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  PENGUIN BOOKS

  How To Break Your Own Heart

  Praise for Cents and Sensibility:

  ‘An excellent read’ Woman’s Own

  ‘A witty read’ Company

  Praise for Handbags and Gladrags:

  ‘Heaven for sex-and-shopping fans’ Daily Mail

  ‘A wicked read – funny, sexy and stylish’ Best

  Praise for Pants on Fire:

  ‘A witty, modern romance’ Vogue

  ‘A funny, light-hearted read’ Glamour

  ‘Entertaining and upbeat’ She

  Praise for Mad About the Boy:

  ‘Sassy stuff’ Daily Mirror

  ‘A bubbly concoction of bitchiness, humour, glamour and eccentricity written with great verve and enthusiasm’ Sunday Mirror

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Maggie Alderson was born in London, brought up in Staffordshire and educated at the University of St Andrews. She has worked on two newspapers and nine magazines – editing four of them – and contributed to many more. She is married with one daughter and lives by the sea. This is her fifth novel.

  www.maggiealderson.com

  How To Break

  Your Own Heart

  MAGGIE ALDERSON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2009

  Copyright © Maggie Alderson, 2009

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-191030-7

  For Barbie Boxall

  Acknowledgements

  As well as my adored agents, Jonathan Lloyd and Fiona Inglis, and my wonderful publishers, Julie Gibbs and Mari Evans, I am greatly indebted to the following people: Bruce Palling for his oenophile expertise; Paul Levy and Charlie Mount for some specifics on champagne, and Richard Juhlin’s book 4000 Champagnes; Mark Connolly for taking me to L’Atelier Joël Robuchon; Jocelyn Hungerford, for rhymes and chimes; Stephanie Donaldson for her horticultural knowledge; Barry Goodman for the matches game and Val Garland for playing it so hilariously; Henri Krug for the lunch at Tetsuya’s, where we drank Clos de Mesnil. And in fond memory of my late friend Alan Crompton-Batt, who introduced me to Krug twenty years ago.

  1

  ‘Do you always sleep in separate beds?’

  Kiki’s question took me so much by surprise that I’d answered her truthfully before I had time to think about it. I hadn’t had any coffee yet, my brain wasn’t in gear.

  ‘Yes,’ I said and turned the tap on to full blast to fill the kettle. I wanted to drown out any possible further discussion of the subject.

  But Kiki hadn’t finished.

  ‘Do you think that’s normal for a happy couple in their mid-to late-thirties?’ she asked brightly, leaning round me over the sink, forcing me to look at her.

  I switched the kettle on and deliberately moved away to bustle around with mugs and coffee pots. I really wasn’t in the mood for an in-depth discussion of my marital relationship before 9 on a Sunday morning. And especially not after the amount of wine we had consumed at dinner the night before. My head was pounding.

  I wasn’t used to getting up so early at the weekend, but Kiki had woken me like a puppy, bouncing up and down on the end of my bed, insisting I go for a walk with her. Which was when she’d discovered that Ed and I slept in separate beds. In separate bedrooms.

  I glanced out of the window. It was a perfect March morning, as she’d said. The sky was bright blue with little white clouds scurrying across it and the catkins on my neighbour’s tree were dancing in the breeze. A walk through the fields and woods would probably clear my head, I thought, as long as the conversation didn’t continue in the same vein.

  But Kiki wasn’t ready to let it go.

  ‘Amelia,’ she said, walking over to the dresser where I was pouring milk into a Cornishware jug. She put her hand up to my face and gently turned my chin so I had to look at her. ‘Stop running away from me. This is serious. How long have you and Ed been sleeping separately?’

  I sighed deeply and pushed her hand firmly away from my face. ‘It’s none of your bloody business where we sleep, Kiki,’ I said, starting to feel really cross. ‘I’ve had enough of this. You’ve woken me up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to go for a walk, and I’m happy to do that, but not if you are going to give me the third degree about my sleeping arrangements.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Kiki, raising her hands in surrender. ‘I’ll shut up now, but I am going to make you talk about it one day.’

  ‘Sugar, dear?’ I asked in a deliberately over-bright tone and with a fake smile, as I held a mug of coffee up in front of her, my little finger raised genteelly.

  ‘Two, thank you, sweetie,’ she said, returning my ironic grin and then sticking her tongue out. I stuck mine out back at her.

  Kiki kept her promise and our walk passed very pleasantly, with conversation no more intrusive than a post mortem of the various hilarities of the night before and what we each had coming up socially in the next week – always a rich vein of conversation with her. There were also frequent diversions as Kiki discovered yet another wonder of the English spring to squeal over.

  ‘I love all the mud here,’ she said, lifting up each of her brightly striped Paul Smith wellies in turn to admire the thick clods sticking to the soles. ‘We don’t get much mud in Australia, because it’s so dry. I love this oozy mud. Listen to that – a proper squelch.’

  I laughed. Kiki had lived in London on and off for years, with stints in New York and back in her native Melbourne, but she still took great delight in all the little details peculiar to England. It was just part of the insatiable enthusiasm for living which made her so popular.

  With her background and money – she was from an Australian brand-name family – and not forgetting her exquisite gamine looks, she would never have been short of friends, but Kiki’s appeal went way beyond the fiscal or the physical.

  As my husband Ed said when we first met her at a dinner party a few months earlier, Kiki didn’t just seize the day, she got it in a half nelson and squeezed it into submission. His other pronouncement on Kiki was that she didn’t so much meet people as recruit them. We’d been enlisted immediately.

  We had met her that night, she’d decided we were OK, according to some value system entirely of h
er own, and we’d seen her at least once a week ever since, whether we liked it or not – and I was a bit more enthusiastic than Ed.

  But while Kiki’s bossiness could be overwhelming, I was glad she’d forced me to go for a walk that morning. The woods were heavenly in the early spring sunshine, and we got back to the house an hour later with our heads clearer and our arms full of branches of pussy willow and catkins to take back up to London.

  My neighbour was in her garden as we walked past, examining the green shoots that were appearing in her flowerbeds, so I stopped by her gate to say good morning.

  We’d only had the cottage a few weeks and I hadn’t had a chance to get to know her properly yet, but I was quite fascinated by Mrs Hart. She was very old – the man in the village shop had told me she was ninety-five – and seemed to live entirely independently.

  She spent a lot of time in her garden and it was lovely, even in winter. There always seemed to be something flowering and I was hoping she might be able to give me some tips for my patch. I had big plans for it.

  ‘Been for a walk, Amelia?’ she said, smiling, when she made it over to the gate, taking her tiny little steps. ‘I bet it was splendid in the woods this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was glorious down there.’

  Kiki joined me by the gate and I introduced them.

  ‘G’day, Mrs Hart,’ said Kiki, waving cheerfully. Mrs Hart waved back.

  ‘Hello, Kiki,’ she said. ‘Lovely to meet you. But you must all call me Hermione. Those are splendid catkins you have there, Amelia.’

  She put out an ancient hand and gently touched them. ‘ Those are female hazel catkins. You can tell by the red flowers at the tips. They are much more spectacular than my birch ones.’

  I was impressed by her knowledge, but as she spoke I was distracted by a small thatch of long white hairs on her chin. They were glinting in the sunshine and they really bothered me.

  Mrs Hart – Hermione – had such a marvellous face, fine-boned, with very lively blue eyes, and the bristles were such a shame. She was always nicely dressed, but her bright coral lipstick was a bit skew-whif, so I could only presume that she couldn’t see the bristles. She certainly wasn’t gaga, so it had to be her eyesight. If I ever got to know her better, I thought, I would say something. It was what I would want someone to do for me.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll let you girls go,’ she was saying. ‘Have a lovely day and do call and see me next time you’re here, Amelia.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I definitely will.’

  Ed still hadn’t come down when we got in, but I could hear him moving around upstairs.

  He appeared – dressed, shaved and immaculate, as he was every morning – just as I’d put a large pile of thick bacon sandwiches on the table. I got up and poured two strong cups of coffee, with just a splash of milk in each and put them down at the place where he always sat.

  As he reached the table, Ed pulled me to him and kissed my cheek, then he nodded at Kiki and sat down, helping himself to the food but still not speaking.

  ‘Morning, Edward!’ said Kiki, in the tones of a bossy nurse to a groggy patient.

  ‘Hurrmph,’ said Ed, which was quite chatty for him in the morning.

  Then he started glancing nervously round the room and I picked the Sunday Telegraph up off the dresser and dropped it by his plate.

  ‘Hanksh,’ he said, or something similar, not looking up, his gaze fixed on the front page as he took hurried little sips of his first coffee. I put a hand on his shoulder and he reached up to squeeze it, not taking his eyes off the paper.

  I was used to Ed’s silent morning routine and it didn’t bother me in the slightest, but Kiki clearly wasn’t prepared to let it pass unremarked.

  She put her bacon sarnie down and leaned back, studying him with her eyes narrowed and her head on one side. Then she looked over at me and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘Ed doesn’t really speak before noon,’ I said, laughing. ‘Do you, darling?’

  I reached over and ruffled his hair and he smiled up at me blearily. He looked a bit like a three-toed sloth in the morning, I decided. A very elegant three-toed sloth with beautiful hair, wearing a hand-made shirt.

  ‘And the two cups of coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Just his little routine,’ I replied, smiling indulgently.

  ‘Right,’ said Kiki, nodding slowly. ‘Just checking.’

  The three of us were settled into eating breakfast and reading various bits of the papers when our other house-guest appeared suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, after practically falling down them. He looked terrible.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Kiki. ‘Early man.’

  ‘Shuddup,’ said Oliver, slumping down in a chair, his eyes half closed. He looked like a spoilt Caravaggio cherub, with black curls, heavy beard growth and the mascara he had been wearing the night before smudged beneath his eyes. He didn’t sound very angelic though.

  ‘I feel like total shit. Did you have to make me drink that much last night, Amelia? It was the fucking brandy that did it. Filthy piss. Why’d you open that shit, Ed? It’s fucking horrible.’

  Ed grunted. It sounded like ‘armagnac’, but it was hard to tell.

  ‘Why did you drink it then?’ I asked Oliver, handing him a mug of coffee. He was wearing my flowery silk kimono, which he must have found in the bathroom, and was having problems keeping it closed.

  ‘I drank it because I’m a total drink slut, but all that wine turns your stomach to shit, and my breath smells like it as well. Why don’t you have decent piss in this house, like vodka? Or tequila? Midori would be better than that cack.’

  He slapped Ed on his upper arm with the back of his hand, provoking another grunt.

  Rolling his eyes in response, Oliver took a deep drink from his mug and then stood up and ran to the sink, the kimono flapping open.

  ‘Bleeeucccch!’ he said, spitting it out. ‘What did you give me coffee for, Amelia? I fucking hate coffee. Haven’t you got any tea? How can you drink that shit? It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Oh, do your nightie up, Ollie,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to see the entire sausage counter at breakfast. Sit down and I’ll make you some tea.’

  Meanwhile, Kiki had stood up and was sidling behind the table towards where Oliver was now sitting. As he gazed vacantly into space she suddenly thrust one of the bottles from the night before under his nose. There was still an inch of red wine in the bottom, I noticed, and a few cigarette ends bobbing in it.

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ said Oliver, jumping up and wrestling the bottle away from her. ‘You are such a cow. Go on, you smell it!’ he said, pushing it towards her face.

  Kiki shrieked, grabbed the sash from his kimono and pulled it off, dancing off into the sitting room twirling it behind her like an Olympic gymnast. Oliver followed, waving the bottle and shouting profanities at her.

  I heard a crash as, I presumed, they tripped over the ottoman, followed by shrieks of laughter and foul insults from both sides. I wondered where the wine bottle had figured in the impact with regard to the white linen loose covers on my sofas, but carried on eating my bacon sandwich. I’d sort it out later.

  Kiki and Oliver carried on with their mutual abuse, with thwacking sounds suggesting they were now hitting each other with copies of Wine Spectator, Decanter, Cigar Aficionado, and whatever other magazines were in there, until they clearly tired of it and the noise stopped. The next thing I heard was the TV coming on.

  ‘Ooh, look,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s Hot Property. I love this. And I think this bloke is quite a hot property himself, in a Topman-suit estate-agent kind of way. He can take down my particulars any time.’

  They roared with laughter. Ed sighed deeply and stood up, gathering the business section of the paper and his second cup of coffee and then coming round to my side of the table. He put his free arm around my shoulders and kissed my neck.

  ‘It’s all a bit too hilarious for me at this time of day, Melia, my
darling,’ he said, sleepily. ‘I’m going to take this up to my study. Give me a call when they’re going and I’ll come and see them off.OK?’

  I nodded and smiled up at him as he stroked my head with his hand, and then I was left sitting alone at the table. Which made it a normal morning, in one way.

  Kiki and Oliver left on the train for London about an hour later. Oliver had to get back to town early because he was flying off to Brazil that evening to do the hair for the new advertising campaign for a major fashion label, which was what he did for a – very lucrative – living. Kiki, I had gathered in our relatively short acquaintance, just couldn’t stay still anywhere very long.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ she said, tossing the giant-sized Hermès Birkin bag which was her weekend tote out of the car boot and on to the pavement as if it were an old bin-liner. ‘I rather love your country idyll, but I need a few lungfuls of carbon monoxide now to even things out. I’ll call you when I’ve re-toxed. We’ll go out this week. We’ll do something fun.’

  I clicked my heels and saluted. ‘I look forward to getting my orders, Frau Commandant,’ I said.

  ‘She is a bossy cow, isn’t she?’ said Oliver, giving me a surprisingly warm hug and two bristly kisses. ‘ Thanks, babe. I’ve had a great time. Kiki told me you were a good woman and you are. I’m glad we’ve finally met. But that husband of yours seriously needs a kick up the arse. What a grumpy git he was this morning. So much for Mr Suave in his Savile Row suit. Is he always like that?’

  ‘Oh, don’t take any notice,’ I said. ‘He’s just hopeless in the morning. And you weren’t exactly Sally Sunshine yourself first thing, I might remind you. Ed’s like an old car, he needs a while to warm up. He gets better and better as the day goes on. You’ll get used to him – and he is worth it, really he is.’

  ‘Yeah, he was all right at dinner, I suppose. Quite funny for a posh twat.’