Page 59 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

hanging upside-down outside the window dressed as a Morris dancer, crash in

and start hitting Mum over the bead with a sheep's bladder; or suddenly fall face
downwards out of the airing cupboard with a plastic knife stuck in his back. The
only thing which can possibly get everything back on course is a Bloody Mary.
It's nearly the afternoon, after all.

12.05 p.m. Mum called. 'Let him come then,' she said. 'Let him bloody well have
his own way as usual.' (My mum does not swear. She says things like 'ruddy' and
'Oh my godfathers'.) 'I'll be all right on my bloody own. I'll just clean the house
like Germaine sodding Greer and the Invisible Woman.' (Could she possibly,
conceivably, have been drunk? My mum has drunk nothing but a single cream
sherry on a Sunday night since 1952, when she got slightly tipsy on a pint of
cider at Mavis Enderby's twenty-first and has never let herself or anyone else

forget it. 'There's nothing worse than a woman drunk, darling.') 'Mum. No.

Couldn't we all talk this through together over lunch?' I said, as if this were
Sleepless in Seattle and lunch was going to end up with Mum and Dad holding
hands and me winking cutely at the camera, wearing a luminous rucksack.

'Just you wait,' she said darkly. 'You'll find out what men are like.'

'But I already . . . ' I began.'

'I'm going out, darling,' she said. I'm going out to get laid.'

At 2 o'clock Dad arrived at the door with a neatly folded copy of the Sunday
Telegraph. As he sat down on the sofa, his face crumpled and tears began to
splosh down his cheeks.

'She's been like this since she went to Albufeira with Una Alconbury and
Audrey Coles,' he sobbed, trying to wipe his cheek with his fist. 'When she got
back she started saying she wanted to be paid for doing the housework, and she'd
wasted her life being our slave.' (Our slave? I knew it. This is all my fault. If I
were a better person, Mum would not have stopped loving Dad.) 'She wants me