Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

‘Oh, thank you!’ she said. ‘Neither are you!’ and headed up the stairs with the children, looking and being absolutely perfect.

Got downstairs to find Mum, who, if she did have a tail, had hidden it very well beneath the coat-dress, banging through all the cupboards saying, ‘Where do you put the tea strainer?’

‘I use tea bags,’ I muttered grumpily.

‘Tea bags. Durr! I mean, you might have left the phone on! It’s only responsible if you have children who can’t behave themselves. What have you got on your top? Have you been out in that dress? The trouble with flesh pink is it can wash you out, can’t it?’

I burst into tears, straight in her face.

‘Now come on, Bridget, you’ve got to pull yourself together. You’ve got to soldier on, you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . .’

I literally thought she was just never going to stop saying ‘you can’t’, but then she burst into tears too.

‘You’re not helping,’ I sobbed. ‘You just think I’m rubbish. You’re always trying to change me and think I’m doing it all wrong and make me wear different . . . COLOURS,’ I wailed.

Mum suddenly snuffled to a halt and stared at me.

‘Oh, Bridget, I’m so sorry,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

She stumbled awkwardly, knelt in front of me, put her arms around me and pulled me to her. ‘My little girl.’

It was the first time I’d actually felt Mum’s bouffe. It was crispy, almost solid. She didn’t seem to mind it being squashed as she held me close. I really liked it. I wanted her to give me a bottle of warm milk or something.

‘It was so dreadful. So dreadful what happened to Mark. I couldn’t bear to think. You’re doing so . . . Oh, Bridget. I miss Daddy. I miss him so much, so much. But you’ve . . . got to . . . you’ve got to just keep going, haven’t you? That’s half the battle.’

‘No,’ I wailed. ‘It’s just papering over the cracks.’

‘I should have . . . Daddy ALWAYS said . . . he said, “Why can’t you just let her be?” That’s my problem. I can’t let anything be. Everything has to be perfect and it . . . ISN’T!’ she wailed. ‘At least, I don’t mean you, I mean you are, you’re doing so well . . . Oh, where’ve I put my lipstick? And Pawl, you know Pawl – the pastry chef at St Oswald’s? – I thought, you know, he was always bringing me little savoury profiteroles . . . taking me into the kitchen. But he turns out to be one of these . . .’

I started laughing then. ‘Oh, Mum, I could’ve told you Pawl was gay from the moment I saw him.’

‘But there’s no such things as gay, darling. It’s just LAZINESS and—’

Billy appeared on the stairs. ‘Mummy, Chloe’s crying upstairs. Oh.’ He looked at us, puzzled. ‘Why is everybody crying?’

Just as Mum, Chloe and I were having a sort of AA-style sharing event over the kitchen table, while Billy played Xbox and Mabel trotted back and forth handing us Hellvanian Fuckoons and leaves from the garden and patting us kindly, the doorbell rang again. It was Daniel, looking desperate and holding an overnight bag.

‘Jones, my dear girl, I have been released from the rehab sin bin. I got back to the flat and I . . . Actually, I don’t want to be alone, Jones. Could I possibly come into the hellhole for a minute? Just to –’ his voice cracked – ‘be in some sort of human company which I know I’m not going to try and shag?’

‘All right,’ I said, trying to ignore the insult, given the sensitivity of the moment. ‘But you have to PROMISE you won’t try to shag Chloe.’

It was quite an odd evening, as social occasions go, but I think everyone enjoyed it. By the time Daniel had finished with her, Chloe thought she was Charlize Theron, and that Graham wasn’t fit to touch the hem of her skirt, which he isn’t, whoever he is. And Mum, as she cuddled Mabel, eating alternate chocolate buttons with her, slurping red wine and getting completely covered in all of it, was quite coming round to the idea of Kenneth Garside. ‘I mean, he’s terribly charming, is Kenneth. It’s just that he’s VERY highly sexed.’

Daniel, while saying, ‘And what on EARTH is wrong with that, Mrs Jones?’ turned out to be really, really good at the Xbox. But then he ruined the whole thing in the hallway at the end by putting his hand right up Chloe’s skirt. I mean, right up to her knickers.

PART FOUR

SUMMER OF FUN

Saturday 31 August 2013

133lb (still! Miracle), boyfriends 0, children 2 (lovely), friends loads, holidays 3 (counting mini-break), screenwriting jobs 0, possibility of screenwriting jobs (slight), days till school starts 4, major shocks 1.