The Edge of Reason

by Helen Fielding

  Hurrah! Was Mark Darcy.

  “How are you?” he said considerately, given that, thanks to me, it turned out, he’d been at the police station for seven hours. “I’d have called but they wouldn’t tell me where you were till they’d cleared me.”

  Tried to be cheerful but ended up telling him in a whisper that it was a bit of a squash at Shazzer’s.

  “Well, the offer’s still open to come and stay with me,” he said off-handedly. “Plenty of bedrooms.”

  Wished he wouldn’t keep rubbing it in so much that he didn’t want to sleep with me. Seems to be turning into pashmina scenario and know from Shazzer and Simon how impossible that is to get out of once you start because at the merest hint of sex everyone starts panicking about “spoiling the friendship.”

  Just then, Jude yawned and turned over, dislodging a pile of shoe boxes with her foot, which crashed to the ground spilling beads, earrings, makeup and a cup of coffee into my handbag. I took a big breath.

  “Thanks,” I whispered into the phone. “I’d love to come.”

  11:45 p.m. Mark Darcy’s house. Oh dear. Is not going very well. Am just lying alone in strange white room with nothing in it except white bed, white blind and worrying white chair which is twice as high as it should be. Is scary here: great big empty palace with not even any food in house. Cannot seem to find or do anything without colossal mental effort as every light switch, toilet flush, etc. disguised as something else. Also is freezing cold in manner of fridge.

  Strange, twilight day, drifting in and out of sleep. Keep finding self going along as normal then hitting Sleepy Pocket, almost like when airplanes plunge down fifty feet as if from nowhere. Cannot decide if it is still jet lag or just trying to escape from everything. Mark had to go into work today, even though Sunday, because of missing whole day on Friday. Shaz and Jude came round about four with the Pride and Prejudice video but could not face watching lake scene after Colin Firth debacle so we just talked and read magazines. Then Jude and Shaz started looking round the house, giggling. I fell asleep and when I woke up they’d gone.

  Mark came home about nine with a takeaway for us both. Had high hopes for romantic reconciliation but was concentrating so hard on not giving the impression that I wanted to sleep with him, or in any way think staying at his house is anything other than police-type legal arrangement, that we ended up being all stiff and formal with each other in manner of doctor and patient.

  Wish he would come in now. Is very frustrating being so close to him, and wanting to touch him. Maybe I should say something. But it seems too scary a can of worms to open, because if I tell him how I feel, and he doesn’t want to get back together, it will just be hideously humiliating, given that we’re living together. Also is middle of night.

  Oh my God, though, maybe Mark did do it. Maybe he’s going to come into the room and just, like, shoot me, and then there’ll be blood all over the virgin white room in manner of virgin’s blood except am not virgin. Just bloody celibate.

  Must not think like that. Of course he didn’t. At least have got panic button. Is so awful not being able to sleep and Mark downstairs, naked probably. Mmmm. Mmm. Wish could go downstairs and, like, ravish him. Have not had sex for . . . v. difficult sum.

  Maybe he will come up! Will hear footsteps on stairs, door will open softly and he will come and sit on the bed—naked!—and . . . oh God, am so frustrated.

  If only could be like Mum and just have confidence in self and not worry what anyone else is thinking, but that is very hard when you know that someone else is thinking about you. They’re thinking how to kill you.

  MONDAY 8 SEPTEMBER

  123 lbs. (serious crisis now), no. of death threateners captured by police 0 (non-v.g.), no. of seconds since had sex 15,033,600 (cataclysmic crisis).

  1:30 p.m. Mark Darcy’s kitchen. Have just eaten huge lump of cheese for no reason. Will check calories.

  Oh fuck. One hundred calories an ounce. So pack is eight oz. and had already eaten a bit—maybe two oz.—and little bit left, so have eaten five hundred calories in thirty seconds. Oh well, might as well eat the rest of it as if to draw a line under whole sorry episode.

  Think may be forced to accept truth of doctors saying diets don’t work because your body just thinks it’s being starved, and the minute it so much as sees any food again it gorges like a Fergie. Awake every morning now to find fat in bizarre and horrifying new places. Would not be in least surprised to find pizza dough–like strand of fat suspended between ear and shoulder or curving out at the side of one knee, rippling slightly in the wind like an elephant’s ear.

  Is still awkward and unresolved with Mark. When I went down this morning he’d already gone to work (not surprising as was lunchtime) but he had left a note saying to “make myself at home” and ask anyone I want to round. Like who? Everyone is at work. It’s so quiet here. Am scared.

  1:45 p.m. Look, it’s all fine. Definitely. Realize have no job, no money, no boyfriend, flat with hole in which cannot go to, and am living with man I love in bizarre, platonic housekeeper-style capacity in giant fridge and someone wants to kill me, but this, surely, is temporary state.

  2 p.m. Really want my mum.

  2:15 p.m. Have rung police and asked them to take me to Debenhams.

  Later. Mum was fantastic. Well, sort of. Eventually.

  She turned up ten minutes late in top-to-toe cerise, hair all bouncy and coiffed with about fifteen John Lewis carrier bags.

  “You’ll never guess what, darling,” she was saying as she sat down, dismaying the other shoppers with the carrier-bag spread.

  “What?” I said shakily, gripping my coffee cup with both hands.

  “Geoffrey’s told Una he’s one of these ‘homos,’ though actually he’s not, darling, he’s a ‘bi,’ otherwise they’d never have had Guy and Alison. Anyway, Una says she isn’t the least bit bothered now he’s come out with it. Gillian Robertson up at Saffron Waldhurst was married to one for years and it was a very good marriage. Mind you, in the end they had to stop because he was hanging round these hamburger vans in lay-bys and Norman Middleton’s wife died—you know, who was head of the governors at the boys’ school? So in the end, Gillian . . . Oh, Bridget, Bridget. What’s the matter?”

  Once she realized how upset I was she turned freakishly kind, led me out of the coffee shop, leaving the bags with the waiter, got a great mass of tissues out of her handbag, took us out to the back staircase, sat us down, and told me to tell her all about it.

  For once in her life she actually listened. When I’d finished she put her arms round me like a mum and gave me a big hug, engulfing me in a cloud of strangely comforting Givenchy III. “You’ve been very brave, darling,” she whispered. “I’m proud of you.”

  It felt so good. Eventually, she straightened up and dusted her hands.

  “Now come along. We’ve got to think what we’re going to do next. I’m going to talk to this detective chappie and sort him out. It’s ridiculous that this person’s been at large since Friday. They’ve had plenty of time to catch him. What have they been doing? Messing around? Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got a way with the police. You can stay with us if you want. But I think you should stay with Mark.”

  “But I’m hopeless with men.”

  “Nonsense, darling. Honestly, no wonder you girls haven’t got boyfriends if you’re going out pretending to be superdooper whizz kids who don’t need anybody unless he’s James Bond, then sitting at home gibbering that you’re no good with men. Oh, look at the time. Come on, we’re late for your colors!”

  Ten minutes later I was sitting in a Mark Darcy–esque white room in a white robe with a white towel on my head surrounded by Mum, a swathe of colored swatches and somebody called Mary.

  “I don’t know,” tutted Mum. “Wandering round on your own worrying about all these theories. Try it with the crushed cerise, Mary.”

  “It’s not me it’s a social trend,” I said indignantly. “Women are staying single because they
can support themselves and want to do their careers, then when they get older all the men think they’re desperate retreads with sell-by dates and just want someone younger.”

  “Honestly, darling. Sell-by dates! Anyone would think you were a tub of cottage cheese in ASDA! All that silly-daft nonsense is just in films, darling.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Durrr! Sell-by date. They might pretend they want one of these bimbas but they don’t really. They want a nice friend. What about Roger what’s-his-name that left Audrey for his secretary? Of course she was thick. Six months later he was begging Audrey to come back and she wouldn’t have him!”

  “But . . .”

  “Samantha she was called. Thick as two short planks. And Jean Dawson, who used to be married to Bill—you know Dawson’s the butchers?—after Bill died she married a boy half her age and he’s devoted to her, absolutely devoted and Bill didn’t leave much of a fortune you know, because there isn’t a lot of money in meat.”

  “But if you’re a feminist, you shouldn’t need a—”

  “That’s what’s so silly about feminism, darling. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows we’re the superior race. The only problem is when they think they can sit around when they retire and not do any housework. Now look at that, Mary.”

  “I preferred the coral,” said Mary huffily.

  “Well, exactly,” I said, through a large square of aquamarine. “You don’t want to go to work and then do all the shopping if they don’t.”

  “I don’t know! You all seem to have some silly idea about getting Indiana Jones in your house loading the dishwasher. You have to train them. When I was first married Daddy went to the Bridge Club every night! Every night! And he used to smoke.”

  Blimey. Poor Dad, I thought, as Mary held a pale pink swatch up against my face in the mirror and Mum shoved a purple one in front of it.

  “Men don’t want to be bossed around,” I said. “They want you to be unavailable so they can pursue you and—”

  Mum gave a big sigh. “What was the point of Daddy and me taking you to Sunday school week after week if you don’t know what you think about things. You just stick to what you think’s right and go back to Mark and—”

  “It’s not going to work, Pam. She’s a Winter.”

  “She’s a Spring or I’m a tin of pears. I’m telling you. Now you go back to Mark’s house—”

  “But it’s awful. We’re all polite and formal and I look like a dishrag . . .”

  “Well, we’re sorting that out, darling, aren’t we, with your colors. But actually it doesn’t make any difference what you look like, does it, Mary? You just have to be real.”

  “That’s right,” beamed Mary, who was the size of a holly bush.

  “Real?” I said.

  “Oh, you know, darling, like the Velveteen Rabbit. You remember! It was your favorite book Una used to read you when Daddy and I were having that trouble with the septic tank. There now, look at that.”

  “D’you know, I think you’re right, Pam,” said Mary, standing back in marvelment. “She is a Spring.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Well, you did, Pam, and there was me with her down for a Winter! It just shows you, doesn’t it?”

  TUESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER

  2 a.m. In bed, alone, Mark Darcy’s house still. Seem to be spending entire life in entirely white rooms now. Got lost with policeman on way back from Debenhams. Was ridiculous. As said to policeman, was always taught as a child, when lost, to ask a policeman, but somehow he failed to see the humor of the situation. When eventually got back, hit another Sleepy Pocket and woke up at midnight to find house in darkness and Mark’s bedroom door closed.

  Maybe will go downstairs, make myself a cup of tea and watch TV in the kitchen. But what if Mark isn’t back and is going out with someone and brings her home and I am like the mad aunt or Mrs. Rochester drinking tea?

  Keep thinking back about what Mum said about being real and the Velveteen Rabbit book (though frankly have had enough trouble with rabbits in this particular house). My favorite book, she claims—of which I have no memory—was about how little kids get one toy that they love more than all the others, and even when its fur has been rubbed off, and it’s gone saggy with bits missing, the little child still thinks it’s the most beautiful toy in the world, and can’t bear to be parted from it.

  “That’s how it works, when people really love each other,” Mum whispered on the way out in the Debenhams lift, as if she was confessing some hideous and embarrassing secret. “But, the thing is, darling, it doesn’t happen to ones who have sharp edges, or break if they get dropped, or ones made of silly synthetic stuff that doesn’t last. You have to be brave and let the other person know who you are and what you feel.” The lift was now stopping at Bathroom Fittings and Fixtures. “Oof ! Well, that was fun, wasn’t it!” she trilled with an abrupt change of tone, as three ladies in brightly colored blazers squeezed themselves and their ninety-two carrier bags each in alongside us. “You see, I knew you were a Spring.”

  It’s all very well for her to say. If I told a man what I really feel they would run a mile. This—just to pluck an example out of the air—is what I feel at this precise moment.

  Lonely, tired, frightened, sad, confused and extremely sexually frustrated.

  Ugly, as hair sticking up in imaginative peaks and shapes and face all puffy from tiredness.

  Confused and sad as no idea if Mark still likes me or not and scared to ask.

  V. lovingful of Mark.

  Tired of going to bed on my own and trying to deal with everything on own.

  Alarmed by horrifying thought that have not had sex for fifteen million, one hundred and twenty thousand seconds.

  So. To sum up what I really am is a lonely, ugly, sad act gagging for sex. Mmmm: attractive, inviting. Oh, I don’t bloody well know what to do. Really fancy a glass of wine. Think will go downstairs. Will not have wine but probably tea. Unless there’s some open. I mean it might actually help me sleep.

  8 a.m. Crept down towards kitchen. Could not turn on lights as impossible to find designer light switches. Half hoped Mark would wake up when went past his door, but he didn’t. Carried on creeping down the stairs, then froze. Was big shadow ahead like man. Shadow moved towards me. Realized it was man—great big man—and started screaming. By time had realized man was Mark—naked!—realized he was also screaming. But screaming much more than me. Screaming in complete, abandoned terror. Screaming—in a half-asleep way—as if he had just come across the most horrifying terrible scenario of his life.

  Great, I thought: “Real.” Then this is what happens when he sees me with mad hair and no makeup.

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s Bridget.”

  For a second I thought he was going to start screaming even more, but then he sank down on the stairs, shaking uncontrollably. “Oh,” he said, trying to breathe deeply. “Oh, oh.”

  He looked so vulnerable and cuddly sitting there that could not resist sitting down next to him, putting arms round him and pulling him close to me.

  “Oh God,” he said, nestling against my pajamas. “I feel such an arse.”

  It suddenly struck me as really funny—I mean it was really funny being terrified out of your wits by your own ex-girlfriend. He started laughing too.

  “Oh Christ,” he said. “It’s not very manly, is it, getting scared at night. I thought you were the bullet man.”

  I stroked his hair, I kissed his bald patch where his fur had been loved off. And then I told him what I felt, what I really, really felt. And the miracle was, when I had finished, he told me he felt pretty much the same.

  Hand in hand like the Campbell’s Soup Kids, we made our way down to the kitchen and, with extreme difficulty, located Horlicks and milk from behind the baffling walls of stainless steel.

  “You see, the thing is,” said Mark, as we huddled round the oven, clutching our mugs trying to keep warm, “when you didn’t reply to my n
ote, I thought that was it, so I didn’t want you to feel I was putting any pressure on. I—”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “What note?”

  “The note I gave you at the poetry reading, just before I left.”

  “But it was just your dad’s ‘If’ poem.”

  Was unbelievable. Turns out when Mark knocked the blue dolphin over he wasn’t writing a will he was writing me a note.

  “It was my mother who said the only thing to do was to be honest about my feelings,” he said.

  Tribal elders—hurrah! The note was telling me that he still loved me, and he wasn’t with Rebecca, and that I should ring him that night if I felt the same and otherwise he’d never bother me with it again but just be my friend.

  “So why did you leave me and go off with her?” I said.

  “I didn’t! It was you who left me! And I didn’t even bloody realize I was supposed to be going out with Rebecca till I got to her summer house party and found myself in the same room as her.”

  “But . . . so you didn’t ever sleep with her?”

  Was really, really relieved he had not been so callous as to wear my Newcastle United underpants gift for prearranged shag with Rebecca.

  “Well.” He looked down and smirked. “That night.”

  “What?” I exploded.

  “I mean one’s only human. I was a guest. It seemed only polite.”

  I started trying to hit him around the head.

  “As Shazzer says, men have these desires eating away at them all the time,” he went on dodging the blows. “She just kept inviting me to things: dinner parties, children’s parties with barnyard animals, holidays—”

  “Yur, right. And you didn’t fancy her at all!”

  “Well, she’s a very attractive girl, it would have been odd if . . .” He stopped laughing, took hold of my hands and pulled me to him.

  “Every time,” he whispered urgently, “every time I hoped you’d be there. And that night in Gloucestershire, knowing you were fifty feet away.”

  “Two hundred yards in the servants’ quarters.”