Bridget Jones's Diary

Thursday 15 May

9st 3 (hideous instant fat production after lard-smeared parental Sunday lunch) cigarettes 17 (emergency) alcohol units 4 (positive thoughts about mother: 0 Negative thoughts about mother: weird Stephen-Hawking-like incalculably infinite number)

After the Alconburys left last Sunday I decided - traumatised by the suspicion that my real father was not Dad but Uncle Geoffrey - to confront my mother.

"Why were you all being so weird during lunch?" I said, while she banged open and shut the kitchen cupboard doors, trilling "Durr! I wish Una wouldn't put things away. Where's the bloomin' sieve?"

I put my head down and clenched my fists determinedly. "When I was talking about Paula Yates being the secret love-child of Hughie Green, why did you all go all funny?"

"Funny, darling? Can I just get past you into that drawer?"

I took a big breath. "It was almost as if people finding out who their real fathers were was a touchy subject with you and Daddy and Auntie Una and ..." I paused meaningfully, "Uncle Geoffrey."

"Oh don't be silly, Bridget. Now d'you want to take a couple of packets of minestrone back with you?"

"No!" I burst out, then breathed in calmly through my nose. "Look. Why did everyone start going out of the room and giving each other weird looks?"

She suddenly let out a peal of laughter. "Oh, I know what you mean, darling. Didn't you see? It was Wellington."

What?

"The only one who didn't notice was Daddy! Wellington started fiddling about with his Wee Wee in front of the French windows and of course him being a tribesman it's absolutely enormous - I mean in the Sudan they have the largest Wee Wees in the world and it's only the next country up or is that Niger?"

"Do you mean Wellington's penis, mother?" I said, icily.

"Bridget," she said in her worst, face-Magimixing voice, "I will not have that word used in this house."

Something inside me wanted to snap and go, "Do you mean Wellington's c**k, Mother?" then start striding around like Gregory Peck being a lawyer and having a rhetorical showdown; "Do you mean Wellington's d**k? Do you mean Wellington's great big, thrusting enormous, todger, Mother, because I think it's about time we started calling a spade a spade around here. Because all this swirly-carpeted, ripply-glass-internal, French-windowed, Country Casuals two-piece world is a sham, isn't it? A pathetic sham. You are sleeping with your 20-year-old Kikuyu tribesman "penfriend" (some might say less than satisfactorily if he has to masturbate in front of the french windows during Sunday lunch); Auntie Una's husband, Uncle Geoffrey, is a closet gay; and my father is not Daddy but Uncle Geoffrey."

"Don't just stand there with your mouth open, darling," said Mum. "You look like one of those mongols. What about a couple of tubes of Primula and some TUC biscuits?"

"No! How come my eyes are brown and yours are grey and Daddy's are blue?"

"I hope I'm not going to have to get Daddy to tell you about the birds and the bees," she said, with a horrible arch little Mummy-Being-Naughty look. For a second I thought she was going to continue gaily: "Because I shagged Uncle Geoffrey and got pregnant with you, you silly billy, now where is that sieve!" then stuff a packet of Rowntree's jelly into my faux Prada rucksack.

Instead she came out with some, as it were, cock-and-bull story about Granny's eyes being brown and Daddy's daddy's eyes being brown and brown being the stronger gene and now I don't know what to think.

Monday 19 May

8st 13 (phew) cigarettes 6 (vg) alcohol units 2 (excellent progress)

7pm Ugh. Is disgusting indescribable smell on stairs in manner of dead body. Suddenly have horrible fear that might be love-child buried under the stairs but is obviously ridiculous macabre thought. Love- children, though, are completely the latest thing. Only today another story emerged from new Labour MP describing joy at finding lost love-child. Is good that new spirit of Labour government means having secret love-child is positive PR asset. Also, when I was driving home from Mum's all the cars were behaving nicely to each other on the road, almost as if Tony Blair had stood up with his inspiring don't-smile-it'll-show-your-great-big- teeth look and said we were going to be a nation of kind, polite, smiley ... oooh. Someone at the door.

Oh my God. Was policeman saying they'd had a complaint from next door about the smell. They started emptying the hall cupboard and talking about pulling up the stair carpet then one of them suddenly appeared with my overnight bag, pulling a polythene bag of stinking blood-smeared flesh accusingly from the zip pocket and saying, "Is this yours, Miss?"

Was just sitting rigid with terror on the sofa being interrogated by whippersnapper policeman when the phone rang.

"Shall I get that for you, Miss?" said one of the officers suspiciously as if it might be my bits-of-dead-person supplier. He looked completely terrified for a moment, then shoved the phone at me.

"Now honestly, Bridget." It was my mother. "If you can't be bothered to pick up the phone to say thank you then I'm not going to bother giving you presents."

"Wha'?" I stammered.

"Didn't you find those two pieces of fillet steak? I put them in your bag before you left. In the zip pocket. I mean as I was saying to Una, it's not cheap isn't fillet steak."

Fervently wish to be secret long-lost love-child of anyone except my natural mothern