Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy(9)

By the time four years had gone by, however, the friends were not having it.





PART ONE





ONE YEAR AGO . . .





These are the extracts from last year’s diary, starting exactly one year ago, four years after Mark died, which show how I got myself into the current mess.





2012 DIARY


Thursday 19 April 2012

175lb, alcohol units 4 (nice), calories 2822 (but better eating real food in club than bits of old cheese and fish fingers at home), possibility of having or desire to have sex ever again 0.

‘She HAS to get laid,’ said Talitha firmly, sipping a vodka martini and glancing alarmingly around Shoreditch House for candidates.

It was one of our semi-regular evenings which Talitha, Tom and Jude insist I attend, in an effort to ‘Get Me Out’, rather like taking Granny to the seaside.

‘She does,’ said Tom. ‘Did I tell you, I got a suite at the Chedi in Chiang Mai for only two hundred quid a night on LateRooms.com. There was a Junior Suite for 179 on Expedia but it didn’t have a terrace.’

Tom, in later life, has become increasingly obsessed with boutique-hotel holidays and trying to make us tailor our lifestyles to fit in with Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog.

‘Tom, shut up,’ murmured Jude, looking up from her iPhone, where she was on DatingSingleDoctors. ‘This is serious. We have to do something. She’s become a Born-Again Virgin.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘It’s a total impossibility. I don’t want anyone else. And anyway, even if I did, which I don’t, I’m non-viable, completely asexual and no one will ever fancy me again, ever, ever, ever.’

I stared at my stomach, bulging under my black top. It was true. I had become a Born-Again Virgin. The trouble with the modern world is that you are bombarded with images of sex and sexuality all the time – the hand on the bum on the billboard, the couples smooching on the beach in the Sandals ad, real-life couples entwined in the park, condoms by the till in the chemist – a whole wonderful magical world of sex, which you no longer belong to and never will again.

‘I’m not going to fight it, it’s just part of being a widow and the process of turning into a little old lady,’ I said melodramatically, hoping they would all immediately insist I was Penelope Cruz or Scarlett Johansson.

‘Oh, darling, don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ said Talitha, summoning the waiter for another cocktail. ‘You probably do need to lose a bit of weight, and get some Botox and do something with your hair, but—’

‘Botox?’ I said indignantly.

‘Oh God,’ Jude suddenly burst out. ‘This guy isn’t a doctor. He was on DanceLoverDating. It’s the same photo!’

‘Maybe he’s a doctor who’s also a dance lover and just covering all the bases?’ I encouraged.

‘Jude, shut up,’ said Tom. ‘You are lost in a morass of nebulous cyber presences, most of whom don’t exist and who simply turn each other on and off randomly at will.’

‘Botox can kill you,’ I said darkly. ‘It’s botulism. It comes from cows.’

‘So what? Better to die of Botox than die of loneliness because you’re so wrinkly.’

‘For God’s sake, shut up, Talitha,’ said Tom.

Suddenly found self missing Shazzer again and wishing she was here to say, ‘Will everyone f*cking stop the f*ck telling everyone else to shut the f*ck up.’

‘Yes, shut up, Talitha,’ said Jude. ‘Not everyone wants to look like a freak show.’

‘Darling,’ said Talitha, putting her hand to her brow, ‘I am NOT a “freak show”. Grieving apart, Bridget has lost, or shall we say, mislaid, her sense of sexual self. And it’s our duty to help her relocate it.’

And with a toss of her lush, shining locks Talitha settled back into her chair while the three of us stared at her silently, sucking our cocktails through our straws like five-year-olds.

Talitha burst out again, ‘The thing about not looking your age is, it’s all about altering the “signposts”. The body must be forced to reject the fat-positioning of middle age, wrinkles are completely unnecessary and a fine head of swingy shiny healthy hair—’

‘Purchased for a pittance from impoverished Indian virgins,’ interjected Tom.

‘—however obtained and attached, is all one needs to turn back the clock.’

‘Talitha,’ said Jude, ‘did I actually just hear you articulate the words “Middle” and “Age”?’

‘Anyway, I can’t,’ I said.

‘Look. This really makes me very sad,’ said Talitha. ‘Women of our age—’

‘Your age,’ muttered Jude.

‘—have only got themselves to blame if they brand themselves as unviable by going on and on about how they haven’t had a date for four years. Germaine Greer’s “Disappearing Woman” must be brutally murdered and buried. One needs, for the sake of oneself and one’s peers, to create an air of mysterious confidence and allure, rebranding oneself—’

‘Like Gwyneth Paltrow,’ said Tom brightly.

‘Gwyneth Paltrow is not “our age” and she’s married,’ said Jude.