How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  He looked at me for a moment with pursed lips, almost as if he were trying to memorize my face. ‘What you don’t understand, Amelia,’ he said finally, as I stood there, fairly certain my face was bright red and my eyes were bugging out, but still too cross to care, ‘what you don’t grasp is that Irina – and her hideous leather-headed husband, Sergei, who you would also have seen that night – were potential new clients for Bradlow’s. Courtesy of my meddling mother who had met them at the Grosvenor House antiques fair. While he is indeed a billionaire, it was not a business relationship I chose to pursue.’

  He paused before continuing. ‘And now, as you have made it quite clear what you have been up to in the time we have been separated – spelled it out, really – I am leaving. I had at least assumed my wife would be faithful to me, as I have always been to you, until we worked this out. So that leaves us with nothing else to discuss. Ever.’

  Then he walked out – leaving the door open, more devastating than slamming it – I heard his car start, and I knew in that moment that this was it. It really was over between us. No way back.

  A wave of panic swept over me. I wasn’t ready yet. We still needed to talk. We’d never properly discussed the real reasons I’d moved out in the first place and, if he left now, it would be too late.

  I ran to the door to try and stop him, but his Bristol 406 took off in a large gust of noxious exhaust just as I got there.

  A sense of hysteria rising inside me at the thought of fifteen years of a loving relationship going up in a similar puff of smoke, I ran straight up to the bedroom and turned my phone on, stabbing at Ed’s number in my contacts list. The phone connected, but the connection was immediately cancelled. I tried again twice and it was the same. Ed was not taking my calls.

  I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, the events of the past few days swirling around in my head like some kind of psychedelic minestrone. Three of the most momentous happenings of my life – kissing Joseph Renwick again, having my first orgasm, and properly breaking up with my husband – had happened within the last four days. I felt nauseous with shock. And I’d had sex with Ed without a condom. That was an event in itself.

  For a moment it flashed through my mind that I might be pregnant. That’s how it happened – it only took one little squirt of sperm to do it. That was a thought so confusing, I held my head in my hands and shook it.

  In the end I couldn’t stand it, so I got out of bed again, grabbed my bag and checked my diary to see when my next period was due. It was in three days’ time, which made it much less likely I was pregnant.

  I sat there for a moment, looking at the ringed dates on the year’s calendar, each of them representing a day when I had been desperately sad to be reminded yet again that I wasn’t pregnant and wasn’t ever likely to be. Oh well, I told myself bitterly, at least I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out this time.

  On top of everything else, that was way too much to process. So I turned my phone off, dumped it on the floor with my handbag and pulled the covers over my head.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, drifting in and out of a feverish sleep, waking up every time with a lurch, as the events of the past few days flooded in again.

  I heard a knock on the kitchen door at one point, which I was fairly sure was Hermione, but I didn’t go down to open it. I felt bad knowing how painfully she would have made her way over to see me, with her fragile hips and knees, but I just couldn’t face her. Or anyone.

  What I’d done with Ed the night before had made the glorious time with Joseph seem soiled and grubby. I felt cruelly cheated of that brief happiness by my own guilt. It had taken me to the age of thirty-six to discover what sex was really all about, and now I felt ashamed of myself for it. That amazing liberated feeling had been destroyed so quickly, and I had nothing to replace it with.

  I couldn’t see how I could ever make it up to Ed, and I still felt strangely as though I had betrayed Joseph as well. He had been pretty loved up when we’d said goodbye just the morning before, and my response to his tender ardour had been to run off and immediately shag another man. Who happened to be my husband…

  What kind of a ho was I?

  I rolled over and groaned, burying my face in the pillow. It made no sense, none of it. But as I lay there, feeling slightly suffocated by the goosedown, I suddenly felt I’d spent way too much time between the sheets in the past few days, and being in bed another minute seemed unbearable.

  I jumped out and ran to the shower, washing my hair and scrubbing myself clean until my skin tingled. Then I put on fresh clothes, stripped the bed and shoved all the sheets straight into the machine on a hot wash. I needed to purge myself.

  What would do it, I realized, was a good blast of fresh air, so I got the old Volvo out of the garage and headed down to Pett Level, the nearest stretch of beach. It was a lovely drive through the country lanes, which looked glorious in their early summer mode, and I felt better with every turn of the wheels.

  The tide was out, and I scrambled down the steep bank of pebbles to the squidgy mudflats that stretched out to the sea. Picking my way across the slimy seaweed, I found a suitably prominent rock to balance my bright-yellow flipflops on. Then I splashed to the shoreline where the sand was firm, breaking into a run and trying not to think about anything except the cool water around my feet, the surprisingly hot sun on my face and the pure sea air I was breathing in and out of my lungs.

  The run sorted me out enough that I felt able to face Hermione, so I knocked on her door as soon as I got back to the cottage and told her I had been feeling unwell earlier – which wasn’t so far from the truth – and that I’d decided to go back up to town right away. If she noticed anything different about me she didn’t show it.

  The train seemed like a pleasantly neutral space, and I closed my eyes and just zoned out as much as I could, grateful for any further respite from thinking. I didn’t turn my phone on until we were nearly at Charing Cross, to find there were no messages from Ed, which didn’t surprise me, but there were two from Joseph.

  The first one – which he had left that morning, when he’d called just before my row with Ed – was so sweet and affectionate, I almost burst into tears, so clearly did it bring back that beautiful little island of time we’d had together.

  Scrolling through my phone log I could see there had been several other missed calls from him, and then he’d left another message not very long before I’d turned the phone back on.

  ‘Meals-on-wheels,’ he said, using a nickname I hadn’t heard for about twenty years. ‘Where are you, baby girl? You’re turning me into a stalker. I’ve been ringing you all day. I want to talk to you. I want to hear your voice. I want to hear your body. Grrrrr. Ring me. Soon.’

  I smiled at the phone, but I had tears in my eyes. He was still in the blissed-out state I’d been in too, until the ugly events of the last twenty-four hours had turned everything sour.

  I desperately wanted to speak to him, but I was sure he would know something was up the moment he heard my voice and I didn’t want to burst his bubble the way I had burst my own. So I sent him a cowardly text instead: ‘Sorry JR not feeling well. Phone turned off. Will call you Monday. Miss you. Meals xxx.’

  It was true: I did miss him. I was actually surprised how much, but I was so afraid that I was pining for something that was already destroyed – by my own stupid behaviour – that I wasn’t ready to expose myself to that disappointment in the flesh just yet.

  After all the emotional turmoil of the weekend I kept myself deliberately insanely busy with work, catching up with all the admin I had let slide, against all my own professional advice, and re-booking all the clients I had cancelled in favour of being with Joseph.

  At least someone was benefiting from my mistakes, I told myself, as I arrived at the large Chiswick doorstep of the fourth new client I had seen that day, who I had been able to bring forward from the waiting list as a result of my burst of frenzied activity.

&nb
sp; This one’s problem was clear from the moment I entered her hallway. She could open the door, which was an improvement on many of my clients, but after I took two steps into her house, I found myself suddenly flying through the air at high speed. I hit the floor with a hard thump, the contents of my handbag spilling out all around me.

  Immediately, feeling like Dorothy just landed in Oz, I found myself surrounded by small people, who were very interested in the lipsticks, tape measures, mobile phones and other fascinating adult ephemera spread out before them.

  ‘Oh my GOD, I am so sorry,’ said my client – Philippa, an actress, who had found me through Rosalyn. ‘Finn!’ she yelled up the stairs. ‘You left your skateboard in the hall again! I’m taking it to the dump! Tonight! You nearly killed someone!’

  ‘Are you all right, lady?’ said a small boy with a mop of brown curls, his face exactly level with mine. He was eating a large carrot and wearing nothing but a pair of Spiderman underpants. Twin rivers of green were descending from his nostrils. On autopilot, I grabbed a tissue from my trusty box and wiped his nose.

  As I reached for the tissues, I noticed that a much younger person of indeterminate sex, clad in a nappy and a stained vest, was methodically emptying my wallet, pausing only to chew on one of my credit cards.

  ‘Leto!’ said Philippa, grabbing it. ‘Don’t chew that. And put that lipstick down, Miranda.’

  I heard a giggle behind my head and turned round to see two little girls. One, wearing what I recognized as a Princess Yasmin outfit, was wiping my favourite Laura Mercier lipstick methodically across her lower face. The other, dressed as Pocahontas, had my phone to her ear.

  She’d clearly found someone to talk to on the other end, because I could hear a tinny voice saying ‘Hello? hello?’, but before she could say anything back, an older boy had rushed at her and grabbed the phone, causing her to scream loudly.

  ‘Put that phone down, Sigmund!’ said Philippa.

  I managed to grab him as he attempted to leap across my legs towards the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I’ll have that, thank you, sir,’ I said, and was relieved to see the number dialled had only been AAA1 Taxis. I turned the phone off and shoved it back into my bag, with anything else I could reach before small dimpled hands got to it.

  ‘All you children, playroom, now!’ boomed Philippa, in a voice that I knew would effortlessly reach the very back rows in Stratford with perfect clarity. ‘Or you won’t have any pudding tonight! And it’s ice cream!’

  At her threat, they fled towards the back of the house like a pack of small dogs.

  ‘We had ice cream last night,’ whined the boy identified as Sigmund over his shoulder as he went.

  ‘OUT!’ screamed Philippa.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia,’ she said, turning to me and snapping back into more dulcet tones, her unusually large eyes wide with horror, ‘but at least you’ve seen what I have to deal with.’

  She fell to her knees next to me and looked earnestly into my face with an expression I recognized. I’d seen her Portia at the Donmar.

  ‘Do you think you can possibly help me?’ she asked me.

  I had to laugh. ‘Give me a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you,’ I said.

  We had about three minutes’ peace before the children started sneaking into the kitchen one by one, until they were all in there, even Finn from upstairs, and I had to clamp my bag firmly on my lap to prevent tiny fingers continuing the investigations they had started in the hall.

  Now in full flow of the story of her fascinating life and how it had led to all these children, Philippa seemed not to notice what was going on.

  In the end I was so frustrated by the constant incursions I gave up. I took out my phone, wallet and car keys and shoved them down my bra, as the only safe place I could think of, put my clipboard and pen on the table where I would be able to hold on to them, and then dumped the handbag – a cheap and cheerful tote thing from Topshop – on the kitchen floor.

  ‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Do what you like with the rest of it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Philippa, suddenly snapping back into the present and looking horrified. ‘They’re vicious destroyers, you know.’

  I shrugged. ‘Show me the house,’ I said.

  It was a huge place, and there was mess everywhere, but I could see right away it was superficial. The large playroom at the back was a wonderful room, with the remnants of a very organized storage system, with different areas for various activities.

  The kids’ bedrooms were also lovely, with four-poster princess beds for the girls and pirate bunks for the boys, just horribly strewn with toys, bits of discarded food and dirty clothes. But, considering how much chaos they had managed to cause in my life in the short time I had been in the house, it didn’t seem too bad to me.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can talk for five minutes where they won’t find us?’ I asked Philippa, and she took us to the master bedroom, which had a bolt on the inside of the door.

  ‘We had to put that on,’ she said, as she slid it closed. ‘It was the only way we could have any time together, if you know what I mean…’

  I nodded and sat down on the corner of the bed. I’d heard about that system from my friends with kids.

  ‘So when did the nanny leave?’ I asked her.

  She opened her mouth and shut it again. ‘Is it that obvious?’ she said, dropping to the floor in an elegant heap.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious that in the not-too-distant past there was someone very organized here, but they aren’t here now…’

  Philippa looked sheepish. ‘I had a row with her…’ she said, eventually. ‘I wouldn’t give her a payrise. She caught me at a bad moment. I’d just lost a part I really wanted. I was a bit, well, unkind…’

  ‘And what about the cleaner?’

  ‘She resigned in protest,’ said Philippa in an unusually unaffected, small voice.

  ‘Can you get hold of them?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Call them both, this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Give the nanny a much bigger payrise than she asked for – and the cleaner – and you won’t need me.’

  We went downstairs to find the older boy using my handbag for some kind of one-man sack race, the baby happily tearing pages out of my Moleskin notebook, carrot boy measuring his legs with my retractable tape, and the twin girls rapturously absorbed in my make-up bag.

  I bent down to rescue what was left of the notebook and while I was there, I kissed the baby – I still wasn’t sure what sex it was – on its dear little tufty head.

  Philippa hugged me at the door. ‘Are you sure you won’t take your fee?’ she said, her eyes in full saucer mode.

  ‘Spend it on the nanny,’ I said, ‘and then you can relax and enjoy your kids. They’re gorgeous.’

  ‘Do you want to take one with you?’ she said laughingly, and I waved cheerily back at her before turning quickly towards my car, so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

  Keeping busy with other people’s chaotic lives seemed to work as an excellent form of therapy for my own mess and I managed to get through the days without obsessing on Ed or Joseph more than, say, twenty times an hour each. I was quite pleased with that result.

  Using work as an ongoing excuse, I didn’t see Joseph until the following Thursday, when we met for dinner at Julie’s. He was waiting for me outside, and when he saw me coming down Portland Road, he ran towards me and scooped me off the ground, swinging me round.

  I had felt more and more nervous about seeing him again the nearer I’d got to the venue, in case my face somehow revealed what I’d done that disastrous night with Ed, but the moment I was in his physical presence my nerves disappeared completely.

  As he kissed me, there on the street, completely oblivious of early evening passers-by, I felt an enormous sense of relief. It seemed the bubble was not entirely burst after all.

  Dinner was heaven – not that I ate it. I found it difficult to do anything but ga
ze at Joseph’s face, and I could barely take in what he was saying for watching his mouth move and thinking how much I wanted to slide my tongue over those sensuous lips.

  I did become aware of a familiar expression in his eyes, though, as I realized he had stopped talking English and was saying something along the lines of: ‘Oogley poogely snoogely noogely you’re not taking any of this in, are you, Amelia?’

  I giggled and shook my head. He laughed and took hold of my hand across the table.

  ‘I was asking about your weekend,’ he said, talking exaggeratedly slowly, and smiling sweetly. ‘I was wondering how your vegetable garden was coming along and whether I could invite myself down to see it some time soon.’

  I felt like a cloud had just blocked out the sun. My blissed-out mood was gone in an instant. My weekend – eeurgh – just the thought of it made me feel ill.

  Joseph frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘You suddenly look shattered.’

  I sighed deeply. I had to tell him. Maybe not all of it, but I had to tell him some of it.

  ‘Oh, Joseph,’ I said, ‘I had a hideous weekend. That’s why I couldn’t speak to you after it. I couldn’t bear to break the spell between us.’ He squeezed my hand and I took a deep breath. ‘Ed turned up at the cottage on Friday night,’ I said. ‘Almost exactly twelve hours after I had said goodbye to you.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Joseph.

  I nodded. ‘Ouch is the word. I hate even saying his name to you, it makes me feel so confused. You’ll have noticed I haven’t mentioned him once since we, er, kissed – and I haven’t asked you anything about your situation either.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I have noticed that and I have really appreciated it. It’s been like having a vacation from real life.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I felt,’ I said. ‘And when Ed turned up, with no warning, I’m afraid the holiday was definitely over.’