How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  If these new clothes made me look as different as they made me feel, the effect would be striking – and while he was being great about my new business, I was fairly sure he wasn’t ready for the wardrobe makeover as well. I’d have to introduce it slowly, piece by piece.

  I was so caught up in trying on different looks I hadn’t noticed how late it was until my mobile rang. Reaching for the handset, which was lying on the bed, my eyes fell on my alarm clock and I saw it was nearly midnight.

  It must be Ed, I thought, ringing to say he’d decided to stay the night at the client’s house in Richmond, but when I picked the phone up the display said ‘Dick’.

  ‘Dickie bird,’ I said, surprised and immediately a little concerned at how late he was ringing me. We had a strict not-after-9-p.m. rule in our family. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘It’s not Dick, actually,’ said a deep voice. It was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  ‘Oh?’ I said, now feeling quite worried. ‘Well, you’re ringing on Dick’s phone – so who is it?’

  ‘It’s Joseph Renwick,’ said the voice. I sank down on to the bed, in something like shock. It was a combination of instant deep anxiety about Dick and that irritating effect Joseph Renwick seemed to have on me.

  ‘Is Dick all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Joseph.

  My heart was pounding. Now I knew something bad had happened.

  ‘He’s been in a fight,’ said Joseph, his voice heavy with concern.

  ‘A fight?’ I said stupidly. ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘Not as much as the other bloke…’

  ‘Oh God, what happened? Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in A&E at Saint Mary’s. I’m with him, but so are the police.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said again, starting to feel quite nauseous.

  ‘Do you think you could come?’ said Joseph, gently.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ I said, flustered. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so shocked, I can’t think straight. I’ll come immediately.’

  I grabbed my bag and literally ran out of the flat and raced down the stairs, which seemed quicker than the lift. It wasn’t until I had jumped into a taxi, which had been coming along the street from Berkeley Square, that I realized I was still wearing the Louboutin heels.

  A kind nurse directed me to the side room where Dick was, but when I got there Joseph was sitting on a chair outside the closed door.

  ‘Amelia,’ he said, his face lighting up when he saw me. He jumped to his feet. ‘It’s so great you’re here.’

  ‘What’s going on? How is he?’ I asked, hardly noticing that Joseph had put his arms round me and was giving me a tight hug.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Joseph, letting go of me again. ‘He’s not going to look pretty for a while, but he hasn’t lost any limbs.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ I asked.

  Joseph shook his head.

  ‘The cops are in there at the moment, taking a statement. They made me wait out here…’

  ‘Oh sod that,’ I said. ‘He’s my brother.’

  And I pushed open the door and marched in. Two very surprised policemen looked up at me. I ignored them.

  ‘Dickie,’ I said, running to the bed on my perilous shoes, shocked at the state of him. His face was like a big red hamburger with slitty eyes. ‘Whatever’s happened to you?’

  ‘Hello, Meals…’ he groaned. ‘Had a bit of a disagreement. South African bloke. Bigger than me…’

  ‘Oh Dick,’ I said, wanting to kiss him but not able to see any bit that didn’t look too painful to touch. ‘You are such an idiot.’

  I squeezed one of his feet through the hospital blanket.

  ‘Er, excuse me, young lady,’ said one of the policemen, ‘but we are conducting an interview here…’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I said, looking at the two of them properly for the first time. And as I did, I realized they were already looking at me, and in a very particular way.

  Then I remembered what I was wearing. I had been in such a hurry to get there I hadn’t even stopped to put a jacket on, so I was basically wearing skintight clothes from the clinging T-shirt down to my very high-heeled feet. And it was clear they appreciated the effect.

  Maybe it was the shoes, maybe it was the adrenaline, but the next thing I knew, I was looking at that policeman from under my eyelashes and pouting shamelessly.

  I stepped forward towards him with my hand – and my chest – out. ‘I’m Amelia Bradlow, Dick’s sister,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I was just so worried about him. I had to see him. Do you think you will be very long? Should I go away?’

  I did everything but lick my lips at him, then I turned my gaze on the other one, who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat. They looked at each other and then back at me.

  ‘Well, I think we’ve pretty much finished actually,’ said the first one, clearly the senior officer. ‘We can leave it for now. We’ve got Mr Herbert’s details, and we can always find him if the other party wants to press charges.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, in my newly acquired Marilyn Monroe whisper ‘you’d better have my number as well…’ And I took his notebook and wrote it down, with a bit more simpering. That time I actually did lick my lips. He went quite pink. It was hilarious.

  ‘We’ll leave it there for now, Mr Herbert,’ said the policeman to Dick, in a much brisker voice. ‘But do try not to get into any more pub brawls. We won’t be so lenient next time. You’re on notice.’

  ‘Right you are,’ croaked Dick, wincing as he moved his painfully swollen lips.

  It wasn’t until I turned to wave a coquettish goodbye to my new policemen pals that I realized that Joseph was standing in the doorway watching, a look of barely contained amusement on his face.

  We left it a few moments after they’d gone then he came into the room, closed the door, and we all cracked up – even Dick.

  ‘Oh bloody hell, don’t make me laugh – bloody painful – but really, sis, that was quite something.’

  ‘Way to go, Amelia,’ said Joseph, holding up his palm. I gave him a high five. ‘You played those two like a couple of trout.’

  I giggled. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ I said. ‘I just couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘I know what came over PC Plod,’ said Dick, speaking much more clearly all of a sudden. He must have been laying on the pitiful croaking for our friends from the Met, I realized. ‘Raw lust. I don’t know what you’re wearing, but you look like Olivia Newton-John at the end of Grease.’

  ‘Oh, I think she looks a lot better than that,’ said Joseph quietly.

  My head snapped round to find he was looking at me with that steady gaze of his, the same way he had looked at me at the party. I swallowed awkwardly and my mouth felt dry. I licked my lips again, but out of nerves this time, not flirtation. Something about that look was so grossly inappropriate – but why couldn’t I just ignore it?

  I was greatly relieved when a nurse bustled into the room, followed by a doctor, who put some X-rays up on a lightbox by the wall.

  ‘You’ve been very lucky, Mr Herbert,’ he said. ‘Judging by the size of the bump, that bottle clearly came down very hard on your head, but it hasn’t fractured your skull. You’ve got six fractured ribs, though, which won’t be much fun, but the rest is just severe bruising and a few cuts. You’ll survive – painfully, but you’ll live.’

  ‘Just an average game of rugby for you then, Sherbet,’ said Joseph.

  The doctor turned to look at us for the first time, and he did a classic cartoon double-take. At me.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, some kind of primitive light flaring in his eyes, ‘are you Mr Herbert’s wife?’

  I shook my head. ‘Just his sister,’ I said. ‘ There isn’t a wife yet.’

  ‘Well, he’s going to need a bit of looking after in the next week. Reckon you can do the ministering-angel bit?’

  I nodded.

  The doctor turned to Joseph. ‘Don’t
suppose you’d like to hit me over the head with a bottle, would you?’

  They laughed heartily together while I stood there feeling slightly like a piece of meat or a blow-up doll and marvelling at the power of tight clothing over apparently intelligent men. It was extraordinary. Kiki really knew what she was doing when it came to the male of the species, I thought, and not for the first time.

  The doctor said he was going to keep Dick in overnight so that he could have some morphine to alleviate the worst of the pain, and I promised to come and take him home the next day. We left him waving at us with one arm, as the nurse was putting a needle into the other one.

  As Joseph and I rode down in the lift, I suddenly felt exhausted. Now the adrenaline had worn off, my feet were killing me, and I was starting to feel quite uncomfortable about what had happened up there.

  I’d never knowingly used my sexuality to manipulate men like that, and I wasn’t sure if I felt empowered or cheapened by it. But once I’d started, it had seemed almost obscenely easy, and pointless to stop. I knew there were women who did that stuff all the time, but I never had. It didn’t quite seem like fair play to me.

  On top of all that (not to mention what had happened to poor old Dick) there had been the disconcerting look I had exchanged with Joseph – again. It was all a bit too much to take in at getting on for two in the morning, and my head was starting to throb.

  I blinked and rubbed my temples with my fingers, and as the lift came to a stop and we stepped out into the hospital lobby, I felt Joseph’s hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I turned to look at him.

  ‘Tired?’ he said, softly. I nodded. ‘Me too,’ he said, smiling gently.

  Now he was looking at me normally, I felt relaxed with him again. He was just silly old Joseph Renwick, I told myself. As familiar as someone’s old pet you’ve known for years. I didn’t know why I had ever allowed myself to get so mixed up about seeing him again. All that snogging nonsense was in the past. He was just hopeless Dick’s slightly more together friend.

  We agreed to speak in the morning to work out a roster to look after Dick, and then he walked me out of the hospital on to Praed Street and hailed a taxi. I pecked him lightly on the cheek and climbed in.

  Then, as the taxi took off towards Mayfair, something made me look back, and I saw Joseph still standing on the pavement where I had left him, his hands deep in his jeans pockets, gazing after it.

  14

  Looking after Dick – I did a morning visit each day and Joseph went round after work – kept me up in London that weekend, but by the following Friday he was much better and we finally got down to Winchelsea again, just Ed and me.

  The closer we got to Rye on the train, the more excited I felt at the prospect of properly getting to grips with my new garden. Having a garden to nurture – particularly a vegetable patch – was one of the reasons I had badgered Ed so relentlessly about getting a country cottage. I had fantasies about growing all our food for the weekends, gathering it in trugs and entering my giant onions in the village show. Not that I knew anything about growing vegetables.

  My parents certainly weren’t great gardeners. Keeping the garden fearsomely neat with lots of mowing, strimming and trimming was about the extent of it for them, and my father was like Genghis Khan when he got hold of a pair of pruning shears.

  My mum would ask him to ‘shape’ a tree or shrub, and he’d go at it wildly until everything in the garden looked like a stunted lollipop. Then he’d stalk around it like an avenging conqueror admiring his handiwork. Thought you’d grow, did you? Ha!

  Dick and I used to laugh about what would happen if he ever got his hands on a chainsaw. I think he would have quite enjoyed napalming the entire garden actually, and I had often reflected that he might have been happier with a career in the army, where constantly barking commands would be seen as normal rather than ‘eccentric’ – to put it politely.

  I knew the boys at the school used to call him the Führer, and I remembered seeing some of Dick’s friends goosestepping around with their arms in Nazi salutes, fingers across their top lips, doing impressions of Dad’s shouty voice.

  Somehow Dick was able to take all that in good spirit – or at least he was good at putting on a show. All part of his hearty rugby persona, I suppose. I found it a bit hurtful, but it just went with the territory when your father was a deputy headmaster, and we had to deal with it.

  It was worse for Dick, though, because he actually went to the school where Dad worked, and one of the things I had always liked about Joseph Renwick was that he had never done any of that kind of stuff; he’d poke gentle fun at Dad, but nothing nasty – and I knew the rest of the boys had given Dick a really hard time.

  As a result, over the years I think he’d grown a hide thicker than a rhino’s. Mind you, this was a great advantage in his eventual career, working for a major tobacco company. He really didn’t care what anyone thought of him which, with that job, was pretty essential.

  So there was no ringing Mum and Dad for horticultural advice to get my garden going. I was relying on Gardeners’ World and a gorgeous pile of lavishly illustrated books Ed had bought me for Christmas from the list I had left at Hatchards, as was our annual custom.

  I was staking out the back lawn with string on Saturday morning – as advised by Country Living, my other gardening oracle – to mark out where I thought the vegetable patch should go, when Hermione called over the hedge to me.

  I’d gone round with a box of chocolates from Charbonnel & Walker when we’d arrived the evening before, as a gesture, and I could tell she had really appreciated it. The people we had bought the house from had lived there all the time, and I could understand that a woman of her age, living alone, would prefer to have neighbours who were in residence more often than the odd weekend.

  ‘Amelia, dear,’ she said, when I went over to her. ‘I can see you are a keen gardener. Would you like to come and have tea with me and see around mine?’

  I practically vaulted over the hedge I was so excited. I’d only seen what I could scope from my bedroom window and the small area at the front that you could see from the road. I was gagging to see the rest, and it was no disappointment when I got in there.

  The space seemed to unfold like a series of rooms, each with a different character and atmosphere, and while it was only just May something seemed to be blooming in all of them.

  I also loved the fact that, although it had clearly been meticulously planned, Hermione’s garden looked as though it could have grown that way on its own. It wasn’t all manicured and uptight like my parents’ painfully tidy plot. Plants tumbled over each other in a riot of colours, the lawn had camomile and wild flowers mixed in with the grass, and the paths were as much vegetation as paving stones.

  An image of my father stalking his garden like a Cyberman, with a tank of deadly weedkiller on his back, spraying anything that dared to grow outside its allotted zone, came into my mind.

  I loved it all, but most fascinating for me was Hermione’s vegetable patch. It was in the far back left corner, so two sides of it were enclosed by her lovely old flint garden walls, with fruit trees espaliered – a term I had picked up from one of my glossy gardening books – up them.

  The rest was neatly contained within picket fencing, and it was made up of a patchwork of small raised beds with wide walkways between them, which she explained to me was a method called ‘square-foot gardening’.

  ‘I don’t need much of anything,’ she said. ‘But I want a long season of different things to pick, so I just plant a little of each – some courgettes, artichokes, lots of different salads and leaves, runner beans, potatoes, broad beans, fennel. Some of the salads just keep on going – they are called “cut and come again” – which is marvellous, and for the things which fruit once then finish, I plant a second crop, or something else altogether. I can eat from my potager most of the year.’

  ‘Perhaps I should do that in my garden,’ I said, feeling really inspired. T
he fences round her vegetable garden were painted a gorgeous muted grey-green, and it all looked so beautiful, with little wigwams of bean canes set up for the new growing season and her lovely old galvanized watering cans dotted around. Even her fork and trowel, stuck into the earth in one patch, looked as though they had come from the pages of a lifestyle magazine.

  ‘I was just measuring out for my own vegetable patch when you called over to me, actually,’ I said, in the confident tones of one seasoned greenfinger to another.

  ‘Yes, I thought perhaps you were. Would you like some advice about it from an old codger, or would that be annoying?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, enthusiastically. ‘I would love your advice. I’ve been working up the courage to ask you.’

  ‘Well, come inside and have some tea and we can talk about it.’

  Hermione’s house was as gorgeous as her garden, with the same feeling that it had become like that organically over time. There was nothing contrived-looking about it, just an apparently random collection of lovely old furniture and rugs, loads of books, and a wonderful mix of quirky paintings, photographic prints and other artefacts, including quite a few impressive animal horns, mounted on the walls. There were big vases of blossom and decorative leaves everywhere, clearly all cut from the garden – something else I keenly aspired to do.

  I followed her out to the kitchen while she made the tea and then carried the tray back into the ‘drawing room’, as she called it, like Ed. My parents called it the sitting room and I knew it was a key semantic difference. I varied between the two. Ed had once told me that if I had ever called it the ‘lounge’, he couldn’t have married me, which I had always found hilarious. I knew he was joking, but there was a little grain of truth in there.

  Hermione held the teapot high as she poured the tea into my cup through a silver strainer and then passed me the milk jug – another class indicator Ed would approve of. It always drove him bonkers that my mother put the milk in first. I honestly didn’t care. I preferred coffee anyway.

  ‘So,’ she said, passing me a slice of date and walnut loaf, which she said she had made that morning. ‘What are you intending to grow in your garden?’