Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (35 page)

The ward was a ‘locked ward’. Pressed on the green button. Eventually a lady in a burka appeared and let me in.

‘I’m here to see Daniel Cleaver.’

She didn’t seem to recognize the name, just another one on her clipboard.

‘Over there to the left. First bed behind the curtain.’

I recognized Daniel’s bag and his coat but the bed was empty. Had Daniel done a runner? I started trying to tidy up, then a strange tramp-like figure appeared in winceyette hospital pyjamas, unshaven, with wild hair and a black eye.

‘Who are you?’ he said suspiciously.

‘It’s me, Bridget!’

‘Jones!’ he said, as if a light bulb had come on in his head. Just as quickly it went out, and he stumbled over to the bed. ‘You could at least have told me you were coming. Might have cleaned up a bit.’

He lay down and closed his eyes.

‘Silly arse,’ I said.

He fumbled for my hand. He was making a very strange noise.

‘What happened? Why can’t you breathe?’

A flicker came into his eye, a glimpse of the old Daniel.

‘Well, the thing is, Jones,’ he said, pulling me over to him, ‘went on a bit of a bender, to tell you the truth. Pretty much drank through everything. I delightedly fastened upon what I took to be a bottle of crème de menthe, you know, the green stuff, drank the whole thing down.’ His face broke into the familiar rueful smirk. ‘It turned out to be Fairy Liquid.’

We both started shaking with laughter. I know it was a potentially tragic situation but it was pretty funny. But then Daniel started choking, making a wheezing noise, and bubbles started appearing out of his mouth. You could see exactly what had happened. It’s like when you run out of dishwasher tablets, and think it would be a good idea to put washing-up liquid in instead and it all froths up inside.

The nurse rushed over and sorted him out. Then he picked up the card and opened it. For a second he looked as if he was going to cry, then he shoved it back down on the table, just as a glamorous leggy blonde appeared.

‘Daniel,’ said the blonde, in a way which made me want to flick my hair at her and give her nits. ‘Look at you! You should be ashamed of yourself. It has to stop.’

She picked up the card. ‘What’s this? Is this from you?’ she said accusingly. ‘You see, this is his problem! All his bloody friends: “Dear old Daniel.” It’s just completely enabling.’

‘Best be off then,’ I said, getting up.

‘No, Jones, don’t,’ said Daniel.

‘Oh,
please
,’ snorted the girl, just as Talitha appeared carrying a basket of edible gift items, wrapped in cellophane and topped with a big bow.

‘You see? You see?’ said the glamorous girl. ‘This is exactly what I mean.’

‘And WHAT do you mean by that . . . sugar?’ said Talitha. ‘WHO exactly are you and WHAT does this have to do with you? I have known Daniel for twenty years and slept with him, on and off, for most of them . . .’

Almost burst out, ‘What??’ Was Talitha sleeping with Daniel when I was sleeping with Daniel? But then I thought, ‘What’s the point?’

I made my excuses and left, thinking, really, after a certain age, people are just going to do what they’re going to do and you’re either going to accept them as they are or you’re not. Unsure, however, if should altogether leave the children in Daniel’s charge again, at least until he’s been back to rehab, or can conclusively distinguish a fork from a hairbrush.

LET’S FACE THE MUSIC AND TEA-DANCE

Saturday 29 June 2013

Just set off for Hampstead Heath and had to come back as seemed like giant bucket of water was being emptied on our heads. Weather has been disgusting this summer. Rain, rain, rain and freezing cold, as if there is NO summer. Is completely intolerable.

Sunday 30 June 2013

Gaah! Is suddenly boiling hot. Don’t have sunblock or hats and is too hot to stay outside. How are we supposed to manage in this unbearable heat? Is completely intolerable.

Monday 1 July 2013

6 p.m.
Right! Am going to stop being so sorry for myself lest I end up accidentally drinking Fairy Liquid. The end of the school year is almost here with its absorbing matrix of plays, school trips, pyjama days, emails about presents for the teachers (including a very strict one from Perfect Nicolette about everyone sticking to chipping in for the John Lewis vouchers and not buying their own Jo Malone candles), and – generating the most unfeasible number of mass emails of all – Billy’s Summer Concert. Billy is going to play ‘I’d Do Anything’ from
Oliver!
as a solo on his bassoon. The concert has been organized by Mr Wallaker, who seems now to be including half the music department in his military-style takeover, and is to be held at sunset in the grounds of Capthorpe House, a stately home up the A11.

Presumably Mr Wallaker will be dressed as Oliver Cromwell and his ‘so nice to meet someone with a real face’ wife will have had four pints of extra filler put in her face to celebrate. Oops, back in
the knife box, Miss Sharp. Must read more of
The Little Book of Buddhism
: ‘
We do not possess our home, our children or even our own body. They are only given to us for a short time to treat with care and respect
.’

Oh, no! I still haven’t made the dentist appointment for Billy and Mabel. The longer I leave it, the more I daren’t, since clearly their teeth are now riddled with holes, they will end up like extras in
Pirates of the Caribbean
and it will be all my fault.

But at least am treating own body like a temple. Am going to Zumba.

8 p.m.
Just back. Usually love Zumba, with young, dark, long-haired Spanish couple, taking it in turns to lead ‘numbers’, flinging their hair about, stomping angrily like horses, transporting one into a world of Barcelona or possibly Basque-coast nightclubs, and firelit Gypsy encampments of undetermined national extraction.

But this week, the thrilling duo were replaced by a zingy-pingy woman with blonde fringe, a bit like Olivia Newton-John in
Grease
. Exotically sexual Zumba moves were strangely juxtaposed with gay, determined grin, as if to say, ‘Super-dooper, nothing sexual or dirty about this at all!’

On top of that, the grinning woman made us do not only hand-rolling moves, but also ‘imaginary shaking-off-water-from-wet-hands’ moves, not to mention ‘starbursts’. As whole Catalan nightclub fantasy collapsed like house of cards, looked around to realize class was peopled not by wild Gypsy youths, but a collection of women whom members of an unenlightened male-dominated patriarchal society might describe as ‘middle-aged’.

Have sinking feeling that very concept of attending Zumba may be linked to attempt to relive long-gone days of sexual possibility – as evidenced by St Oswald’s House: even there, Zumba has entirely replaced the concept of ‘tea-dancing’.

Staggered upstairs to somewhat galling sight of tall, thin-without-Zumba Chloe cradling children like Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna and reading
The Wind in the Willows
. Children looked up excitedly
for usual post-Zumba spectacle of me crawling up, red in the face, on verge of heart attack.

As soon as Chloe left, Billy and Mabel dispensed with
The Wind in the Willows
, to egg self on into hilarious game of throwing contents of laundry basket down stairs. By time had got them to sleep, cleared up overexcited vomit, etc., was so exhausted that stuffed down two giant fried turkey croquettes (cold) and a three-inch wedge of banana cake. Resolved to enrol in proper salsa or meringue class as soon as possible because, actually (airily), it is the purer form of Latin dance which interests me. Merengue, I mean. Not meringue.

GETTING ONLINE

Tuesday 2 July 2013

133lb (thank you, Zumba/tea-dancing), dating sites investigated 13, dating profiles read 87, attractive dating profiles read 0, dating profiles set up 2, number of disastrous relationships Jude has formed online 17, number of promising relationships Jude has formed online 1 (encouraging).

11 p.m.
Jude, who is STILL going out with Wildlifephotographerman, just came round after the kids were asleep, determined to make me get online.

I watched her clicking on dating sites with messianic frenzy and making lists: ‘Scuba-diver’, ‘Likes Hotel Costes’, ‘Read
A Hundred Years of Solitude
’ – yeah, right. ‘You see, you have to make notes, Bridge, otherwise you’ll mix them all up when you message them.’

‘Don’t you ever want to just, like, give up?’ I said.

‘No, or I would have ended up sucking lollipops with a faraway look in my eye.’

Realized with embarrassment I had picked up a lollipop and was sliding it in and out of my mouth.

‘The thing is, Bridge, it’s a percentages game.’

Jude, having burst through the ‘glass ceiling’ of the financial world, is, I suppose, bound to see it in these terms.

‘You can’t afford to take anything personally. You’re going to get stood up, you’re going to get eighteen-stone people whose pictures are of someone else. But with enough experience – and skill! – you’ll weed through that dross.’

We then went into a Greatest Hits medley of the online dross Jude had successfully weeded through to find Wildlifephotographerman:
Sexualhumiliationman (of course!), Marriedwithbabyman – who took Jude out, snogged her, then included her in the global text saying his wife had had a baby – and SkydiverGraphicdesignerman – who did turn out to be a graphic designer, but also, it emerged, a devout Muslim who didn’t believe in sex before marriage, but, bizarrely, also liked to spend his weekends Morris dancing.

‘And somewhere,’ Jude said, ‘somewhere out there, it’ll just take one click, and you’ll be home.’

‘But who would want a fifty-something single mother with two small children?’

‘Take a look,’ she said, signing me in for a free trial on SingleParentMix.com. ‘They’re just normal people like you and me. They’re not weirdos. I’ll put forty-nine.’

A column of photos popped up of strange men in wire glasses and striped becollared shirts hanging over the folds of their stomachs.

‘It looks like a line-up of serial killers,’ I said. ‘How can they be single fathers? Unless they’ve murdered the mothers?’

‘Yes, well, maybe that wasn’t a very good search,’ Jude said briskly. ‘How about this?’

She opened up the profile she’d made for me on OkCupid.

Actually, when I looked, there were some really quite cute ones on there. But oh, the loneliness – the profiles giving away months or maybe years of heartbreak and disappointment and insult.

Someone who’d actually picked as their username ‘Isthereanyoneout_there?’ had as their profile:

I’m a nice normal guy who just wants a nice normal woman. If your photo is from 15 years ago, then MOVE ON! If you’re fucked up, married, desperate, passive-aggressive, not a woman, shamelessly gold-digging, emotionally sadistic, superficial, self-obsessed, illiterate, just looking for quick sex, just looking to indulge in endless streams of messaging then not meet, just looking to get a date to massage your ego and stand me up because you can’t be bothered, then MOVE ON!

And then there were the profiles from married men quite openly saying they want uncomplicated sex.

‘Why don’t they just go on MarriedAffair.co.uk?’ sniffed Jude.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

8.30 a.m.
Billy’s football comic just dropped through the letter box and I took it downstairs saying, ‘Billy! Your Match.com’s arrived!’

KBO

Wednesday 3 July 2013 (continued)

133lb, negative thoughts 5 million, positive thoughts 0, bottles of Fairy Liquid drunk 0 (you see? Could be worse).

9.15 p.m.
Right. Super! Is school concert tomorrow and is going to be perfectly fine. Mabel is staying at Rebecca’s so I don’t have to worry about keeping tabs on both of them at the same time. Of course, many, many of the fathers will be away on business, or perhaps busy tapping away on MarriedAffair.co.uk! And even if Roxster was still around, he wouldn’t have come to the school concert, would he? He’d have felt ridiculous with all those people who have children and are so much older than him.

9.30 p.m.
Just looked at news online. Whole royal baby frenzy is not helping: perfect young couple of Roxster’s age, starting life, doing everything perfectly, in the perfect way and at the perfect time.

9.45 p.m.
Went up to check on Billy and Mabel.

‘Mummy,’ said Billy, ‘will Daddy know I’m doing the concert?’

‘I think so,’ I whispered.

‘Will I do it all right?’

‘Yes.’

I held his hand till he was asleep. There was a full moon again and I watched it over the rooftops. What would it be like now if I was going to the Summer Concert with Mark? He would have leaned over my shoulder the way he used to, whizzed through the mass picnic emails, deleted them and simply replied: ‘I will bring the hummus and the black bin liners.’

I would be one hundred per cent looking forward to it. It would be a one hundred per cent lovely thing. Oh, come on. Brace up. Keep Buggering On.

THE SUMMER CONCERT

Thursday 4 July 2013

We roared up through the landscaped parkland. We were late, because Billy was trying to map the route on the iPhone and we came off at the wrong junction. Clambered out to the smell of cut grass, the chestnut leaves hanging heavy and green, the light turning golden.

Staggering under the weight of the bassoon case, the rug, my handbag, the picnic basket and a second basket with Diet Cokes and oatmeal cookies that wouldn’t fit in the first basket, Billy and I headed towards the path marked: ‘
CONCERT THIS WAY
’.

We came out into the open and gasped. It looked like a painting: a gracious, wisteria-clad house, with an old stone terrace and lawns leading down to a lake. The terrace was laid out like a stage, with music stands and a grand piano, and rows of chairs below. Billy held my hand tightly as we stood wondering where to go.