Sunday 2 July

8st 10 (continuing good work), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 995, Instants 0: perfect.

7.45 a.m. Mum just rang. “Oh, hello, darling, guess what?”

“I’ll just take the phone in the other room. Hang on,” I said, glancing over nervously at Daniel, unplugging the phone, creeping next door and plugging it in again only to find my mother had not noticed my absence for the last two and a half minutes and was still talking.

“So what do you think, darling?”

“Um, I don’t know. I was bringing the phone into the other room like I said,” I said.

“Ah. So you didn’t hear anything?”

“No.” There was a slight pause.

“Oh, hello, darling, guess what?” Sometimes I think my mother is part of the modern world and sometimes she seems a million miles away. Like when she leaves messages on my answerphone which just say, very loudly and clearly, “Bridget Jones’s mother.”

“Hello? Oh, hello, darling, guess what?” she said, again.

“What?” I said resignedly.

“Una and Geoffrey are having a Tarts and Vicars party in the garden on the twenty-ninth of July. Don’t you think that’s fun! Tarts and Vicars! Imagine!”

I tried hard not to, fighting off a vision of Una Alconbury in thigh boots, fishnet nights and a peephole bra. For sixty-year-olds to organize such an event seemed unnatural and wrong.

“Anyway, we thought it would be super if you and” – coy, loaded pause – “Daniel, could come. We’re all dying to meet him.”

My heart sank at the thought of my relationship with Daniel being dissected in dose and intimate detail amongst the Lifeboat luncheons of Northamptonshire.

“I don’t think it’s really Daniel’s – ” Just as I said that the chair I had, for some reason, been balancing on with my knees while I leaned over the table fell over with a crash.

When I retrieved the phone my mother was still talking.

“Yes, super. Mark Darcy’s going to be there, apparently, with someone, so . . . ”

“What’s going on?” Daniel was standing in the doorway. “Who are you talking to?”

“My mother,” I said, desperately, out of the corner of my mouth.

“Give it to me,” he said, taking the phone. I like it when he is authoritative without being cross like this.

“Mrs Jones,” he said, in his most charming voice. “It’s Daniel here.”

I could practically hear her going all fluttery.

“This is very bright and early on a Sunday morning for a phone call. Yes, it is an absolutely beautiful day. What can we do for you?”

He looked at me while she chattered for a few seconds then turned back to the receiver.

“Well, that’ll be lovely. I shall put that in the diary for the twenty-ninth and look out my dog collar. Now, we’d better get back and catch up on our sleep. You take care of yourself, now. Cheerio. Yes. Cheerio,” he said firmly, and put the phone down.

“You see,” he said smugly, “a firm hand, that’s all it needs.”

a) Where were Bridget and Daniel invited to? Why didn’t Bridget want to go there?

b) Compare the style in which Bridget and Daniel speak to Mrs. Jones.

Extract 9

Saturday 23 September

9st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0 (v.v.g.), draft replies written to Mark Darcy’s invitation 14 (but at least has replaced imaginary conversations with Daniel).

10 a.m. Right. I am going to reply to Mark Darcy’s invitation and say quite clearly and firmly that I will be unable to attend. There is no reason why I should go. I am not a close friend or relation, and would have to miss both Blind Date and Casualty.

Oh God, though. It is one of those mad invitations written in the third person, as if everyone is so posh that to acknowledge directly in person that they were having a party and wondered if you would like to come would be like calling the ladies’ powder room the toilet. Seem to remember from childhood am supposed to reply in same oblique style as if I am imaginary person employed by self to reply to invitations from imaginary people employed by friends to issue invitations. What to put?

Bridget Jones regrets that she will be unable . . .

Miss Bridget Jones is distraught, that she will be unable . . .

Devastated does not do justice to the feelings of Miss Bridget Jones . . .

It is with great regret that we must announce that so great was

Miss Budget Jones’s distress at not being able to accept the

kind invitation of Mr. Mark Darcy that she has topped herself

and will therefore, more certainly than ever, now, be unable to

accept Mr. Mark Darcy’s kind . . .

Ooh: telephone.

It was Dad: “Bridget, my dear, you are coming to the horror event next Saturday, aren’t you?”

“The Darcys’ ruby wedding, you mean.”

“What else? It’s been the only thing that has distracted your mother from the question of who’s getting the mahogany ornament cabinet and nesting coffee tables since she got the Lisa Leeson interview at the beginning of August.”

“I was kind of hoping to get out of it.”

The line went quiet at the other end.

“Dad?”

There was a muffled sob. Dad was crying. I think Dad is having a nervous breakdown. Mind you, if I’d been married to Mum for thirty-nine years I’d have had a nervous breakdown, even without her running off with a Portuguese tour operator.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“Oh, it’s just . . . Sony. It’s just . . . I was hoping to get out of it too.”

“Well, why don’t you? Hurray. Let’s go to the pictures instead.”

“It’s . . . ” he broke down again. “It’s the thought of her going with that greasy beperfumed bouffant wop, and all my friends and colleagues of forty years saying ‘cheers’ to the pair of them and writing me off as history.”

“They won’t . . . ”

“Oh yes, they will. I’m determined to go, Bridget. I’m going to get on my glad rags and hold my head up high and . . . but . . . ” Sobs again.

“What?”

“I need some moral support.”