How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  ‘Nice work, Bradders,’ said Dick, nodding in appreciation.

  ‘Well, as I told your sister earlier, I’ve had plenty of experience with grumpy teachers and, like most of them, your dad is a pussycat as long as you play it all exactly by his rules – or at least if he thinks you are.’

  I just gazed at him in silent awe. For the first time in my life I felt I had an ally in the battle of my family life who wasn’t already a hopeless part of it.

  So, a year later, when Ed asked me to marry him, producing a large diamond solitaire ring from his pocket, after we had spent an afternoon tasting champagne in the Krug cellars near Reims, I didn’t hesitate to accept.

  My parents were delighted when I rang to tell them. And after I hung up, I laughed at the horrified expression on Ed’s face as I passed on my father’s special engagement message to him: he was going to lay down a few cases of that Argentinian Merlot ready for his first grandson.

  At the time, I had assumed it was the prospect of the cheap New World wine that had horrified Ed – it wasn’t until years later that I realized it had been the grandson part of it too.

  5

  ‘I don’t give a damn if you are going to send it round by tame ostrich. It is now 10.15 a.m. on Monday 12 March – one quarter of an hour after the agreed time and date – and as I have still not received your remuneration, I will be sending round the bailiffs to remove my painting forthwith…’

  I tried in vain to block out the sound of my boss’s voice. Christopher was one floor up from me, but his honking tones were so loud and offputting I had already messed up three of the envelopes I was addressing – and I knew that, if he found out, I’d be in for a similar roasting to whoever was on the end of the phone. I really couldn’t be bothered.

  I could just imagine it. ‘Do you know how much each of those tissue-lined envelopes cost me, Amelia?’

  ‘Tiss-yew,’ he would say, hissing like a snake.

  And I did know how much they cost actually, they were 40 pence each. I knew, because it was me who had to order them from Smythson and try, humiliatingly, to weasel a discount. I fished the spoiled envelopes out of the bin and put them in my handbag, to be on the safe side. It just wasn’t worth the hassle.

  So why did I work for such a monster and his equally repellent son, Leo? Because in my own way, I enjoyed it. After growing up with my father, I was used to dealing with difficult men – indeed, it was almost a game to me and more than worth it to spend my days surrounded by amazing works of art and the interesting people they attracted.

  C. J. Mecklin and Son was one of the most well-known art galleries on Cork Street, and their list of artists was extremely impressive. If you weren’t edgy enough to be with White Cube, you were with Mecklin’s. Artists who showed there got rich. Just not quite as rich as Christopher James Mecklin, or ‘CJ’ as he styled himself.

  I’d worked there for nearly five years, lured away from my previous position at a less prestigious Mayfair gallery after we’d met at a drinks party. He’d taken me for lunch at Le Caprice and done his full oily number, promising great things, telling me how my ‘marvellous language skills’ would be such an asset to the gallery, and implying I’d be practically running the place in no time.

  In fact it had turned out to be little more than a souped-up receptionist’s role and I had long ago realized that my association with Ed’s business, with its super-rich clients and the potential for cut-price prestige wine for private views, was a large part of my appeal to Christopher. Yet somehow he managed to keep me believing that I was permanently on the brink of a thrilling promotion, so I stayed.

  Really, he was such an operator – with me and everyone else – I couldn’t help rather admiring him. Indeed, observing CJ, or Creeping Jesus, as Ed called him, on one of his deadly charm offensives with a potential customer was so impressive I sometimes wondered if that was what kept me working there. It was great sport.

  And, really, I reflected, as I addressed another envelope, although it could be tedious, my job suited me for all kinds of reasons. Not least of which was I could walk there from home. That, combined with the status of the operation – which played well with Ed’s snobby clients and made me seem like much more of a go-getter than I really was – made it a perfectly acceptable package for me.

  I put down my fountain pen and massaged my right hand, which was starting to ache from the strain of writing addresses in my best calligraphy; Christopher thought printed labels were beyond the pale.

  I stretched in my seat behind the reception desk and then got up to take a stroll around the room. We had a wonderful show on, one of my favourite Mecklin artists, a lovely old chap who specialized in almost abstract landscapes of the Cornish coast where he lived.

  I was gazing at a tiny, jewel-like watercolour in the far corner of the room when I heard a commotion at the door and spun round. There’d been a ram raid on another gallery a few doors up the month before, and it had left us all a bit jumpy, but this seemed to be someone simultaneously pressing the security buzzer and banging on the window.

  I walked over quickly to check them out through the plate-glass door and saw a familiar figure standing there. A neat head of shiny black hair and an enormous pair of white sunglasses above a vintage Chanel suit told me it was Kiki.

  ‘Jeez, what’s with all the security?’ she was saying, as she pushed past me. ‘You think anyone would want to steal these things? They’re hideous.’

  ‘Will you shut up?’ I hissed at her. I could already hear heavy footfalls coming down the stairs and I knew CJ was on his way. I didn’t need the aggro.

  ‘Is everything all right down here, Amelia?’ he said, in his most sinister smoothie tones, gliding across the parquet floor towards us. Sometimes I was convinced his Lobb brogues had wheels in them.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘ The, er, doorbell got stuck. I’ll have someone come and look at it.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Kiki, brazenly looking him up and down. She’d never been to the gallery before, which had suited me fine, and so far I’d managed to dodge her requests to be put on the private-view invitation list.

  ‘Hello,’ said Christopher, icily. ‘Can we help you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve just come to take Amelia out to lunch,’ she said cheerily, linking her arm through mine, ‘but I thought I’d check out the gallery first.’

  He fixed me with a cold, enquiring stare.

  ‘Um, Christopher, this is my very good friend Kiki Wilmott, from Australia,’ I said, hoping he would catch my drift. A tiny flicker in his saurian eyes told me he did.

  For someone who read – and re-read – the Sunday Times Rich List with the reverence most people reserved for a religious text, as he did, ‘Wilmott’ in an Australian context was a name which meant something. Something with a great many noughts on the end.

  ‘Ah, Miss Wilmott, how lovely to see you. Let me show you the work… Now this is a very special piece…’

  ‘Oh yeah, very nice,’ said Kiki, in devastatingly dismissive tones. ‘But you see, the thing is, Chris, I only buy Australian art.’

  ‘Ah, yes, very wise to concentrate on one area,’ he replied, not missing a beat. It was a bit like watching a Wimbledon final, they were both such masters of the social volley. ‘So many collectors make the mistake of lessening the effect of very good individual pictures by buying too disparately,’ CJ was droning on. ‘I don’t know if Amelia has told you, but as well as all our premier British names, we are also widely considered London’s leading gallery for prestige contemporary Australian artists. Lesley Pinecliff, you may know…’

  He was Australia’s greatest living artist and of course Kiki knew him. She’d already told me she had a flat full of his paintings.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she was saying. ‘Les is a great mate. Love Les. I’ll have to get Amelia to bring you over to see my collection some time.’

  ‘That would be delightful, and of course we must put you on our private-view list…’

  ‘Oh, I alr
eady have actually, Christopher,’ I lied, to both of them.

  ‘Right,’ said Kiki, clearly fully over the chitchat. ‘Nice to meet you, Chris. Can I take this girl off your hands now?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, smiling broadly at her and bowing slightly. ‘Do come in and see us again,’ and then, turning to me, he added: ‘Have a nice long lunch, Amelia dear.’

  Which I knew translated as: Go out and whore yourself to get this rich Australian bitch to give us some money.

  I smiled sweetly back, thinking: Dream on, fuckface.

  *

  ‘Christ, what a dickhead,’ Kiki was saying, the door of the gallery barely closed behind us. ‘He’s so oily I thought I might slip in it. Why on earth do you work for him? It’s not like you and Ed need the money.’

  I hurried her down the street, hoping Christopher hadn’t heard any of it and electing not to answer any of her questions.

  ‘Right,’ she said, stopping on the corner of Burlington Street. ‘Cecconi’s or the Wolseley?’

  ‘The Wolseley,’ I said firmly. I loved Cecconi’s, and Ed and I often went there for dinner, but hideous Leo Mecklin had a regular table at lunchtime. It was so close to the gallery he didn’t have to waddle his chubby legs very far to get there, and having him so near might put me off my lunch.

  ‘If you think Christopher – or Chris, as you called him’

  – I laughed out loud at the memory – ‘if you think he’s bad, you should meet the son. Christopher is oily, but Leo is more like toxic lard. He’s foul. Luckily, he’s so lazy he hardly ever comes into the gallery.’

  ‘The Wolseley it is then,’ said Kiki, not bothering to ring ahead. When we got there she just strolled casually in, certain she’d be given a table, and we were – a great one too, in the inner ring, right opposite the front door.

  ‘Thanks for a great weekend, Amelia,’ she said, raising the glass of champagne which had been sent over to our table by Jeremy King, one of the owners. ‘It was a riot. Your Ed is hilarious when he gets going. I loved that story about getting accidentally locked in a cellar where he had been taking a sneaky look, but what’s with the silent-treatment morning thing?’

  ‘Oh, Ed just isn’t very communicative before midday,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I explained all that to Ollie already. He wasn’t always like that – in fact, he used to be quite a morning bird – but now he stays up very late working most nights and when he gets up he just likes to be quiet until his brain gets into gear. There’s always so much going on there, he needs to let it warm up slowly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kiki, raising her glass and draining it. ‘And the amount of grog he puts away, he must feel like shit too. Does he always drink that much?’

  I laughed and shook my head simultaneously. ‘You do like to cut to the chase, don’t you, Kiki?’ I said. ‘No edging carefully around the subject for you.’

  She just shrugged. ‘I’m Australian – but he does cane it, doesn’t he? Be honest.’

  ‘Ed is a wine broker, Kiki, a connoisseur, he has to drink for work – and you and Oliver weren’t exactly restrained with the vino yourselves this weekend, and you don’t even have an excuse. I thought Ollie was going to suggest a drinking game with Ed’s St-Emilion at one point.’

  ‘Yeah, isn’t he great?’ said Kiki, chuckling fondly.

  ‘Yes, he’s very funny,’ I answered, choosing my words carefully, ‘once you get used to him. I found his foul mouth rather offputting at first – not to mention the make-up – but he’s actually really nice when you get beyond that.’

  ‘He’s incredibly clever too,’ said Kiki, smiling like a proud aunt. ‘It looks like he’s going to be doing his own hair-care range without having to go through all the hassle of opening a salon. All the magazines are fighting over the exclusive and Selfridges want to launch it with five windows. It’s going to be huge.’

  We carried on in this vein for quite a while, with Kiki updating me on the latest developments in her social life – and a lot seemed to have happened since our last conversation on the subject just the day before.

  But while it was all pleasantly distracting and I always found just being in the Wolseley a treat, I had the distinct feeling there was another agenda, which Kiki hadn’t got round to yet. It wasn’t like her to be circumspect, and I was seriously hoping it wasn’t going to be my marital sleeping arrangements again.

  That topic had been nagging away at me ever since she’d brought it up the morning before, and it made me very uneasy. I knew it wasn’t right, but I just didn’t want to examine the reasons for it too closely, or any of the other unwelcome associated thoughts they brought up.

  With all that swilling around in my head I had pretty much tuned out of what Kiki was saying. I was feeling increasingly on edge, waiting for her to bring up the real subject she wanted to talk to me about and, in the end, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  ‘Kiki,’ I said, firmly, putting my hand on her arm. ‘It’s lovely having lunch with you and everything, especially on a gloomy Monday like this, but what do you really want to talk to me about? Go on, be a proper Aussie, spit it out.’

  She looked at me for a moment and then her shoulders slumped inside her Chanel jacket. She suddenly looked about half her normal size, which was pretty small to begin with. It was quite alarming.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ I asked, sincerely concerned.

  ‘Oh, Amelia,’ she said, sighing deeply. ‘It’s just my place.’

  ‘Your place in Holland Park?’ I asked. I’d never been there, which was a bit odd now I thought about it, considering that we’d been friends for quite a few months.

  ‘Not just in Holland Park,’ she nodded, looking glummer with every moment, ‘on Holland Park…’

  ‘You mean, the actual road Holland Park?’ I said, impressed. It was one of the nicest streets in London; Ed had several clients who lived there. ‘Wow. How fab. So what about it?’

  ‘You’ve never been there, right?’ she said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, there’s a reason for that. I don’t invite anybody to my place. Not friends, not even lovers – especially not them.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ I asked.

  She leaned across the table towards me. ‘Because it’s a total shithole,’ she said, abruptly.

  ‘But surely it’s one of those gorgeous villas…?’ I continued, still not understanding why she was so upset.

  ‘It is. I’ve got the whole ground floor. It’s got three bedrooms, two reception rooms with twenty-foot ceilings, and a big garden too. The problem is me, Amelia. I live like a pig and I don’t know what to do about it.’

  I still didn’t understand what she was getting at.

  ‘Haven’t you got a cleaner?’ I asked tentatively. Somebody with her money would have been able to have a full staff, I thought. Ed and I had a very nice lady who came three times a week, plus the cleaner for the cottage, and we weren’t nearly as grand as Kiki.

  She laughed bitterly. ‘They usually last about fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘They turn up, realize how bad it is and bale out. I want a housekeeper, but the agency won’t send any more people over. The last one came three months ago. It’s serious, Amelia.’

  I could see she had tears in her eyes. ‘I think I’ve got rats,’ she said.

  ‘Rats?’ I squealed.

  ‘Well, either that, or it’s a very small squatter,’ she said, regaining her sense of humour. ‘Who likes to shit on the kitchen floor. Anyway, I’ve been to your flat and your cottage, and you really seem to know how to live like a grown-up. Your places are clean and tidy and nice to be in. They smell lovely, and you have flowers and milk jugs and ironed tea towels – so I was wondering if you would consider coming over to my place and helping me get it into some kind of shape, so that I might be able to get someone to come and work for me…’ Her eyes filled up again.

  ‘It’s either that, or I’m just going to leave it. Throw away the keys and never come back. I mean –
how can I ever expect to find a proper boyfriend, let alone a husband, if I can’t let them see where I live? And it can make you feel like some kind of hooker, if you only ever see men at their place or in hotel rooms…’ One tear fell out of each eye and rolled down her cheeks.

  I took her hand.

  ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘I’ll come over after work today and have a look. Then we can decide how we’ll get started.’

  *

  Nothing could have prepared me for the scene that awaited me when I got to Kiki’s place that night. I had to squeeze round the front door just to get in because of all the, well, crap was the only name for it, in the hallway.

  There was a snowdrift of post and junkmail behind the door, which was why she could hardly open it, then, once you were in, all you could see were cardboard boxes and piles of bulging black rubbish bags.

  There was a fold-up bicycle – or part of one – some kind of vacuum cleaner, which seemed to be in pieces, and piles and piles of old newspapers cascading out of the cardboard boxes. They didn’t look as though they had ever been read.

  The smell hit you the moment you got inside too, the stale stench of old newspaper, dirty laundry and rotting garbage. It was horrid. You really couldn’t bring a potential boyfriend in there; she was right.

  ‘Jesus, Kiki,’ I said. It was no time to make polite conversation. ‘I see what you mean. But don’t worry, we can do something with this.’ Maybe with the help of the SAS, I thought to myself.

  As we walked further into the place – which underneath all the mess, I could see was gorgeous – it just got worse.

  The drawing-room floor was littered with junk: scattered heaps of books, shoes, bits of discarded clothing, dirty plates, empty mugs and wine glasses, magazines, more newspapers.

  Incongruous among the chaos were strangely neat piles of carefully hand-labelled videos. They were stacked up on every flat surface, including the armchairs and sofas, and there seemed to be some kind of filing system. One chair seemed to be for old movies, another for episodes of Inspector Morse and Rebus and a third one was devoted to The Simpsons.