Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason

"Oh, I love that!" Rebecca. "If I were married to someone I really loved I would want to be with them constantly."

"Would you?" he said eagerly. Then he went on. "I think, as you get older, then ... the danger is if you've been single for a time, you get so locked into a network of friends - this is particularly true of women - that it hardly leaves room for a man in their lives, emotionally as much as anything because their friends and their views are their first point of reference."

"Oh, I quite agree. For me, of course I love my friends, but they're not top of my list of priorities."

You're telling me, I thought. There was silence, then Mark burst out again.

"This self-help book nonsense - all these mythical rules of conduct you're presumed to be following. And you just know every move you make is being dissected by a committee of girlfriends according to some breathtakingly arbitrary code made up of Buddhism Today, Venus and Buddha Have a Shag and the Koran. You end up feeling like some laboratory mouse with an ear on its back!"

I clutched my book, heart pounding. Surely this couldn't be how he saw what had happened with me?

But Rebecca was off on one again. "Oh, I quite agree," she gushed. "I have no time for all that stuff. If I decide I love someone then nothing will stand in my way. Nothing, Not friends, not theories. I just follow my instincts, follow my heart," she said in new simpery voice, like a flower girl-child of nature.

"I respect you for that," said Mark quietly. "A woman must know what she believes in, otherwise how can you believe in her yourself?"

"And trust her man above all else," said Rebecca in yet another voice, resonant and breath-controlled, like an affected actress doing Shakespeare.

Then there was an excruciating silence. I was dying, dying frozen to the spot, assuming they were kissing.

"Of course I said all this to Jude," Rebecca started up again. "She was so concerned about everything Bridget and Sharon had told her about not marrying Richard - he's such a great guy - and I just said, 'Jude, follow your heart."'

I gawped, looking to a passing bee for reassurance. Surely Mark couldn't be slaveringly respectful of this?

"Ye-es," he said doubtfully. "Well I'm not sure ..."

"Giles seems to be very keen on Bridget!" Rebecca burst in, obviously sensing she had veered off course.

There was a pause. Then Mark said, in an unusually high-pitched voice, "Oh really. And is ... is this reciprocated?"

"Oh, you know Bridget," said Rebecca airily. "I mean Jude says she's got all these guys after her" - Good old Jude, I started to think - "but she's so screwed up she won't - well, as you say, she can't get it together with any of them."

"Really?" Mark jumped in. "So have there been ..."

"Oh, I think - you know - but she's so bogged down in her rules of dating or whatever it is that no one's good enough."

Could not work out what was going on. Maybe Rebecca was trying to make him stop feeling guilty about me.

"Really?" said Mark again. "So she isn't ..."

"Oh, look, there's a duckling! Oh, look, a whole brood of ducklings! And there's the mother and father. Oh, what a perfect, perfect moment! Oh, let's go look!"

And off they went, and I was left, breathless, mind racing.

After lunch, it was boiling hot and everyone decamped under a tree at the edge of the lake. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene: an ancient stone bridge over the water, willows overhanging the grassy banks. Rebecca was triumphant. "Oh, this is such fund! Isn't it, everyone? Isn't it fun?"

Fat Nigel from Mark's office was fooling about heading a football to one of the hoorays, huge stomach quivering in the bright sunlight. He made a lunge, missed and plunged head-first into the water, displacing a giant wave.

"Yesss!" said Mark, laughing. "Breathtaking incompetence."

"It's lovely, isn't it?" I said vaguely to Shaz. "You expect to see lions lying down with lambs."

"Lions, Bridget?" said Mark. I started. He was sitting right at the other side of the group, looking at me through a gap in the other people, raising one eyebrow.

"I mean like in psalm whatsit," I explained.

"Right," he said. There was a familiar teasing look in his eye. "Do you think you might be thinking of the Lions of Longleat?"

Rebecca suddenly leaped to her feet. "I'm going to jump off the bridge!"

She looked round beaming expectantly. Everyone else was in shorts or little dresses, but she was naked except for a tiny sliver of Calvin Klein brown nylon.

"Why?" said Mark.

"Because attention was diverted from her for five minutes," breathed Sharon.

"We used to do it when we were little! It's heaven!"

"But the water's very low," said Mark.

It was true, there was a foot and a half of baked earth all the way round the water line.

"No, no. I'm good at this, I'm very brave."

"I really don't think you should, Rebecca," said Jude.

"I have made up my mind. I am resolute!" she twinkled archly, slipped on a pair of Prada mules, and sashayed off towards the bridge. Happily, there was a bit of mud and grass attached to her upper right-hand buttock, which greatly added to the effect. As we watched, she took off the mules, held them in her hand and climbed on to the edge of the parapet.

Mark had got to his feet, looking worriedly at the water and up at the bridge.

"Rebecca!" he said. "I really don't think ..."

"It's all right, I trust my own judgement," she said playfully, tossing her hair. Then she looked upwards, raised her arms, paused dramatically and jumped.

Everyone stared as she hit the water. The moment came when she should have reappeared. She didn't. Mark started towards the lake just as she broke the surface screaming.

He ploughed off towards her as did the other two boys. I reached in my bag for my mobile.

They pulled her to the shallows and eventually, after much writhing and crying, Rebecca came limping to shore, supported between Mark and Nigel. it was clear that nothing too terrible could have happened.

I got up and handed her my towel. "Shall I dial 999?" I said as a sort of joke.

"Yes ... yes."

Everyone gathered round staring at the injured hostess's foot. She could move her toes, daintily and professionally painted in Rouge Noir, so that was a blessing.

In the end I got the number of her doctor, took the out-of-surgery hours number from the answerphone, dialled it and handed the phone to Rebecca.

She spoke at length to the doctor, moving her foot according to his instructions and making a great range of noises, but in the end it was agreed there was no breakage, not really a sprain, just a slight jar.

"Where's Benwick?" said Nigel, as he dried himself and helped himself to a big slug of chilled white wine.

"Yes, where is Giles?" said Louise Barton-Foster. "I haven't seen him all morning."

"I'll go and see," I said, grateful to get away from the hellish sight of Mark rubbing Rebecca's delicate ankle.

It was nice to get into the cool of the entrance hall with its sweeping staircase. There was a line of statues on marble plinths, oriental rugs on the flagstone floor, and another of the giant garish crests above the door. I stood for a moment, relishing the peace. "Giles?" I said and my voice echoed round and round. "Giles?"

There was no reply. I had no idea where his room was, so set off up the magnificent staircase.

"Giles!" I peeked into one of the rooms and saw a gigantic carved-oak four-poster bed. The whole room was red and it looked out over the scene with the lake. The red dress Rebecca had been wearing at dinner was hanging over the mirror. I looked at the bed and felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. The Newcastle United boxer shorts I bought Mark for Valentine's Day were neatly folded on the bedspread.