How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  Just the day before I’d received an email from Louise with photos from Posy’s fifth birthday party. I pulled my laptop on to my knees and had another look at the pictures: Posy shyly holding up a piece of paper with a big pink ‘5’ drawn on it. Posy in a sparkly pink dress waving a wand. Posy’s rapt face looking at the lit candles on her birthday cake. A group of little girls in fairy wings chasing each other through an apple orchard. Fat tears poured down my cheeks.

  Was it abnormal for a woman to want that? I didn’t think so. Really, when you considered it, there was probably nothing more normal.

  I kissed Posy’s little face on the screen. I had held her the day she was born, and I’d always felt such a special connection with her. But since they’d made the big move to Cornwall, I’d only seen them all once, right after the twins were born. Now it was just emails and photos like this and the odd treasured drawing through the post.

  Was that going to be as close as I would ever be to children in the years to come? The way Dick was going, I wouldn’t even have any nieces and nephews. It was all so wrong – and I was beginning to understand why my parents were increasingly frustrated about it.

  I lay back on the cushions with my arms behind my head and thought about Kiki and her strange antipathy to having children. I couldn’t imagine what made her so against the idea. She should have been married to Ed, not me. Shame they loathed each other, because they could have had a life of untrammelled, childless pleasure together – although it seemed a pretty empty prospect to me.

  I wondered what she was doing that lovely summer evening. No doubt she was at some glamorous party, caught up with her brittle crowd, laughing too hard at nothing, drinking too much and spilling out of the venue on to the pavement with all the smokers, where the action was these days.

  And then, of course, that made me wonder again what Joseph was doing. This time, I let myself think about him. Perhaps he was with her. Maybe they were an official item now I was out of the picture. Suddenly I felt a physical yearning for him so strong I grabbed hold of a pillow and hugged it to me, pretending it was him. It wasn’t just a sexual thing – I missed his physical presence, his reassuring bulk, the broad shoulders I could cling on to.

  If he hadn’t been such an arsehole, maybe we could have become an official couple and had a baby. He could have got me ‘gloriously up the duff ’, as he’d called it. It was obvious from that – and from how cut up he was about the separation from his stepchildren – that he loved kids and pregnancy and the whole package of reproduction and family life. What a contrast to Ed’s attitude. Whenever I’d told him a friend was expecting a baby he had pulled a repulsed face.

  I looked at my mobile on the bedside table and willed it to ring. Suddenly, I desperately wanted Joseph to call me. In that moment, I knew, however hurt and angry I had been, I would have begged him to rush over right away. So why didn’t I just ring him? Give him that chance to explain that he had pleaded for?

  My hand reached out for the phone, but I stopped short. What possible explanation could put it right?

  He’d behaved like there was something special between us, but all along he’d been sleeping with Kiki too. What was it Oliver had said? ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was shagging both of you?’ There was no way to make that acceptable.

  No wonder his wife had kicked him out, I reminded myself. He was a bastard, he always had been, that was all there was to it. The sooner I could stop thinking about him, the better. What I needed was a faithful, reliable man, I told myself… Someone like Ed. Which brought me right back to the start of the argument.

  I nearly yelped with frustration as I realized the mental merry-go-round had done its full circuit for the umpteenth time that day. I knew I had to get out of the flat before it started off again.

  I stepped out into the soft air and crossed Charing Cross Road. As I wandered aimlessly into Leicester Square I felt more like some kind of alien spaceperson with every step. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be couples strolling along hand in hand, smiling and laughing.

  I’d better get used to this thing called being single, I thought. I’d hardly had a chance to find out what it was like, going straight from home to university, to being married to Ed, to dating Joseph.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I told myself firmly. It did have its advantages – I could see that already – and I did really need to have some fallow time, as Hermione had said. And if she’d learned to be happy on her own after all those husbands, I could jolly well get to like it too.

  So, to educate myself in the ways of the twenty-first-century single woman, I bought the entire boxed set of Sex and the City. Then I picked up a bottle of Tasmanian pinot noir and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream – Ed would have been appalled, I thought happily – and headed back to the flat with something like a spring in my step.

  Thinking of Hermione made me want to just keep walking down the hill to Charing Cross station and get on the train to Winchelsea, where I had already grown to enjoy being on my own, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go for a while.

  I still had that huge job on, sorting out the house in Highgate. It was a big place – seven bedrooms – and an absolute tip. The man who had died had been a well-known historian, and he had lived and worked there for forty years, so there were Jurassic layers of clutter to clear.

  Even with my assistant and a specialist archivist I had recruited to do his study, preserving all the papers for posterity, according to his children’s instructions, it was going to take at least another couple of weeks. And they were paying extra for me to do it as quickly as possible, so I was going to have to work all that weekend and probably the next two as well. What a bore.

  So I wasn’t going to be able to see Hermione and have one of my comforting chats with her for ages, which was a royal bore, but as I was in the rickety lift going back up to the flat, I suddenly had a great idea. I would ring Hermione. I needed to tell her I wasn’t coming down that weekend, and there was no reason I couldn’t have a chat to her on the phone. We didn’t have to have all our conversations sitting on her terrace.

  ‘Amelia, dear,’ she said when she answered. ‘How lovely to hear from you. Is everything all right?’

  Well, that did it. Just when I’d thought I’d reached some kind of equilibrium about my situation, it took one kind enquiry and I let out what I knew was an audible sob.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Hermione,’ I said, recovering myself. ‘It’s just I am desperate to come down to the cottage, but I won’t be able to come this weekend, or probably the next one either.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, simply.

  So I told her about my near-reconciliation with Ed and his final pronouncement on the baby issue. Then I heard my voice wobbling treacherously again as I outlined my situation as I had analysed it.

  ‘What I find so hard to cope with, Hermione, is the awful choice between Ed and no kids – and no Ed and still possibly no kids. I just don’t know what to do. I do still love him, but I think he is being so unfair. Surely if he really loved me, he wouldn’t let me be so unhappy about something?’

  ‘Hmmmm,’ said Hermione, ‘that is a very difficult dilemma.’ She paused. ‘Have you considered writing a pros and cons list about Ed?’ she said.

  One hour and several glasses of the Ninth Island pinot later, and my list was finished. I sat up straight and stared at the blinking screen of my laptop until my eyes started to smart.

  Staying Married to Ed – Pros and Cons

  Pro:

  Can be the sweetest man in the world (Mr Bun)

  Really loves me

  Fifteen years’ shared history

  Very loving

  Very funny

  Very clever

  Very successful

  Highly respected

  Glamorous lifestyle

  Financially secure

  Flat in Mount Street

  Beautiful profile, hair, hands, feet, etc. £10 million�
�

  Con:

  Can be the most stubborn man in the world

  Quirky to the point of eccentricity (Mr Bun…)

  Doesn’t like me having girlfriends Can be a silly snob

  Tendency to selfishness

  Sulks if doesn’t get own way

  (e.g. haircut…)

  Works too much Wine obsession gets boring

  Keeps anti-social hours

  Heinous cow of a mother

  My dad hates him

  Crap in bed

  Absolutely refuses to have children

  And there it was. I counted up and there were thirteen points in each one, which didn’t seem to augur well but, as I looked at them, I knew the issue wasn’t quantity anyway. It was content. I took another big swig of my wine, read through the lists again and then highlighted the last one and put it in thirty-six point, and the boldest font I could find:

  Absolutely refuses to have children

  That said it all. The other pros and cons all pretty much balanced each other out, but there was nothing to compensate for that. Even if I never met another man, I couldn’t stay with Ed if he insisted on imposing that restriction on me. It just wasn’t right.

  I would just have to learn to love being single and hope for the best.

  28

  I was missing my weekends in Winchelsea desperately and longing to see what the new gardener had done, but I was actually very happy to be frantically busy at work, because it was such a useful distraction from thinking.

  But the day I had a surprise call from Janelle, saying she needed me to pop round for a ‘follow-up’ visit, I began to wonder if I would need to clone myself to cope. If all my clients were going to expect this kind of aftercare as well as the initial clutter-clearance, it was going to mean twice as much work again.

  Settling back in the rackety Northern Line tube carriage on my way up to see her, I wondered if I should promote Fiona to do some of the first appointments to try and clear some of the backlog. The waiting list just kept getting longer and I had understood from my very first experiences with Kiki and Janelle that getting on to the job as soon as possible was of paramount importance to the desperate client.

  But that pressure was almost too much at times – especially now I no longer had Kiki there to field all the calls from the media, which were still coming thick and fast. Perhaps, I pondered, I would need to take on a PR company to look after that side of things for me.

  As I sat there looking at the ridiculously busy day I had ahead of me on my iPhone schedule, I keenly wished I still had her and Ed to discuss such important business decisions with. I tried to imagine what each of them would say if I asked them about splitting the first consultations with Fiona.

  I could almost hear Ed’s voice in the rattling of the train. ‘You are your brand, Melia, my darling,’ he would say. ‘ They are paying for you and what you represent. Never water that down. If you physically can’t do more, you have to charge more instead for the real thing. That’s what I’ve always done.’

  And what would Kiki’s take on it be, I wondered. Similar, just put differently. ‘Shit no, darls,’ she’d say. ‘ They’re paying for the glamour associated with Amelia Bradlow. They want the woman they’ve seen in Grazia not some superannuated chalet girl in Marks & Spencer’s jeans.’

  So, gathering up my bags, ready to get off at Hampstead, I decided to abandon that idea, wondering whether I had quite made the decision myself or not, but fairly sure it was the right one.

  Janelle was waiting at the open door of her flat when I got there, smiling broadly. Her eyes were a startling violet colour now, I noticed.

  ‘’Allo, darling,’ she said, giving me a big hug. ‘How are you? You looked great in the mag. Were you pleased with it?’

  I promised her I was, although I had no idea which one she was talking about, and looked round the hallway, puzzled. It was immaculate. Perfectly clean and tidy.

  ‘The flat looks great, Janelle,’ I said. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, come through to the lounge and I’ll show you,’ she said, grinning mischievously.

  I understood why when I walked through the door. Ollie was sitting there, clearly waiting for me, legs akimbo, his arms spread along the back of the sofa.

  ‘Hi, babe,’ he said, not bothering to get up.

  ‘Surprise!’ said Janelle, like it was all a great hoot.

  ‘Hello, Oliver,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Oh, don’t start with that old arctic-knickers shit,’ he said. ‘Sit down here and let me talk to you.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said, and turned to Janelle, who was looking crestfallen.

  ‘Did you want to discuss anything with me?’ I asked her, as warmly as I could muster. ‘Because I am happy to help you in any way I can, but if this is just a social visit with Oliver, I think I’ll be off. I have an awful lot of clients to see today.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Amelia,’ said Janelle. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and we can all have a nice cup of tea. Ollie said he needs to talk to you about the wedding. He said he can’t get married until he sorts things out with you, so I thought we could all go through it together. I love weddings…’

  I turned back to Oliver.

  ‘So that’s what this is all about, is it?’ I said, feeling the anger rising up inside me like a geyser. ‘ This is all about me salving your conscience so I will come to your wedding and everything will be lovely for you. Unbelievable. And quite despicable of you to involve Janelle in it…’

  ‘Oh, come on, Amelia,’ said Ollie, sounding pretty angry himself. ‘I said a lot of stupid things that night – I was drunk, OK? And over-excited. But get off your fucking high horse for a minute and listen to me. You are such a stubborn cow and you are breaking Sonny’s heart with this – and Kiki’s…’

  ‘What about my fucking heart?’ I screamed at him, and I fled from the room, the flat and the building.

  I could hear Janelle calling after me as I left, but I kept going. I’d ring her when I recovered, I promised myself, as I ran up Hampstead High Street towards the tube.

  At that moment I just needed to get away from everything that reminded me of Joseph and Kiki and the entire sordid scene I’d got myself so unfortunately tangled up with. They were revoltingly tacky, the lot of them, as that little scenario had reminded me.

  By the time I reached the tube station I was panting heavily, not just because it was uphill, but from the tidal wave of emotion that had crashed over me. It was as though I had managed to put that whole episode – and the people involved in it – where it belonged, in the past, but seeing Oliver had made it all real again. And that made Kiki real and Joseph real, and that was what I couldn’t bear.

  The only way I knew how to cope with the hurt from what those two had done to me was to carry on like none of it had ever happened – the good or the bad – but now I had been forced out of that artificial mental refuge, and it was so damned painful.

  I sat down heavily on a bench and sobbed. As the tears came pouring out of me I felt quite out of control – it was a public place after all – but strangely it felt good to let it all go. After a few minutes, a kind older lady stopped to ask if I was all right, and lifting my head to thank her and say I would be fine nudged me back into the here and now.

  I took some deep breaths and groped for my trusty box of tissues, always ready for weepy clients in my tote bag and at that moment very useful for weepy me. Then, once I had recovered enough to breathe properly, I went into a nearby florist and ordered a large bunch of flowers for Janelle, attaching a non-specific note of apology.

  After that unpleasant outing, I was happier than ever to lose myself in work. I stayed at the historian’s house in Highgate late every night, mainly to get the job done but also to be somewhere that wasn’t on my own in the flat, or on my own surrounded by those goddam happy couples, who seemed to be everywhere else.

  I hadn’t noticed them when I was in a happy couple myself, but now
I couldn’t seem to escape them. It almost became a private joke I had with myself, because if I wasn’t following them around the supermarket as they stocked up for another joyous weekend together, no doubt filled with picnics and afternoons strolling around art galleries, it seemed they were off to the myriad theatres or cinemas near my new flat, sharing confidences over coffee, or just bloody holding hands everywhere I looked.

  I felt awful to think that for so many years I had been half of one of those happy duos, quite unaware of how much pain my very existence might be causing single onlookers. I sent them all a mental retrospective apology.

  There wasn’t even any escape when I was home alone. I was watching quite a bit of television to pass the time, and even the adverts were full of neat little pairs. I did actually laugh out loud every time another lot of them appeared, but there was a bitter edge to it.

  And, of course, every time I saw another Mr and Mrs Happy Couple, the thought would come tripping into my mind that I only needed to pick up the phone and I could be back in one myself, with Ed, but I couldn’t let myself do that. Thanks to Hermione’s brilliant advice, I had made my decision in a very considered way, and I wouldn’t let myself go back on it, just to run away from being lonely.

  My conviction that I had made the right choice was renewed again one morning when I had what I had come to think of as my monthly low moment, waking up with that telltale dull ache in my belly, and the bright-red reminder in the loo.

  I knew in my rational brain that I couldn’t be pregnant

  – I hadn’t had sex and I hadn’t had a visit from the Angel Gabriel – but now I understood that through all the years with Ed there had always been a tiny kernel of irrational hope buried deep inside me that somehow it might happen.

  Even though I’d known it was extremely unlikely – if not actually impossible with the Pill and condom combo – my lower brain had always secretly nurtured the idea. It only took one sperm and one egg, after all.