Page 51 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

other world out there,' and hoping for vicarious thrills by getting us to tell them

the roller-coaster details of our sex lives.

'Yes, why aren't you married yet, Bridget?' sneered Woney (babytalk for
Fiona, married to Jeremy's friend Cosmo) with a thin veneer of concern whilst
stroking her pregnant stomach.

Because I don't want to end up like you, you fat, boring, Sloaney milch cow,

was what I should have said, or, Because if I had to cook Cosmo's dinner then
get into the same bed as him just once, let alone every night, I'd tear off my head
and eat it, or, Because actually, Woney, underneath my clothes, my entire body
is covered in scales. But I didn't because, ironically enough, I didn't want to hurt
her feelings. So I merely simpered apologetically, at which point someone called
Alex piped up, 'Well, you know, once you get past a certain age . . . '

'Exactly . . . All the decent chaps have been snapped up,' said Cosmo, slapping
his fat stomach and smirking so that his jowls wobbled.

At dinner Magda had placed me, in an incestuous-sex-sandwich sort of way,
between Cosmo and Jeremy's crashing bore of a brother. 'You really ought to
hurry up and get sprogged up, you know, old girl,' said Cosmo, pouring a quarter
of a pint of '82 Pauillac straight down his throat. 'Time's running out.'

By this time I'd had a good half-pint of '82 Pauillac myself. 'Is it one in three
marriages that end in divorce now or one in two?' I slurred with a pointless
attempt at sarcasm.

'Seriously, old girl,' he said, ignoring me. 'Office is full of them, single girls
over thirty. Fine physical specimens. Can't get a chap.'

'That's not a problem I have, actually,' I breathed, waving my fag in the air.

'Ooh. Tell us more,' said Woney.

So who is it, then?' said Cosmo.