"I didn't know you knew Rebecca," I said, breathing very quickly.

Rebecca is not exactly a friend, except that she's always turning up in 192 with me and Jude and Shaz. But the thing about Rebecca is, she's a jellyfisher. You have a conversation with her that seems all nice and friendly, then you suddenly feel like you've been stung and you don't know where it came from. You'll be talking about jeans and she'll say 'Yes, well, if you've got cellulite jodhpurs, you're best in something really well cut like Dolce & Gabbana,' - she herself having thighs like a baby giraffe - then smoothly move on to DKNY chinos as if nothing has happened.

"Bridge, are you still there?"

"Where ... where did you see Rebecca?" I said, in a high, strangled voice.

"She was at Barky Thompson's drinks last night and introduced herself."

"Last night?"

"Yes, I dropped in on my way back because you were running late."

"What did you talk about?" I said, conscious of Gary smirking at me, with a fag hanging out of his mouth.

"Oh. You know, she asked about my work and said nice things about you," said Mark casually.

"What did she say?" I hissed.

"She said you were a free spirit ..." The line broke up for a moment.

Free spirit? Free spirit in Rebecca-speak is tantamount to saying, "Bridget sleeps around and takes hallucinatory drugs."

"I suppose I could put up an RSJ and suspend them," Gary started up again, as if the phone conversation were not going on.

"Well. I'd better let you go, hadn't 1, if you've got someone there," said Mark. "Have a good time. Shall I call you later?"

"Yes, yes, talk to you later."

I put the phone down, mind reeling.

"After someone else is he?" said Gary in a rare and extremely unwelcome moment of lucidity.

I glared at him. "What about these shelves ... ?"

"Well. If you want them all in line, I'll have to move your leads, and that'll mean stripping the plaster off unless we rawl in a 3 by 4 of MDF. I mean if you'd told me you wanted them symmetrical before I'd have known, wouldn't P I suppose I could do it now." He looked round the kitchen. "Have you got any food in?"

"They're fine, absolutely lovely just like that," I gabbled.

"If you want to cook me a bowl of that pasta I'll..."

Have just paid Gary F-120 in cash for insane shelves to get him out of the house. Oh God, am so late. Fuck, fuck, telephone again.

9.05 p.m. Was Dad - which was strange since normally he leaves telephonic communication to Mum.

"Just called to see how you're doing." He sounded very odd.

"I'm fine," I said worriedly. "How are you?"

"Jolly good, jolly good. Very busy in the garden, you know, very busy though not much to do out there in the winter of course ... So, how's everything?"

"Fine," I said. "And everything's fine with you?"

"Oh, yes, yes, perfectly fine. Urn, and work? How's work?"

"Work's fine. Well, I mean disastrous obviously. But are you all right?"

"Me? Oh yes, fine. Of course the snowdrops will be pop, plop, ploppeeddee plopping through soon. And everything's all right with you, is it?"

"Yes, fine. How's things with you?"

After several more minutes of the impenetrable conversational loop I had a breakthrough: "How's Mum?" "Ah. Well, she's, she's ah. . ."

There was a long, painful pause. "She's going to Kenya. With Una."

The worst of it was, the business with Julio the Portuguese tour operator started last time she went on holiday with Una.

"Are you going too?"

"No, no," blustered Dad. "I've no desire to sit getting skin cancer in some appalling enclave sipping pina colada and watching topless tribal dancers prostitute themselves to lascivious crusties in front of tomorrow's breakfast buffet."

"Did she ask you to?"

"Ah. Well. You see, no. Your mother would argue that she is a person in her own right, that our money is her money, and she should be allowed to freely explore the world and her own personality at a whim."

"Well, I suppose as long as she keeps it to those two," I said. "She does love you, Dad. You saw that" - nearly said "last time" and changed it to - "at Christmas. She just needs a bit of excitement."

"I know but, Bridget, there's something else. Something quite dreadful. Can you hold on?"

I glanced up at the clock. I was supposed to be in 192 already and hadn't got round to telling Jude and Shaz yet that Magda was coming. I mean it is delicate at the best of times, trying to combine friends from opposite sides of the marriage divide, but Magda has just had a baby. And I feared that wouldn't be good for Jude's mindset.

"Sorry about that: just closing the door." Dad was back. "Anyway," he went on conspiratorially. "I overheard your mother talking on the phone earlier today. I think it was to the hotel in Kenya. And she said, she said. , ."

"It's all right, it's all right. What did she say"'

"She said, 'We don't want twins and we don't want anything under five foot. We're coming here to enjoy ourselves.'"

Christ alive.

"I mean," - poor Dad, he was practically sobbing - "am I actually to stand by and allow my own wife to hire herself a gigolo on arrival?"

For a moment was at a loss. Advising one's own father on the suspected gigolo-hiring habits of one's own mother is not a subject had ever seen covered in any of my books.

In the end I plumped for trying to help Dad boost his own self-esteem, whilst suggesting a period of calm distance before discussing things with Mum in the morning: advice I realized I would be completely incapable of following myself.

By this time I was beyond late. Explained to Dad that Jude was having a bit of a crisis.

"Off you go, off you go. When you've got time. Not to worry!" he said overcheerily. "Better get out in the garden while the rain's holding off." His voice sounded odd and thick.

"Dad," I said, "it's 9 o'clock at night. It's midwinter."

"Ah, right..." he said. "Jolly good. Better have a whisky, then."

Hope he is going to be OK.

Wednesday 29 January

9st 5 (gaah! But possibly due to wine-bag inside self), cigarettes 1 (v.g.), jobs 1, flats 1, boyfriends 1 (continuing good work).

5 a.m. Am never, never going to drink again as long as live.

5.15 a.m. Evening keeps coming back to me disturbingly in lumps.

After panting rush through rain, arrived at 192 to find Magda not arrived yet, thank God, and Jude already in a state allowing her thinking to get into a Snowball Effect, extrapolating huge dooms from small incidents as specifically warned against in 'Don't Sweat the Small Stuff'.

"I'm never going to have any children," she was monotoning, staring straight ahead. "I'm a re-tread. That guy said women over thirty are just walking pulsating ovaries."

"Oh for God's sake!" snorted Shaz, reaching for the Chardonnay. "Haven't you read Backlash? He's just a moral-free hack, recycling woman-bashing, Middle-England propaganda to keep women down like slaves. I hope he goes prematurely bald."

"But how likely is it I am going to meet someone new, now, and have time to form a relationship and persuade them they want to have children" Because they never do before they get them."

Wish Jude would not talk about biological clock in public. Obviously one worries about such things in private and tries to pretend whole undignified situation isn't happening. Bringing it up in 192 merely makes one panic and feel like a walking cliche.

Happily, Shazzer was off on a rant. Tar too many women are wasting their young lives having children in their twenties, thirties and early forties when they should be concentrating on their careers," she growled. "Look at that woman in Brazil who had one at sixty."

"Hurrah!" I said. "Nobody wants never to have any children but it's the sort of thing you always want to do in two or three years' time!"