The Little Book of…
By S. Faith, © 2009
Words: 2,404
Rating: T / PG-13
Summary: Not every self-help book Bridget gets has the best ideas in it.
Disclaimer: Most of the dialogue is straight from the columns. The other words in the order that they're in are mine.
Notes: Inspired by the 14 / 21 November 1998 columns from the Telegraph.
Everyone at one point or another has the sort of day that they only get through because they know there's something waiting for them when they finish that makes it all worthwhile. Today was one of those days for Mark Darcy, and the something waiting for him was his wonderful girlfriend Bridget, always ready and willing to take him in her arms, glass of wine and sympathetic ear in the offering. With a game of squash scheduled later that evening, he really needed the spiritual recharge.
When he showed at her door she was truly a sight for sore eyes, and he kissed her with a "Hi love" before collapsing into an exhausted heap onto the sofa. "God," he said, letting the words fall out of his mouth in a rush, "I've had such a day. I thought I'd just pop round for a spot of nurture before I play squash with Giles."
He looked up to her; instead of a glass of wine and a cuddle, she just stood there looking at him in a rather disturbing manner.
He added, "It's been a nightmare."
"Yes," she said coolly. "It must be awful being in a job you're not up to."
Her words surprised him—it was very unlike her not to comfort him—but he felt a smile curl his lips. Maybe she'd had a bad day too. "I suppose I am being a bit of a whinger," he said. "Shall I blow out Giles for squash and take you to a movie?"
As he asked, he recalled her having said something about a film with Jude, and he roundly expected to be refused, but she said, "Okay. Fine."
Motion in the corner of his eye drew his attention away from her and her slightly odd behaviour. It was the edge of the polythene curtain covering the gaping hole in Bridget's flat wall, fluttering with the draft. "You really should fix that hole in the wall," he said; he'd been pestering her to get her builder, Gary, to do it for some time now.
He expected her to say that yes, she would get around to it; he did not expect her to pick up her phone, punch in a number, and bark into the phone, "It's Bridget. You're a lying, cheating, manipulative, idle dickhead."
He couldn't believe his ears. Perhaps she'd had a very bad day.
………
The movie they'd gone to see turned out to be something of a bore, a matter made worse by a loudmouth know-it-all who kept yammering on during the film. To his surprise, Bridget's mobile not only went off—she was usually very good about shutting off the ringer when in the cinema—but she answered it and spoke loudly to whom was soon to be revealed as Jude. Her words were less than kind.
She was so obnoxious that even he loudmouth know-it-all was prompted to turn to her and say, "Will you shut up?"
"You started it, dickhead!" she shot back.
At least the loudmouth stopped talking from that point forward.
………
Despite a reticence to spark her inexplicably short temper, Mark returned with her to her flat. He had been having bouts of insomnia lately, and he had found that sleeping curled up with her after a cup of camomile tea was the best remedy.
She was working in the kitchen and seemed to have everything well in hand so he retired to her bedroom, undressed, and slipped between the sheets. She returned momentarily with two mugs, and a spiral bound pad of paper tucked under her arm. She handed him a mug. It was not camomile tea at all, but was rather dark and looked very much like espresso. He was perplexed. She crawled in beside him and whipped out a pen as she flipped the pad open.
"What are you doing?" he asked, giving her a sidelong glance.
"I'm making a list of all my worries," she said. "Then I'm going to read them all out before we go to sleep."
He reached over to set down the espresso—it seemed a bad idea to add caffeine into the mix at this point in the night—then leaned on her shoulder and watched her write the number one on the top line, then, beside it, wrote, Wasting time in wrong job. Next came number two: Richard Finch is mad, drug-crazed lunatic—afraid will be in wrong place at wrong time when he snaps. Number three: Fear that there is maximum quota of sex in lifetime and am close to hitting it. Number four: Folding underpants might be sign of deeper psychological problem….
The last two made him smile. He closed his eyes, felt himself drift off to sleep.
………
Mark's Friday, Saturday and Sunday passed in a blur. He tried several times to reach her but he always got her answerphone, which worried him a little, especially as her usually warm and welcoming outgoing message had been replaced by something a lot less so: "I can't answer right now. If you don't know what to do next, I really can't help you, can I?"
He was only able to reach her once for a few minutes on Saturday afternoon, and she told him very smugly that Gary had made significant progress on the hole. He was impressed that she'd spurred him into action but unsettled that she turned from the receiver to bark, presumably to Gary, "I told you to do it faster."
He tried giving her a call on Sunday night, but she wasn't there, concerning him. He tried again on Monday night to see if he could go over to see her.
"Yes?" she asked, picking up the phone.
"Hey, I called you last night and you were out. Where were you?"
After a moment's hesitation, she said, "I went out with Daniel."
Mark's head spun, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, and a loud whooshing wind-like sound filled his ears. How could she have betrayed him like this? He felt devastated, and his voice sounded gravelly to his own ears when he said at last, "Daniel! You went out with Daniel? What for? Where to? Why?"
After a beat, she coolly said, "I went out to dinner with Daniel. I didn't 'go out' with Daniel like you 'went out' with Rebecca."
Chastened by the reminder of his own stupidity, he calmed down. She'd only had one meal with him. This was Bridget, after all; he could trust her fidelity to him. Starkly he realised he could have set work aside for the weekend and been more attentive to her, especially with the strange way she'd been behaving. "Fair point," he said at last. "Maybe I've been neglecting you lately. Will you have dinner with me tonight?"
"Thank you," she said at last. "That would be lovely. Will you pick me up about eight?"
She was of course not ready at eight, which did not surprise him, but with her recent surly mood he dared not comment on it. Once at the restaurant, dinner was delicious, though he could not help but notice that Bridget still seemed distant and aloof. "How was your day?" he asked.
She shrugged. "The usual. Crap."
He reached out for her, scooting himself closer to her on the seat, putting his arm around her shoulder, hugging her to him. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Mark," she said. "I'm trying to eat."
"Sorry." He withdrew his arm.
She dug her fork into her dinner, brought it to her mouth, and looked away.
"Just remember what you said to me the last time Richard Finch drove you crazy. Imagine him with a lovely two-piece bikini on." He reached forward to brush her hair out of her eyes, hoping to catch at least a fleeting glimpse of a smile. "You're looking really lovely tonight," he said in a low tone, letting his fingers trace along her eyebrow. "I'm sorry if I don't say so enough." He reached forward and planted a feather-light kiss on her cheek. As he sat back again, he saw the corners of her mouth subtly pull down in a frown, and she looked down to her plate, picking at her food.
He laid his hand on her knee, then squeezed gently. He could not figure out what was going on, what was prompting this sour mood, and why everything he did was causing her to spiral deeper into it. Not even PMT had ever been this bad before.
"Bridget," he asked gently. "Is something wrong?"
"No," she snapped. "Nothing at all. Why do you always assume something's wrong with me?"
"Sorry, love," he said, surprised at her brusqueness. "I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. I just meant in general. Did you just get up on the wrong side of the bed?" he joked, striving for a light tone.
She looked at him as if he were mad, then sighed huffily. "Forget it. It doesn't matter," she said, in a manner that said to him that it very much mattered to her.
Perhaps, he thought, it's just really bad PMT.
"Is there anything I can get you?" he asked in a gentle tone. "I could run back to your flat for the Midol—"
"What?" she asked, her head snapping up. "Why do men always assume it's that?"
He vowed to ramp up his efforts.
He leaned over, put his arm around her shoulder again, and pressed a lingering kiss to her earlobe, followed by several more light kisses. "Sorry," he whispered, then kissed her once more.
She didn't protest that time.
He took her home and continued his attentions into the bedroom, managed to bring her around at last with a little tender loving care, and held her as she fell to sleep.
………
After a slightly more back-to-normal morning with Bridget and a long day at work, Mark's phone rang at ten in the evening. Drawing his brows together, he answered it promptly. "Yes?"
"Mark, it's me. Bridget."
The tremor in her voice alarmed him. "Everything all right?"
She did not answer right away, and when she did, her voice was very dire, scaring him further. "It's Jude. She… has a lump."
It was no wonder she was so upset. "I'll be right over."
It took him no time at all to get to her flat, and he gathered her up in his arms the moment he got in. "She found it this morning," Bridget said into his shirt. "She went to see a vile, hateful doctor who's freaked her out beyond all reason. She has a scan on Tuesday, and wants me to go."
"You should go," he said. "Take the day off, go with her."
Bridget nodded.
"Come on. Let's sit." He led her over to the sofa, sat down, and bade her sit over his lap. When she did, he held her close to him, stroking her hair.
"I'm afraid I made it worse," she said.
He made a dismissive sound. "Come now. How could you have possibly made it worse?"
She didn't say anything, just settled into his embrace, rested her cheek on his shoulder. How much he enjoyed offering comfort to her; how much it pleased him to know she called him for that comfort, that she trusted him, felt safe and secure enough in his arms to do so.
"I have a confession to make," came her trembling voice, close to his ear.
He was nearly to the point of drifting to sleep, with her on his lap and his arm cradled around her, when her sudden declaration brought him back to full wakefulness. "What?" he asked.
She sat up, meeting his eyes. "I haven't been completely on the level with you."
He became concerned. "Bridget, what are you talking about?"
She took in a deep breath. "Tom bought me this new self-help book. The Little Book of Stress."
This was about another bloody self-help book?
"Stress?" echoed Mark. "That doesn't sound very helpful."
She continued, "The philosophy is that, well, bad is the new good. And I may have taken it too far."
"What do you mean?"
"I was kind of evil," she said. "I never had dinner with Daniel—I just said that to get a rise out of you." He was sure his relief was palpable. "And I probably made things worse for Jude."
She stood up, pulled a small red book off of the table and handed it to him. He took it from her, flipped and instantly began to chuckle as his eyes scanned over the blatantly outrageous 'advice'. It was clearly intended to be a response to the wildly (and inexplicably) popular The Little Book of Calm—of which he knew she also possessed a copy—and in his opinion not a real self-help book at all. Tom had just had quite a little joke at her expense.
His laughter tapered off and he met her gaze squarely as she stood over him, looking quite repentant. How it warmed his heart that her conscience was so distraught at the thought of the things she had done being 'evil' that she had to confess after only a few days (and after saying a few things that were actually mostly true), how it made him love her that much more. "The thing is, Bridge, you didn't actually do anything very bad," he said comfortingly. "The reason it worked was you just stopped worrying so much about getting everything right and put your foot down a bit. That's not bad. It's just normal."
She blinked at him in disbelief, and only then a small smile found her features.
"Really?" she asked.
He nodded.
"But it really hurt Jude's feelings." She sat on the sofa beside him again.
"Jude will be fine," he said. "There's nothing at all wrong with being a little more assertive."
Her grin turned a little impish. "What you're saying then, what you're admitting to me, is that advice from a self-help book actually worked."
"What I'm saying," he said, trying not to feel like he'd painted himself into a corner, "is that sometimes you're a little too good."
She raised an eyebrow, trying to keep a straight face, before bursting into a laugh. That was more like the Bridget he knew. "And other times?"
He smiled. He couldn't help it. "Other times?" he teased. "Just right."
The end.