Mad About the Boy (Bridget Jones 3)

But I try to stand like a great tree and take the stick about Roxster – the Love that Could Not Beeeeeeee! as Tom and Arkis have dramatically dubbed it – and just be happy that, even if no one ever loves me or shags me again ever, at least I know it’s not completely out of the question.

Now, however, am trying to deal with a growing alarm about going back to school: the different homeworks which will probably be beyond my capabilities, the different days for show-and-tell and shin pads. More alarmingly, find myself looking back over all my encounters with Mr Wallaker – the tree, the snow, the Sports Day, the Botox, the concert – all his attempts at kindness to me and I feel shallow and think maybe he wasn’t just trying to make me feel stupid. Maybe he did really care. BUT HE WAS MARRIED, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, even if it was to an over-plastic-surgeried drunk lady. He had kids. What was he doing nearly kissing me, and confusing me? And I gave him an earful, and he saw me with Roxster, and he thinks I’m a condom-buying, syphilis-infected, shallow cougar and now we are going to have to face each other every day at school.

4 p.m. Just went round to Rebecca’s, who is back from the touring, and blurted out the whole confusion about Mr Wallaker, and the school concert and the Heath.

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘None of it adds up. He doesn’t add up. Have you got a photo? Any other info?’

I spooled through the phone and found a shot of the concert and Mr Wallaker accompanying Billy.

I watched as Rebecca stared at the photo, frowning slightly. She spooled through some more.

‘This is Capthorpe House, right? Where they have festivals and stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know exactly who this is. He isn’t a schoolteacher.’

I looked at her in consternation. Oh God. He was a weirdo.

‘He plays a bit of jazz piano?’

I nodded.

She went to the cupboard, slightly dislodging the plastic garden vine woven into her hair, and took out a bottle of red wine.

‘He’s called Scott. He was at college with Jake.’

‘He’s a musician?’

‘No. Yes. No.’ She looked at me. ‘That’s a hobby. He went into the SAS.’

The Special Air Service! He was James Bond! It explained everything. The ‘One, sir! Two, sir!’ Billy jumping and rolling from the tree. The gun reflex at Sports Day. Bond.

‘When did he start at the school?’

‘Last year – December?’

‘I bet it’s him. He went off to Sandhurst, then he was abroad a lot, but they kept in touch in a man-friend – i.e. not-very-often – sort of way. Jake ran into him a few months ago. He’d been in Afghanistan. Some bad shit had happened. He said he was back and “keeping it simple”.’ Rebecca suddenly laughed. ‘He thinks teaching at a London private school is “keeping it simple”? Has he seen your Quadrant Living chart?’

‘And he’s married?’

‘Not if it’s him. He’s got two boys, right, at boarding school? He was married, but not any more. She was a nightmare.’

‘Is she really plastic-surgeried . . .?’

‘Exactly. She turned into a major spender: clothes, charity luncheons, all that bollocks, total plastic-surgery queen. When he went abroad she started sleeping with her personal trainer, filed for divorce and tried to fleece him. That place Capthorpe Hall is the family pile. I think she might have tried to get back with him now she’s made herself look like the Bride of Wildenstein. I’ll ask Jake. Next time I see him.’

BACK TO SCHOOL

Friday 13 September 2013

Minutes late for school pickups 0 (but only as trying to impress Mr Wallaker), conversations with Mr Wallaker 0, seconds of eye contact with Mr Wallaker 0.

9.15 p.m. It seems Rebecca was right. And although I have not breathed a word about any of it (except, obviously, to Talitha, Jude and Tom), the news is out that Mr Wallaker is not married. Which is awful because now there is a feeding frenzy over Mr Wallaker. Everyone is trying to fix Mr Wallaker up with their single friend. Farzia did suggest trying to shove me at him, but it is pointless. Even though my heart leaps now, when I see him on the steps, Mr Wallaker does not come up and tease me any more. Mr Wallaker does not run into us on the Heath. The magic is gone. And it is all my own fault.

Mr Wallaker is in charge of more and more things at the school: sport, chess, music, ‘Pastoral Care’. He is like Russell Crowe in Gladiator – when he was a slave and organized the other slaves into an army and defeated all the Greeks or Romans. It’s like putting ants down in any situation: ants will just do what ants do. If you put someone really cool and capable down anywhere they will just be cool and capable. And

be set up with every unattached woman in sight except me.