The door burst open.
“This is the single most wonderful piece of information I have ever been given in my entire life.”
He came over and took me in his arms, and the familiar scent of him, the reassuring feel of him, washed over me.
“It’s…I feel almost as if clouds are dispersing.”
He held me away from him, looking at me with tenderness in his brown eyes.
“When one’s own childhood has been…when one has somehow…I never found it possible to believe that love could translate into a home life. That one could create a home we could bring a child into, that was somehow different”—he looked like a small boy—“different from one’s own.”
I hugged him, this time, and stroked his hair.
“And now,” he said, coming out of the embrace, with that rare smile he has, “in a moment of…unadulterated passion, the decision has been made for us. And I’m the happiest man alive.”
There was a knock on the door and Fatima, Mark’s longtime housekeeper, appeared: “Oh!” she beamed. “Mees Jones! You back? Mr. Darcy, your car is here.”
“Oh my goodness. I completely forgot. I have a Law Society dinner…”
“No, Mark, it’s fine, you already said you had a dinner.”
“But my car can…we can drop you off.”
“I’ve got my new car, that’s fine.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll meet tomorrow night?”
“Yes.”
—
7 p.m. My flat. This is unbearable. I’m pregnant, and Mark wants the baby and if I hadn’t slept with Daniel as well this would be a complete fairy tale and we would all be so happy but…Oh God. Mark and I did occasionally take chances, so maybe sleeping with Daniel is why I’m pregnant.
Bloody dolphin condoms. But then I wouldn’t have been having the baby, if I hadn’t tried to save the dolphins from swallowing undissolved condoms. So actually I should be grateful to the condoms, if only the already-dolphin-friendly baby could tell me who’s dolphin-friendly baby she is.
It’s all my fault. But Daniel is so funny and charming. It’s like they’re two halves of the perfect man, who’ll spend the rest of their lives each wanting to outdo the other one. And now it’s all enacting itself in my stomach.
7.15 p.m. Toilet really is wonderful invention. Is just amazing to have such an item in one’s home, which can so calmly, cleanly and efficiently take all the sick away. Love the lovely toilet. Is cool and solid, calm and dependable. Is fine just to lie here and keep it handy. Maybe it is not Mark I really love but the toilet. Oh, goody, telephone! Maybe Mark asking how I am! Maybe I will just tell him the whole story and he’ll forgive me.
8 p.m. Was Tom: “Bridget, am I a horrible person?”
“Tom! No! You’re a lovely person!”
Source of Horrible Person neurosis was that Tom had seen an “acquaintance” (i.e., guy he shagged once), Jesus, at the front of the gym snack bar queue, gone up to say hi, and then asked Jesus to order him a wheatgrass smoothie.
“The thing is,” Tom obsessed, “the thought of queue-jumping had—I think—crossed my mind before I decided to say hello to Jesus. So I’m one of those people who coldly, cynically, tries to make things better for themselves at the expense of others: like avoiding buying a round in the pub by going to the toilet.”
“But the key issue you’re missing, Tom,” I said—happy to escape from my own fucked-up situation for a moment, whilst simultaneously feeling a nagging certainty that sooner or later Tom was going to remember about my fucked-up situation then decide he was a horrible person anyway for forgetting to ask about it—“is that, actually, saying hello to a friend is a nice thing, and joining Jesus for a gym-time beverage is much more friendly than just abandoning him and going to the back of the queue.”
“But then I did abandon Jesus and went and drank the wheatgrass smoothie with Eduardo because he’s hotter. You see, I am a horrible person, aren’t I?”
Mind was busily trying to turn the minuscule social gay gaffe into a random act of kindness, but then Tom crashed in with: “OK. I get it. I am a horrible person. Goodbye.”
The phone rang again.
“Oh, hello, darling, I was just ringing to see what you wanted for Christmas?”—my mother. Flirted briefly with throwing the cat amongst the pigeons by asking for a Bugaboo stroller, but knew she had really called to talk about something else. “Bridget, will you come to the Queen’s visit rehearsal on the twenty-eighth? Mavis is making a huge thing about family values and, as well as making constant little digs about me not having grandchildren, she’s trying to make out that I haven’t done as much for the village as her over the years, but I have, darling, haven’t I?”
“Of course you have, Mum. Think of all the food! The gherkins!” I encouraged, starting to gag. “The scotch eggs! The raspberry pavlovas!”