Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries (Bridget Jones 4)
Page 25
“It’s just, I was so upset after the christening when you said you didn’t want to get back together and use up any more of my fertile years…”
“I’m so very sorry. Believe me, I’ve been wretched about it, and torn as to whether I should contact you. I allowed myself to be swayed by Jeremy. He caught me in the hallway of the hotel, when I went out for breakfast, and said it was very wrong of me to be messing around with you at this point in your life unless I was absolutely certain that I could be constant and be a husband to you. At that point, so raw from the divorce, I didn’t feel that, morally, responsibly, I should…”
I closed my eyes. Why couldn’t I learn not to be so insecure, not to flee at the first hint of rejection? To understand that there might be more to it than me being too old or too fat or silly?
“I felt inadequate,” he said, “unequal to the task, but now…”
“It’s just I was so hurt.”
“I am so very sorry, Bridget.”
“I just felt so old, you see, that I…”
“But no, I felt so old. What did you do?”
“Is that an elm tree?”
“Bridget.”
“I slept with Daniel Cleaver.”
“The same DAY?”
“No, no: a few days later. I felt as if my sexual days were over, and he was saying I looked so young he didn’t know whether to marry me or adopt me, and the friends were saying ‘Get back on that horse’ and…”
“You used protection with, with…both parties?”
Mark was opening and closing the stainless-steel cabinets.
“Yes, but they were…eco-condoms. It turned out they were past their sell-by date and they dissolve because of the dolphins.”
He opened another immaculate stainless-steel door and a huge pile of mess fell out—papers, photographs, old shirts, pencils, leaflets. He tried to stuff it all back in. He shut the door on it firmly. I saw his shoulders stiffen and he turned back to me.
“Yes, no, I can quite see how all that would happen. There’s no necessity to explain.”
He opened another cupboard, found a bottle of Scotch and started pouring himself a glass.
“Can you find out? I mean technically the paternity, who the…the…father is?” he said, gulping down the Scotch.
“Not without risking the baby.”
“But surely…”
“I know. But I’m not going to risk it. Giant needle thing. Horrible.”
He started pacing, in his agitated way: “Right, right, of course. I see now. That would explain why, when we did take the occasional chance…”
Then he turned to me: composed, steely.
“I expect you’ll be wanting to get an early night.”
“Mark. Don’t. She could be our baby. There’s a fifty per cent chance, at least.”
“It’s kind of you to say.”
“It just takes a moment, an impulse, one bad decision.”
“Yes, I know. I see it every day of my professional life: tragic. Life turns on a sixpence. But I don’t want that in my personal life, I’m afraid.”