I shrugged it off and snuggled down moonily, still shag-drunk, savouring flashbacks to the night before and arranging myself prettily for Mark’s return.
The door opened and he came in with a tray full of orange juice, coffee and chocolate croissants.
“Mmmm, thank you, do come back in,” I said.
But he set down the tray and remained standing.
“What’s the matter?”
He started pacing. “I’ve made a mistake,” he said.
Mind starting spiralling: horror, doom, pain, vulnerable in nighty and him in his suit. Not this? Not such passion and intimacy, instantly replaced by pain and rejection. Not in my nighty.
“I wasn’t thinking. I was carried away with emotion, with the joy of seeing you again. I had way too much to drink. We both did. But we cannot proceed.”
“Proceed? That’s a funny way to describe shagging.”
“Bridget,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I can’t do this. I
’m newly divorced. I am not in a fit emotional state to take on a relationship at this point in your life.”
“But I didn’t ask you for that.”
“I realize, but the question is undoubtedly there, whether it is verbalized or not. At your age, I simply…it would be wrong of me…I don’t want to use up any more of your childbearing years.”
—
7 p.m. My flat. Oh God, oh God. I actually have reached my sexual sell-by date. Men are no longer attracted to me because I am withered and a barren husk.
7.01 p.m. I’m toxic. I’m emitting man-repellent rays.
7.02 p.m. Right. Pah! I cannot allow emotional matters to influence my professional career. I am a professional producer and I will simply multitask and compartmentalize my brain even if I have slept with, then been rejected by, the love of…and anyway I do not care about men anymore. Simply my work.
7.03 p.m. Being a woman in her late thirties with no kids is the hardest time for a woman. It’s a biological kink which I’m sure will be sorted out in years to come. But for now, it’s just torture, the clock ticking louder and louder, men sensing the panic and running for the hills, the sense of time running out—and even if you met someone NOW there still wouldn’t be time for the relationship to run its course and a baby to happen in the natural run of things.
7.05 p.m. Babies: yuk. I am a top professional woman. Every woman has her needs, which I simply fulfil with adult liaisons, almost French in their elegance.
THREE
MEN ARE LIKE BUSES
MONDAY 26 JUNE
6 p.m. Sit Up Britain studios. “Get over it,” said Miranda. She was sitting in the studio, surrounded by cameras and giant screens, looking immaculate as usual in the presenter’s chair, while I controlled the WHOLE THING from the glass studio control gallery above, talking to her through her earpiece.
“Thirty seconds to air,” said Julian the floor manager.
“I can’t believe he’d leave like that and assume I was wanting a relationship and babies,” I whispered into Miranda’s feed. “I feel like such a sad act.”
“What are you talking about?” said Miranda, as the soundman shoved the mike up her shirt.
“TEN, nine, EIGHT, seven,” Julian the floor manager began.
“This is Sit Up Britain, not Victorian Britain,” said Miranda. “You hooked up with your ex. So what?”
Gaah! Miranda, unbeknownst to herself, was looming up on the screens all over the studio and indeed the country. “And anyway, fucking your ex doesn’t count.”
“Sorry, missed that cue, yes, we are live,” said Julian the floor manager.