Tuesday October 11th

9.30am. In frenzy of anxious anticipation. Daniel is coming round tonight to have DNA, unbeknownst to him, covertly extracted. Mark Darcy is scheduled for Thursday.

Acceptable DNA sample forms:

Saliva: from inside cheek using sterile swab, possibly by initiating playful game of "Hamsters" where parties put swabs in cheeks and make cute noises.

Blood: knife through artery or similar.

Tooth, fingernail or toenail: everyday grooming or violence.

Hair: 15 to 20 strands yanked from head, plus follicles and scalp in manner of Red Indians. Sorry, Native Americans.

Entire flat is booby-trapped. Have put dental floss and tangle-inducing hairbrush enticingly on washbasin. Tonight will affix dry cleaning ticket with open safety pin to inside of my D&G shirt. When greeting Daniel, will thrust pin into his chest, thereby drawing drop of blood which can then swab! Gaah! Telephone! Completely late for work.

6.30pm. Back home. Was my mother "Oh hello, darling. Have you seen about Tom Cruise and this Katie Holmes being pregnant..." I crouched by the answerphone, brooding. Were these constant celebrity baby reports normal maternal sadism or something eerier - a Richard Finch-like sixth sense about my condition perhaps? It was probably just sadism, I told myself. Or maybe just a by-product of the celebrity magazines' own obsession with all things Baby? Funnily enough, I had the Katie Holmes baby conversation with Shazzer only yesterday at work.

"It's too weird," Shazzer whispered into the phone. "I mean, if Tom Cruise CAN get people pregnant why did he adopt the children with Nicole Kidman?"

"Hmmm," I said thoughtfully.

"Well exactly," snarled Shazzer. "And anyway, Katie Holmes is still a virgin. She's always said she wanted to wait till she was married."

"She can't be a virgin if she's pregnant, can she?" I whispered, glancing around for marauding Finches or Freddos.

"If you were impregnated with sperm using a turkey baster you'd still be a virgin wouldn't you? Katie Holmes has obviously been impregnated by someone else's sperm."

"Whose sperm?"

"A Scientologist's sperm," whispered Shazzer, darkly. "Oh fuck. Gottogobye."

Would actually really have liked to call my Mum back and continue Katie Holmes debate, even garner maternal support for own situation, but cannot talk to Mum at moment, at least until have prepared some kind of defence. My great white hope is that my mother likes Elizabeth Hurley - because she comes from a Home Counties army background - so the single parent thing might go down OK, particularly as Elizabeth Hurley was invited to get her figure back at the European villa of Elton John - another Mother favourite. The main problems as I see them are:

I was never going to be invited to get my figure back at the European villa of anyone.

Liz Hurley didn't have to pursue Steve Bing round the room trying to gouge out skin. (Did Steve Bing just send a toenail over, I wonder?)

There was only one of him.

Found self racking brains for names of stars who had to do paternity testing on two different fathers. Realised that for my mother to really embrace the whole thing, Angelina Jolie would have to split up with Brad Pitt, then have a not-back-together shag with him, followed by a not-back-together shag with Billy Bob Thornton, DNA test them both then do an interview about it in Hello! magazine and I'd be home and dry.

It was never going to happen.

Left for work v. depressed. Got into office to find that Sienna Miller (whom my mother likes because, again, she has a posh voice) in spooky echoing of own situation had previously "gone out" with future James Bond, Daniel Craig (you see: same name!), split up, got engaged to Jude Law, split up with Jude, shagged her Daniel again, then shagged Jude Law again - just like me! Now all she needs to do is be pregnant, DNA test them both, do an interview about it in Hello! and I can tell my mother the truth! Maybe there is a God, or at least a spiritual pattern in life, or is that Magical Thinking? Gaaah! Daniel will be here in 15 minutes.

6.55pm. Right, right. Have got safety pin attached to shirt now. As a back up, I can twist my fingers passionately round his hair and pull, even perhaps suggest he has a scratchy nail and cut it off. Have rejected semen as that was what got self into this mess in first place (not that baby is mess, obviously). Thought about putting drawing pin on kitchen chair but decided it wouldn't actually draw blood through trousers. Also inappropriate. WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT - WHOLE THING IS COMPLETELY OFF THE SCALE OF INAPPROPRIATE.

Calm and poised. Have got two stabs (not in sense of actual stabbing, hope) at it, for... Gaah! Telephone! Had better not be fucking Daniel.

7.00pm. Was fucking Daniel all right, with buzzy sound of excited voices, clinking glasses etc. in background.

"Jones my darling. Listen I'd forgotten it's the bloody Booker Prize tonight. Can we make it Monday?" NOOOO! THE FUCKING DNA TEST IS MONDAY! Honestly! Doesn't Daniel realise he's been doing this: "completely forgot it was the Booker Prize/my grandmother's funeral/Christmas" excuse for YEARS now? Doesn't he REALISE what an idiot he sounds? Daniel would be terrible father, terrible. It would be baby's first Nativity play and she would be the Virgin Mary or the Angel Gabriel and Daniel would ring up saying he had to go to the National Crap TV Awards and then a big tear would plop down her cheek and she would say: "But all the other daddies are here. Why isn't my daddy here?"

7.15pm. Hate Daniel. Is not fit to be human father. Am not even going to get his DNA sample then will not even get a chance to be father. Hah! That will show him.

7.20pm. But then what, if Mark Darcy blows me out for DNA sampling as well?

7.30pm. Maybe stabbing would be best option after all. Will simply go round to both their offices and stab them. That should do it.