Bridget Jones's Baby (17 page)

5 a.m. My flat
. I just daren't call him. I daren't. It'll hurt too much if he says no.

W
EDNESDAY 14
F
EBRUARY

1 p.m. My flat.
Gaah! It's one in the afternoon. I'm starving, the baby's starving. Have to get up and get some food.

1.05 p.m.
Gaah! What's that?

1.06 p.m.
Is baby in stomach. Has started to feel like giant frozen turkey.

1.10 p.m.
Cannot put socks on, baby is so enormous.

1.30 p.m.
Oh God. There's no food in the fridge. I have no cash. I'm starving. The baby's starving.

1.31 p.m.
I'll just have a little lie-down.

1.55 p.m.
Just spent ten minutes trying to get up from sofa as had got hands stuck under stomach. Magda is right, cannot do anything on my own. Cannot call Mark to help after all this time, as will seem like act of desperation, not because I really love and understand him. Have to manage by myself, pull self together and go out and forage for food.

3 p.m. Tesco Metro.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked a shopper as I tried to reach the cheesy potatoes.

“Boy!”

“When's it due?”

“March!” I said. Realized, now with my pregnancy public, I had started to feel not so much like Her Majesty the Queen, but like an air hostess, only with human head attached to elephant's body, saying same thing to one person after another with fixed grin.

“When's it due?”

“March. Thank you for flying with us,” I said, distractedly.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” said the cashier as she rang up my shopping and I fumbled to get my credit card out of my purse.

“Boy, two years' time. It's an elephant,” I said, sliding my card into the machine and adding, “Can I have fifty pounds cash back, please?”

“Just enter your PIN.”

I stared blankly at the cashier.

“Just pop your PIN in here.”

People in the queue behind me were starting to mutter things.

“Pregnant women! Forget everything!”

“I think it's a girl, she's carrying lopsided.”

“Do you think she's all right?”

“Look,” said the cashier. “Get on with it.”

“I can't remember my PIN.”

Started jabbing different numbers frantically. My birthday? Nope. My actual weight and my ideal weight? Nope. The baby had eaten the part of my brain with the PIN in it.

“She's firing blanks,” said the man behind me.

Firing blanks. Firing blanks.

“Have you got another card?”

“No,” I said, fumbling in my wallet for cash: nothing but a 50p coin. “Don't suppose you do credit?” I gabbled. “I'm a regular customer. I'm very trustworthy. I used to work for the TV—
Sit Up Britain
?”

“Sorry.”

I shouldn't have told her it was an elephant.

Firing blanks. That's what Daniel said to Mark after the childbirthing class, when Mark was so angry and I went off in the taxi. Suddenly remembered looking back at the two of them, through the taxi's rear window. I saw Daniel saying something intently to Mark, then Mark stormed off. Something happened. It was after that conversation, the same night, when Mark sent me the letter.

I took out my phone, right there in Tesco Metro, and dialled.

“Daniel?”

“Yes, Jones. I'm about to do an interview about
The Poetics of Time
for the most important arts programme in Monaco. But what may I help you with?”

“You know after the childbirthing class?”

“I do know after it, yes, Jones.”

“What did you say to Mark?”

There was silence on the other end.

“Daniel?” I said dangerously.

“Yes, I was meaning to call you about that, Jones. I may have implied to Darce that, when you and I had our delightful thrust towards conception, I did not, as it were,
dress for the occasion…
”

“You WHAT? But you did wear a condom. You lied! You absolute bastard!”

“Come on, Jones. It's only Darcy. Oops. Got to go, Monte Carlo on the line.
Bonjour, les petites Monacaines!
Bye, Jones.”

That's it! That's it, I thought, standing by the tills in Tesco Metro as people bustled by, tutting, with their shopping. Mark is a man of honour and he thought that I had lied. On top of everything else, he thought I'd lied to him about the condoms. I have to call him immediately. Anything could happen. He could remarry Natasha. He could go back to the Maghreb and never return. He could have become a successful painter and at this moment be chatting up a gallery owner wearing a weird outfit and hat in Shoreditch.

3.30 p.m.
Oh shit. Oh shit! iPhone has turned itself off. Cannot remember iPhone password.

3.45 p.m. Back in flat
. OK. Calm and poised. I will let my upset mind settle like a glass of mud and…What the fuck is the password?

3.46 p.m.
The baby's due date? 1703? 0317? Nope. Also was not even having baby when put password in phone. OK: when I was thirty-two Mark was…no. When I am sixty-five Daniel will be…still a fuckwit. Oh God, oh God. I have to get hold of him.

3.47 p.m.
I know! Will call Mark from good old-fashioned landline.

3.48 p.m.
Oh. What is Mark's phone number?

4 p.m.
Maybe is in phone book on the computer.

4.05 p.m.
Computer screen said:
ENTER PASSWORD
.

4.15 p.m.
Baby? Mark. MarkDaniel? Cheese? Potato? Cheesy potato?

4.30 p.m.
The baby has eaten every number in my head. Cannot remember Shazzer's number, or Tom's number, or Dad's number. I have no cash. I have no brain.

5 p.m.
Staring blankly at wall. Is not baby's fault. Is technology.

5.30 p.m.
Grrr! Hate technology. Wish technology had never been invented. When did it suddenly happen that you can't do anything without remembering some sort of weird mixed-up name or number? Is exactly like car burglar alarms used to be when your car was more likely to be broken into if you
had
a car alarm because the alarm kept going off and annoying everyone so much that they simply smashed the window and broke it. Passwords are supposed to stop Russian hackers from getting into the computer—not stop YOU from getting into your own computer, or indeed anything, while the Russian hackers get on with hacking all your stuff.

6.30 p.m.
Please, my child. Give forth thy passwords back to what is left of my brain, so that I might tell Mark that we love him and want him to be thy father, and—crucially—bring forth a cheesy potato that I might nourish thee.

Then suddenly, miraculously, it came to me:

5287

I checked the numbers and letters on the landline phone.

5287

J A U R

JUST AS U R

6.45 p.m.
Lunged at the cellphone and found Mark's number in contact. Hands shaking, I called him. I got his voicemail.

“Mark, it's Bridget. I have something very, very important to say to you. I did not lie to you about the condoms. It was Daniel who lied. It's you I love. I love you. Please call me. Please call me.”

6.46 p.m.
Nothing. Maybe Mark has forgotten
his
password.

7 p.m.
Just texted Mark the same message. Maybe he's still painting. Maybe I should go round there. Oh God. I have to get some phone, I mean food. Maybe I'll get some cash first, so nothing else can go wrong.

Limped, broken, downstairs to the cash machine booth at the bank. Went through the automatic doors, put my handbag down and entered the PIN. It didn't work. Why didn't it work? Maybe I'd entered it too many times. Stumbling, as if in a dream, I went back out to the street, through the automatic doors, then suddenly, just as they closed, saw that my bag was still on the floor inside.

Oh God, oh God. My phone was in the bag, as well as my wallet and the keys to my flat.

And the doors to the bank wouldn't open.

8.30 p.m. Slumped on doorstep outside my flat.
Whole idea of making the big small is just bollox. Magda is right.

8.35 p.m.
It has started to rain: really lots and lots of rain.

8.40 p.m.
Maybe I could ask a kindly stranger to lend me their phone? But then, what is the point if cannot remember anyone's phone numbers? Still, maybe through a dream state…there is a man approaching!

I started to say, “Excuse me?”—but he just dropped a coin on my coat and hurried off, looking frightened. Obviously thinks am desperate pregnant baby lady, like Thomas Hardy's Fanny Robin dying in the snow.

Hearing footsteps, I raised my head wearily, perhaps for the last time, and saw, once again, a familiar figure in a dark blue overcoat, striding towards me through the rainy street.