'But I don t want to come out in shocking pinks and bottle greens, 'I said, through clenched teeth.
'Well you see darling, Mavis is Winter. And I'm Winter, but you might be Summer like Una and then you'll get your pastels. You can't tell till they get the towel on your head.'
'Mum, I'm not going to Color Me Beautiful,' I hissed, desperately.
'Bridget, I'm not listening to any more of this. Auntie Una was just saying the other day: if you'd had something a bit more bright and cheerful on at the turkey curry buffet Mark Darcy might have shown a bit more interest. Nobody wants a girlfriend who wanders round looking like someone from Auschwitz, darling.' Thought better of boasting to her about having a boyfriend despite being dressed from head to toe in slurry but prospect of Daniel and self becoming hot topic for discussion precipitating relentless stream of feedback folk-wisdom from Mum dissuaded me. Eventually got her to shut up about Color Me Beautiful by telling her I would think about it.
Tuesday 17 May
9st 2 (hooray!), cigarettes 7 (v.g.), alcohol units 6 (so v.g – v. pure).
Daniel is still being gorgeous. How could everyone have been so wrong about him? Head is full of moony fantasies about living in flats with him and running along beaches together with tiny offspring in manner of Calvin Klein advert, being trendy Smug Married instead of sheepish Singleton. Just off to meet Magda.
11 p.m. Hmmm. Thought-provoking supper with Magda, who is v. depressed about Jeremy. The night of the burglar alarm and screaming row in my street was a result of a remark from Sloaney Woney, who claimed she had seen Jeremy with a girl at the Harbour Club who sounded suspiciously like the witch I saw him with all those weeks ago. After that, Magda asked me at point blank range if I'd heard or seen anything so I told her about the witch in the Whistles suit.
Turned out Jeremy admitted there'd been a flirtation and he'd been very attracted to this girl. They hadn't slept together, he alleged. But Magda was really fed up.
'You should make the most of being single while it lasts, Bridge,' she said. 'Once you've got kids and you've given up your job you're in an incredibly vulnerable position. I know Jeremy thinks my life is just one big holiday, but basically it's extremely hard work looking after a toddler and a baby all day, and it doesn't stop. When Jeremy comes home at the end of the day he wants to put his feet up and be nurtured and, as I imagine all the time now, fantasize about girls in leotards at the Harbour Club.
'I had a proper job before. I know for a fact it's much more fan going out to work, getting all dressed up, flirting in the office and having nice lunches than going to the bloody supermarket and picking Harry up from playgroup. But there's always this aggrieved air that I'm some sort of ghastly Harvey Nichols-obsessed lady who lunches while he earns all the money.'
She's so beautiful, Magda. I watched her toying with her champagne glass despondently and wondered what the answer is for we girls. Talk about grass is always bloody greener. The number of times I've slumped, depressed, thinking how useless I am and that I spend every Saturday night getting blind drunk and moaning to Jude and Shazzer or Tom about not having a boyfriend; I struggle to make ends meet and am ridiculed as an unmarried freak, whereas Magda lives in a big house with eight different kinds of pasta in jars, and gets to go shopping all day. And yet here she is so beaten, miserable and unconfident and telling me I'm lucky . . .
'Ooh, by the way, she said, brightening, talking of Harvey Nicks, I got the most wonderful Joseph shift dress in there today – red, two buttons at one side at the neck, very nicely cut, ?280. God, I so much wish I was like you, Bridge, and could just have an affair. Or have bubble bath, for two hours on Sunday morning. Or stay out all night with no questions asked. Don't suppose you fancy coming shopping tomorrow morning, do you?'
'Er. Well, I've got to go to work,' I said.
'Oh,' said Magda, looking momentarily surprised. You know,' she went on, toying with her champagne, 'Once you get the feeling that there's a woman your husband prefers to you, it becomes rather miserable being at home, imagining all the versions of that type of woman he might run into out in the world. You do feel rather powerless.'
I thought about my Mum. 'You could seize power,' I said, 'in a bloodless coup. Go back to work. Take a lover. Bring Jeremy up short.'
'Not with two children under three,' she said resignedly.
'I think I've made my bed, I'll just have to lie in it now.'
Oh God. As Tom never tires of telling me, in a sepulchral voice, laying his hand on my arm and staring into my eyes with an alarming look, 'Only Women Bleed.'
Friday 19 May
8st 12 1/2(have lost 3lb 8oz literally overnight – must have eaten food which uses up more calories to eat it than it gives off e.g. v. chewy Lettuce), alcohol units 4 (modest), cigarettes 21 (bad), Instants 4 (not v.g.).
4.30 p.m. Just when Perpetua was breathing down my neck so she didn't end up late for her weekend in Gloucestershire at the Trehearnes' the phone rang.
'Hello, darling!' My mother. 'Guess what? I've got the most marvellous opportunity for you.'
'What?' I muttered sulkily.
'You're going to be on television,' she gushed as I crashed my head on to the desk.
'I'm coming round with the crew at ten o'clock tomorrow. Oh, darling, aren't you thrilled?'
'Mother. If you're coming round to my flat with a television crew, I won't be in it.'
'Oh, but you must,' she said icily.
'No,' I said. But then vanity began to get the better of me. 'Why, anyway? What?'
'Oh, darling,' she cooed. 'They're wanting someone younger for me to interview on "Suddenly Single": someone pre-menopausal and Suddenly Single who can talk about, well, you know, darling, the pressures of impending childlessness, and so on.'
'I'm not pre-menopausal, Mother!' I exploded. 'And I'm not Suddenly Single either. I'm suddenly part of a couple.'
'Oh, don't be silly, darling,' she hissed. I could hear office noises in the background.
'I've got a boyfriend.'
'Never you mind, I said, suddenly glancing over my shoulder at Perpetua, who was smirking.
'Oh, please, darling. I've told them I've found someone.
'No.'
'Oh, pleeeeeease. I've never had a career all my life and now I'm in the autumn of my days and I need something for myself,' she gabbled, as if reading from a cue card.
'Someone I know might see. Anyway, won't they notice I'm your daughter?'
There was a pause. I could hear her talking to someone in the background. Then she came back and said, 'We could blot out your face.'
'What? Put a bag over it?' Thanks a lot.
'Silhouette, darling, silhouette. Oh, please, Bridget. Remember, I gave you the gift of life. Where would you be without me? Nowhere. Nothing. A dead egg. A piece of space, darling.'
The thing is I've always, secretly, rather fancied being on television.
Saturday 20 May
9st 3 (why? Why? from where?), alcohol units 7 (Saturday), cigarettes 17 (positively restrained, considering), number of correct lottery numbers 0 (but v. distracted by filming).
The crew had trodden a couple of wine glasses into the carpet before they'd been in the house thirty seconds, but I'm not too fussed about that sort of thing. It was when one of them staggered in shouting, 'Mind your backs,' carrying an enormous light with flaps on it, then bellowed, 'Trevor, where do you want this brute?' overbalanced, crashed the light through the glass door of the kitchen cupboard and knocked an open bottle of extra virgin olive oil over on to my River Cafe cookbook that I realized what I'd done.
Three hours after they arrived, filming had still not begun and they were still boshing around saying, 'Can I just cheat you this way a bit, love?' By the time we finally got going, with Mother and I sitting opposite each other in semidarkness, it was nearly half past one.
'And tell me,' she was saying 'in a caring, understanding voice I'd never heard before, 'when your husband left you, did you have' – she
was almost whispering now – 'suicidal thoughts?'
I stared at her incredulously.
'I know this is painful for you. If you feel you're going to break down we can stop for a moment,' she said hopefully.
I was too livid to speak. What husband?
'I mean, it must be a terrible time, with no partner on the horizon and that biological clock ticking away,' she said, kicking me under the table. I kicked her back and she jumped and let out a little noise.
'Don't you want a child?' she said, handing me a tissue.
At this point there was a loud snort of laughter from the back of the room. I had thought it would be fine to leave Daniel asleep in the bedroom because he never wakes up tiff after lunch on Saturdays and I'd put his cigarettes on the pillow next to him.
'If Bridget had a child she'd lose it,' he guffawed. 'Pleased to meet you, Mrs Jones. Bridget, why can't you get all done up on Saturdays like your mum?'
Sunday 21 May
My mum is not speaking to either of us for humiliating her and exposing her as a fraud in front of her crew. At least she might leave us alone for a bit now. So much looking forward to the summer, anyway. Will be so lovely having a boyfriend when it is warm. We will be able to go on romantic mini-breaks. V. happy.
JUNE. Hah! Boyfriend
Saturday 3 June
8st 13, alcohol units 5, cigarettes 25, calories 600, minutes spent looking at brochures: long-haul 45, mini-break 87, 1471 calls 7 (g.).
Finding it impossible to concentrate on almost anything in the heat except fantasies about going on mini-breaks with Daniel. Head is filled with visions of us lying in glades by rivers, me in long white floaty dress, Daniel and I sitting outside ancient Cornish waterside pub sipping pints in matching striped T-shirts and watching the sun set over the sea; Daniel and I eating candlelit dinners in historic country-house-hotel courtyards then retiring to our room to shag all hot summer night.
Anyway. Daniel and I are going to a party tonight at his friend Wicksy's, then tomorrow I expect we will go to the park or out to a lovely pub in the country for lunch. It is marvellous having a boyfriend.
Sunday 4 June
9st, alcohol units 3 (g.), cigarettes 13 (g.), Minutes spent looking at brochures: long-haul 30 (g.), mini-break 52, 1471 calls 3 (g.).
7 p.m. Humph. Daniel has just gone home. Bit fed up, actually. Was really lovely hot Sunday but Daniel did not want to go out or discuss mini-breaks and insisted on spending all afternoon with the curtains drawn, watching the cricket. Also the party was quite nice last night, but at one point we went over to join Wicksy and a very pretty girl he was talking to. I did notice, as we approached, that she looked rather defensive.
'Daniel,' said Wicksy, 'have you met Vanessa?'
'No,' said Daniel, putting on his most flirtatious seductive grin and holding out his hand. 'Nice to meet you.'
'Daniel,' said Vanessa, folding her arms and looking absolutely livid, 'We've slept together.'
God, it's hot. Quite like leaning out of the window. Someone is playing a saxophone in effort to pretend we are all in a film set in New York, and can hear voices all around because everyone's windows are open, and smell cooking from restaurants. Hmm. Think would like to move to New York: though probably, come to think of it, not v. g. area for mini-breaks. Unless mini-break actually is to New York, which would be pointless if one were already in New York.
Will just ring Tom then get down to work.
8 p.m. Just going round to Tom for a quick drink. Just for half an hour.
Tuesday 6 June
9st 2, alcohol units 4, cigarettes 3 (v.g.), calories 1326, Instants 0 (excellent), 1471 calls 12 (bad), hours spent asleep 15 (bad, but not self's fault as heatwave).
Managed to persuade Perpetua to let me stay at home to work. Certain she only agreed because she wants to sunbathe too. Mmmm. Got lovely new mini-break brochure: 'Pride of Britain: Leading Country House Hotels of the British Isles'. Marvellous. Going through all pages one by one imagining Daniel and me being alternately sexual and romantic in all the bedrooms and dining rooms.
11 a.m. Right: am going to, concentrate now.
11.25 a.m. Hmmm, got a bit of a scratchy nail.
11.35 a.m. God. I just started having paranoid fantasy for no reason about Daniel having an affair with someone else and thinking up dignified but cutting remarks to make him sorry. Now why should that be? Have I sensed with a woman's intuition that he is having an affair?
The trouble with trying to go out with people when you get older is that everything becomes so loaded. When you are partnerless in your thirties, the mild bore of not being in a relationship – no sex, not having anyone to hang out with on Sundays, going home from parties on your own all the time – gets infused with the paranoid notion that the reason you are not in a relationship is your age, you have had your last ever relationship and sexual experience ever, and it is all your fault for being too wild or wilful to settle down in the first bloom of youth.
You completely forget the fact that when you were twenty-two and you didn't have boyfriend or meet anyone you remotely fancied for twenty-three months you just thought it was a bit of a drag. The whole thing builds up out of all proportion, so finding a relationship seems a dazzling, almost insurmountable goal, and when you do start going out with someone it cannot possibly live up to expectations.
Is it that? Or is it that there is something wrong with me being with Daniel? Is Daniel having an affair?
11.50 a.m. Hmmm. Nail really is scratchy. Actually, if don't do something about it I'll start picking at it and next thing I'll have no fingernail left. Right, I'd better go and find an emery board. Come to think of it, this nail varnish generally is looking a bit scrotty. I really need to take it all off and start again. Might as well do it now while I think about it.
Noon. It is such a bloody bore when the weather is so hot and one's soi-disant boyfriend refuses to go anywhere nice with you. Feel he thinks I am trying to trap him into a mini-break; as if it were not a mini-break but marriage, three kids and cleaning out the toilet in house full of stripped pine in Stoke Newington. I think this is turning into a psychological crisis. I'm going to call Tom (can always do the catalogue stuff for Perpetua this evening).
12.30 p.m. Hmmm. Tom says if you go mini-breaking with somebody you are having a relationship with you spend the whole time worrying about how the relationship is going, so it is better just to go with a friend.
Apart from sex, I say. Apart from sex, he agrees. I'm going to meet Tom tonight with brochures to plan fantasy, or phantom mini-break. So I must work really hard this afternoon.
12.40 p.m. These shorts and T-shirt are too uncomfortable in this heat. I'm going to change into a long floaty dress.
Oh dear, my pants show through this dress now. I'd better put some flesh-coloured ones on in case someone comes to the door. Now, my Gossard Glossies ones would be perfect. I wonder where they are.
12.45 p.m. In fact think might put the Glossies– bra on to match if I can find it.
12.55 p.m. That's better.
1 p.m. Lunchtime! At last a bit of time off.
2 p.m. OK, so this afternoon I am really going to work and get everything done before the evening, then can go out. V. sleepy, though. It's so hot. Maybe I'll just close my eyes for five minutes. Catnaps are said to be an excellent way of reviving oneself. Used to excellent effect by Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. Good idea. Maybe I'll lie down on the bed.
7.30 p.m. Oh, Bloody Hell.
Friday 9 June
9st 2, alcohol units 7, cigarettes 22, calories 2145, minutes spent inspecting face for wrinkles 230.
9 a.m. Hurrah! Night out with girls tonight.
7 p.m. Oh no. Turns out Rebecca is coming. An evening with Rebecca is like swimming in sea with jellyfish: all will be going along perfectly pleasantly then suddenly you get painful lashing, destroying confidence at stroke. Trouble is, Rebecca's stings are aimed so subtly at one's Achilles' heels, like Gulf War missiles
going 'Fzzzzzz whoossssh' through Baghdad hotel corridors, that never see them coming. Sharon says am not twenty-four any more and should be mature enough to deal with Rebecca. She is right.
Midnight. Argor es wororrible. Am olanpassit. Face collapsin.
Saturday 10 June
Ugh. Woke up this morning feeling happy (still drunk from last night), then suddenly remembered horror of how yesterday's girls' night had turned out. After first bottle of Chardonnay was just about to broach subject of constant mini-break frustration when Rebecca suddenly said, 'How's Magda?'
'Fine,' I replied.
'She's incredibly attractive, isn't she?'
'Mmm,' I said.
'And she's amazingly young-looking – I mean she could easily pass for twenty-four or twenty-five. You were at school together, weren't you, Bridget? Was she three or four years below you?'
'She's six months older,' I said, feeling the first twinges of horror.
'Really?' said Rebecca, then left a long, embarrassed pause. 'Well, Magda's lucky. She's got really good skin.'
I felt the blood draining from my brain as the horrible truth of what Rebecca was saying hit me.
'I mean, she doesn't smile as much as you do. That's probably why she hasn't got so many lines.'
I grasped the table for support, trying to get my breath. I am ageing prematurely, I realized. Like a time-release film of a plum turning into a prune.
'How's your diet going, Rebecca?, said Shazzer.