Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries (Bridget Jones 4)

“You mean tell Mum?” I said, horrified.

“Well, no, maybe not your mum just yet. But with Mark and Daniel, just tell the truth and see where it takes you.”

SUNDAY 15 OCTOBER

2 p.m. My flat. Sitting on the floor, hands trembling, I dialled Daniel’s number, feeling the six collective eyes of Tom, Miranda and Shazzer boring into me.

“Yeees, Jones?” said Daniel into the phone. “Is my ear about to be sprayed with…”

“Daniel, I’m sixteen weeks pregnant,” I blurted.

The line went dead.

“He hung up on me!”

“Fuckwit, t

otal, total fucking fuckwit from hell with a tail.”

“How can any human fuckwit do that?” I said, fuming. “That’s it. I’m through with bloody men. They’re irresponsible; self-indulgent…Does anyone want to feel my bump?”

“You have to find some way of externalizing these angry thoughts and feelings,” said Tom in his creepy therapist’s voice and patting the bump nervously, as if the baby was going to jump out and be sick on him. “Perhaps by writing them down and burning them?”

“OK,” I said, marching over to the kitchen table and grabbing a Post-it pad and a box of matches.

“No!” yelled Shazzer. “No fires! Use the phone.”

“Okeedokeee.”

I typed into the phone. “Daniel, you are a selfish, shallow…”

“Give it to me, give it to me,” slurred Shazzer, grabbing the phone. She typed “fuckwitted, crap writer” and then pressed send.

“We were supposed to BURN IT,” I said in horror.

“What? The phone?”

“She was supposed to express the angry thoughts and feelings, then send them into the universe,” said Tom. “Not text them to the object of the angry thoughts and…Here, have we run out of wine?”

“Oh, God. And he might be the father of my unborn child.”

“Iss fine,” said Tom, in a drunk yet soothing voice. “Do him good to hear it.”

“Tom, shut up. Bridget, you’ve done your practicing. Now text Mark,” said Miranda.

—

So I did. I simply texted: “I would like to see you.” And, to my utter astonishment, he wanted to meet me immediately.

SUNDAY 15 OCTOBER

I stood on the doorstep of Mark’s tall white-stuccoed house in Holland Park, as I’d stood before, before so many earth-shattering events, sad, happy, sexual, emotional, triumphant, disastrous, dramatic. The light was on upstairs in his office: he was working as usual. What would he say? Would he reject me as a drunken slag? Might he be pleased? But then…

“Bridget!” said the intercom. “Are you actually still there or have you rung the doorbell and run away?”

“I’m here,” I said.

The door opened a few seconds later. Mark was in sexy work mode: suit trousers, shirt a little undone, sleeves rolled up and the familiar watch on his wrist.