Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason

"And then on Tuesday we heard they'd got Jed."

"And Mark called on Friday and said they'd got a confession . . ."

"Then the call came out of the blue on Saturday that you were on the plane!"

"Hurrah!" we all said, clinking glasses. Was desperate to get on to subject of Mark but did not want to appear shallow and ungrateful for all the girls had done.

"So is he still going out with Rebecca?" I burst out.

"No!" said Jude. "He's not! He's not!"

"But what happened?"

"We don't really know," said Jude. "One minute it was all on, next thing Mark wasn't going to Tuscany and-" "You'll never guess who Rebecca's going out with now," interrupted Shaz.

"Who?"

"It's someone you know."

"Not Daniel?" I said, feeling an odd mixture of emotions.

"No."

"Colin Firth?"

"No."

"Phew. Tom?"

"No. Think of someone else you know quite well. Married."

"My dad? Magda's Jeremy?"

"Now you're getting warm."

"What? It's not Geoffrey Alconbury, is it?"

"No." Shaz giggled. "He's married to Una and he's gay."

"Giles Benwick," said Jude suddenly.

"Who?" I gibbered.

"Giles Benwick," confirmed Shaz. "You know Giles, for God's sake, the one who works with Mark, who you rescued from suicide at Rebecca's."

"He had that thing about you."

"He and Rebecca both stayed holed up in Gloucestershire after their accidents reading self-help books and now they are together."

"They are as one," added Jude.

"They are joined in the act of love," expanded Shaz.

There was a pause while we all looked at each other, stunned at this strange act of the heavens.

"The world has gone mad," I burst out with a mixture of wonderment and fear. "Giles Benwick isn't handsome, he isn't rich."

"Well, actually he is," murmured Jude.

"But he isn't someone else's boyfriend. He isn't a status symbol in any normal Rebecca way."

"Apart from being very rich," said Jude.

"Yet Rebecca has chosen him."

"That's right, that's exactly right," said " Shaz, excitedly. "Strange times! Strange times indeed!"

"Soon Prince Philip will ask me to be his girlfriend, and Tom will be going out with the Queen," I cried.

"Not Pretentious Jerome, but our owni, dear Queen," clarified Shaz.

"Bats will start eating the sun," I expanded. "Horses will be born with tails on their heads, and cubes of frozen urine will land on our roof terraces offering us cigarettes."

"And now Princess Diana is dead," said Shazzer, solemnly.

The mood abruptly changed. We all feIl silent, trying to absorb this violent, shocking and unthinkable thought. "Strange times," pronounced Shaz shaking her head with heavy portentousness. "Strange times indeed."

8st 3 (will definitely stop gorging tomorrow), alcohol units 6 (must not start drinking too much), cigarettes 27 (must not start smoking too much), calories 6,285 (must not start eating too much).

8 a.m. My flat. Owing to Diana death Richard Finch has cancelled all the stuff they were doing on Thai Drug Girl (me) and given me two days off to sort myself out. Cannot come to terms with death or anything else come to think of it. Maybe there will be national depression now. Is end of era, no two ways about it, but also start of new era in manner of autumn term. It is a time for new beginnings.

Determined not to sink back into old ways, spending entire life checking answerphone and waiting for Mark to ring, but to be calm and centred.

8.05 a.m. But why did Mark split up with Rebecca? Why is she going out with speccy Giles Benwick? WHY? WHY? Did he go to Dubai because he still loves me? But why hasn't he rung me back? Why? Why?

Anyway. All that is irrelevant to me now. I am working on myself. I am going to get my legs waxed.

10.30 a.m. Back in flat. Turned up late (8.30 a.m.) for leg wax only to find that beautician was not coming in 'Because of Princess Diana'. Receptionist was almost sarcastic about this but, as I pointed out, who are we to judge what each individual is going through? If all this has taught us one thing it is not to judge others. Mood was hard to sustain on way home, however, when was caught in massive traffic jam in Kensington High Street rendering normal ten-minute journey home four times normal length. When reached jam-source turned out to be road works only quite inactive and workman-free with merely sign saying: "The men working on this road have decided to stop work for the next four days as a mark of respect to Princess Diana."

Ooh answerphone is flashing.

Was Mark! He sounded very faint and crackly. "Bridget ... only just got the news. I'm delighted you're free. Delighted. I'll be back later in the There was a loud hiss on the line, then it clicked off.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang. "Oh, hello, darling, guess what?"

My mother. My own mother! Felt great overwhelming rush of love.

What?" I said, feeling tears welling up.

"'Go quietly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.'"

There was a long pause. "Mum?" I said eventually.

"Shhh, darling, silence." (More pause.) "'Remember what peace there may be in silence."'

I took a big breath, tucked the phone under my chin, and carried on making the coffee. You see what I have learned is the importance of detaching from other people's lunacy as one has enough to worry about keeping oneself on course. Just then the mobile started ringing.

Trying to ignore the first phone, which had started vibrating and yelling: "Bridget, you'll never find equilibrium if you don't learn to work with silence," I pressed OK on the mobile. It was only dad.

"Ah, Bridget," he said in a stiff, military-style voice. "Will you speak to your mother on the land-line? Seems to have got herself worked up into a bit of a state."

She was in a state? Didn't they care about me at all? Their own flesh and blood?

There was a series of sobs, shrieks and unexplained crashes on the 'land-line'.

"OK, Dad, bye," I said, and picked up the real phone again.

"Darling," croaked Mum, in a hoarse, self-pitying whisper. "There's something I have to tell you. I cannot keep it from my family and loved ones any longer."

Trying not to dwell on the distinction between 'family' and 'loved ones', I said brightly, "Well! Don't feel you have to tell me if you don't want to."

"What would you have me do?" she yelled histrionically. "Live a lie? I'm an addict, darling, an addict!"

I racked my brains as to what she could have decided she's addicted to. My mum has never drunk more than a single glass of cream sherry since Mavis Enderbury got drunk at her twenty-first birthday party in 1952 and had to be taken home on the crossbar of a bicycle belonging to someone called 'Peewee'. Her drug intake is limited to the occasional Fisherman's Friend in response to a tickly cough triggered during the bi-annual performances of Kettering Amateur Dramatic Society.

"I'm an addict," she said again, then paused dramatically.

"Right," I said. "An addict, And what exactly are you addicted to?"

"Relationships," she said. "I'm a relationship addict, darling. I'm co-dependent."

I crashed my head straight down on to the table in front of me.

"Thirty-six years with Daddy!" she said. "And I never understood."

"But, Mum, being married to someone doesn't mean . . ."

"Oh no, I'm not co-dependent on Daddy," she said. "I'm co-dependent on fun. I've told Daddy I ... Ooh, must whizz. It's time for my affirmations."

I sat staring at the cafetiйre, mind reeling. Didn't they know what had happened to me? Had she finally gone over the edge?

The phone rang again. it was my dad. "Sorry about that."

"What's going on? Are you with Mum now?"

"Well, yes, in a manner of ... She's gone off to some class or other."