How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  I shook his hand off my arm and pushed my way out of the door on to the street, but he followed me.

  ‘Please, Amelia…’ he was saying again. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘Joseph,’ I said finally, turning round to face him and putting my hands on my hips, ‘just fuck off. It’s all you’re good for.’

  It felt really good to be so nasty to him, and it had the desired effect. I turned on my high heel and stalked off, and he didn’t try to follow me.

  27

  Ten minutes later I was still standing on Regent Street in my now agonizing shoes desperately trying to find a cab, but at eleven-thirty on a Sunday night it was hopeless – they were all getting picked off by people further up. As I saw yet another yellow light go out as someone got into the taxi I thought I had been hailing, I realized that, even if I could find one, I still had a problem. I had no idea where to go in it.

  There was no way I was going back to Kiki’s place. What a traitor! I couldn’t believe it. She’d said I should be thinking about marrying Joseph, when all along she’d been shagging him too. That’s exactly what Oliver had said: ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was shagging both of you?’

  I felt physically sick as I remembered it and started to wonder when they did it – not to mention how he found the energy – considering Joseph was with me practically every night, but forced myself to put it out of my mind. I didn’t need to know the grisly details; the bare facts were bad enough.

  My first proper girlfriend was definitely going to be my last, I vowed, hopping from foot to foot in the stupid shoes she’d given me. Ed had been right about the shoes and right about her. And it turned out I’d been right to avoid those kinds of girly friendships all along. I was so disappointed – but intensely relieved that at least we weren’t formally in business together yet. That was a lucky escape.

  But as I couldn’t go back to her place, where on earth could I go? I was within easy walking distance of Mount Street, even in my crippling shoes, which was pretty funny, but I could hardly turn up there. What would I say? Sorry, Ed, turns out you were right about Kiki and Joseph all along, so can I move back in now please?

  The old schoolfriends in Forest Hill and Ealing weren’t going to welcome a phonecall close to midnight either. They all went to bed at nine o’clock ready for their 5 a.m. toddler alarm calls. And Louise, who would have been my first choice, was in Cornwall.

  How about Dick? I tried him at home and on his mobile, but there was no answer on either. Sunday was a big pub night for him, and at this moment he was probably in a kebab shop in Earls Court, soaking up the alcohol with starch and fat, his mobile lost along the way. Dick was always losing his phone.

  I walked towards Piccadilly Circus, wondering if I was going to end up sleeping down in the Tube station. The last trains to Rye and Maidstone had just gone, so I couldn’t go to the cottage, or even to my parents.

  So here I was. Celebrity clutter-clearer, Amelia Bradlow, so adept at sorting out other people’s chaotic lives, and I didn’t have a place to lay my own head that night.

  I stood on the corner of Piccadilly in a daze, wondering what on earth to do, when suddenly the solution became clear as I saw the lights of the Ritz in the distance. Perfect.

  Back where I belonged, on the edge of my former Mayfair ’hood.

  It would be comfortingly familiar, without being dangerously on Ed’s regular beat. We used to have dinner there occasionally, if he suddenly felt the need for serious classical French haute cuisine, but it wasn’t on the A list of his regular spots. I actually went there much more often than him, because tea at the Ritz was my mum’s favourite treat. It was corny, but she loved it, and I was happy I was able to take her there.

  I must have looked like I belonged, because the doorman’s eyes flickered with recognition as he held the door for me, and the guy on the reservations desk didn’t seem at all surprised to be checking in a lone woman in a silver-sequinned plunge-neck mini-dress with no luggage apart from a tiny clutch bag shortly before midnight.

  If I was going to be homeless, I thought, as I filled in the registration card, I would do it in the style to which I was accustomed. And on Ed’s black Amex card.

  The next morning I woke with a start, very confused. Then, simultaneously, as I realized where I was, the memory of why I was there came flooding back. I pulled the covers over my head and sobbed, as I remembered what Ollie had said and the stricken look on Joseph’s face that had confirmed it to be true.

  How could he and Kiki have done that to me? Was it their idea of a hilarious prank? Let’s sexually awaken the frigid woman and then toy with her emotions.

  That must have been it – and Ollie was clearly in on the joke – but it was bewildering, as I had been certain Joseph’s feelings for me went way beyond our physical couplings. It had seemed apparent just in the way he looked at me and how much time he wanted to spend with me. He’d always been asking to have a weekend at the cottage with me…

  As that thought came into my head, my stomach dropped. For a moment I thought I might be physically sick as I realized that my quiet weekends in the country had left Joseph perfectly available for Kiki. So I must have been his weekday lover, while she covered Friday and Saturday nights.

  I knew he had a prodigious sexual appetite – every night and every morning was the minimum with him – but he must be some kind of full-on sex addict, I realized. He was probably having it off with other women as well. I knew several of his students had inappropriate crushes on him, so maybe he was servicing them in his lunch hour, as a little amusement. No wonder he was so fit.

  As it all unfolded in my mind, I stopped crying and almost physically felt my despair turning into disgust. What a seedy set-up I had got myself involved in. They thought they were so sophisticated, but really it was just tawdry and tacky – which reminded me: everything I needed to get on with in my immediate life – starting with a clean pair of knickers and my phone charger – was in Kiki’s flat. And there was no way I was going anywhere near that place.

  She was probably in bed with Joseph there at that very moment. I let out an involuntary groan at the thought. How could I have been so stupid? Ed had been more than right about both of them – he had been almost prescient. There was no doubt about it now: Kiki was a slut and Joseph was a weasel. Official.

  Of course, Dick was still friends with Joseph after twenty-five years, which you’d think would mean something, but as my brother had the emotional intelligence of a cricket stump when it came to romantic relationships, I decided his opinion about such things didn’t count for much. Joseph Renwick had always been a womanizing bastard, was still a womanizing bastard. End of story.

  That would be why he hadn’t wanted to tell me why he had split up with his wife, I now understood. She’d probably caught him in bed with the nanny. Really, I should have known that a man with a sex drive like his would need more than one woman to satisfy it.

  And as my disgust morphed into anger, my strength returned. I would organize myself out of this horrific situation. Jumping out of bed with almost frenzied energy, I had a hot shower and, after wrapping myself in the thick softness of the Ritz bathrobe, I sat on the bed, grabbed the pencil and notepad from the side table and started to make a list.

  My first challenge was clothing. I couldn’t leave the hotel room in a sequinned slash-front dress in broad daylight, so I would ask the concierge to find some kind of coat to lend me and, as soon as Zara opened on Regent Street, I’d go over there and buy enough clothes to keep me going for a day or two.

  Later, I would get my trusted assistant clutter-clearer, Fiona, to bring me what I needed from the flat, in terms of clothes, my phone charger and laptop, and paperwork relating to the business. She already had a key, and I would arrange for her to do it when I knew Kiki would be out at her yoga class.

  I could have gone over myself, but I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the bed where I had spent so many rapturous moments with Joseph, or th
e rooms where I had had so many happy times with Kiki.

  That was easy. A bigger challenge was finding somewhere to live. I chewed the little rubber on the end of the pencil and wondered how to approach that, smiling wryly to myself as I realized there were now two major neighbourhoods off limits to me. Mayfair and Holland Park were both out. Oh well, I thought, that left the rest of London. I reckoned I could find somewhere.

  I thought for a moment about asking Dick if I could stay with him for a while, but his scruffy one-bedroom in West Kensington really did not appeal. That place was a testament to his arrested development, right down to Formula One posters and a framed print of that girl in tennis kit with no knickers on, which he considered a major work of art. His only drinking vessels were stolen beer mugs. Really, I reckoned, he needed me in my professional role, not as a flatmate.

  No, there was only one thing for it. I would have to get my own place. It was lucky that – for the first time in my adult life – I had enough money of my own to do it, and it wouldn’t have to be anywhere flash, because I still had the cottage to escape to at the weekend. I just needed a little toehold in London.

  I rang down to the hotel’s reservation department and negotiated a deal to keep the room for a week, then I fished the phone book from under the desk and started calling estate agents from my mobile, knowing from all my time staying in hotels with Ed that you never used their phones, unless you wanted to double your bill.

  My first few attempts didn’t go too well, because there were so many call-waiting tones bleeping over them. I would just be telling some perky-voiced young woman that I was looking for a furnished one-bedroom within walking distance of Charing Cross station, on a six-month lease, when the insistent ‘beep beep’ would distract me.

  It was always Joseph, and I didn’t answer.

  Later in the morning, after I’d bought something to wear and was up in Highgate making my first visit to a huge house that I was sorting out for three siblings after the death of their elderly father, the calls started to come in from Kiki. I didn’t take any of them either, and by midday there were ten messages in my voicemail inbox. I wanted to delete them all without listening, but I couldn’t, as there might also have been some from clients and I certainly didn’t want to miss those.

  So I sat on a park bench on the way back to Highgate tube and listened to a very upset Joseph telling me ‘it wasn’t as it seemed’ and could I please give him the chance to explain. I deleted them all after the first few words. The final one begged me please just to text him that I was OK, because he didn’t know where I was and he was ‘going mad with worry’.

  ‘Go mad, then, fucker,’ I said to the phone, as I deleted it.

  Then there were several messages from Kiki, also telling me I had it all wrong and laughingly telling me not to be such a silly sausage and to give her a chance to explain.

  I put my tongue out at the phone and deleted those without listening to them all the way through as well.

  To my great surprise, there was also a message from Oliver. As it started with the words: ‘Stop being a stupid cow…’ I deleted that without listening further, as I had with all the others.

  The last message was from Dick, saying he’d had a rather strange phonecall from Joseph, who was very worried about me, so could I please ring him. I did.

  ‘What’s going on, little sister?’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you and JR have already split up…’

  ‘Me and who?’ I said in arch tones.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dick. ‘It’s that bad, is it?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he still seems awfully keen on you. He’s worried because you’re not staying with Kiki and you’re not with me – so where the hell are you, actually? You’re not back at Ed’s, are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’m staying in a hotel until I get my own place and, when I do, I’ll give you the address on sworn oath that you will not give it to that shit Joseph Renwick.’

  ‘Ten four,’ said Dick, reverting as he did in any emotionally charged situation to his childhood settings.

  Kiki made a few more attempts to get in touch with me, which I just deleted without listening beyond the first word. Then she started on a new tack, texting me ostensibly about things to do with the business. I deleted those too. I’d had so much coverage after Janelle’s auction, I was already overloaded with work. I didn’t need any more publicity. But one of her texts did make me sit up:

  Vogue wants to feature you in a

  piece about wardrobe organizing.

  Please call me about that, if nothing

  else, you silly stubborn sausage.

  I had a better idea. I rang Vogue myself, spoke to the features editor, who confirmed it was true – I’d had my suspicions it was one of Kiki’s stunts – and asked her to put the writer directly in touch with me.

  After that, Kiki finally stopped calling me.

  It was very lovely staying at the Ritz, but I was very relieved when, on the fourth day, I found a perfectly nice little one-bedroom to rent in Charing Cross Road. It was in an old mansion block and, because it was at the back, the flat was surprisingly quiet. Barely five minutes’ walk from the station, it was perfect for getting down to the cottage and really handy for work too.

  I would have liked to have changed my mobile-phone number as well as my address but, for professional reasons, I couldn’t. That was the number that was out there for work, so I had to stick to it. But after a few days Joseph stopped calling me constantly – I think Dick must have had a word – and I felt able to start a new life.

  One person I did want to give my new address to, though, was Ed, so a few days after I moved in, bearing in mind what Hermione had said about telephones not always being the best way to communicate in ‘affairs of the heart’, as she called it, I sent him a note, on one of my beautiful new correspondence cards, which I knew he would appreciate. Ed loved good stationery.

  Dear Ed

  Here is my new address. I have moved out of Kiki’s place, and it only seems fair for me to tell you that you were right about her.

  I know you are probably still very angry with me, but it has been a very confusing time and I think we have both said things we shouldn’t have.

  I would truly love the chance to talk to you about all that has happened between us, face to face and in a calm way – preferably on neutral territory.

  Do you think that might be possible?

  Melia x

  It was presumptive of me to use his old pet name for me to sign off, but I wanted to get the message over that I was speaking to him as the person I used to be, when we were still together, not as the slapper about town I had briefly been during my infatuation with Kiki, and my seduction by Joseph, as I now saw it.

  He sent me a reply – on one of his own beautiful correspondence cards – in his achingly familiar loopy writing, suggesting we meet in Mount Street Gardens the next day at noon. I texted back my acceptance.

  Not that the gardens were entirely neutral territory. They were a little oasis of calm, tucked away between Mount Street and South Audley Street, and something about the huge old London plane trees there made it incredibly peaceful. It was a special place Ed and I had always enjoyed in nice weather, to go and read the weekend papers, or just to sit and chat, to be outside for a while in the years before we got the cottage.

  He was already sitting on ‘our’ bench, when I got there at midday, reading the paper, as usual.

  ‘Hello, Ed,’ I said, standing in front of him.

  He looked up at me, and I was relieved to see all the coldness had gone from his face. He simply looked pleased to see me.

  ‘Hello, Melia,’ he said, putting out his hand to take mine. ‘Sit down.’

  For a moment we just looked at each other. His tan was even darker than the last time I’d seen him, set off by a very elegant beige and white check linen suit, in a different cut to his usual style.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ I sa
id, sitting down beside him. ‘Have you been back to France?’

  ‘Italy, actually,’ he said.

  That surprised me. Ed never went anywhere except France, or occasionally Scotland, if a client invited him up for some shooting, fishing, or stalking. He hated blood sports actually, but went anyway for the networking.

  ‘You’re looking beautiful,’ he said. ‘I’ve got used to that dreadful haircut now.’

  He smiled as he said it, and I decided to let it pass without comment. Then he took my left hand in his and played with my wedding ring. I had never taken it off.

  ‘I think we’ve both been rather silly, Amelia,’ he said, gently. ‘Don’t you?’

  I nodded, feeling suddenly teary. I couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you down in Winchelsea,’ he continued. ‘But I was just mad with jealousy at the thought of you being with someone else – anyone else – and then when I found later it was that frightful weasel Joseph Renwick, I couldn’t bear it. So there was no going back. I might have spoken to you before this, but I was just too upset about that.’

  I looked at him in amazement. There was no point prevaricating. If we were going to have this conversation, it had to be completely honest.

  ‘How did you know it was him?’ I asked, incredulous.

  ‘Leo Mecklin told me,’ he said. ‘I ran into him at some ghastly party. He thought it was most amusing. Foul little toad.’

  ‘Leo Mecklin!’ I spluttered. ‘How the hell did he know? He’s never even met Joseph – except maybe at Kiki’s party…’

  The words died on my lips. Ed nodded. ‘Yes, your little friend Kiki told him. They are quite the buddies those two, you know. Did you know she’s selling her Australian art collection through Mecklin’s?’

  Now I really was speechless. I couldn’t imagine why she was doing that, but that wasn’t the issue – why on earth would she have told Leo about me and Joseph?

  ‘You were right about her, Ed,’ I said. ‘I should have listened to you, but I was very impressed by all that girly stuff and her social whirl – I’ve never done any of that and it is good fun, and I’m afraid it clouded my judgement.’