pinged up from Mark.

MARK DARCY

What did you think of my painting?

M
ONDAY 20
N
OVEMBER

Sit Up Britain
studio.
Sat, exhausted, in the studio control room watching Miranda—immaculate in a cream trouser suit—interviewing the new Minister for Families: for all the world as if she hadn't been shagging the guy she met in Hackney all the previous afternoon and night.