How to Break Your Own Heart by Maggie Alderson

Author:Maggie Alderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141910307
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

18

Kiki couldn’t wait to hear how Ed had liked his birthday lunch when I saw her the following week. I’d gone over to her place after seeing a new client nearby and we were sitting having coffee in her kitchen – now always immaculate, thanks to her housekeeper.

‘I thought it was wonderful,’ I said, trying to dodge the question. ‘I loved the interior and Ed thought the wine list was excellent. He had the most amazing foie gras in a kind of Japanese broth, it was extraordinary.’

‘Mmmm… yum, I love that dish,’ said Kiki. ‘Did he like my card too?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘He asked me to thank you. He thought it was very amusing.’

Actually, Ed had opened Kiki’s birthday card when we had got back from Paris on Sunday night and had thrown it immediately into the bin.

‘Why are you doing that?’ I had asked him, bewildered. ‘Don’t you think it was sweet of her to remember your birthday?’

‘It’s a technique,’ said Ed, ‘the birthday book. Everyone gets a birthday card and thinks how thoughtful Kiki is. No, thank you. I don’t do friendship by numbers.’

I really didn’t understand why Ed was getting so antagonistic towards Kiki. She brought nothing but joy to my life. I always had a great time with her – and I had her to thank for my fabulous new wardrobe and my ever burgeoning new business, which was still growing at a prodigious rate.

I had the bookkeeper and the eBay people set up now, and with Ed’s sage advice, I had also decided to hire someone to be a basic physical clutter-clearer for me. The idea was that once I had done the initial visit and worked out the action plan, they would go in to do the drudge work, leaving me free to get on with more lucrative first consultations. Then I would go back at the end and see to the glamorous finishing touches.

‘It’s the simple economic principle of the division of labour,’ Ed had told me, working out on the back of an envelope how much I could afford to pay someone. ‘I don’t grow or bottle the wine I sell; my expertise is knowing which wines people will want to buy. Yours is having the vision to see the best way to clear someone’s chaos quickly – not actually doing it yourself.’

I knew he was right, and one of the reasons I’d gone to see Kiki that morning was for help with recruitment. I thought there must be somebody suitable among her ever-expanding group of acquaintances.

It was just the kind of networking challenge she loved, and she sprang up from the table to get what she called her ‘mothership’ address archive – as opposed to the little black book she carried in her handbag and the new numbers that went into her Blackberry.

‘I can’t believe you actually still use that,’ I said, when she carried the old Rolodex into the kitchen. ‘It looks like something from a Humphrey Bogart film.

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