Saturday 6 May: VE Day 4 page

'I know. I told her that, then she said I had a problem with boundaries and charged me fifty-five quid.'

'Why didn't he turn up? I hope the sadistic worm had a decent excuse,' said Sharon.

'He said he got tied up at work,' said Jude. 'I said to him, ''Listen, you don't have a monopoly on commitment problems. Actually, I have a commitment problem. If you ever deal with your own commitment problem you might be brought up short by my commitment problem, by which time it'll be too late.'''

'Have you got a commitment problem?' I said, intrigued, immediately thinking maybe I had a commitment problem.

'Of course I've got a commitment problem,' snarled Jude. 'It's just that nobody ever sees it because it's so submerged by Richard's commitment problem. Actually, my commitment problem goes much deeper than his.'

'Well, exactly,' said Sharon. 'But you don't go round wearing your commitment problem on your sleeve like every bloody man over the age of twenty does these days.'

'Exactly my point,' spat Jude, trying to light up another Silk Cut but having trouble with the lighter.

'The whole bloody world's got a commitment problem,' growled Sharon in a guttural, almost Clint Eastwood voice. 'It's the three-minute culture. It's a global attention-span deficit. It's typical of men to annex a global trend and turn it into a male device to reject women to make themselves feel clever and us feel stupid. It's nothing but fiickwittage.'

'Bastards!' I shouted happily. 'Shall we have another bottle of wine?'

9 a.m.Blimey. Mum just rang. 'Darling,' she said. 'Guess what? Good Afternoon! are looking for researchers. Current affairs, terribly good. I've spoken to Richard Finch, the editor, and told him all about you. I said you had a degree in politics, darling. Don't worry, he'll be far too busy to check. He wants you to come in on Monday for a chat.'

Monday. Oh my God. That only gives me five days to learn Current Affairs.

Saturday 12 August

9st 3 (still in very good cause), alcohol units 3 (v.g.), cigarettes 32 (v.p. bad, particularly since first day of giving up), calories 1800 (g.), lottery tickets 4 (fair), no. of serious current affairs articles read 1.5, 1471 calls 22 (OK), minutes spent having cross imaginary conversations with Daniel 120 (v.g.), minutes spent imagining Daniel begging me to come back 90 (excellent).

Right. Determined to be v. positive about everything. Am going to change life: become well informed re: current affairs, stop smoking entirely and form functional relationship with adult man.

8:30 a.m.Still have not had fag. Vg.

8:35 a.m.No fags all day. Excellent.

8:40 a.m.Wonder if anything nice has come in post?

8:45 a.m.Ugh. Hateful document from Social Security Agency asking for £1452. What? How can this be? Have not got £1432. Oh God, need fag to calm nerves. Mustn't. Mustn't.

8:47 a.m.Just had fag. But no-smoking day does not start officially till have got dressed. Suddenly start thinking of former boyfriend Peter with whom had functional relationship for seven years until finished with him for heartfelt, agonizing reasons can no longer remember. Every so often — usually when he has no one to go on holiday with — he tries to get back together and says he wants us to get married. Before know where am, am carried away with idea of Peter being answer. Why be unhappy and lonely when Peter wants to be with me? Quickly find telephone, ring Peter and leave message on his answerphone-merely asking him to give me call rather than whole plan of spending rest of life together, etc.

1:15 p.m.Peter has not rung back. Am repulsive to all men now, even Peter.

4:45 p.m.No-smoking policy in tatters. Peter finally rang. 'Hi, Bee.' (We always used to call each other Bee and Waspy.) 'I was going to ring you anyway. I've got some good news. I'm getting married.'

Ugh. V. bad feeling in pancreas area. Exes should never, never go out with or marry other people but should remain celibate to the end of their days in order to provide you with a mental fallback position.

'Bee?' said Waspy. 'Bzzzzzzz?'

'Sorry,' I said, slumping dizzily against the wall. 'Just, um, saw a car accident out of the window.' I was evidently superfluous to the conversation, however, as Waspy gushed on about the cost of wedding cakes for about twenty minutes, then said, 'Have to go. We're cooking Delia Smith venison sausages with juniper berries tonight and watching TV.'

Ugh. Have just smoked entire packet of Silk Cut as act of self-annihilating existential despair. Hope they both become obese and have to be lifted out of the window by crane.

5:45 p.m.Trying to concentrate hard on memorizing names of Shadow Cabinet to avoid spiral of self-doubt. Have never met Waspy's Intended of course but imagine giant thin blond rooftop giantess-type who rises at five each morning, goes to gym, rubs herself down with salt then runs international merchant bank all day without smudging mascara..

Realize with sinking humiliation that reason have been feeling smug about Peter all these years was that I finished with him and now he is effectively finishing with me by marrying Mrs. Giant Valkyrie bottom. Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss, also incorporating subthought that reason for Fergy's insane overconfidence may be that Andrew still wants her back (until he marries someone else, har har).

6:45 p.m.Was just starting to watch the 6 o'clock news, notebook poised, when Mum burst in bearing carrier bags. 'Now, darling,' she said sailing past me into the kitchen. 'I've brought you some nice soup, and some smart outfits of mine for Monday!' She was wearing a lime green suit, black tights and highheeled court shoes. She looked like Cilla Black on Blind Date.

'Where do you keep your soup ladles?' she said, banging cupboard doors. 'Honestly, darling. What a mess! Now. Have a look through these bags while I heat up the soup.'

Deciding to overlook the fact that it was a) August b) boiling hot c) 6:15 and d) I didn't want any soup, I peered cautiously into the first carrier bag, where there was something pleated and synthetic in bright yellow with a terracotta leaf design. 'Er, Mum . . . ' I began, but then her handbag started ringing.

'Ah, that'll be Julio. Yup, yup.' She was balancing a portable phone under her chin now and scribbling. 'Yup, yup. Put it on, darling,' she hissed. 'Yup, yup. Yup. Yup.'

Now I have missed the news and she has gone off to a Cheese and Wine party, leaving me looking like a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman in a bright blue suit with slithery green blouse underneath and blue eyeshadow right up to my eyebrows.

'Don't be silly, darling,' was her parting shot. 'If you don't do something about your appearance you'll never get a new job, never mind another boyfriend!'

Midnight.After she'd gone, called Tom, who took me to a party a friend of his from art school was having at the Saatchi Gallery to stop me obsessing.

'Bridget,' he muttered nervously as we walked into the white hole and sea of grunge youths. 'You know it's unhip to laugh at Installation, don't you?'

'OK, OK,' I said sulkily. 'I won't make any dead fish jokes.'

Someone called Gav said 'Hi': twenty-two maybe, sexy, in a shrunken T-shirt revealing a chopping-board-like midriff.

'It's really, really, really, really amazing,' Gav was saying. 'It's, like, a sullied Utopia with these really really really good echoes of, like, lost national identities.'

He led us excitedly across the big white space to a toilet paper roll: inside out with the cardboard outside the paper.

They looked at me expectantly. Suddenly I knew I was going to cry. Tom was now drooling over a giant bar of soap bearing the imprint of a penis. Gav was staring at me. 'Wow, that is, like, a really, really, really wild . . . ' he whispered reverently as I blinked back tears, '. . . response.'

'Just going to the loo,' I blurted, rushing away past a configuration of sanitary-napkin bags. There was a queue outside a Portaloo, and I joined it, shaking. Suddenly, just when it was almost my turn, I felt a hand on my arm. It was Daniel.

'Bridge, what are you doing here?'

'What does it look like?' I snapped. 'Excuse me, I'm in a hurry.' I burst into the cubicle and was just about to get on with it when I realized the toilet was actually a molding of the inside of a toilet, vacuum-packed in plastic. Then Daniel put his head round the door.

'Bridge, don't wee on the Installation, will you?' he said, and closed the door again.

When I came out he had vanished. I couldn't see Gav, Tom or anyone I knew. Eventually I found the real toilets, sat down and burst into tears, thinking I wasn't fit to be in society anymore, and just needed to get away till I stopped feeling like this. Tom was waiting outside..

'Come and talk to Gav,' he said. 'He's really, like, into you.' Then he took one look at my face and said. 'Oh shit, I'll take you home.'

It's no good. When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together Collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed-over British Rail sandwich?

'Gav likes you,' said Tom.

'Gav is ten. Anyway he only liked me because he thought I was crying about a toilet roll.'

'Well you were, in a way,' said Tom. 'Bloody git, Daniel. If that man turns out to be singlehandedly responsible for all the fighting in Bosnia, I wouldn't be in the least surprised.'

Sunday 13 August

V. bad night. On top of everything else, tried to read myself to sleep with new issue of Tatler, only to find Mark Bloody Darcy's face smoldering out from feature on London's fifty most eligible bachelors going on about how rich and marvelous he was. Ugh. Made me even more depressed in way cannot quite fathom. Anyway. Am going to stop feeling sorry for myself and spend morning learning newspapers by heart.

Noon.Rebecca just rang, asking if I was 'all right.' Thinking she meant all right about Daniel, I said, 'Chuh, well it's very depressing.'

'Oh, poor you. Yes, I saw Peter last night . . . (Where? What? Why wasn't I invited?) ' . . . and he was telling everyone how upset you were about the wedding. As he said, it is difficult, single women do tend to get desperate as they get older . . . '

By lunchtime could no longer go on with Sunday, trying to pretend everything was OK. Rang up Jude and told her about Waspy, Rebecca, job interview, Mum, Daniel and general misery and arranged to meet at Jimmy Beez at two for a Bloody Mary.

6 p.m.As luck would have it, Jude had just been reading brilliant book called Goddesses in Everywoman. Apparently the book says that at certain times in your life everything goes wrong and you don't know which way to turn and it is as if everywhere around you stainless steel doors are clamping shut like in Star Trek. What you have to do is be a heroine and stay brave, without sinking into drink or self-pity and everything will be OK. And that all the Greek myths and many successful movies are all about human beings facing difficult trials and not being wimps but holding hard and thus coming Out on top.

The book also says that coping with difficult times is like being in a conical shell-shaped spiral and there is a point at each turn that is very painful and difficult. That is your particular problem or sore spot. When you are at the narrow, pointy end of the spiral you come back to that situation very often as the rotations are quite small. As you go round, you will go through the troubled time less and less frequently but still you must come back to it, so you shouldn't feel when it happens that you are back to square one.

Trouble is now I have sobered up not sure I am 100 percent sure what she was talking about.

Mum rang up and I tried to talk to her about how difficult it is being a woman and having a sell-by date for reproduction unlike men, but she just said, 'Oh, honestly, darling. You girls are just so picky and romantic these days: you've simply got too much choice. I'm not saying I didn't love Dad but, you know, we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much.' And to be honest, darling, having children isn't all it's built up to be. I mean, no offense, I don't mean this personally but given my chance again I'm not sure I'd have . . . '

Oh God. Even my own mother wishes I'd never been born.

Monday 14 August

9st 5 (great-turned into lard mountain for interview, also have spot), alcohol units 0, cigarettes many, calories 1575 (but threw up so effectively 400, approx.).

Oh God. Terrified about interview. I have told Perpetua I am at the gynecologist — I know I should have said dentist but opportunities to torture the nosiest woman in the world must not be allowed to slip through the net. I am almost ready and merely need to complete my makeup while practicing my opinions on Tony Blair's leadership. Oh my God, who's the Shadow Defense Secretary? Oh fuck, oh flick. Is it someone with a beard? Shit: telephone. I can't believe it: terrifying telephonic teenager with patronizing South London sing-song going, 'Hel-lo, Bridget, Richard Finch's office here. Richard's in Blackpool this morning so he won't be able to make the meeting.' Rescheduled for Wednesday. Will have to pretend have recurring gynecological condition. Might as well take rest of morning off anyway.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 896