Time waits for no woman - not even Liz

A girl who wore clothes as painted on as Liz Hurley was never going to be able to keep a pregnancy secret, and now it's official. The girl who thought nappy pins were something that held a Versace dress together is going to have a baby. She's beautiful, she's rich, she's in control, she's delighted.

The father, Steve Bing, is also rich and, apparently, keener to settle down than she is. When she says that she's going to be a single mother, I don't think she's joining the same tribe as those unhappier girls stuck in high rises with toddlers, no money and no future.

Baby Hurley is just the latest life choice for a girl who seems to have everything, the prettiest of paper parasols on the rich cocktail of Liz Hurley's life.

But this latest episode in the Liz Hurley story has the tinge of mystique that has characterised Hurley since she first shimmered into the public eye. It does what she has often done, raise more questions than it answers.

Liz Hurley, at one level, is the perfect trouper, a role model for any ambitious and beautiful girl who wants to be more than the flavour of the month. She is always immaculately groomed, well-mannered, always ready to give good camera, even under difficult circumstances. She has been good for Estee Lauder and her contract there as the beautiful face of their products has said more about her promotability and professionalism than any number of acting roles, even if she has now been limited to the perfumes.

She has been good for Versace. Her perfect, slim figure is the ideal clothes hanger for their sexy, grand-occasion dresses and her dark good looks give what can often be vulgar clothes a touch of class.

She hasn't done much for the few films she's been in because the truth is, like that other British glamour puss, Joan Collins, she is better at looking beautiful than actually acting, but she's obviously a very bright, ambitious girl, so she's compensated for the acting career with production. In short, this is a girl with her lovely head screwed on very tight.

So it's interesting that her private life, baby and all, has not been quite as well regulated as the rest. Peel off the glitzy dresses and the Lauder cosmetics and what you have is another woman in her thirties who, for some time, has clearly been desperate to get pregnant. The current baby is the product, not so much of the perfect relationship as of essential timing. The man, the fertility and the desire for motherhood came together. There's an element of compromise-here but with hindsight-it was never going to happen with Hugh Grant.

The most interesting facet of Liz Hurley so far, the one that has separated her from the bland and beautiful, has been her on-off, very longterm relationship with the bright, attractive and incorrigibly waspish Grant. The announcement of a pregnancy at 36, the eager presence of Steve Bing, the very rich American boyfriend and father of the baby, ought to draw a line under the Hurley-Grant years. Instead it seems to have revived them. It was Hugh Grant who accompanied Hurley to the clinic, Hugh Grant who has been at her side, Hugh Grant who let himself into her house late at night.

It was also Hugh Grant who has been prevaricating about having children, Hugh Grant who was criticised by her friends for not being marriage or father material, Hugh Grant who joked about Hurley being unable to look after a rabbit, never mind a child.

Maybe Hugh Grant is now set for the ideal part in Liz Hurley's life, the glamorous favourite uncle who can be entertaining without having any responsibility. Not the father but the slightly camp, desperately glamorous fairy godfather. But Hugh left a job vacancy, for a much-needed alpha male to make a mother out of Hurley while she had the chance.

Enter Steve Bing, he of the real estate fortune and the useful private jet. He is said to be keener on marriage than her. Observers in America have also called him a serial playboy, so, like Hugh, he has yet to prove that he's a real grown-up. He is also very American, very LA-based. Maybe Hurley is a true Brit. Her close friends, her godchildren, her family are all here.

Once you get pregnant, this back-to-roots, nesting instinct kicks in very strongly, so strongly, it seems, that you can contemplate leaving the father behind. Single motherhood, in circumstances as cushy as this, with as many friends as Liz Hurley has, is a relative term, but she says cheerfully that this is what she may become.

Liz may be a tireless party girl but she's also an enthusiastic godmother to the children of her friends Patsy Kensit and Henry Dent-Brocklehurst. She's not stupid. She will have always known that you can't base a happy life on being photographed at premieres. She will probably also know that a woman's fertility takes a sharp dip in her late thirties. In interviews she takes care to sound insouciant, a bit what-will-bewillbe. But she may have been helping fate along. Observers have noted that she has given up smoking and cut down the alcohol. It sounds as though Liz Hurley really wanted to be pregnant.

Timing is far more important in life than having everything be perfect. For Liz Hurley the desire, the capability, the partner, the circumstances all coincided for her to become pregnant. The fact that Hugh Grant is obviously still her soul mate and that she appears to harbour some doubts about the father of her child is less important than the desire for the child.

There is no real problem here. Rich, beautiful girl with an excess of friends and support becomes pregnant with much wanted child. I wouldn't say this was exactly a happy ending, not for a girl who still has a few things to sort out, but it is a very happy beginning to the next fruitful phase of a continually interesting life.