Bridget Jones's Baby (6 page)

S
UNDAY 8
O
CTOBER

Noon. The Electric Bar, Portobello Road.
“You do have to tell them, Bridge,” said Miranda.

I nodded, sucking diet tonic through a straw. Even though we were sitting in the Electric, my urge to drink alcohol had suddenly disappeared. The very thought of it made me feel strangely acidic and queasy almost as if I had a hangover, which is odd when you think about it.

“Bridget!”

“What?” I said, jumping.

“You have to tell them: the fathers.”

“Oh yes, no, I do,” I said. “I will. Shall we get some more chips? Do you want to feel my bump?”

They all somewhat wearily and perfunctorily patted my bump.

“Start with Daniel,” said Tom. “To practice.”

“Text him now,” said Miranda.

“She can't just text him out of the blue.”

“Yes, I can. I can do what I like. I've got a baby to look after.”

I picked up the phone, bold as you please, and texted:

Cleaver, Jones here. I want to talk to you. Can I see you this week?

He texted back immediately:

Daniel Cleaver

Rather out of the blue, Jones, but why the hell not? Be delighted to see you. Friday night? I shall pick you up and take you out to dinner in my new car.

Blimey. Is it that easy? Have I been sitting here being so obsessed with making sure people think I don't fancy them, in case they think I'm needy, that they actually think I don't fancy them?

F
RIDAY 13
O
CTOBER

7 p.m. Daniel's car, South London.
“Like the car, do you, Jones?”

As Daniel and I zoomed across Waterloo Bridge, I was desperately trying to find a moment to bring up the baby before we got to the restaurant, lest the whole thing caused a public scene, but Daniel was completely obsessed with his new Mercedes.

“It seems like it's purring like a kitten, but put your foot down and whooomph!”

Daniel suddenly accelerated, causing an alarming lurch in my stomach.

“Do you like the pale grey interiors, Jones? I was going to go for black, or even a rather luscious blood red, but I thought this was delicate and actually rather pretty.”

Daniel had chosen Nobu restaurant on Park Lane, which was the sort of place where one might easily run into Posh and Becks or indeed Brad and Angelina (in which case I could have settled the argument once and for all with Mum about whether or not Maddox was how Angelina “got” Brad Pitt).

Sadly, there were no visible celebrities. It was rather, I assume, like going on Safari and finding there were no lions or tigers. There was, however, an unmistakable scent of fish in the air.

As the waiter led us to the table, Daniel still hadn't paused for breath long enough for me to bring up, well, anything, really. He had now moved on from his new car to his new novel,
The Poetics of Time.

“Conceptually, it's
Time's Arrow
in reverse. The characters believe time is moving backwards, but it's actually moving forwards.”

“But wouldn't that just mean time is moving in the direction it normally does move in?” I said.

“It's a conceptual novel, Jones. It's existential.”

What was the matter with him? Normally Daniel's only interest was getting you to tell him what knickers you used to wear at school.

“Yes, but still,” I said doggedly, as the waiters brought us the menus, “wouldn't it be a bit obvious, that it wasn't?”

The menu was all fish, different kinds of fish: sushi fish, tempura fish, fish that had been spoon-fed on sake for hundreds of years. I felt the baby thrashing in a frenzy of fish outrage.

“Wasn't what, Jones?”

“Going backwards. I mean, if time was going backwards, you'd notice straightaway. Cars would be going backwards. Fish would be swimming backwards,” I said, feeling a lurch in my stomach.

“Fish?”

Through my new, pregnancy-induced passivity, I let Daniel order the food and carry on about his backwards-though-not-backwards book. It was all very odd. Daniel seemed to have developed some sort of urge to be taken seriously. Maybe it was to do with the advancing years. The car too! I was having a baby and Daniel was having a cliché.

“You see, this is an alternate conceptual universe, Jones,” continued Daniel. “There are no fish in
The Poetics of Time.
”

“Well! That's something to be grateful for!” I said, brightly. As the waiter placed the food—all fish—in front of us, I felt I really had to get away from
The Poetics of Time
and on to the meat of the matter.

“It's a new reality which makes one question one's very…”

“Right, right, it sounds very…Look, Daniel, there's something I need to…”

“I know, I know, I know, I know,” he said, and paused for dramatic effect. Then he switched into the more typical Daniel seducer mode, leaning towards me and looking deep into my eyes, with an air of flimsy sincerity.

“I was appalling, Jones. There should have been phone calls, sobbing gratitude for our explosive night. There should have been floral tributes, trinkets, chocolates, delicately embossed with our two names, entwined on little hearts. But I've been in
total
writing lockdown hell: editing, galleys, the launch. You can't imagine the creative weight of having an entire novel in one's head and…”

“Excuse me.”

“Yes, Jones?”

“Could you shut up? You're talking bollox.”

“Ah, you're right, Jones. Right as ever. Remind me what knickers you wore at school?”

I suddenly retched.

“Everything all right?”

“I'm not sure I can manage the fish. Do you think I could order a baked potato?”

“Ah, well, the thing is, you see, Nobu, being a Japanese restaurant, does not make a forte out of baked potatoes, jam roly-poly, pork pies, that sort of thing. You've just ordered a lovely Pink Miso Trout, which has been marinated in seaweed and fed on sake for four hundred years. Eat it up, there's a good girl.”

I had to concentrate so hard on keeping the food down that by the time the doorman was handing me back into Daniel's new car, with it's new-leather smell, I still hadn't brought up the fact that the baby, who was now wrestling furiously with a Miso Trout inside me, was even there.

“Lovely evening,” murmured Daniel, clicking something on the dashboard and revving the car with a roar.

“Daniel, there's something I have to…”

The Miso Trout was suddenly rushing upwards towards my throat.

“Dnl stp the crr,” I tried to say, putting my hand over my mouth as it filled with sick.

“Didn't quite catch that, Jones.”

But it was too late.

“Christ alive, Jones, what's going on? This is a nightmare. This is hell. Are you the Exorcist?” a melting-down Daniel cried, as sick spurted out from behind my hand all over his pale grey interior.

11 p.m. My flat.
Little sweetheart, I'm so sorry about all this. I'll make it up to you, I promise. You just stay safe in there and leave it all to me. I'm going to show you the best time…I think I'd better call your granddad.

S
ATURDAY 14
O
CTOBER

Dad's club, London.
It was so lovely to see Dad. I told him everything and he just looked at me with those kind, wise eyes and gave me a big hug. We were sitting in the library. There were old books, maps, globes; a sooty coal fire, and leather armchairs whose tattiness went so far beyond the distressed as to be practically psychotic.

“I feel like a crack whore, or one of those women on
Jerry Springer
who's slept with her own grandson,” I said. “Do you want to feel my bump?”