Page 76 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

excused him from thirty years of washing-up. Well, the tax return was overdue,

so I thought, sod it, I'll do it myself. Obviously I couldn't make head nor tail of it
so I rang up the tax office. The man was really quite overbearing with me.
`Really, Mrs. Jones,' he said. I simply can't see what the difficulty is.' I said,
'Listen, can you make a brioche?' He took the point, talked me through it and we
had it done inside fifteen minutes. Anyway, he's taking me out to lunch today. A
tax man! Imagine!'

'What?' I stammered, grabbing at the door frame. 'What about Julio?'

'Just because I'm "friends" with Julio doesn't mean I can't have other "fiends",'
'she said sweetly, slipping into a yellow two-piece. 'Do you like this? Just bought
it. Super lemon, don't you think? Anyway, must fly. I'm meeting him in
Debenhams coffee shop at one fifteen.'

After she'd gone I ate a bit of muesli out of the packet with a spoon and
finished off the dregs of wine in the fudge.

I know what her secret is: she's discovered power. She has power over Dad:
he wants her back. She has power over Julio, and the tax man, and everyone is
sensing her power and wanting a bit of it, which makes her even more
irresistible. So all I've got to do is find someone or something to have power
over and then . . . oh God. I haven't even got power over my own hair.

I am so depressed. Daniel, though perfectly chatty, friendly, even flirty all
week, has given me no hint as to what is going on between us, as though it is

perfectly normal to sleep with one of your colleagues and just leave it at that.
Work - once merely an annoying nuisance - has become an agonizing torture. I
have major trauma every time he disappears for lunch or puts his coat on to go at
end of day: to where? with whom? whom?

Perpetua seems to have managed to dump all her work on to me and spends
the entire time in full telephonic auto-witter to Arabella or Piggy, discussing the
half-million-pound Fulham flat she's about to buy with Hugo. 'Yars. No. Yars.
No, I quite agree. But the question is: Does one want to pay another thirty grand
for a fourth bedroom?'