Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy(85)

‘No, or I would have ended up sucking lollipops with a faraway look in my eye.’

Realized with embarrassment I had picked up a lollipop and was sliding it in and out of my mouth.

‘The thing is, Bridge, it’s a percentages game.’

Jude, having burst through the ‘glass ceiling’ of the financial world, is, I suppose, bound to see it in these terms.

‘You can’t afford to take anything personally. You’re going to get stood up, you’re going to get eighteen-stone people whose pictures are of someone else. But with enough experience – and skill! – you’ll weed through that dross.’

We then went into a Greatest Hits medley of the online dross Jude had successfully weeded through to find Wildlifephotographerman: Sexualhumiliationman (of course!), Marriedwithbabyman – who took Jude out, snogged her, then included her in the global text saying his wife had had a baby – and SkydiverGraphicdesignerman – who did turn out to be a graphic designer, but also, it emerged, a devout Muslim who didn’t believe in sex before marriage, but, bizarrely, also liked to spend his weekends Morris dancing.

‘And somewhere,’ Jude said, ‘somewhere out there, it’ll just take one click, and you’ll be home.’

‘But who would want a fifty-something single mother with two small children?’

‘Take a look,’ she said, signing me in for a free trial on SingleParentMix.com. ‘They’re just normal people like you and me. They’re not weirdos. I’ll put forty-nine.’

A column of photos popped up of strange men in wire glasses and striped becollared shirts hanging over the folds of their stomachs.

‘It looks like a line-up of serial killers,’ I said. ‘How can they be single fathers? Unless they’ve murdered the mothers?’

‘Yes, well, maybe that wasn’t a very good search,’ Jude said briskly. ‘How about this?’

She opened up the profile she’d made for me on OkCupid.

Actually, when I looked, there were some really quite cute ones on there. But oh, the loneliness – the profiles giving away months or maybe years of heartbreak and disappointment and insult.

Someone who’d actually picked as their username ‘Isthereanyoneout_there?’ had as their profile:

I’m a nice normal guy who just wants a nice normal woman. If your photo is from 15 years ago, then MOVE ON! If you’re f*cked up, married, desperate, passive-aggressive, not a woman, shamelessly gold-digging, emotionally sadistic, superficial, self-obsessed, illiterate, just looking for quick sex, just looking to indulge in endless streams of messaging then not meet, just looking to get a date to massage your ego and stand me up because you can’t be bothered, then MOVE ON!

And then there were the profiles from married men quite openly saying they want uncomplicated sex.

‘Why don’t they just go on MarriedAffair.co.uk?’ sniffed Jude.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

8.30 a.m. Billy’s football comic just dropped through the letter box and I took it downstairs saying, ‘Billy! Your Match.com’s arrived!’





KBO


Wednesday 3 July 2013 (continued)

133lb, negative thoughts 5 million, positive thoughts 0, bottles of Fairy Liquid drunk 0 (you see? Could be worse).

9.15 p.m. Right. Super! Is school concert tomorrow and is going to be perfectly fine. Mabel is staying at Rebecca’s so I don’t have to worry about keeping tabs on both of them at the same time. Of course, many, many of the fathers will be away on business, or perhaps busy tapping away on MarriedAffair.co.uk! And even if Roxster was still around, he wouldn’t have come to the school concert, would he? He’d have felt ridiculous with all those people who have children and are so much older than him.

9.30 p.m. Just looked at news online. Whole royal baby frenzy is not helping: perfect young couple of Roxster’s age, starting life, doing everything perfectly, in the perfect way and at the perfect time.

9.45 p.m. Went up to check on Billy and Mabel.

‘Mummy,’ said Billy, ‘will Daddy know I’m doing the concert?’

‘I think so,’ I whispered.

‘Will I do it all right?’

‘Yes.’

I held his hand till he was asleep. There was a full moon again and I watched it over the rooftops. What would it be like now if I was going to the Summer Concert with Mark? He would have leaned over my shoulder the way he used to, whizzed through the mass picnic emails, deleted them and simply replied: ‘I will bring the hummus and the black bin liners.’

I would be one hundred per cent looking forward to it. It would be a one hundred per cent lovely thing. Oh, come on. Brace up. Keep Buggering On.





THE SUMMER CONCERT


Thursday 4 July 2013

We roared up through the landscaped parkland. We were late, because Billy was trying to map the route on the iPhone and we came off at the wrong junction. Clambered out to the smell of cut grass, the chestnut leaves hanging heavy and green, the light turning golden.

Staggering under the weight of the bassoon case, the rug, my handbag, the picnic basket and a second basket with Diet Cokes and oatmeal cookies that wouldn’t fit in the first basket, Billy and I headed towards the path marked: ‘CONCERT THIS WAY’.

We came out into the open and gasped. It looked like a painting: a gracious, wisteria-clad house, with an old stone terrace and lawns leading down to a lake. The terrace was laid out like a stage, with music stands and a grand piano, and rows of chairs below. Billy held my hand tightly as we stood wondering where to go.