"Yar. Things are starting to move," said Charlie with the heavy air of a government agent burdened with explosive M15 secrets. "Bloody good actually. We've had movements from the Foreign Office."
Trying not to think about tiny top-level turds in boxes, I said, "Did you speak to your dad?"
"Yar, yar," he said. "They know all about it."
"Has it been in the papers?" I said excitedly.
"No, no. Hush-hush. Don't want to rock the boat. Anyway. There's some mail for you. Your friends got it to Dad. Bloody attractive actually, Dad says."
I opened the big brown Foreign Office envelope, hands shaking. First was a letter from Jude and Shaz, rather carefully written almost in code, as if they thought spies might read it.
'Bridge, Don't worry, we love you. We're gonna get you out of there. Jed tracked down. Mark Darcy helping(!)'
Heart leaped. Was best news possible (apart, obviously, from ten-year jail sentence being lifted).
'Remember Inner Poise and diet Potential of jail. 192 soon. Repeat do not worry, Girls on top.
All our love, Jude and Shaz'
Looked at letter, blinking with emotion, then tore eagerly at the other envelope. Maybe from Mark?
Was written on reverse of long concertina of views of Lake Windermere and said:
'Visiting Granny in St Anne's and touring the Lakes. Weather a bit mixed but super factory shops. Daddy has bought a sheepskin gilet! Could you call Una and check that she's put the timer on?
Love, Mum'
Saturday 30 August
8st (hope), alcohol units 6 (hurrah!), cigarettes 0, calories
8,755 (hurrah!), no. of times checked bag to make sure no drugs in same 24.
6 a.m. On plane. Going home! Free! Thin! Clean! Shinyhaired! In own clean clothes! Hurrah! Have got tabloids and Marie Claire and Hello! All is marvellous.
6.30 a.m. Unaccountable plummet. Is disorientating being squashed on plane again in darkness with everyone asleep. Feel huge pressure to be euphoric but feel really freaked out. Guards came last night and called me out. Was taken to room and given clothes back, met by a different embassy official called Brian with strange shortsleeved nylon shirt and wire specs. He said there'd been a 'development' in Dubai and pressure from the highest level in the Foreign Office and they had to get me out of the country immediately before the climate changed.
Was all strange in the embassy. No one there except Brian who showed me straight to a very bare old fashioned bathroom where there was a little pile of all my things and said to have a shower and change, but be really quick.
Couldn't believe how thin I had got, but there was no hairdryer so hair was still pretty mad. Obviously not important but would have been good to look nice on return. Was starting with make-up when Brian knocked on the door saying that we really had to leave.
Was all a blur, rushed out in steamy night to car, rushing through streets full of goats and tuk-tuks and honking and people with entire families on one bicycle.
Couldn't believe cleanliness of airport. Did not have to go through normal channel but some special embassy route, everything all stamped and cleared. When got to the gate, whole area was empty, plane ready to leave with just one guy in a luminous yellow jacket waiting for us.
"Thank you," I said to Brian. "Thank Charlie for me."
"I will," he said wryly. "Or his dad anyway." Then he handed me my passport and shook my hand in really quite a respectful way such as was not at all used to even before incarceration.
"You did very well," he said. "Well done, Miss Jones."
10 a.m. Just been to sleep. Really excited about return. Have actually had spiritual epiphany. Everything is going to be different now.
New post-spiritual epiphany life resolutions:
1. Not start smoking or drinking again as have not had drink for eleven days and only two cigarettes (do not want to go into what had to do to get them). Though may just have small bottle of wine now. As obviously need to celebrate. Yes.
2. Not rely on men but on self. (Unless Mark Darcy wants to go back out with me. Oh God, hope so. Hope he realizes still love him. Hope it was him who got me out. Hope he is there at airport.)
3. Not bother about stupid things e.g. weight, mad hair, who Jude invited to wedding.
4. Not discard advice of self-help books, poems etc. but limit it to key things e.g. optimism, not freaking out, forgiving (though maybe not Fucking Jed as shall now be known).
5. Be more careful about men as are plainly - if evidence of Fucking Jed not to mention Daniel anything to go by -dangerous.
6. Not take shit from people i.e. Richard Finch, but have confidence in self-reliance.
7. Be more spiritual and stick to spiritual principles.
Goody, now can look at Hello! and tabloids.
11 a.m. Mmm. Fantastic spreads of newly rounded Diana and hairy Dodi. Humph, though. Just when I am thin she starts trend for newly roundedness. Great. Glad she is happy but not sure he is right for her somehow. Hope she is not just going out with him because he is not being a fuckwit. Understand, though, if she is.
11. 15 a.m. Does not seem to be anything in papers about me - though as Charlie said, it was all hush-hush and kept under wraps by government so as not to interfere with Thai relations, imports of peanut sauce etc.
11.30 a.m. Brown is this season's black! Just glanced through Marie Claire.
11.35 a.m. Though really should be brown is this season's grey as grey was last season's black. Yes.
11.40 a.m. V. bad disaster though, as no. of brown items in wardrobe 0, though maybe some money will come in manner of unexpected release.
11.45 a.m. Mmm. Wine delicious after so long. Really goes to head.
12.30 p.m. Yuk. Feel slightly sick after tabloid gorging. Had forgotten depressed, ashamed feeling you get afterwards like hangover - and sense of world being turned into same horrible talc over and over again where people get set up as good then turn out to be evil and bad.
Particularly enjoyed, at time, priest-turned-shagging-fuckwit story. Is always so enjoyable when other people behave badly. Feel, however, that founders of support group for victims of shagging priest (because 'women who have relationships with priests often have no one to turn to') are being rather partisan. What about others who have no one to turn to? Should surely also be support groups for women who have been victims of shagging Tory ministers, members of British national sporting teams who have slept with members of the Royal family, Roman Catholic clergy who have slept with celebrities or members of the Royal family, and celebrities who have slept with members of the public who have confessed their story to members of the Roman Catholic clergy who have then sold the story to the Sunday papers. Maybe I will sell story to Sunday papers and that is where money will come from. No, that is wrong, you see spirituality has already been infested by tabloid mentality.
Maybe will write book though. Maybe will get hero's return in England like John McCarthy and write a book called Some Other Cloud Formation or other meteorological phenomenon. Maybe will get hero's welcome with Mark, Jude, Shazzer, Tom, and parents and crowds of waiting photographers and Richard Finch grovellingly begging for exclusive interview. Had better not get too pissed. Hope am not going to go all mad. Feel like I should be met by police or counsellors or something and taken to a secret base for de-briefing. Think will have little sleep.
9 p.m. (UK time now.) Arrived at Heathrow with clouting post-flight hangover trying to purge clothes of remnants of bread and pink toothpaste fraudulently offered as airline dessert, rehearsing lines, in preparation for waiting press phalanx - 'It was a nightmare. A living nightmare. A thunderbolt out of the blue. I feel no hatred (bitterness?) for if others are warned of the dangers of one's friends sleeping with strange men, my incarceration will not have been wasted (in vain?).' Whole time, however, did not think waiting phalanx would actually be there. Passed through customs without incident and looked around excitedly for familiar faces, only to be engulfed by - well, press phalanx.
Crowd of photographers and journalists with flashguns. Mind went completely blank and could not think what to say or do except parrot 'no comment', in manner of government minister who has been caught shagging prostitute, and keep walking, pushing the trolley, thinking my legs were going to collapse under me. Then suddenly the trolley was taken away, and someone put their arm round me saying, "It's all right, Bridge, we're here, we've got you, it's all right."
It was Jude and Shazzer.
Sunday 31 August
8st 2 (Yess! Yess! Triumphant culmination of 18-year diet, though perhaps at unwarranted cost), alcohol units 4, calories 8,995 (deserved, surely), progress on hole in wall made by Gary the Builder 0.
2 a.m. My flat. So nice to be home. So nice to see Jude and Shazzer again. At airport, policeman took us through the crowd to an interview room where there were Drug Squad people and a man from the Foreign Office who started asking lots of questions.
"Look, can't this bloody well wait?" burst out Shaz indignantly after about a minute. "Can't you see the state she's in?"
Men seemed to think it was necessary to carry on but eventually became so terrified of Shazzer's growls of 'Are you men or monsters?' and threats to report them to Amnesty International that they gave us a policeman to take us back to London.
"Just be careful who you get mixed up with next time, ladies," said the Foreign Office man.
"Oh please," said Shaz, just as Jude was saying, "Oh quite right officer," and launching into a professional woman vote-of-thanks-style speech.
Back in my flat, the fridge was full of food, there were pizzas waiting to go in the oven, Milk Tray and Dairy Box, smoked salmon pinwheels, packets of Minstrels, and bottles of Chardonnay. There was a big sign on the polythene hole in the wall saying 'Welcome back, Bridget.' And a fax from Tom - who has moved in with the customs guy in San Francisco - saying:
DARLING, DRUGS ARE POWDER OF SATAN. JUST SAY NO! ASSUME YOU WILL NOW BE THINNEST EVER. GIVE UP ALL MEN IMMEDIATELY AND BECOME GAY. COME HERE AND LIVE WITH US IN CALIFORNIAN GAY SEX-SANDWICH THREESOME. HAVE BROKEN JEROME'S HEART! HAHAHAHA.
CALL ME. LOVE YOU. WELCOME BACK.
Also Jude and Shaz had cleaned all the packing mess up from the bedroom floor and put clean sheets on the bed and fresh flowers and Silk Cut on the bedside table. Love the lovely girls. And the lovely self-obsessed Tom.
They ran me a bath and brought me in a glass of champagne and I showed them my flea bites. Then I got into my pyjamas and we all sat on the bed with cigarettes, champagne and Cadbury's Milk Tray and started going through everything that had happened but think I must have just fallen asleep because now it is all dark, Jude and Shaz are not here but have left a note on my pillow saying to call them when I wake up. They are both staying at Shazzer's because Jude's flat is being done up so she and Vile Richard can live together after the wedding. Hope she has got a better builder than me. Hole in wall entirely unchanged.
10 a.m. Gaaah! Where am I? Where am I?
10.01 a.m. Strange being in bed with sheets. Nice but unreal. Oooh, have just remembered am going to be in papers. Will go fetch from shop. Will cut everything out and keep in scrapbook and show to grandchildren (if ever obtain). Hurrah!
10.30 a.m. Is unbelievable. Like dream or sick newspaper April Fool. Is unbelievable. Diana dies is just not kind of thing she would do.
11 a.m. Am going to put on telly and they will say it has been a mistake and she is back then we will see her coming out of the Harbour Club with all the photographers asking her what it was like.
11.30 a.m. Cannot believe it. Is so scary when is obvious no one in authority knows what to do.
Noon. At least Tony Blair is in control. Seemed to say what everyone was thinking instead of repeating 'grief and shock' over and over again in manner of parrot.
1.15 p.m. Seems like world has gone mad. Is no normality to come back to.
1.21 p.m. Why haven't Jude and Shaz rung?
1.22 p.m. Oh, maybe they think I am asleep. Will ring them.
1.45 p.m. Jude, me and Shazzer all agree that she was our national treasure and all feel very bad that everyone was so niggardly about her and she did not like being in England. Is like great big hand coming down from heaven saying, "If you are going to squabble about her no one is going to have her."
2 p.m. Would have to bloody happen on one day was going to be in newspapers, though. Is nothing about me, nothing.
6 p.m. Cannot believe she is dead. Keep having to look at newspaper headline again to make self believe it. Really, Princess Diana was patron saint of Singleton women because she started off like the archetypal fairy tale doing what we all thought we were supposed to do i.e. marry a handsome prince, and she was honest enough to say that life is not like that. Also it made you feel that if someone so beautiful and gorgeous could be treated like shit by stupid men and feel unloved and lonely then
it wasn't because you were rubbish if it happened to you. Also she kept re-inventing herself and sorting out her problems. She was always just trying so hard like modern women.
6.10 p.m. Hmm. Wonder what people would say about me if I died?
6.11 p.m. Nothing.
6.12 p.m. Especially if what they say about me when locked in Thai jail is anything to go by.
6.20 p.m. Have just had horrible realization. Was watching television with the sound down and tabloid front page came up that looked as though it might have had actual pictures of aftermath of the crash in. Realized was horrible part of me that actually wanted to see the pictures. Clearly would not buy said newspaper even if could but ugh! Ugh! What does this mean about me? Oh God. Am terrible
.
6.30 p.m. Just keep staring into space. Simply hadn't realized how much Princess Diana was part of consciousness. Is like Jude or Shazzer being there and full of life and giggly jokes and lip gloss then suddenly being something so grown-up and horror-filled and alien as dead.
6.45 p.m. Just saw on telly woman has been to garden centre and bought a tree and planted it for Princess Diana. Maybe could plant something in window box e.g. um, basil? Could get from Cullens.
7 p.m. Hmm. Basil does not seem right somehow.
7.05 p.m. Everyone is going to Buckingham Palace with floral tributes as if is long-standing tradition. Have people always done this? Is it something naff people do to try to get on the television like camping all night outside sales or good, real thing? Hmm. Feel want to go though.
7.10 p.m. Think going with flowers might be a bit creepy ... but thing is really did like her. Was like having someone in heart of authority who was same as you. Also all huffer-puffers criticized her re: landmines etc. but if you ask me was bloody intelligent use of mad publicity. Better than doing nothing except huffing at home.
7.15 p.m. What is point of living in capital city if cannot join in great expressions of feeling? Does not seem very English thing to do but maybe everything has changed with the changing weather and Europe and Tony Blair and it is all right to express yourself. Maybe she has changed English stuffiness.
7.25 p.m. OK, am definitely going to go to Kensington Palace. Have not got any flowers, though. Will get some from petrol station.
7.40 p.m. Petrol station has sold out. Only things like Chocolate Orange and custard left. Nice but inappropriate.
7.45 p.m. Bet she would like them, though.
7.50 P.m, Have chosen copy of Vogue, Milk Tray, one Instants and packet of Silk Cut. Not perfect but everyone will have bought flowers and know she liked Vogue.
9.30 p.m. V. glad went. Felt a bit shy walking through Kensington in case people knew where was going and that was on own, but then when think about it Princess Diana was often on own.
Inside park was v. dark and gentle with everyone just walking quietly in one direction. Was no histrionics like on news. The bottom of the wall was covered with flowers and candles in the darkness and people relighting the candles that had gone out and reading messages.
Hope that she knows now after all the times she worried about
not being good enough, look what everybody felt about her. Really all this should give a message to women who are worried about how they look and being rubbish and expecting so much of themselves just not to worry so much. Felt a bit embarrassed about the Vogue and chocolate and Instants so hid under flowers and looked at the messages, which made you think that you do not have to be a spokesman for anything to be able to express things. The best one was copied from the Bible, I think, and it said in wobbly old lady's writing: 'When I was in trouble you cared about me, when I was in danger you tried to stop it, when I was sick you visited me, when people ran away you took my hand. Whatever you did for the poorest and the smallest people I felt as if you did it for me.'
12 Strange Times
Monday 1 September
8st 2 (must make sure do not put weight back on immediately), calories 6,452.
"I knew something was wrong when I got to the gate," Shaz was saying when she and Jude came round last night. "But the airline people wouldn't tell me what had happened and insisted I got on the plane, then they wouldn't let me get off again, and the next thing we were taxiing along the runway."
"So when did you find out?" I said, polishing off my Chardonnay, at which Jude immediately held out the bottle to pour me another. Was marvellous, marvellous.
"Not till we landed," said Shaz. "It was just the most terrible flight. I was hoping you'd just missed it, but they were being really odd and sniffy with me. Then the second I got off the plane . . ."
"She got arrested!" said Jude gleefully. "Pissed as a fart."
"Oh, no," I said. "And you were hoping Jed would be there."
"That bastard," said Shaz, colouring.
Somehow thought I'd better not mention Jed again.
"He had someone behind you in the queue at Bangkok," Jude explained. "Apparently he was waiting at Heathrow for a call and immediately got on a plane to Dubai."