Page 305 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

embarrassed.

'Julio, you naughty person,' she cooed. Oh God. She was still in love with him.

'You sleep,' said Julio, 'with him.' He spat on the Chinese carpet and bounded
upstairs, pursued by Mum, who trilled back at us, 'Could you carve, Daddy,
please, and get everyone sitting down?'

Nobody moved.

'OK, everybody,' said Dad, in a tense, serious, manly sort of voice. 'There is a

dangerous criminal upstairs using Pam as a hostage.'

'Oh, she didn't seem to mind, if you ask me,' piped up Granny in a rare and

most untimely moment of clarity. 'Oh look, there's a biscuit in the dahlias.'

I looked out of the window and nearly jumped out of my skin. There was
Mark Darcy slipping, lithe as a whippersnapper, across the lawn and in through

the French windows. He was sweating, dirty, his hair was unkempt, his shirt
unbuttoned. Ding-dong!

'Everyone keep completely still and quiet, as if everything is normal,' he said

softly. We were all so stunned, and he so thrillingly authoritative, that we started
doing as he said as if hypnotized zombies.

'Mark,' I whispered as I walked past him with the gravy. 'What are you

saying? There is no normal.'

'I'm not sure whether Julio's violent. The police are outside. If we can get your

mum to come downstairs and leave him up there they can go in and get him.'

'OK. Leave it to me,' I said, and walked to the bottom of the stairs.

'Mum!' I yelled. 'I can't find any savory doilies.'