—
7 p.m. Sit Up Britain loos. I am going to be fired and replaced by young people in man-buns.
7.03 p.m. It was my last sexual experience ever. It was a pity shag.
7.04 p.m. I am like those teachers we had at school who were just permanently single and wore thick white powder and red lipstick and were called “Miss” something or other and seemed like ancient alien creatures. Now I have become just like them and…Oh, goody! Telephone!
—
7.10 p.m. Was Tom. “So what time you coming to this Archer-Biro Prize thing.”
Mind started whirring.
“Bridget? BRIDGET?”
“I cannot go,” I said in an eerie, sepulchral voice. “To the Archer-Biro Prize.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sakes, darling. You can’t still be maundering on about Mark Darcy. You’re a radiant superpower sex goddess, and he’s an uptight serial-bigamist bore with a poker up his arse. We’ll see you in the Skybar at 7.30. Get your freak on, bitch.”
—
8 p.m. Bankside Ballroom, South London. As we hurried up the stairs into the event, Shazzer was in full fuckwittage auto-rant.
“Bastaaaaaaaaards!”
There was a brief altercation with the black-clad twenty-somethings controlling the list. Shazzer had to explain that there was no question of Tom being excluded for not being on the list, it was clearly Archer-Biro HOMOPHOBIA, which would NOT play out well on social media, etc., etc.
The twenty-somethings, terrified, waved us through, and Shazzer continued her rant as we took on the next set of stairs.
“How dare he shag you at a christening and then just DISAPPEAR? He’s an emotionally constipated, wanton, drunken…”
“Insecurely attached,” added Tom, who is now (try not to laugh) a psychotherapist.
“Self-righteous fuckwitted bastard!” continued Shazzer loudly, as we burst into the room to find Le Tout Literary London gathered, holding their wine and little plastic cups full of unidentifiable food. The nominee authoresses, from a wide range of nations, were lined up on the stage: here a batik headdress, there a Guatemalan robe, there a full burka.
“Shhh!” The back row of literati turned around, appalled, as the chairwoman, dressed in an Oscar-like glittering gown, took the microphone.
“Ladies and—not to be forgotten—gentlemen!”
She paused for a—frankly faint—ripple of amusement. “Welcome to the Archer-Biro Prize for Women’s Fiction: now in its fifteenth glorious year. The Archer-Biro Prize was conceived broadly, but quintessentially, for the eradication of ‘chick lit.’?”
“I’m just too old,” I muttered.
“For the promotion of the serious, empowered…”
I leaned in to Shazzer. “No one will ever sleep with me again, ever, ever, ever.”
“The valid, strong.”
“Last ever sexual experience my arse,” Shazzer said.
“The intuitive, female imperative…”
“We’ll have you laid before the night’s out,” said Miranda.
“Will you girls be QUIET,” hissed Jung Chang, who was hogging the bar.
“Fuck, sorry,” I muttered, then felt a hand brush across my bum. I froze, then looked round to see the retreating back of a familiar figure making his way through the crowd.