Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

9.15 p.m. Kids are asleep. Wildly puffed up re meeting. Am professional woman again and going to a meeting! Am going to wear navy silk dress and get hair blow-dried in spite of Mr bloody Wallaker’s supercilious take on coiffeurs. And in spite of gnawing sense that increasing female blow-dry habit is turning women into those eighteenth (or seventeenth?) century men who only felt comfortable in public situations when wearing powdered wigs.

9.21 p.m. Oh, though is it morally wrong to get a blow-dry when I may have undetectable nit eggs at the start of their seven-day cycle?

9.25 p.m. Yes. It is morally wrong. Maybe Mabel and Billy should not go to play dates either?

9.30 p.m. Also feel should tell Roxster truth about nits, as lies are bad in a relationship. But maybe, in this case, lies better than lice?

9.35 p.m. Nits seem to be throwing up unfeasible number of modern moral dilemmas.

9.40 p.m. Gaah! Just went through entire wardrobe (i.e. pile of clothes heaped on exercise bike) plus actual wardrobes and cannot find navy silk dress. Have nothing to wear for meeting now. Nothing. How is it that have all these clothes stuffed into wardrobe and navy silk dress is only one that can actually wear for anything important?

Resolve in future, instead of spending evenings shoving grated cheese into mouth and trying to avoid glugging wine, to calmly go through all clothes, giving anything that have not worn for a year to the poor, and organize everything else into mixy-matchy ‘capsule wardrobe’ so that getting dressed becomes a calm joy instead of hysterical scramble. And then will go for twenty minutes on exercise bike. As exercise bike is not wardrobe, obviously, but exercise bike.

9.45 p.m. Though maybe it is all right to wear navy silk dress all the time in manner of Dalai Lama and his robes. If I could find it. Presumably Dalai Lama has several sets of robes, or on-call dry-cleaner, and does not leave robes in bottom of wardrobe full of outfits he bought but does not wear from Topshop, Oasis, ASOS, Zara, etc.

9.46 p.m. Or on exercise bike.

9.50 p.m. Just went up to check on children. Mabel was asleep, hair all over her face as usual, so that her head looked back to front, and clutching Saliva. Saliva is Mabel’s dolly. Billy and I both think she has mixed the name up with Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Sylvanian bunnies, but Mabel considers it to be perfect.

Kissed Billy’s hot little cheek, all snuggled in with Mario, Horsio and Puffles One and Two, at which Mabel raised her head, said, ‘Lovely weather we’re havin’,’ then lay back down again.

I watched them, touching their soft cheeks, listening to their snorty breathing – then, the fatal thought ‘If only . . .’ invaded my head without warning. ‘If only . . .’ Darkness, memories, sorrow rearing up, engulfing me like a tsunami.

10 p.m. Just rushed back downstairs to the kitchen. Worse: everything silent, forlorn, empty. ‘If only . . .’ Stoppit. Can’t afford to do this. Switch on the kettle. Don’t go over to the dark side.

10.01 p.m. Doorbell! Thank God! But who can it possibly be at this time of night?

PLENTY OF FUCKWITS

Thursday 18 April 2013 (continued)

10.45 p.m. Was Tom and Jude, both completely plastered, stumbling into the hallway giggling.

‘Can we use your laptop? We were just in Dirty Burger and—’

‘I’s trying to do PlentyofFish on my iPhone and we can’t get it to download a photo from Google so . . .’ Jude clattered down the stairs into the kitchen in her high heels and work suit, while Tom, still dark, buff, handsome and fabulously gay, kissed me extravagantly.

‘Mwah! Bridget! You’ve lost SO much weight!’

(He’s said this every time he’s seen me for the last fifteen years, even when I was nine months pregnant.)

‘’Ere, have you got any wine?’ Jude yelled upstairs from the kitchen.

Turns out Jude – who now practically runs the City, but has continued to translate her love of the financial roller coaster into her love life – was spotted yesterday on an Internet-dating site by her horrible ex: Vile Richard.

‘And yes!’ announced Tom, as we clattered down to join her. ‘Vile Fuckwit Richard, in spite of having messed this fabulous woman around in a fuckwitted, commitment-phobic manner for a HUNDRED years, then married her, then left her ten months later, has had the NERVE to send her an indignant message about being on Plentyof . . . find it, Jude . . . find it . . .’

Jude fiddled confusedly with the phone. ‘I can’t find it. Shit, he’s deleted it. Can you delete your own message once you’ve—’

‘Oh, give it to me, dear. Anyway, the point is, Vile Richard sent her this insulting message, then BLOCKED her so . . .’ Tom started laughing. ‘So . . .’

‘We’re going to make up a person on PlentyofFish,’ finished Jude.

‘PlentyofDicks, more like,’ snorted Tom.