Bridget Jones's Baby (3 page)

“I am aware of that.”

He reached forwards and extracted the train in one simple movement.

“Anything else in there? What's this…cake?”

The old sweet, capable Mark. I so wanted to kiss him.

“It's been a while, hasn't it?” he said.

“Yes. Who are you again?”

“No idea.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“I've known you for forty years and I've completely forgotten your name.”

We giggled—Dad's old Grafton Underwood joke.

As Mark looked at me with those deep, brown soulful eyes, I asked myself, “What would the Dalai Lama do in this situation?”

We sprang together like unleashed beasts, and continued in that manner in my hotel room, for the rest of the night.

S
UNDAY 25
J
UNE

In the morning we were still ravenous for each other but also, crucially, food. There was no getting through to room service.

“I'll go grab us something from the buffet,” said Mark, buttoning up his shirt. “Don't you dare move.”

As he left the room, I heard a male voice in the corridor, evidently greeting him. The conversation continued, got more heated, then abruptly ended. Which was odd.

I shrugged it off and snuggled down moonily, still shag-drunk, savouring flashbacks to the night before and arranging myself prettily for Mark's return.

The door opened and he came in with a tray full of orange juice, coffee and chocolate croissants.

“Mmmm, thank you, do come back in,” I said.

But he set down the tray and remained standing.

“What's the matter?”

He started pacing. “I've made a mistake,” he said.

Mind starting spiralling: horror, doom, pain, vulnerable in nighty and him in his suit. Not this? Not such passion and intimacy, instantly replaced by pain and rejection. Not in my nighty.

“I wasn't thinking. I was carried away with emotion, with the joy of seeing you again. I had way too much to drink. We both did. But we cannot proceed.”

“Proceed? That's a funny way to describe shagging.”

“Bridget,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I can't do this. I'm newly divorced. I am not in a fit emotional state to take on a relationship at this point in your life.”

“But I didn't ask you for that.”

“I realize, but the question is undoubtedly there, whether it is verbalized or not. At your age, I simply…it would be wrong of me…I don't want to use up any more of your childbearing years.”

7 p.m. My flat.
Oh God, oh God. I actually have reached my sexual sell-by date. Men are no longer attracted to me because I am withered and a barren husk.

7.01 p.m.
I'm toxic. I'm emitting man-repellent rays.

7.02 p.m.
Right. Pah! I cannot allow emotional matters to influence my professional career. I am a professional producer and I will simply multitask and compartmentalize my brain even if I have slept with, then been rejected by, the love of…and anyway I do not care about men anymore. Simply my work.

7.03 p.m.
Being a woman in her late thirties with no kids is the hardest time for a woman. It's a biological kink which I'm sure will be sorted out in years to come. But for now, it's just torture, the clock ticking louder and louder, men sensing the panic and running for the hills, the sense of time running out—and even if you met someone NOW there still wouldn't be time for the relationship to run its course and a baby to happen in the natural run of things.

7.05 p.m.
Babies: yuk. I am a top professional woman. Every woman has her
needs,
which I simply fulfil with adult liaisons, almost French in their elegance.

M
ONDAY 26
J
UNE

6 p.m.
Sit Up Britain
studios.
“Get over it,” said Miranda. She was sitting in the studio, surrounded by cameras and giant screens, looking immaculate as usual in the presenter's chair, while I controlled the WHOLE THING from the glass studio control gallery above, talking to her through her earpiece.

“Thirty seconds to air,” said Julian the floor manager.

“I can't believe he'd leave like that and assume I was wanting a relationship and babies,” I whispered into Miranda's feed. “I feel like such a sad act.”

“What are you
talking about
?” said Miranda, as the soundman shoved the mike up her shirt.

“TEN, nine, EIGHT, seven,” Julian the floor manager began.

“This is
Sit Up Britain,
not Victorian Britain,” said Miranda. “You hooked up with your ex. So what?”

Gaah! Miranda, unbeknownst to herself, was looming up on the screens all over the studio and indeed the country. “And anyway, fucking your ex doesn't count.”

“Sorry, missed that cue, yes, we are live,” said Julian the floor manager.

“BONG,” went the headline theme, urgent scuttling news music in the background, implying that
Sit Up Britain
minions were scouring for news, antlike, all over the hot spots of the world, when in fact everyone was just arseing around talking about sex in the office.

“Binge drinking!” chirped Miranda, slightly panicked, then clicking into her crisp newsreader voice. “A serious threat to our young girls, or just good old-fashioned fun?”

BONG. A clip flashed up of drunken girls falling out of a pub.

“Do you think it's because I'm of a certain age?” I whispered into Miranda's earpiece.

“No, it's because he's an emotional retard!” said Miranda, flashing up on the nation's screens again. “And now Sir Anthony Hopkins…”

“…extends his ever-extending range,” I—thinking on my feet—said into her feed.

“…extends his ever-extending range,” said Miranda, over a shot of an empty-looking chair where Anthony Hopkins was supposed to be for his “Hello!” shot.

“…through the full range of actoring emotions,” I finished for her desperately.

“…through the FULL RANGE of actoring emotions,” Miranda said into the camera.

BONG.

“And finally: What makes men gay? A new finding points to the womb environment.”

“What makes fuckwits fuckwits, more like,” said Miranda, leaning back in her chair, thinking the clip had started when it hadn't, quite.

“Bridget! Miranda!” Richard Finch—my longtime boss—burst into the control room. “I've told you not to talk between the effing bongs. This is a total fucking shambles, and where's Anthony Hopkins?”

I panicked. “Shit! Where is he? Where's Anthony Hopkins?” The news clip was ending and there was no Anthony Hopkins.

“Get Anthony Hopkins in the chair,” I rasped into Julian the floor manager's feed.

“And now, fresh from location, our next guest…” said Miranda, brightly.

“Spread, Miranda, spread,” I hissed.

I spotted Anthony Hopkins, grey-haired in a suit, wandering distractedly round the studio.

“Julian, he's there, camera left, I mean right, whatever, behind the chair.”

“Knight of the realm…” continued Miranda.

“Get him in the chair. Get Anthony effing Hopkins in the chair now!” I said, like an angry alpha female whose taxi has taken her on a route she doesn't care for.

“National treasure,” Miranda was ad-libbing wildly. “Oscar-honoured, flesh-eating…”

The floor manager was rushing Anthony Hopkins into the chair, the soundman miking him up as they went.

“National treasure I cannot stress enough times, actor, time-honoured, Sir Anthony…”

It wasn't Anthony Hopkins.

“Hopkins! Sir Anthony!” Miranda said, brightly, even though it clearly wasn't. “Has Hannibal Lecter dogged you throughout your career?”

“Actually, I'm here to talk about the possible gay gene in the womb environment,” said the man, as Sir Anthony Hopkins loomed up behind Miranda, doing his Hannibal Lecter flesh-eating face.

Afterwards, just as Miranda flopped down next to me in the control room, saying, “Jesus, who do you have to screw to get a mojito round here?” Richard Finch threw open the door, gave one of his looks and said, “Bridget! Miranda! This is Peri Campos, our new network controller.” He gestured to a high-heeled woman behind him. “And these are the systems analysis team who have been observing our show today.” A group of people shuffled into the small control room.

“As they will for the next four weeks, looking for where our staffing cuts can most effectively be made,” finished Peri Campos, who was very young, wearing some sort of designer bondage outfit, and surrounded by youths sporting beards and man-buns. “Pruning,” she continued. “I love that word. It kind of brings a rush of blood to my teeth.”

7 p.m.
Sit Up Britain
loos.
I am going to be fired and replaced by young people in man-buns.

7.03 p.m.
It was my last sexual experience ever. It was a pity shag.

7.04 p.m.
I am like those teachers we had at school who were just permanently single and wore thick white powder and red lipstick and were called “Miss” something or other and seemed like ancient alien creatures. Now I have become just like them and…Oh, goody! Telephone!

7.10 p.m.
Was Tom. “So what time you coming to this Archer-Biro Prize thing.”

Mind started whirring.

“Bridget? BRIDGET?”

“I cannot go,” I said in an eerie, sepulchral voice. “To the Archer-Biro Prize.”

“Oh, for fuck's sakes, darling. You can't still be maundering on about Mark Darcy. You're a radiant superpower sex goddess, and he's an uptight serial-bigamist bore with a poker up his arse. We'll see you in the Skybar at 7.30. Get your freak on, bitch.”

8 p.m. Bankside Ballroom, South London.
As we hurried up the stairs into the event, Shazzer was in full fuckwittage auto-rant.

“Bastaaaaaaaaards!”

There was a brief altercation with the black-clad twenty-somethings controlling the list. Shazzer had to explain that there was no question of Tom being excluded for not being on the list, it was clearly Archer-Biro HOMOPHOBIA, which would NOT play out well on social media, etc., etc.

The twenty-somethings, terrified, waved us through, and Shazzer continued her rant as we took on the next set of stairs.

“How dare he shag you at a christening and then just DISAPPEAR? He's an emotionally constipated, wanton, drunken…”

“Insecurely attached,” added Tom, who is now (try not to laugh) a psychotherapist.

“Self-righteous fuckwitted bastard!” continued Shazzer loudly, as we burst into the room to find Le Tout Literary London gathered, holding their wine and little plastic cups full of unidentifiable food. The nominee authoresses, from a wide range of nations, were lined up on the stage: here a batik headdress, there a Guatemalan robe, there a full burka.

“Shhh!” The back row of literati turned around, appalled, as the chairwoman, dressed in an Oscar-like glittering gown, took the microphone.

“Ladies and—not to be forgotten—gentlemen!”

She paused for a—frankly faint—ripple of amusement. “Welcome to the Archer-Biro Prize for Women's Fiction: now in its fifteenth glorious year. The Archer-Biro Prize was conceived broadly, but quintessentially, for the eradication of ‘chick lit.' ”

“I'm just too old,” I muttered.

“For the promotion of the serious, empowered…”

I leaned in to Shazzer. “No one will ever sleep with me again, ever, ever, ever.”

“The valid, strong.”

“Last ever sexual experience my arse,” Shazzer said.

“The intuitive, female imperative…”

“We'll have you laid before the night's out,” said Miranda.

“Will you girls be QUIET,” hissed Jung Chang, who was hogging the bar.

“Fuck, sorry,” I muttered, then felt a hand brush across my bum. I froze, then looked round to see the retreating back of a familiar figure making his way through the crowd.

“And now, to present the award, I'd like to welcome TV personality, former chairman of Pergamon Press, and—a little bird tells me—nascent NOVELIST! Daniel Cleaver!”

Gaaaaaaaah!

“What's he doing here?” said Tom. “I thought he was in Transylvania with Princess Disney of Bimboland.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Archer Biro,” Daniel began, looking toned and glowing, like a successful politician who's just had a facial. “It is a tremendously arousing honour to be standing amongst such an array of radiant lady finalists: almost like wandering into the Alternative Miss World Competition.”

I flinched on his behalf, waiting for roars of outrage, but instead there was a ripple of amusement.

“Oh, isn't he a hoot,” said Pat Barker, turning and wrinkling her nose amusedly.

“I'm actually just waiting for the swimwear segment,” Daniel continued.

There were roars of laughter.

“Obviously, it has taken me rather longer to learn to pronounce our esteemed finalists' names than to read their actual works of rare genius. The result, which I hold in this gilded Ryman's envelope, was, apparently, an extremely close shave—something, of course, never to be undertaken by the ladies assembled before me.”

The strong, female literary voices were now beside themselves with mirth.

“And now, with trembling hands, and with thanks to Trinity College, Cambridge, for a perfunctory grounding in Proto-Indo European, I pronounce the winner to be…”

He opened the envelope with a huge amount of fuss, “Yes, it's like trying to extract a condom from its packaging, and actually— Oh! My darlings! My dearest readers and finalists! It's a draw!—between Omaguli Qulawe for
The Sound of Timeless Tears
and Angela Binks for
The Soundless Tears of Time.
”

As soon as the speeches were over, Daniel was swamped by a sea of gorgeous young publicists and I dived off to the Ladies' to recover my composure.

“Don't even start with that line of thought,” said Tom, as I excused myself from the table. “Give it a few more years and all the power is with the women. Fuckwittage becomes a luxury you can't afford when your hair's falling out and your stomach's hanging over your waistband.”

Had total meltdown in the Ladies', thinking that I looked a hundred years old, and started plastering myself with makeup, at which Tom put his head round the door and said, “Stop right there, darling, or you'll come out looking like Barbara Cartland.” Eventually I emerged from the Ladies' into the hall and came face-to-face with Daniel.

“Jones, you gorgeous creature,” he cried, delighted. “You look younger and more attractive than when I last saw you five years ago. No, seriously, Jones, I don't know whether to marry you or adopt you.”

“Daniel!” said Julian Barnes, approaching with his thin-lipped smile.

“Julian! Have you met my young niece, Bridget Jones?”

9 p.m.
In loos again, touching up own youthful beauty with more blusher. Blurry good party. Thing about Daniel is he's really is very charming and I really don't feel old anymore.

Which was, in a way, what I
think
the entire Archer-Biro Prize was saying one ought
not
to allow oneself to feel because of a man.

“Go for it, girl,” said Tom, handing me a drink as I emerged from the loos again. “Get back on that horse.”