Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding Read Free Book Online

human fuckwit do that?” I said, fuming. “That’s it. I’m through with bloody men. They’re irresponsible; self-indulgent…Does anyone want to feel my bump?”
    “You have to find some way of externalizing these angry thoughts and feelings,” said Tom in his creepy therapist’s voice and patting the bump nervously, as if the baby was going to jump out and be sick on him. “Perhaps by writing them down and burning them?”
    “OK,” I said, marching over to the kitchen table and grabbing a Post-it pad and a box of matches.
    “No!” yelled Shazzer. “No fires! Use the phone.”
    “Okeedokeee.”
    I typed into the phone. “Daniel, you are a selfish, shallow…”
    “Give it to me, give it to me,” slurred Shazzer, grabbing the phone. She typed “fuckwitted, crap writer” and then pressed send.
    “We were supposed to BURN IT,” I said in horror.
    “What? The phone?”
    “She was supposed to express the angry thoughts and feelings, then send them into the universe,” said Tom. “Not text them to the object of the angry thoughts and…Here, have we run out of wine?”
    “Oh, God. And he might be the father of my unborn child.”
    “Iss fine,” said Tom, in a drunk yet soothing voice. “Do him good to hear it.”
    “Tom, shut up. Bridget, you’ve done your practicing. Now text Mark,” said Miranda.
    —
    So I did. I simply texted: “I would like to see you.” And, to my utter astonishment, he wanted to meet me immediately.
    S UNDAY 15 O CTOBER
    I stood on the doorstep of Mark’s tall white-stuccoed house in Holland Park, as I’d stood before, before so many earth-shattering events, sad, happy, sexual, emotional, triumphant, disastrous, dramatic. The light was on upstairs in his office: he was working as usual. What would he say? Would he reject me as a drunken slag? Might he be pleased? But then…
    “Bridget!” said the intercom. “Are you actually still there or have you rung the doorbell and run away?”
    “I’m here,” I said.
    The door opened a few seconds later. Mark was in sexy work mode: suit trousers, shirt a little undone, sleeves rolled up and the familiar watch on his wrist.
    “Come in,” he said. I followed him into the kitchen. It was exactly the same: spotless, streamlined cabinets where you couldn’t tell which was the dishwasher, which was the cereal cupboard and which was the pig bin.
    “So!” said Mark, stiffly. “How’s life treating you? Work good?”
    “Yes. How’s yours? Work, I mean.”
    “Oh good, well, shit actually.” He gave that conspiratorial half smile I so loved.
    “Trying and failing to extract Hanza Farzad from the clutches of the king of Kutar.”
    “Ah.”
    I gazed out at the garden and trees, the leaves beginning to turn, mind racing. I mean my mind, not the trees’ minds. Trees do not have minds: unless you’re the mind of Prince Charles, or perhaps in Daniel Cleaver’s novel. Our whole future rested on these next few babies, I mean moments. I started to rerehearse what I was going to say. It had to be subtle, slowly built up to.
    “All caught up with international trade, of course,” Mark was going on. “Always the problem with the Middle East: endless layers of subterfuge, deceit, conflicted interest…”
    “Excuse me.”
    “Yes?”
    There was a pause. “The garden looks lovely,” I eventually said.
    “Thank you. Of course, it’s a devil to keep up with the leaves.”
    “Yes it must be.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yup.”
    “Mark?”
    “Yes, Bridget?”
    Oh God, oh God. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to savour these last few moments when everything seemed like it used to be.
    “Is that a conker tree?”
    “Yes. It is a conker tree and that one’s a magnolia and…”
    “Oh, and what is that one?”
    “Bridget!”
    “I’m pregnant.”
    Mark’s face was a mess of emotions.
    “How much, how long, pregnant?”
    “Sixteen weeks.”
    “The christening?”
    “Do you want to feel my bump?”
    “Yes.” He put his hand on