Magda squeezed my hand and whispered, “Take no notice of Woney—she spent so much time on her feet she got varicose veins in her labia,” at which Shazzer smirked.
“It’s a girl!” said Mufti. “It’s a girl! Look how low-slung she’s carrying.”
“No, it’s not, it’s a boy. Look how bloated her boobs are.”
“A boy? A boy? She’s completely lopsided,” said Mufti. “Completely lopsided.”
“OK, stop,” said Magda. “We’re here to help Bridget, not torture her. Guess what? We’ve found you a nanny: Eastern European. She’s got a degree in neuroscience from the University of Vilnius.”
“Have you found out who the father is?” said Woney. “You can’t have a baby without a father.”
“Look,” growled Tom, breathing alcohol fumes. “It’s positively archaic to be living with two heterosexual parents of opposite sexes.”
“Wouldn’t want to saddle a baby with that sort of social stigma,” said Shaz. Miranda was ignoring everyone, swiping on Tinder.
“I think you lot might be the tiniest bitter,” said Mufti. “Bitter.”
“Why, because we didn’t make a materialistic grab for any solvent man in sight when we hit thirty?” said Shaz.
“No, but maybe that’s why you’re childless and single.”
“Are you the one who got varicose veins in her labia?” rasped Shazzer.
—
Whole thing erupted into a terrible shouting match. Ended up being swept away by Magda, with the new giant gift pram—a somewhat weird accessory without a baby in it—while Magda went on and on about how it was going to be fine when I got my new nanny who was a friend of her nanny, Audrona, who had a degree in Aeronautical Engineering.
A very beautiful girl, who looked like the sort of Eastern European model/princess Daniel would stand me up at a scan for, was heading towards us pushing the identical Bugaboo stroller.
“Nice pram!” I said, suddenly thinking the bonding over the overpriced baby accessory might catapult me into a new glamorous Smug Mother strata.
“Nice baby!” she said, in an accent, looking into my pram—then looked at me oddly, since there clearly was no baby.
“Still cooking!” I said, patting my bump. “But yours is adorable.”
The baby was indeed adorable—and yet oddly fa—
“Mama,” said the baby.
“Molly!” said Magda. “That’s my baby—what are you doing with my fucking baby?”
People were starting to stare as Magda struggled with the complex Bugaboo strapping arrangements to get Molly out of the pram, yelling, “You’ve stolen my baby!”
“No! Do not be cross, Mrs. Carew!” said the model/princess. “Audrona has job interview. She asked me to take Molly. I have master’s degree in Psychology and Early Childhood Development. She is fine, see?”
SUNDAY 19 NOVEMBER
2 p.m. My flat. Have spent most of day scouring newspapers for stories, which can turn into Peri Campos riddle-me-ree headline for bloody meeting tomorrow:
“They’re slimy, they’re creepily silent—and they’re lurking in your arugula—frogs!”
“They’re hexagonal, they suddenly change their form and they gouge out your eyes—umbrellas!”
—
3 p.m. This is hopeless. This is ridiculous. Ooh, text.
—
3.05 p.m. A miracle! It’s from Mark!
Mark Darcy
Bridget, I am mortified to hear that you are isolated and in distress and so sorry that I only just now got your message. Should I come now? Or would you like to visit for tea? I have something to show you.
—
3.10 p.m. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is wonderful. Flat is a bit messy. Don’t want to put him off and make him think am sluttish housewife. Better go round there. Wonder what he has to show me?—as the actress said to the bishop harrumph, harrumph.
TEN
TOTAL BREAKDOWN
SUNDAY 19 NOVEMBER
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?
MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER
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.
“Listen, Miranda,” the Minister for Families was saying earnestly, “if we want to give children the best chance in life, the right structures need to be in place: strong and secure traditional families, two confident and able parents, an ethic of responsibility instilled from a young age.”
Something inside me snapped.
“Have you actually been out there in the dating world recently?” I said into Miranda’s feed.
“Minister, have you actually been out in the dating world recently?” parroted Miranda.
“Er, well, I have been married for the last fifteen years so…”
“Exactly!” I said into the feed. “It’s brutal out there. It’s a war! Men are totally self-obsessed and bonkers. Have you any idea how HARD it is to get someone to even TEXT you after you’ve slept with them…”
“Exactly!” began Miranda. “Men are totally self-obsessed and bonkers. Have you any idea how HARD it is…”
Peri Campos grabbed my mike. “OK, wrap it up, Bridget’s gone mad. Cut to next segment!” as Miranda continued:
“…after you’ve slept with them…”
“I said WRAP IT UP.”
“And, Minister, thank you, we’re going to have to leave it there,” said Miranda smoothly. “And now!” She spun round to look fiercely into camera three. “They’re small, they’re elliptical killers, and they’re ALL OVER YOUR SHOPS.”
News footage flashed across the screen of ambulances, hospitals, people throwing up and chickens.
Miranda looked up at me from the studio chair, holding her hands out, mouthing, “Where the fuck is it?”
“Jordan!” I hissed. “The prop!”
Man-bun youth Jordan was turning out to be even worse than Julian. The news clips were on the point of ending as Jordan crawled along the floor and handed the prop to Miranda.
“EGGS!” said Miranda triumphantly, in the nick of time, and held up a small brown egg, which promptly broke in her hand and oozed over her cream suit.
“They’re, they’re fragile, they’re gooey…” I ad-libbed desperately.
“They’re fragile, they’re gooey…” parroted Miranda.
“There’s one for the Christmas reel,” I continued wildly. “Jordan. Where the fuck is the egg man?”
“There’s o
ne for the Christmas reel. Where the…” began Miranda.
“…humble egg might seem harmless, if potentially messy”—I free-associated into the feed—“new findings indicate that the threat of eggs may be…Jordan, get him in the chair, get the eggspert in the chair NOW…more serious than ever previously…OK, he’s here! Miranda, go back on script.”
I turned round to see Peri Campos’s eyes boring into me.
“You’re the one who’s elliptical and all over the shop,” she said. “You were supposed to boil the egg first. I want you in my office, after the show. Cut out of the egg interview. Boring. Drop Nigeria and go to Liz Hurley’s bikini line.”
—
7 p.m. Sit Up Britain loos. Slumped on the toilet, hand on my bump. None of this is going right. A baby is supposed to bring joy and happiness into the world, but everyone just seems to be falling apart.
7.01 p.m. Must reassure baby that everything is all right. Even though it isn’t.
7.02 p.m. It’s OK, darling, It’s OK, we’re going to be OK. I’m sorry about all this mess but you just stay safe and cosy in there and snuggle up and I’ll take care of it all and keep you safe.
7.03 p.m. Oh God. It isn’t. It really isn’t. Texts have started pinging frantically.
MIRANDA
Are we fired?
SHAZZER
Bridge, I’ve just had a blazing row with Tom. Can I talk to you?
MAGDA
Bridge—not only do I have no nanny, but I’ve just found Jeremy’s credit card bill and it’s full of hotels and Agent Provocateur. Will you call me?
MUM
Darling, just wanted to firm up about the pre-vote debate event. Will you call me?
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
Jones. Could you please call me back? If it hadn’t been for this baby business I could have defended myself. You have broken me. You owe me some support.
PERI CAMPOS
Bridget: Where the fuck are you? In my office. Now.
—
7.10 p.m. Think had better call Dad.
Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries Page 9
