The Edge of Reason Read online

  Love, Mum

  SATURDAY 30 AUGUST

  112 lbs. (hope), alcohol units 6 (hurrah!), cigarettes 0, calories 8,755 ( hurrah!), no. of times checked bag to make sure no drugs in same 24.

  6 a.m. On plane. Going home! Free! Thin! Clean! Shiny-haired! In own clean clothes! Hurrah! Have got tabloids and Marie Claire and Hello! All is marvelous.

  6:30 a.m. Unaccountable plummet. Is disorientating being squashed on plane again in darkness with everyone asleep. Feel huge pressure to be euphoric but feel really freaked out. Guards came last night and called me out. Was taken to room and given clothes back, met by a different embassy official called Brian with strange short-sleeved nylon shirt and wire specs. He said there’d been a “development” in Dubai and pressure from the highest level in the Foreign Office and they had to get me out of the country immediately before the climate changed.

  Was all strange in the Embassy. No one there except Brian who showed me straight to a very bare old-fashioned bathroom where there was a little pile of all my things and said to have a shower and change, but be really quick.

  Couldn’t believe how thin I had got, but there was no hair dryer so hair was still pretty mad. Obviously not important but would have been good to look nice on return. Was starting with makeup when Brian knocked on the door saying that we really had to leave.

  Was all a blur, rushed out in steamy night to car, rushing through streets full of goats and tuk-tuks and honking and people with entire families on one bicycle.

  Couldn’t believe cleanliness of airport. Did not have to go through normal channel but some special Embassy route, everything all stamped and cleared. When got to the gate, whole area was empty, plane ready to leave with just one guy in a luminous yellow jacket waiting for us.

  “Thank you,” I said to Brian. “Thank Charlie for me.”

  “I will,” he said wryly. “Or his dad anyway.” Then he handed me my passport and shook my hand in really quite a respectful way such as was not at all used to even before incarceration.

  “You did very well,” he said. “Well done, Miss Jones.”

  10 a.m. Just been to sleep. Really excited about return. Have actually had spiritual epiphany. Everything is going to be different now.

  New post–spiritual epiphany life resolutions:

  Not start smoking or drinking again as have not had drink for eleven days and only two cigarettes (do not want to go into what had to do to get them). Though may just have small bottle of wine now. As obviously need to celebrate. Yes.

  Not rely on men but on self. (Unless Mark Darcy wants to go back out with me. Oh God, hope so. Hope he realizes still love him. Hope it was him who got me out. Hope he is there at airport.)

  Not bother about stupid things e.g. weight, mad hair, who Jude invited to wedding.

  Not discard advice of self-help books, poems etc. but limit it to key things e.g. optimism, not freaking out, forgiving (though maybe not Fucking Jed as shall now be known).

  Be more careful about men as are plainly—if evidence of Fucking Jed not to mention Daniel anything to go by—dangerous.

  Not take shit from people i.e. Richard Finch, but have confidence in self-reliance.

  Be more spiritual and stick to spiritual principles.

  Goody, now can look at Hello! and tabloids.

  11:15 a.m. Does not seem to be anything in papers about me—though as Charlie said, it was all hush-hush and kept under wraps by government so as not to interfere with Thai relations, imports of peanut sauce etc.

  11:45 a.m. Mmm. Wine delicious after so long. Really goes to head.

  12:30 p.m. Yuk. Feel slightly sick after tabloid gorging. Had forgotten depressed, ashamed feeling you get afterwards like hangover—and sense of world being turned into same horrible tale over and over again where people get set up as good then turn out to be evil and bad.

  Particularly enjoyed, at time, priest-turned-shagging-fuckwit story. Is always so enjoyable when other people behave badly. Feel, however, that founders of support group for victims of shagging priest (because “women who have relationships with priests often have no one to turn to”) are being rather partisan. What about others who have no one to turn to? Should surely also be support groups for women who have been victims of shagging Tory ministers, members of British national sporting teams who have slept with members of the Royal family, Roman Catholic clergy who have slept with celebrities or members of the Royal family, and celebrities who have slept with members of the public who have confessed their story to members of the Roman Catholic clergy who have then sold the story to the Sunday papers. Maybe I will sell story to Sunday papers and that is where money will come from. No, that is wrong, you see spirituality has already been infested by tabloid mentality.

  Maybe will write book though. Maybe will get hero’s return in England like Beirut hostage John McCarthy and write a book called Some Other Cloud Formation or other meteorological phenomenon. Maybe will get hero’s welcome with Mark, Jude, Shazzer, Tom, and parents and crowds of waiting photographers and Richard Finch grovelingly begging for exclusive interview. Had better not get too pissed. Hope am not going to go all mad. Feel like I should be met by police or counselors or something and taken to a secret base for debriefing. Think will have little sleep.

  9 p.m. (UK time now.) Arrived at Heathrow with clouting post-flight hangover trying to purge clothes of remnants of bread and pink toothpaste fraudulently offered as airline dessert, rehearsing lines, in preparation for waiting press phalanx—“It was a nightmare. A living nightmare. A thunderbolt out of the blue. I feel no hatred (bitterness?) for if others are warned of the dangers of one’s friends sleeping with strange men, my incarceration will not have been wasted (in vain?).” Whole time, however, did not think waiting phalanx would actually be there. Passed through customs without incident and looked around excitedly for familiar faces, only to be engulfed by—well, press phalanx. Crowd of photographers and journalists with flashguns. Mind went completely blank and could not think what to say or do except parrot “No comment,” in manner of government minister who has been caught shagging prostitute, and keep walking, pushing the trolley, thinking my legs were going to collapse under me. Then suddenly the trolley was taken away, and someone put their arm round me saying, “It’s all right, Bridge, we’re here, we’ve got you, it’s all right.”

  It was Jude and Shazzer.

  SUNDAY 31 AUGUST

  114 lbs. (Yess! Yess! Triumphant culmination of 18-year diet, though perhaps at unwarranted cost), alcohol units 4, calories 8,995 (deserved, surely), progress on hole in wall made by Gary the Builder 0.

  2 a.m. My flat. So nice to be home. So nice to see Jude and Shazzer again. At airport, policeman took us through the crowd to an interview room where there were Drug Squad people and a man from the Foreign Office who started asking lots of questions.

  “Look, can’t this bloody well wait?” burst out Shaz indignantly after about a minute. “Can’t you see the state she’s in?”

  Men seemed to think it was necessary to carry on but eventually became so terrified of Shazzer’s growls of “Are you men or monsters?” and threats to report them to Amnesty International that they gave us a policeman to take us back to London.

  “Just be careful who you get mixed up with next time, ladies,” said the Foreign Office man.

  “Oh please,” said Shaz, just as Jude was saying, “Oh quite right, Officer,” and launching into a professional woman vote-of-thanks-style speech.

  Back in my flat, the fridge was full of food, there were pizzas waiting to go in the oven, Milk Tray and Dairy Box, smoked salmon pinwheels, packets of Minstrels, and bottles of Chardonnay. There was a big sign on the polythene hole in the wall saying “Welcome back, Bridget.” And a fax from Tom—who has moved in with the customs guy he flirted with in San Francisco—saying:

  DARLING, DRUGS ARE POWDER OF SATAN. JUST SAY NO! ASSUME YOU WILL NOW BE THINNEST EVER. GIVE UP ALL MEN IMMEDIATELY AND BECOME GAY. COME HERE AND LIVE WITH US IN CALIF
ORNIAN GAY SEX-SANDWICH THREESOME. HAVE BROKEN JEROME’S HEART! HAHAHAHA.

  CALL ME. LOVE YOU. WELCOME BACK.

  Also Jude and Shaz had cleaned all the packing mess up from the bedroom floor and put clean sheets on the bed and fresh flowers and Silk Cut on the bedside table. Love the lovely girls. And the lovely self-obsessed Tom.

  They ran me a bath and brought me in a glass of champagne and I showed them my flea bites. Then I got into my pajamas and we all sat on the bed with cigarettes, champagne and Cadbury’s Milk Tray and started going through everything that had happened.

  “I knew something was wrong when I got to the gate,” Shaz was saying. “But the airline people wouldn’t tell me what had happened and insisted I got on the plane, then they wouldn’t let me get off again, and the next thing we were taxiing along the runway.”

  “So when did you find out?” I said, polishing off my Chardonnay, at which Jude immediately held out the bottle to pour me another. Was marvelous, marvelous.

  “Not till we landed,” said Shaz. “It was just the most terrible flight. I was hoping you’d just missed it, but they were being really odd and sniffy with me. Then the second I got off the plane . . .”

  “She got arrested!” said Jude gleefully. “Pissed as a fart.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “And you were hoping Jed would be there.”

  “That bastard,” said Shaz, coloring.

  Somehow thought I’d better not mention Jed again.

  “He had someone behind you in the queue at Bangkok,” Jude explained. “Apparently he was waiting at Heathrow for a call and immediately got on a plane to Dubai.”

  Turned out Shaz called Jude from the police station and they quickly got on to the Foreign Office.

  “Then nothing happened,” said Jude. “They started talking about you being in for ten years.”

  “I remember.” I shuddered.

  “We called Mark on the Wednesday night and he immediately got on to all his contacts in Amnesty and Interpol. We tried to get hold of your mum but the answerphone said she was touring the Lakes. We thought about ringing Geoffrey and Una but we decided everyone would just get hysterical and it wouldn’t help.”

  “Very wise,” I said.

  “On the first Friday we heard you’d been transferred to proper jail . . .” said Shaz.

  “And Mark got on a plane to Dubai.”

  “He went to Dubai? For me?”

  “He was fantastic,” said Shaz.

  “And where is he? I left him a message but he hasn’t rung back.”

  “He’s still there,” said Jude. “Then on Monday we got a call from the Foreign Office and everything seemed to have changed.”

  “That must have been when Charlie talked to his dad!” I said excitedly.

  “They let us send out your mail . . .”

  “And then on Tuesday we heard they’d got Jed . . .”

  “And Mark called on Friday and said they’d got a confession . . .”

  “Then the call came out of the blue on Saturday that you were on the plane!”

  “Hurrah!” we all said, clinking glasses. Was desperate to get on to subject of Mark but did not want to appear shallow and ungrateful for all the girls had done.

  “So is he still going out with Rebecca?” I burst out.

  “No!” said Jude. “He’s not! He’s not!”

  “But what happened?”

  “We don’t really know,” said Jude. “One minute it was all on, next thing Mark wasn’t going to Tuscany and—”

  “You’ll never guess who Rebecca’s going out with now,” interrupted Shaz.

  “Who?”

  “It’s someone you know.”

  “Not Daniel?” I said, feeling an odd mixture of emotions.

  “No.”

  “Colin Firth?”

  “No.”

  “Phew. Tom?”

  “No. Think of someone else you know quite well. Married.”

  “My dad? Magda’s Jeremy?”

  “Now you’re getting warm.”

  “What? It’s not Geoffrey Alconbury, is it?”

  “No.” Shaz giggled. “He’s married to Una and he’s gay.”

  “Giles Benwick,” said Jude suddenly.

  “Who?” I gibbered.

  “Giles Benwick,” confirmed Shaz. “You know Giles, for God’s sake, the one who works with Mark, who you rescued from suicide at Rebecca’s.”

  “He had that thing about you.”

  “He and Rebecca both stayed holed up in Gloucestershire after their accidents reading self-help books and now—they are together.”

  “They are as one,” added Jude.

  “They are joined in the act of love,” expanded Shaz.

  There was a pause while we all looked at each other, stunned at this strange act of the heavens.

  “The world has gone mad,” I burst out with a mixture of wonderment and fear. “Giles Benwick isn’t handsome, he isn’t rich.”

  “Well, actually he is,” murmured Jude.

  “But he isn’t someone else’s boyfriend. He isn’t a status symbol in any normal Rebecca way.”

  “Apart from being very rich,” said Jude.

  “Yet Rebecca has chosen him.”

  “That’s right, that’s exactly right,” said Shaz, excitedly. “Strange times! Strange times indeed!”

  “Soon Prince Philip will ask me to be his girlfriend, and Tom will be going out with the queen,” I cried.

  “Not Pretentious Jerome, but our own, dear queen,” clarified Shaz.

  “Bats will start eating the sun,” I expanded. “Horses will be born with tails on their heads, and cubes of frozen urine will land on our roof terraces offering us cigarettes.”

  “Strange times,” pronounced Shaz, shaking her head with heavy portentousness. “Strange times indeed.”

  Think I must have just fallen asleep because now it is all dark, Jude and Shaz are not here but have left a note on my pillow saying to call them when I wake up. They are both staying at Shazzer’s because Jude’s flat is being done up so she and Vile Richard can live together after the wedding. Hope she has got a better builder than me. Hole in wall entirely unchanged.

  * * *

  12

  Strange Times

  TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER

  115 lbs. (will definitely stop gorging tomorrow), alcohol units 6 (must not start drinking too much), cigarettes 27 (must not start smoking too much), calories 6,285 (must not start eating too much).

  8 a.m. My flat. Determined now not to sink back into old ways, spending entire life checking answerphone and waiting for Mark to ring, but to be calm and centered.

  8:05 a.m. But why did Mark split up with Rebecca? Why is she going out with speccy Giles Benwick? WHY? WHY? Did he go to Dubai because he still loves me? But why hasn’t he rung me back? Why? Why?

  Anyway. All that is irrelevant to me now. I am working on myself. I am going to get my legs waxed.

  10 a.m. Returned to flat to find answerphone flashing.

  Was Mark! He sounded very faint and crackly. “Bridget . . . only just got the news. I’m delighted you’re free. Delighted. I’ll be back later in the . . .” There was a loud hiss on the line, then it clicked off.

  Ten minutes later, the phone rang.

  “Oh, hello, darling, guess what?”

  My mother. My own mother! Felt great overwhelming rush of love.

  “What?” I said, feeling tears welling up.

  “ ‘Go quietly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.’ ”

  There was a long pause.

  “Mum?” I said eventually.

  “Shhh, darling, silence.” (More pause.) “ ‘Remember what peace there may be in silence.’ ”

  I took a big breath, tucked the phone under my chin, and carried on making the coffee. You see what I have learned is the importance of detaching from other people’s lunacy as one has
enough to worry about keeping oneself on course. Just then the mobile started ringing.

  Trying to ignore the first phone, which had started vibrating and yelling: “Bridget, you’ll never find equilibrium if you don’t learn to work with silence,” I pressed OK on the mobile. It was my dad.

  “Ah, Bridget,” he said in a stiff, military-style voice. “Will you speak to your mother on the land line? Seems to have got herself worked up into a bit of a state.”

  She was in a state? Didn’t they care about me at all? Their own flesh and blood?

  There was a series of sobs, shrieks and unexplained crashes on the “land line.” “OK, Dad, bye,” I said, and picked up the real phone again.

  “Darling,” croaked Mum, in a hoarse, self-pitying whisper. “There’s something I have to tell you. I cannot keep it from my family and loved ones any longer.”

  Trying not to dwell on the distinction between “family” and “loved ones,” I said brightly, “Well! Don’t feel you have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “What would you have me do?” she yelled histrionically. “Live a lie? I’m an addict, darling, an addict!”

  I racked my brains as to what she could have decided she’s addicted to. My mum has never drunk more than a single glass of cream sherry since Mavis Enderbury got drunk at her twenty-first birthday party in 1952 and had to be taken home on the crossbar of a bicycle belonging to someone called “Peewee.” Her drug intake is limited to the occasional Fisherman’s Friend in response to a tickly cough triggered during the biannual performances of Kettering Amateur Dramatic Society.

  “I’m an addict,” she said again, then paused dramatically.

  “Right,” I said. “An addict. And what exactly are you addicted to?”

  “Relationships,” she said. “I’m a relationship addict, darling. I’m co-dependent.”

  I crashed my head straight down on to the table in front of me.

  “Thirty-six years with Daddy!” she said. “And I never understood.”