Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason

6 p.m. Result! Result! An hour ago the guard came in and hustled me out of the cell. Fantastic to get out and away from the stink. Was taken to a small interview room with a wood-effect Formica table, a grey metal filing cabinet and a copy of a Japanese gay porn magazine, which the guard hurriedly removed as a short, distinguished middle-aged Thai man entered and introduced himself as Dudwani.

He turned out to be Drug Squad and a pretty hard nut. Good old, Charlie.

I started on the details of the story, the flights Jed had arrived on and probably left on, the bag, the description of Jed.

"So surely you can trace him from this?" I concluded. "There must be his fingerprints on the bag."

"Oh, we know where he is," he said dismissively, "And he has no fingerprints." leuw. No fingerprints. Like having no nipples or something.

"So why haven't you captured him?" "He is in Dubai," he said dispassionately. Suddenly I felt really quite annoyed.

"Oh, he's in Dubai, is he?" I said. "And you know all about him. And you know he did it. And you know I didn't do it and he made it look as though I did and I didn't. But you go home to your lovely satй sticks and wife and family in the evening and I'm stuck here for the rest of my childbearing years for something I didn't do just because you can't be bothered to get someone to confess to something I didn't do."

He looked at me in consternation.

"Why don't you get him to confess?" I said.

"He is in Dubai."

"Well, get somebody else to confess, then."

"Miss Jones, in Thailand, we... "

"Someone must have seen him break into the hut or broke in for him. Someone must have sewn the drugs into the lining. It was done with a sewing machine. Go investigate it like you're supposed to do."

"We are doing everything we can," he said coldly. "Our government takes any breach of the drug codes very seriously."

"And my government takes the protection of its citizens very seriously," I said, thinking for a moment of Tony Blair and imagining him striding in and coshing the Thai official on the head.

The Thai man cleared his throat to speak. "We ..."

"And I am a journalist," I interrupted him. "On one of Great Britain's top television current affairs programmes," I said, trying to fight back a vision of Richard Finch going 'I'm thinking Harriet Harman, I'm thinking black underwear, I'm thinking. . .'

"They are planning a vigorous campaign on my behalf." Mental cut to Richard Finch: 'Oh, Bridget droopy bikini hasn't come back from her holiday, has she? Snogging on the beach, forgot to get the plane.'

"I have connections in the highest ranks of government and I think, given the current climate" - I paused to give him a meaningful stare, I mean the current climate's always something, isn't it? - "it would look very bad indeed in our media if I were imprisoned in these frankly appalling conditions for a crime I plainly and by your own admission did not commit, while the police force here are failing to enforce their own laws with their own people and properly investigate the crime."

Gathering my sarong around me with tremendous dignity, I sat back and gave him a cool stare.

The official shuffled in his seat, looked at his papers. Then he looked up, pen poised.

"Miss Jones, can we go back to the moment at which you realized your hut had been broken into?"

Hah!

8st, cigarettes 2 (but at hideous price), fantasies involving Mark Darcy/Colin Firth/Prince William bursting in saying: 'In the name of God and England, release myfuture wife!': constant.

Worrying two days with nothing. No word, no visits, just constant requests to perform Madonna songs. Repeated reading of "If" only means of keeping nerve. Then this morning Charlie appeared - in a new mood! Extremely earnest, top level and overconfident, with another kit containing cream cheese sandwiches that - given earlier flight of fantasy about in-jail impregnation - found self not really wanting to eat.

"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'

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: