I have recently read an article which insists that many women say that they “literally are/were” Bridget Jones. I am not one of these women. However, I used to have an awful lot in common with her; right down to the red pyjamas she wore at the beginning of the first movie when she sang (well, mimed) along to “All By Myself” with such raw emotion; guzzling glass after glass of wine and giving it all she’d got. It was clear she was a girl with a huge heart and nobody to give it to.

There was a time when most days I would finish work, get back to my flat, pop a frozen fish pie (for one) into the oven, start running my bath and open a bottle of wine. Just like Bridget my main relationship at that time was in fact with said bottle and I have to confess to still having the occasional affair with it. Other similarities? Well, I am a constant calorie counter and I do love a list.

Still, I’m not and never have “literally been” Bridget Jones but you may have already worked out that I am a huge fan, having created the character Rigid Bones who started life in a daily column entitled Rigid Bones’s Diary (geddit? Of course you do).

So, obviously I’d been looking forward to reading Bridget Jones – Mad About The Boy for some time. And then then it happened; the news of Mark Darcy’s demise came out. I know a lot of people felt very angry but at first all I felt was a little surprised and perhaps a tad disappointed. However, after giving it some thought I realised that Bridget has to be single. That’s who she is; to me, the reader, I mean. And, given that so much time has passed since we last looked at Bridget, she had to be written into a suitable single situation for her age and the author has chosen to make her a widow.

There are several alternative single situations Bridget could have found herself in at this stage of her life; for example she could have been a childless divorcee or a single mum, handing over the children to her estranged husband at weekends. That way the door would still have been open for the happy ending that I assumed was on the cards for her.

Perhaps there will be a happy ending, obviously not the one I envisaged where Mark and Bridget live happily ever after; but happy all the same. I do hope so. It breaks my heart when I think of that lonely girl in the red pyjamas, miming along to “All By Myself”, eventually giving her heart to someone who deserved it only to lose him. No, I’m not mad about Bridget; I’m just a little sad.