Bridget bumps into Mark and his glamorous and haughty colleague Natasha. Bridget leaves with Daniel and they have dinner, despite Daniel's notorious reputation as a womaniser. Daniel tells Bridget that he and Mark were formerly friends but as Mark slept with his fiancée, they now hate each other. Bridget and Daniel start dating. Bridget is invited to a family party, originally a "Tarts & Vicars" costume party, so she ties it into a mini-break weekend with Daniel. They spend the day before the party at a country inn where Mark and Natasha are also staying. The morning of the party, Daniel says he must return to London for work and leaves Bridget dressed as a Playboy bunny to endure the party alone. When she returns to London and drops in on Daniel, she discovers his American colleague, Lara naked in his flat. Bridget cuts ties with him and immediately searches for a new career. She lands a new job in television, and when Daniel pleads with her to stay, she declares that she would "rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse". Bridget attends a friend's long-standing dinner party, where she is the only unaccompanied person. Once again she crosses paths with Mark and Natasha. He privately confesses to Bridget that, despite her faults, he likes her "just as you are". Sometime later, he allows Bridget an exclusive TV interview in a landmark legal case which boosts her career and allows her to see him differently. Bridget begins to develop feelings for Mark, and when she misguidedly and somewhat disastrously, attempts to cook her own birthday dinner party, he comes to her rescue. After a happy dinner celebration with Bridget's friends and Mark, a drunken Daniel arrives and temporarily monopolises Bridget's attention. Mark leaves, but returns to challenge Daniel and they fight in the street, eventually smashing through a window of a Greek restaurant. The fight eventually ends, with Bridget chiding Mark and he leaving, but after a self-serving appeal from Daniel, she rejects him as well. Bridget's mother, Pamela, has left Bridget's father Colin and begun an affair with perma-tanned shopping channel presenter Julian. When the affair ends, she returns to the Jones's family home and off-handedly reveals that Mark and Daniel's falling-out resulted from Daniel (then Mark's best friend at Cambridge University) sleeping with Mark's wife which Mark walked in on, not the other way around. At the