Bridget’s second diary ushers in a reformed woman. She is no longer a smoker (well, not much), the wilderness years are over, and she is at last united with man-of-her-dreams Mark Darcy. But things aren’t perfect: there’s an eight-foot hole in the wall of her flat, she’s increasingly worried about a certain boyfriend-stealing beauty, and her friends’ mad advice is getting her nowhere – something has to change. And so Bridget decides to embark on a spiritual epiphany to the palm- and magic-mushroom-kissed shores of Thailand. Surely it will be the perfect place to set her life on course once and for all . . .

Bridget faces a few rather pressing questions: What do you do when your girlfriend’s sixtieth birthday party is the same day as your boyfriend’s thirtieth? Is it better to die of Botox or die of loneliness because you’re so wrinkly? Is it wrong to lie about your age when online dating? Is it morally wrong to have a blow-dry when one of your children has head lice? Is it normal to be too vain to put on your reading glasses when checking your toy boy for head lice? Does the Dalai Lama actually tweet or is it his assistant? Is it normal to get fewer followers the more you tweet? Is technology now the fifth element? Or is that wood? If you put lip plumper on your hands do you get plump hands? Is sleeping with someone after two dates and six weeks of texting the same as getting married after two meetings and six months of letter writing in Jane Austen’s day?

Before motherhood, before marriage, Bridget with biological clock ticking very, very loudly, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at the eleventh hour: a joyful pregnancy which is dominated, however, by a crucial but terribly awkward question – who is the father? Mark Darcy: honourable, decent, notable human rights lawyer? Or Daniel Cleaver: charming, witty, notable fuckwit? 9:45 PM It’s like they’re two halves of the perfect man, who’ll spend the rest of their lives each wanting to outdo the other one. And now it’s all enacting itself in my stomach.