Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy(2)

‘It’s about your spec script.’

‘Just . . . in . . . a meeting!’ How could I be in a meeting, and yet talking on the phone saying I’m in a meeting? People’s assistants are meant to say they’re in a meeting, not the person themself, who is supposed to be unable to say anything because they’re in the meeting.

Set off on school run, feeling, now, desperate to call back and find out what the call was about. Brian has so far sent it to two production companies, both of whom have turned it down. But now maybe a fish has bitten at the fish hook?

Fought overwhelming urge to ring Brian back claiming ‘meeting’ had come to an abrupt end, but decided far more important to be on time for Mabel: and that’s the sort of caring, prioritizing mother I am.

4.30 p.m. School run was even more chaos than usual: like Where’s Wally? picture of millions of lollipop ladies, babies in prams, white-van men having standoffs with over-educated SUV mums, a man cycling with a double bass strapped to his back, and earth mothers on bicycles with tin boxes full of children in the front. Entire road was gridlocked. Suddenly, a frantic woman came running along yelling, ‘Go back, go BACK! Come ON! Nobody is HELPING HERE!’

Realizing there had been a terrible accident, I, and everyone else, started rearing their cars crazily onto pavement and into gardens to make way for Emergency Services. Once road was clear, peered gingerly ahead for the ambulance/bloodbath. But there was not an ambulance, just a very fancy woman, flouncing into a black Porsche, then roaring furiously along the newly cleared road, a smug be-uniformed small child next to her in the front seat.

By the time I got to the Infants Branch, Mabel was the only child left on the steps, apart from the last straggler, Thelonius, who was about to leave with his mum.

Mabel looked at me with her huge solemn eyes.

‘Come on, Old Pal,’ she said kindly.

‘We wondered where you’d got to!’ said Thelonius’s mum. ‘Did you forget again?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The road was completely gridlocked.’

‘Mummy’th fifty-one!’ Mabel suddenly burst out. ‘Mummy’th fifty-one. She says she’th thirty-five but she’th really fifty-one.’

‘Shhh. Hahaha!’ I responded to Thelonius’s mother’s stare. ‘Better run off and get Billy!’

Managed to get Mabel, still yelling ‘Mummy’th fifty-one!’, into the car, leaning over in the traditional body-wrenching movement, which gets increasingly awkward with age, fastening the seat belt by waddling my hand in the mess between the seat back and booster seat.

Arrived at Billy’s Junior Branch to see Perfect Nicolette, the Class Mother (perfect house, perfect husband, perfect children: only slight imperfection being name, presumably chosen by parents before invention of popular smoking substitute), surrounded by a gaggle of Junior Branch mothers. Perfect Nicorette was perfectly dressed and perfectly blow-dried with a perfectly gigantic handbag. Sidled up, panting, to see if I could get the scoop on the latest Area of Concern, just as Nicolette flicked her hair crossly, nearly taking my eye out with the corner of the giant bag.

‘I asked him why Atticus is still in the football Ds – I mean, Atticus has been coming home, literally, in tears – and Mr Wallaker just said, “Because he’s rubbish. Anything else?”’

Glanced over at the Area of Concern/new sports teacher: fit, tall, slightly younger than me, crop-haired, rather like Daniel Craig in appearance. He was staring broodingly at a group of unruly boys, then suddenly blew a whistle and bellowed, ‘Oi! You lot. In the cloakroom now or I’ll Caution you.’

‘You see?’ Nicolette continued, as the boys formed themselves into a shambolic line, attempting to jog back into school, shouting, ‘One, sir! Two, sir!’ like startled bushmen recruited to form a Spring Uprising, while Mr Wallaker blew his whistle ludicrously in time.

‘He is hot, though,’ said Farzia. Farzia is my favourite school mum, always having her priorities in place.

‘Hot, but married,’ snapped Nicolette. ‘And with children, though you wouldn’t guess it.’

‘I thought he was a friend of the headmaster,’ ventured another mum.

‘Exactly. Is he even trained?’ said Nicolette.

‘Mummy.’ Looked round to see Billy, in his little blazer, dark hair tousled, shirt hanging out of his trousers. ‘I didn’t get picked for chess.’ Those same eyes, those same dark eyes, stabbed with pain.

‘It doesn’t matter about being picked or winning,’ I said, giving Billy a furtive hug. ‘It’s who you are that counts.’

‘Of course it matters.’ Gaah! It was Mr Wallaker. ‘He has to practise. He has to earn it.’ As he turned away, distinctly heard him mutter, ‘The sense of entitlement amongst the mothers in this school defies belief.’

‘Practise?’ I said brightly. ‘Why, I’d never have thought of that! You must be terribly clever, Mr Wallaker. I mean, sir.’

He looked at me with his cold blue eyes.

‘What has this got to do with the Sports Department?’ I continued sweetly.

‘I teach the chess class.’

‘But how lovely! Do you use the whistle?’

Mr Wallaker looked disconcerted for a moment, then said, ‘Eros! Get out of that flower bed. Now!’