“What are you talking about?” said Miranda, as the soundman shoved the mike up her shirt.
“TEN, nine, EIGHT, seven,” Julian the floor manager began.
“This is Sit Up Britain, not Victorian Britain,” said Miranda. “You hooked up with your ex. So what?”
Gaah! Miranda, unbeknownst to herself, was looming up on the screens all over the studio and indeed the country. “And anyway, fucking your ex doesn’t count.”
“Sorry, missed that cue, yes, we are live,” said Julian the floor manager.
“BONG,” went the headline theme, urgent scuttling news music in the background, implying that Sit Up Britain minions were scouring for news, antlike, all over the hot spots of the world, when in fact everyone was just arseing around talking about sex in the office.
“Binge drinking!” chirped Miranda, slightly panicked, then clicking into her crisp newsreader voice. “A serious threat to our young girls, or just good old-fashioned fun?”
BONG. A clip flashed up of drunken girls falling out of a pub.
“Do you think it’s because I’m of a certain age?” I whispered into Miranda’s earpiece.
“No, it’s because he’s an emotional retard!” said Miranda, flashing up on the nation’s screens again. “And now Sir Anthony Hopkins…”
“…extends his ever-extending range,” I—thinking on my feet—said into her feed.
“…extends his ever-extending range,” said Miranda, over a shot of an empty-looking chair where Anthony Hopkins was supposed to be for his “Hello!” shot.
“…through the full range of actoring emotions,” I finished for her desperately.
“…through the FULL RANGE of actoring emotions,” Miranda said into the camera.
BONG.
“And finally: What makes men gay? A new finding points to the womb environment.”
“What makes fuckwits fuckwits, more like,” said Miranda, leaning back in her chair, thinking the clip had started when it hadn’t, quite.
“Bridget! Miranda!” Richard Finch—my longtime boss—burst into the control room. “I’ve told you not to talk between the effing bongs. This is a total fucking shambles, and where’s Anthony Hopkins?”
I panicked. “Shit! Where is he? Where’s Anthony Hopkins?” The news clip was ending and there was no Anthony Hopkins.
“Get Anthony Hopkins in the chair,” I rasped into Julian the floor manager’s feed.
“And now, fresh from location, our next guest…” said Miranda, brightly.
“Spread, Miranda, spread,” I hissed.
I spotted Anthony Hopkins, grey-haired in a suit, wandering distractedly round the studio.
“Julian, he’s there, camera left, I mean right, whatever, behind the chair.”
“Knight of the realm…” continued Miranda.
“Get him in the chair. Get Anthony effing Hopkins in the chair now!” I said, like an angry alpha female whose taxi has taken her on a route she doesn’t care for.
“National treasure,” Miranda was ad-libbing wildly. “Oscar-honoured, flesh-eating…”
The floor manager was rushing Anthony Hopkins into the chair, the soundman miking him up as they went.
“National treasure I cannot stress enough times, actor, time-honoured, Sir Anthony…”
It wasn’t Anthony Hopkins.
“Hopkins! Sir Anthony!” Miranda said, brightly, even though it clearly wasn’t. “Has Hannibal Lecter dogged you throughout your career?”
“Actually, I’m here to talk about the possible gay gene in the womb environment,” said the man, as Sir Anthony Hopkins loomed up behind Miranda, doing his Hannibal Lecter flesh-eating face.
—
Afterwards, just as Miranda flopped down next to me in the control room, saying, “Jesus, who do you have to screw to get a mojito round here?” Richard Finch threw open the door, gave one of his looks and said, “Bridget! Miranda! This is Peri Campos, our new network controller.” He gestured to a high-heeled woman behind him. “And these are the systems analysis team who have been observing our show today.” A group of people shuffled into the small control room.
“As they will for the next four weeks, looking for where our staffing cuts can most effectively be made,” finished Peri Campos, who was very young, wearing some sort of designer bondage outfit, and surrounded by youths sporting beards and man-buns. “Pruning,” she continued. “I love that word. It kind of brings a rush of blood to my teeth.”
—
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.
“And now, to present the award, I’d like to welcome TV personality, former chairman of Pergamon Press, and—a little bird tells me—nascent NOVELIST! Daniel Cleaver!”
Gaaaaaaaah!
“What’s he doing
here?” said Tom. “I thought he was in Transylvania with Princess Disney of Bimboland.”
—
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Archer Biro,” Daniel began, looking toned and glowing, like a successful politician who’s just had a facial. “It is a tremendously arousing honour to be standing amongst such an array of radiant lady finalists: almost like wandering into the Alternative Miss World Competition.”
I flinched on his behalf, waiting for roars of outrage, but instead there was a ripple of amusement.
“Oh, isn’t he a hoot,” said Pat Barker, turning and wrinkling her nose amusedly.
“I’m actually just waiting for the swimwear segment,” Daniel continued.
There were roars of laughter.
“Obviously, it has taken me rather longer to learn to pronounce our esteemed finalists’ names than to read their actual works of rare genius. The result, which I hold in this gilded Ryman’s envelope, was, apparently, an extremely close shave—something, of course, never to be undertaken by the ladies assembled before me.”
The strong, female literary voices were now beside themselves with mirth.
“And now, with trembling hands, and with thanks to Trinity College, Cambridge, for a perfunctory grounding in Proto-Indo European, I pronounce the winner to be…”
He opened the envelope with a huge amount of fuss, “Yes, it’s like trying to extract a condom from its packaging, and actually— Oh! My darlings! My dearest readers and finalists! It’s a draw!—between Omaguli Qulawe for The Sound of Timeless Tears and Angela Binks for The Soundless Tears of Time.”
—
As soon as the speeches were over, Daniel was swamped by a sea of gorgeous young publicists and I dived off to the Ladies’ to recover my composure.
“Don’t even start with that line of thought,” said Tom, as I excused myself from the table. “Give it a few more years and all the power is with the women. Fuckwittage becomes a luxury you can’t afford when your hair’s falling out and your stomach’s hanging over your waistband.”
Had total meltdown in the Ladies’, thinking that I looked a hundred years old, and started plastering myself with makeup, at which Tom put his head round the door and said, “Stop right there, darling, or you’ll come out looking like Barbara Cartland.” Eventually I emerged from the Ladies’ into the hall and came face-to-face with Daniel.
“Jones, you gorgeous creature,” he cried, delighted. “You look younger and more attractive than when I last saw you five years ago. No, seriously, Jones, I don’t know whether to marry you or adopt you.”
“Daniel!” said Julian Barnes, approaching with his thin-lipped smile.
“Julian! Have you met my young niece, Bridget Jones?”
—
9 p.m. In loos again, touching up own youthful beauty with more blusher. Blurry good party. Thing about Daniel is he’s really is very charming and I really don’t feel old anymore.
Which was, in a way, what I think the entire Archer-Biro Prize was saying one ought not to allow oneself to feel because of a man.
“Go for it, girl,” said Tom, handing me a drink as I emerged from the loos again. “Get back on that horse.”
—
10 p.m. Daniel and I were stumbling, wine-filled, in the flow of drunken attendees pouring out of the venue.
“So what happened to the princess?” I said.
“Oh, over, over. Shame, really. I think I would ultimately have made rather an effective king: cruel, but beloved.”
“Oh dear. What went wrong?”
“Perfection blunted the horn, Jones. Every night, the same glossy hair splayed on the pillow. The same exquisite features frozen in ecstasy. It was as if the very sexual act had been digitally performance-captured. You, Jones, in contrast, are like that mysterious, lumpy parcel that arrives on a Christmas morning, odd, a little misshapen but…”
“…one you always want to get inside. Well, thank you, Daniel. Lovely to catch up! I’ll be getting a cab now.”
“I meant it as a compliment, Jones. Besides, firstly, there are no cabs; and, secondly, if there were, you would be competing for them with five hundred other giants of the literary stage, all of them with full beards and moustaches.”
I was trying to call a minicab, but the voicemail was saying, “All our customer service agents are currently busy, as we are currently experiencing unusually long wait times for this location.”
“Look,” said Daniel, “my flat is three minutes away. Let me arrange you a ride home from there. Least I can do.”
I watched as Annie Proulx and Pat Barker snapped up the last remaining cab, Jung Chan bounding in behind them.
—
10.30 p.m. Daniel’s flat. I stood in Daniel’s familiar, designer shag-pad, overlooking the Thames. All the car companies were still “currently experiencing unexpected delays.”
“Seen Darcy since he returned?” said Daniel, holding out a glass of champagne. “In emotional ignominy and failure? Hardly surprising for a man who looks in the mirror every morning and is startled by a complete stranger. Did he weep after sex? Or before? Or was it during? I forget.”
“Right, Daniel, that’s enough,” I said indignantly. “I have not come into your flat to be treated to a litany of very unpositive bad karmic vibes about somebody who—”
Suddenly Daniel kissed me on the lips. Oh God, he was such a great kisser.
“No, no, we mustn’t,” I said weakly.
“Yes, yes, we must. You know the one thing people most regret when they’re about to die? Not that they didn’t save the world, or rise to the pinnacle of their career, but that they didn’t have more sex.”
TUESDAY 27 JUNE
8 p.m. My flat. Staring psychopathically at phone. Still no word from either of them. Is this going to go on for the rest of my life? Am I going to be getting drunk on sherry with Mark and Daniel over dominoes in the old people’s home, then getting furious because they’ve shagged me and haven’t asked me to play Scrabble?
8.05 p.m. Cannot believe I am still behaving like this after sex after all these years—as if I have sat an exam and am waiting for my results. Am going to call Shazzer.
8.15 p.m. “Doesn’t count with exes,” decreed Shaz.
“That’s exactly what Miranda said! Why?”
“Because you’ve already fucked up the relationship.”
“So I already know I’ve failed?”
8.30 p.m. I am going to give up men. I eschew them.
FOUR
PERIMENOPAUSE
THREE MONTHS LATER
SUNDAY 17 SEPTEMBER
10 p.m. My flat. Everything is terrible. I mean, I just can’t believe that this is…Oh, goody! Doorbell!
—
11 p.m. Was Shazzer, Tom and Miranda, bursting into the flat, completely plastered.
“Darling! You’re alive!” said Tom.
“What’s going the fuck on?” enquired Shaz.
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t answered calls, texts, emails anything all weekend. You’re in total techno-purdah.”
“What is she googling?”
I leapt at the laptop and wrestled it from their hands.
“Perimenopause! She’s been googling perimenopause for seven hours. She’s signed up to hotflush.com.”
“For some women perimenopause can begin as early as thirty-five,” I gabbled. “In years to come all women will automatically freeze their eggs, build their careers, microwave them, and Bob’s your uncle, but…”
“Why do you think you’re perimenopausal?”
I stared at them, embarrassed.
“Have your periods become irregular?” said Shazzer.
I nodded, almost in tears. “Gone, and I’m getting middle-age spread. Look, I’ve had to buy jeans a size bigger.”
I showed them my stomach. But instead of looking sympathetic they started exchanging glances.
“Er, Bridget,” began Tom. “Just, um, a thought. Perhaps a random thought, but…” br />
“You have done a fucking pregnancy test, right?” said Shazzer.
I reeled. How could she be so cruel?
“I told you—I’m barren,” I said. “I can’t be pregnant because I’m perimenopausal, so I can’t have children anymore.”
Miranda looked as though she was trying not to laugh. “You know, the whole ‘doesn’t count with exes thing’ in the summer? Mark and Daniel? Did you use condoms?”
This was unbearable.
“Yes!” I said, starting to feel quite cross now. “Of course I used condoms.” I picked up my handbag and held out the packet. “These condoms.”
The packet was passed between them as if it was a piece of evidence from CSI Miami.
“Bridget,” said Shazzer. “These are eco-dolphin-friendly condoms and they’re two years out of date.”
“Well, so?” I said. “I mean, sell-by dates are just there to sell more products, aren’t they? They’re not real.”
“The whole point of the dolphin-friendliness is that they dissolve over time,” said Miranda.
“Look,” said Shazzer, standing up and putting on her coat, “never fucking mind the fucking dolphins. Let’s get the fuck to the late-night chemist.”
—
As we drove through the streets to the late-night chemist I felt like I was driving through the graveyard of my fertile years—there the tree where Daniel threw my knickers after the Pergamon Press Christmas party, there the corner where Mark and I had our first kiss in the snow, there the doorstep where Mark Darcy first said, “I love you, just as you are.”
—
Back in the flat, Shazzer was banging on the bathroom door.
“It takes two minutes, OK?” I said.
“What if she’s pregnant with both of them? Like twins?” I heard Tom whisper loudly.
“You can’t,” hissed Miranda drunkenly. “The first sperm blocks the second, or something.”
“What about when someone has one black twin and one white twin?”
“That’s different eggs but the same sperm.”
—
This was not how I had imagined this moment would be. I thought I would be with the square-jawed love of my life in a renovated farmhouse in the Cotswolds with poured concrete floors and shaggy rugs, possibly interior-designed by Jade Jagger.