How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

I went over to her.

  ‘I got the tubs at the boot fair,’ I said. ‘Do you like them?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They look very rustic. You might want to look out for another one to grow your mint in. Otherwise it will take over your whole herb garden – very invasive stuff. Did you speak to Sonny last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, slightly too quickly. Damn. ‘He popped round.’

  ‘He’s a charming young fellow, isn’t he?’ she said.

  My head snapped round, too fast again, as I looked to see if there was any mischief in her eyes. Maybe a little; I wasn’t sure. It could have just been her usual warmth.

  ‘Yes, he seemed lovely,’ I said. ‘He’s going to start on my garden this Friday – if that suits you. He’s coming at ten.’

  ‘Marvellous. I’ll make a banana cake, that’s his favourite.’

  I looked at her again. It wasn’t mischief in her eyes at all, I realized, it was twinkle. She found Sonny just as attractive as I did.

  It wasn’t until Ed and I were on the train going back to town on Monday morning that I realized there might be a problem with starting the garden that coming Friday. I might have to put Sonny off a week if I didn’t get it sorted out right away.

  The snag was that the coming weekend was my father’s birthday – which meant it was also Ed’s birthday. They were born within two days of each other – 10 May and 12 May – Taurus, both of them, and just as stubborn and intractable as people born under that star sign are reputed to be. And both with very fixed ideas about how their birthdays should be celebrated.

  My father expected – or should I say, demanded? – that his entire family be in residence for the weekend nearest his ‘special day’, as he actually called it, a tradition that had been problematic for me over the years, as Ed felt equally strongly that I should spend the weekend nearest his birthday alone with him, preferably somewhere in France.

  Most years I got round it in cahoots with my mum. She’d convince Dad that the weekend before their birthdays was ‘his’ weekend, while I’d convince Ed the one after was ‘his’. Normally, it worked pretty well, but it was going to be impossible to pull off this year, when Dad’s birthday fell on the Friday and Ed’s on the Sunday. There was only one weekend to go round.

  I was quite surprised Ed hadn’t already mentioned it and knew I had better get in quick, before he sprang it on me that he had booked us in for three nights at the Colombe d’Or, because I had already committed us to going to my parents’ place. I couldn’t let my mother down, and I was hoping he would understand that.

  ‘Ed,’ I said, reaching across the train table and pulling down the edge of the Daily Telegraph, so I could see his face. ‘You do know it’s my dad’s birthday on Friday, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said brightly. ‘And it’s mine on Sunday. I was wondering when you were going to bring it up. What shall we do? What lovely treat are you going to lay on for me?’

  I looked at him entreatingly, mentally begging him to throw me a lifeline, although, while my dad was just pathetic, I could understand why birthdays were a bit of a thing for Ed. He didn’t remember ever seeing his parents on his birthday as a child. It had always fallen in the middle of the school term, and the best he could expect was a card with a Hong Kong stamp and a generous cheque in it. If he was lucky, a kind housemaster would organize a cake, but I suspected he’d cried himself to sleep clutching Mr Bun under the covers on many a birthday night at prep school.

  Knowing this, I always made a big effort to spoil him, but I still really wished he didn’t have to turn it into a tug-of-love with my father every year, even if he did it half-jokingly.

  He had put his paper down on the table between us and was looking at me with an eyebrow raised and a cheeky look in his eye. He clearly thought it was hilarious. I didn’t.

  ‘Right,’ I said, in the most resolved tones I could muster, ‘we are going to my parents’ house this Friday for Dad’s birthday dinner. Full stop, no argument. We have to, and I’ve promised my mother already, so that’s the end of it. You know I only do this for her anyway, because she’s the one who’ll cop it if I’m not there, so please try and be nice about it.’

  I paused to collect my thoughts.

  ‘OK,’ I continued, hoping it was a good sign that Ed hadn’t reacted, apart from sticking his tongue out and pulling a goofy face. I swatted his head with the paper and he shielded himself in mock fear. ‘Ed!’ I said. ‘Will you take this seriously? You know what my dad’s like about his stupid birthday. He’s even worse than you.’

  He pulled more faces. I threw the paper at him. ‘Do you want everyone on this train to think you are a nutter? OK, we will need to arrive in good time for dinner on Friday, so I’ll drive over from the cottage in the afternoon, and you can go down from London by train. We will leave early on Sunday morning and then we can do whatever you would like for your birthday. OK?’

  Ed now had his lip curled in an exaggerated sneer, like Elvis Presley in a Savile Row suit.

  ‘What does that face mean?’ I said.

  ‘It means,’ he said, leaning towards me, ‘that I am happy to pander to your sociopathic father – and to help out your lovely, put-upon mother – for one night each year, but I really don’t want to wake up on my own birthday between polycotton sheets in a room with roller blinds. Nor do I want instant coffee for my birthday breakfast, and I particularly don’t want to listen to your father shouting at your mother for more toast and telling me I really ought to shop at Lidl and take up golf. I love you enough to put up with it any other weekend, but not on my birthday.’

  ‘Oh, Ed,’ I said, starting to feel really cross. I was well aware of all the petty little things Ed found untenable about my parent’s living arrangements and mostly it washed over me. But this was too much. He was semi-joking – but only semi – and they were still my parents, however suburban they were in his eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot it was your sixth birthday,’ I hissed at him. ‘I wouldn’t care if I woke up in an igloo on my birthday. In fact, I wouldn’t care if no one remembered my birthday for the rest of my life. But you’re going to be thirty-nine next Sunday, Edward Bradlow, so maybe you should grow up.’

  I glared at him, and he glared back, crossing his eyes simultaneously, the corners of his mouth twitching. He clearly was half joking but at the same time I knew there was no point arguing with him about it. The more I argued, the more deeply he would entrench himself in his position.

  ‘All right,’ I said, sighing deeply at the thought of relaying changed plans to my mother, who already had her work cut out making sure my father was happy with every detail of his birthday arrangements. ‘Is this acceptable? We’ll get there early on Friday evening, as planned, but we’ll leave on Saturday afternoon – not even twenty-four hours later. Then you can wake up on your birthday between your own starched linen sheets.’

  I felt like adding ‘alone, the way you like it’, but it wasn’t worth it.

  ‘OK,’ he said, smiling happily. ‘ That’s perfectly acceptable, thank you. Perhaps we could go straight from your parents’ place to St Pancras, hop on to my favourite little train, and then I could wake up on my actual birthday in the Crillon. Very nice sheets there. Then Sunday lunch somewhere lovely for my treat and home…’

  ‘Consider it booked, you heinous old Taurus,’ I said. ‘But I might make you drink Blue Nun as a punishment.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Your father will probably serve it at dinner anyway.’

  He chuckled happily and went back to his paper.

  It hadn’t been the greatest start to my week, but the minute I turned my phone on things got so frantic I didn’t give it another thought. By midday on Monday I had first appointments booked in with three new clients, as well as follow-up visits to all the people I had seen the week before.

  It was after I had spent an entire afternoon and late into the evening posting Janelle’s ghastly ornaments on eBay and the best part of another day sort
ing Rosalyn’s financial paperwork into separate piles and then filing it all in order that I realized it might be time to start delegating.

  With my fee of £500 for a first ‘consultation’ – on Ed’s advice, that was how I structured it now, so I didn’t feel I was overcharging for a ‘day’ that only actually lasted three hours – with a flat fee then negotiated for the rest of the job, depending on what was involved, I could afford it. I could hire a freelance bookkeeper to do all the financial filing, and use one of those eBay agencies for selling stuff. Even after paying them I’d still be ahead, and I could be getting started with the next client, which was the really lucrative bit – and there was already a waiting list.

  Even more excitingly, Janelle’s agent had somehow wangled it so that both Grazia and Hello! were doing ‘exclusive’ stories about how my clutter-clearing had led directly to the reunion of the Honeypots. I made a note to get Kiki’s advice about what to wear for the photo shoots.

  On top of all that, I now had to book Ed’s birthday trip to Paris as well, and I actually found it quite hard to get excited about yet another ride on Eurostar and yet another night at the Crillon. It was a gorgeous hotel, but we always stayed there, and usually in the same room. It was lovely to be greeted as old friends by the concierge, the barman and even the chambermaid, but I couldn’t help thinking it would be so much more fun to try somewhere else for a change.

  The groovy Hotel Costes would have been fabulous, I thought. Kiki had stayed there on a recent dirty weekend and it sounded fabulous. Or perhaps a night in Oscar Wilde’s old room at L’Hôtel, daringly over on the Left Bank. But I knew there was no point in trying anywhere new. Ed would have been bitterly disappointed and it really wasn’t worth it. Not on his ‘special day’.

  Oh well, I thought, as I arrived back at Bond Street tube on Thursday afternoon after a second visit to the banker’s wife in Notting Hill – at least I might get lucky at the Crillon. That was one of Ed’s routines I did appreciate.

  But when I got home and picked up the phone to book the restaurant for his birthday lunch, I rebelled. I had been about to call L’Ambroisie, because I knew that was where Ed expected to go, although Arpège or Le Grand Vefour might have been options, but I was heartily sick of all those restaurants. I’d been to them countless times and I wanted a change.

  While I put up with the limited restaurant roster at home, in Paris – gorgeous, exciting, sexy Paris – I wanted some adventure. So I called Kiki to get the number for L’Atelier Joël Robuchon. She and Oliver had both raved about the London branch – sadly, outside Ed’s geographically acceptable restaurant zone – and I wanted to try it myself in the original Paris venue. And, anyway, it did have a Michelin star. Surely Ed couldn’t object?

  ‘Great idea,’ she said, when I told her my plan. ‘You’ll love it – but you’ve got no chance for Sunday lunch at this short notice, so let me ring them. I’ll get you a spot. They’ll do it for me.’

  With all that to organize and being so busy with work, I hadn’t given the garden – or Sonny – a thought all week. It wasn’t until I started packing for the weekend, ready for my early start down to Winchelsea on Friday, that I realized that, as well as something nice for my father’s birthday and something chic for Paris, I would also need some gardening clothes.

  That put me in a quandary. I knew in my heart that if the gardener had been more of an Eddy Grundy than a Calvin Klein model, I would have been packing some foul old pair of track pants without a second thought, but I couldn’t help myself: I wanted to look good for Sonny.

  Surely that was a natural way for any woman to feel, I told myself. It wasn’t as if I was going to try and get off with him, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the garden if I felt I looked middle-aged and frumpy with him around.

  That meant I really wanted to wear my favourite new skinny jeans for gardening – but I wanted them for Paris too. I tried on my tired old bootlegs and realized I could never wear them again: they were only fit for a clothing bin. There was only one thing for it. I was going to have to hit Oxford Street.

  It was Thursday late-night shopping, so I had plenty of time, which was a good thing, because now I had my head around having a new look for myself and some proper money of my own to spend there was so much great stuff I wanted to try on. I found some perfect skinny jeans in Zara – a fraction of the price of the ones Kiki had bought me in Selfridges – and once I’d started shopping, I went a bit nuts.

  They had some great little summer jackets in there as well, so I bought two of those and then, starting to feel more confident, I tried on some dresses. I was amazed to find one that looked remarkably like the backless black satin Lanvin number I had tried on in Dover Street Market and, in an impetuous moment, I bought that too.

  The next morning, Sonny knocked on the door about five minutes after I had arrived down at the cottage, and I was greatly relieved to find that I didn’t turn instantly into a crazed nymphomaniac at the sight of him. He’d shaved, and maybe that was the difference, because it made him look even younger – about twenty-two, I would have guessed.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Brad… er, Amelia,’ he said. ‘Mrs Hart was wondering whether you had any tools, or whether you would like to borrow hers until you get kitted out?’

  I hadn’t thought about tools. Well, not the sort he meant.

  ‘Oh, gosh,’ I said. ‘ That would be great.’

  ‘OK. I’ll go back round to her place and I can pass them over the hedge to you.’

  As he set off back up the path to the garden gate, Hermione’s head appeared on her side of the thick holly hedge that divided our gardens.

  ‘Morning, Amelia,’ she said, looking very perky, her coral lipstick clearly freshly applied. ‘ There’s no point in you spending a lot of money on tools at this stage. While Sonny’s doing both gardens, you might as well use mine.’

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I said, and then Sonny appeared at her side holding a large spade over his head. I took it from him and put it down on my lawn, and we carried on until there was also a fork, a rake and a strange object I thought might have been a mattock. It looked like something out of Chancer.

  ‘Right,’ said Sonny. ‘Now for the humans.’

  They both disappeared, and I wasn’t sure what was going on until I heard the latch open on our garden gate. I looked up the path and saw Sonny walking towards me – carrying Hermione.

  ‘Right you are,’ he was saying. ‘Nearly there…’ She was smiling radiantly and gave me a little wave with her walking stick as they progressed towards me. I waved back and then dashed to the garden shed to get her a chair. The best thing I could find was an old flowery sun-lounger that had been there when we bought the house, so I put it on the back lawn next to where the vegetable patch was going to be and Sonny settled her into it.

  The rest of the morning was a blur, we worked so hard. From her vantage point on the sun-lounger, with an umbrella shading her from the surprisingly strong sun

  – Sonny’s idea – Hermione ordered us about with great charm.

  First we staked out the plot with bamboo canes and string. Then we divided it up into where the separate beds would go and started to take off the top layer of grass. That was hard labour, but nothing compared to our next task, which was to bring over from her house wheel-barrows of old bricks that she was donating to my project. They were left over from when she’d had her greenhouse built twenty years before and she’d kept them ‘just in case’.

  It was quite tricky manoeuvring the loaded wheel-barrows all the way through her garden, up the side of her house, out of the gate, along the pavement, through our gate and then all the way down to the back of our house, and after we’d done it twice each, Sonny stopped, wiped his forehead on the back of his arm – just as I’d pictured him doing but, fortunately for my equilibrium, with a shirt on – and looked thoughtful.

  I went inside to get us some cold drinks and when I came out with the tray, he was sitting on the grass next
to Hermione and they were both grinning up at me conspiratorially.

  ‘Sonny’s had a marvellous idea,’ said Hermione, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Go on, tell her.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, squinting up at me in a way that gave me an inappropriate little flutter. ‘As I’m going to be working in both your gardens and we are going to share the tools, I just wondered whether we should put a gap in the hedge here. It would save us loads of walking.’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Hermione, who clearly loved the idea.

  ‘I think it’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘As long as you’re sure you don’t mind losing part of the hedge, Hermione?’

  ‘Pfff,’ she said, flicking her hands in the air. ‘Hedge smedge. We can always grow it again. That’s the joy of plants, they are so forgiving.’

  So Sonny got to work with the pruning shears, and in no time there was a wheelbarrow-sized gap in the hedge between the two gardens, between Hermione’s potting shed and where my vegetable patch was going to be. Once it was finished, we agreed that she should officially open it, so she tottered gingerly through the gap while we clapped and cheered, and then announced she was going inside to make us all some sandwiches.

  ‘I’ll ring my little gong when they’re done,’ she said. ‘And you can come through Checkpoint Charlie and get them.’

  Half an hour later we were sitting on the table outside her French windows eating our lunch, and it was all very pleasant. Hermione kept offering Sonny more food, and he never refused. It was a joy to watch him eat with such relish, hoovering up at least five ham sandwiches, several cheese ones, an apple and three pieces of her amazing banana cake.

  I could see the delight in Hermione’s eyes as she watched him, but she hardly ate a thing, just nibbled on some ham and drank a cup of weak China tea with no milk. Sonny emptied several large glasses of lemon barley water and I found it hard not to stare at his Adam’s apple bouncing in his strong neck as he gulped them down.

  When we’d finished, Hermione said she was going upstairs to rest, and Sonny and I went back through Checkpoint Charlie to the devastation of my back garden. I hadn’t noticed how much damage we were doing while we were hacking away at it, but seeing it after a break, the torn-up lawn covered in piles of old bricks, it looked like a disaster area. I hung my head and sighed loudly when I saw it, feeling a bit overwhelmed.