How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  Now she was a PR she insisted on having all the newspapers delivered again. The difference was, now she had a reason to look at them, she actually did it and they all went out into the recycling bin every night. She tore out anything she thought might be useful and put it into a designated filing tray ready for the part-time office assistant she had recently hired for us to sort each week.

  ‘But you’re always telling me to be professional and think like a businesswoman,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think it’s very professional to have unpaid slaves in the business.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, looking up, but keeping a finger on the last word she had read. ‘Here’s the deal. If, with my help, by the end of this year we can get your turnover up to £150,000 p.a., we’ll legally incorporate ABCC as a limited company and I will be your business partner on a 49 per cent share? How’s that? Deal?’

  I looked at her, initially speechless. Suddenly the heavy glasses didn’t seem so bizarre on her dainty head.

  ‘Deal…’ I said, finally. ‘Ms Wilmott.’

  She grinned at me and then, as she turned immediately back to her newspaper-scanning, I realized I’d never seen her so happy.

  She was even more delighted when I asked her to be my official date for Janelle’s auction. My first thought had been to take Joseph, who would certainly look the part in a dinner jacket and who, I rather suspected, was expecting me to take him.

  But the more Kiki drilled me on how to pose for the paparazzi who would be outside the venue – her main advice was to stay glued to Janelle, for maximum coverage

  – I came to realize I couldn’t possibly go with him. Ed would see pictures of us together in the paper the next day. ‘Celebrity clutter-clearer Amelia Bradlow and friend…’ And I couldn’t do that to him.

  Because, although I was feeling pretty dizzy about Joseph, I still wasn’t able to shake off a nagging sense of responsibility about Ed. I might be involved with someone else, but the fact was we were still married, and it really bothered me that we had allowed our relationship to get to that stage of breakdown without ever having a proper conversation about what the original problems had been.

  I kept trying to call him to arrange a meeting to have that conversation, but he still wouldn’t answer when he saw it was me on the line. One afternoon I even tried ringing him from a phonebox so he wouldn’t recognize the number, but when he heard my voice, he immediately hung up.

  Shortly afterwards I got a text: ‘Please stop phoning me, Amelia. I am not ready to talk to you yet. When I am I will contact you.’

  There it was again – all on Ed’s stubborn terms. At least his texting had improved, I thought to myself, sticking my tongue out at the phone. Then I rang Joseph’s number, when I knew he would be giving a tutorial to his summer school students, just to hear his voice on the message.

  It was, I acknowledged to myself, as I hung up, the kind of dopey thing I would have done when I was sixteen. And although I tried to put the thoughts out of my head the moment they popped up, I had also been obsessing on what Kiki had said about Joseph and me and wedding bells.

  Mrs Joseph Renwick. Amelia Jane Renwick. Amelia and Joseph Renwick. The names I’d written so many times in my teen diaries were running through my head again as I jogged around Holland Park the next morning. Perhaps, after all these years, my coded teenage declaration would come true: ‘AH n JR TRU LUV 4 EVA OK’.

  But would it have been like this between us, I wondered, so sweet and easy, if we had got together all the way back then, when we were teenagers?

  Probably not, I decided. I would have been like a hopeless little puppy running after him, the dashing captain of the rugby team with his own car and five grade-A A levels, and it all would have ended like a Jackie magazine photo-love story when he’d gone off to Oxford – one of the sad ones: ‘Joseph was a loner…’ and all that.

  How about later, when we were both students? I’d still seen a lot of him then – until I met Ed – as part of Dick’s social crowd, and I’d never stopped liking him. And I’d always been aware of the special way he had looked at me, no matter which of what seemed like an endless succession of pretty girls he’d had on his arm at that moment.

  Maybe if I’d had proper girlfriends myself then, I thought, I could have talked to them about it, and I would have known how to read his signals and what to do. They could have checked him out and told me that he liked me, and then I could have made a move. If I’d known Kiki then, I realized, I’d probably be married to Joseph already.

  But what would my life have been like if that had happened? The wife of an academic, no doubt the mother of his children, probably living in an executive home in the suburbs. It might have been New York, or Washington, but it still seemed a little too like my own mother’s life for comfort.

  So, I asked myself, as I did my cooling-down stretches by the park gate, would I have given up the last fifteen quirky and exciting years with Ed for what would surely have been a more conventional life with Joseph? And I had to be honest with myself: however loved up I was about him now, the answer was definitely no. I wouldn’t have missed my time with Ed for anything.

  I found that very confusing.

  Hermione knew something was up. I could see those bright bird eyes looking at me questioningly and I knew I couldn’t put her off much longer.

  It was Saturday night, the weekend after Janelle’s auction – which had been a huge success, raising over £300,000 for what was now a formally structured charity for schools in deprived areas – and once again I was on Hermione’s terrace drinking Campari and chatting.

  It did occur to me that most women who had a hot thing going like I did with Joseph would probably not have chosen to spend their weekends in the country with a ninety-five-year-old when they could have been in the big city with their own personal love god, but it was where I wanted to be. The bad memory of Ed’s visit had lifted, and I found the cottage a great comfort again – and my friendship with Hermione was a big part of that.

  ‘I can see you have something on your mind, Amelia,’ she said, when I came back through Checkpoint Charlie with some bowls of olives and Twiglets for us to nibble on. ‘And I don’t mean the blackfly on your roses.’

  After five marriages of her own, she was, I had realized, probably the best person I knew to discuss my romantic complications with. My only proper girlfriend seemed a hopeless case when it came to relationships, my brother was even worse and I certainly couldn’t talk to my mother about it. The conversation might accidentally turn to her own situation, and then the sky would have fallen on our heads.

  Plus, I always suspected that anything I might want to discuss with my mum in relation to Ed would be coloured by her understandably desperate yearning to have grandchildren and his failure to deliver in that regard. Really, I thought, as I sat down again, I was incredibly lucky to have a friend like Hermione, who cared but wasn’t involved.

  ‘Oh, things still aren’t great in the marriage department,’ I said, casually – much more casually than I felt about it.

  ‘Edward came down to see you, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘Was that not a success?

  I turned to look at her, quickly. I hoped she hadn’t heard me shouting.

  ‘I saw him out looking at your vegetable garden one morning,’ she continued, ‘and he came over to speak to me. He seemed very impressed with your potager. He said having a garden like that was the main reason you bought the cottage, and he seemed pleased you had fulfilled your dream.’

  I’d had no idea he’d even seen the garden, because I’d been upstairs sleeping off my fuckfest for most of that morning and, when I had emerged, we’d had that terrible row.

  ‘He seemed rather sad, though,’ Hermione continued. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that.’

  ‘He wasn’t sad when I saw him,’ I said, suddenly wanting to tell her all about it – well, most of it. ‘He was furious, because he’d figured out I’ve been seeing someone else. So we had a big row and he stormed off, a
nd that was the last time I spoke to him. It’s looking more and more like divorce time.’

  I was surprised how choked it made me feel to say that. I stuffed a Twiglet in my mouth before a sob could get out.

  ‘Is it the same fellow you were seeing before?’ said Hermione.

  I nodded. ‘You’ve met him actually, Hermione. It’s Joseph. He came down that time with my other friends.’

  ‘Is he the one with the glasses?’ she said.

  I nodded again. ‘Ah,’ said Hermione. ‘Very attractive, a good intelligent face. I could tell he liked you that weekend. He never took his eyes off you.’ She smiled sweetly at me. ‘So is that going well?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s great. I’ve known Joseph since I was eleven. He was my brother’s best friend at school, so in a lot of ways it feels like comfy slippers being with him but, even beyond that, we just spark each other off –we always did – so it’s lovely.’

  ‘But…?’ said Hermione.

  I laughed and shook my head. ‘You don’t miss a thing, do you?’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t feel quite right launching into a cosy boyfriend/girlfriend scene with him when I’m still married to Ed and I’ve never had the chance to talk to him properly about what was really wrong between us in the first place.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hermione, firmly. ‘ That is a mistake I made more than once, going straight from one love affair to another without a break to clear the head. It muddies the new relationship, that’s the problem, gets it off on the wrong foot. It was harder in my day, of course, because a woman couldn’t be on her own so easily then, even one who earned her own living, as I did, but I do think it is better to let the heart lie fallow for a while, if you can.’

  ‘What did you do for a living, Hermione?’ I asked, seizing the opening to ask her. I’d always wondered, plus I wanted a break from thinking about the ghastly complications I had caused in my own emotional life.

  ‘What didn’t I do?’ she laughed. ‘After my father disowned me – a long story, which I will tell you another time – I was a fittings model, for a couture house in Paris. Later I was a war photographer. My first husband worked for Magnum and I just ended up doing it too. After the war I lived in Africa for several years, not working, then I lived in Connecticut and wrote cookery and gardening books. Finally I was a publisher in New York and then in London. And when I gave that up twenty years ago, I moved here.’

  ‘That’s amazing, Hermione,’ I said. ‘What a career. Why do you never talk about it?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘It’s all in the past. I may be ancient, but I still like to live in the present as much as possible. I’ll give you some of my gardening books to look at before you go tonight, I think you will enjoy those – but, Amelia, don’t change the subject. What are you going to do about your husband? It seems to me that you need to sort things out with him, one way or the other.’

  ‘But I can’t – he won’t take my phone calls…’

  ‘Do you not have a key to your flat any more?’

  I looked at her. Of course I did. I’d never thought of that.

  ‘So, go and see him,’ she said. ‘ Telephones are not always the best way to handle affairs of the heart. Face to face is still the thing for that.’

  My conversation with Hermione had really cleared my head, and on the train back to London on Sunday evening I added two unpleasant things to my mental To Do list. I dreaded them both.

  Like it or not, I was going to have to go and see Ed and at least try to have a proper conversation about what had gone wrong between us. Even if it was the last one we ever had, we had to have it. What did Americans call it? Closure. That was what I needed.

  But before that, I had to do something else I was dreading just as much. I was going to have to tell Joseph that I couldn’t see him for a while. I didn’t want to do it, I loved my cruise-y times with him – and I was really going to miss the hanky-panky, too, now he had given me such a taste for it – but it was all getting way too comfy-cosy with him way too quickly.

  As Hermione had said, starting something you were hoping might develop into an ongoing relationship before you were properly disentangled from the previous one couldn’t be healthy. No, I had to sort things out one way or another with Ed, before I let it get any more serious between me and Joseph. She was right – I needed some fallow time.

  The train was really slow because of engineering works, and I didn’t get back to Kiki’s place until after nine that night. The minute she heard my key in the lock she ran to the front door and pulled it open, telling me I had to get changed immediately – we were going to a party, and Joseph was meeting us there. She was already dolled up in her favourite yellow chiffon party dress and seriously hyper.

  ‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘You’re going off like a firecracker. What is this great event?’

  ‘It’s an engagement party,’ said Kiki, dancing from foot to foot as she did when she was excited. She grasped my hands and pulled me to her. ‘Oh, Amelia, it’s such good news – Ollie and Sonny are getting married!’

  She had tears in her eyes.

  ‘You old softie,’ I said. ‘You pretend to be such a hard nut about so-called boring relationships and look at you. You’re all soppy and misty over this.’

  ‘But, Amelia,’ she said, ‘it will be my first gay wedding

  – I’m so excited. I’m going to be the maid of honour. The outfit possibilities are endless…’

  I went and changed into my own party gear – something I was now capable of doing all on my own – and as I was putting on my make-up it sank in that Kiki had said Joseph was going to be at the party.

  I felt distinctly uncomfortable at the prospect of seeing him in a public social context just when I had decided to cool things down with him, but as usual I got caught up in Kiki’s excitement at the prospect of a happening and put it out of my mind as we scurried around spraying on perfume and deciding which ridiculously high-heeled shoes to wear.

  The engagement party certainly seemed set to be a hoot. It was being held in a new burlesque club in Soho, which had been created out of an old one, keeping a lot of the tacky old fixtures, which added greatly to the atmosphere, and as well as the glamorous women in corsets and seamed stockings doing elaborate stripteases, there were drag queens and beautiful boys doing the same.

  Joseph arrived shortly after me and Kiki, and we set off together to hunt down the happy couple. We found them near the stage, holding court on a semi-circular banquette upholstered with purple velvet. Oliver was glowing with pride, and Sonny was as sweet and modest as ever, although looking spectacular in a white suit.

  ‘Here she is!’ cried Oliver, when he saw us. ‘Here’s the girl who made this possible. Get over here, darling.’

  He was talking to me, I realized – and I’d never heard him so benign, it was quite unsettling. It didn’t last long.

  ‘You lot,’ he said, to the people who were sitting with them. ‘Fuck off, all of you, I want my real friends sitting with me tonight. This is the girl who introduced me to my darling, and I want to thank her.’

  He stood up, a little unsteadily, and put his arms out to me. He hugged me so hard, he nearly winded me. ‘ Thank you, Amelia,’ he said into my ear, ‘you uptight old tart. It’s all down to you.’

  ‘I only took him on as a gardener because he was so gorgeous,’ I said, leaning down to kiss Sonny. He still made me blush.

  Joseph and Kiki did their hugging and congratulating and then we all sat happily on the banquette, with me in the place of honour between Sonny and Oliver. He was looking at me thoughtfully, rather as a sculptor might look at his own artwork newly installed on a plinth.

  ‘Looking good, babe,’ he said. ‘Your hair’s great, of course, and it suits you being spunk drunk too. Kiki told me old Speccie Four-Eyes over there is a really dirty fuck and it looks like he’s been giving you a seriously good seeing to as well.’

  I wasn’t sure I was hearing him right. ‘Are
you talking about Joseph?’

  ‘Yeah. Those brainy straight boys are always big hornheads. Hey, Speccie,’ he said, throwing a coaster at Joseph. ‘So which of these two is a better shag then? Amelia or Kiki?’

  I felt sick. I looked at Joseph, and the expression on his face said it all. He looked shattered, but I didn’t care. It was clearly true. Kiki was oblivious to what was going on as she kneeling on the seat talking to someone behind us.

  I looked back at Oliver and my face was clearly giving me away as well.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was shagging both of you?’ said Oliver, not in the least bit concerned that I might be upset. He chuckled with laughter and smacked his hand on my knee, squeezing it.

  ‘That’s why she set you up with him, darling. She said he was just the one to sort you out – and that was before you even told us you were actually frigid. How funny was that? Anyway, you know how generous Kiki is. She likes to share her blessings. So is his dick as big as she says, then?’

  I stood up and pushed past him and Sonny to get off the banquette. I didn’t even look at Joseph again as I walked off. I could hear him calling my name, and he caught up with me at the door, grabbing hold of my arm.

  ‘Amelia!’ he said. ‘Stop. I can explain. It’s not how it sounds…’

  I turned round and looked at him, saying nothing. If I had spoken it would have come out as a roar, and I didn’t want to do that in public. He didn’t say anything either and, as I took in that handsome face for what would definitely be the last time, it was as if all the moments I had shared with him over the past twenty-five years flashed before me.

  He never had been much good at having one girlfriend at a time, I reminded myself. He’d been at Dick’s eighteenth party with another girl the night he had kissed me. That’s why it had never gone anywhere that time – except to make all that trouble for me. He was a faithless bastard when he was eighteen and, clearly, nothing had changed. I should have followed my instincts from the time I saw him again at Kiki’s party and had nothing to do with him.