The Other Half of My Heart (15 page)

It certainly seems as though everyone Bettina has ever met in Throckton is here. From the moment the event was declared open at 10.30 until Verity arrived at the stall at 12.45 to remind Bettina that the Heart of Throckton New Business Award was going to be presented in fifteen minutes, she and Angie have worked non-stop, seeing familiar face after familiar face arrive, and being introduced to visiting nieces, friends from nearby Marsham, and husbands with face-painted children, tigers and already-smudging sheep, hoisted on to their shoulders. The croissants sell out first, followed by the Scarborough Fair cob loaves: gingerbread, shortbread and coffee cake are soon gone. Simon, who is working an extra shift in the kitchen, arrives with warm baguettes, focaccia and walnut loaves just as the stall is starting to look desolate. ‘I've put some more in,' he says, grinning when he sees the look of relief on her face, ‘don't panic. Back in an hour.'

So Bettina has no time to worry about the presentation until it happens and she steps up the three steps, solid but slightly too deep for comfort, and stands on the stage with her fellow nominees. Rufus is standing at the front of the small crowd, holding Daisy in his arms: Kate is next to him. Bettina isn't sure whether to look at them or not. She risks a glance and sees that they are talking to each other, not yet looking her way. Verity is bouncing a finger off the top of a microphone. Bettina's fellow nominees are the man who owns the bookshop, who is sweating in the sun, and a woman who runs a bed-and-breakfast that has already won awards. She smiles at Bettina, who smiles back but can't then think of anything to say.

Rufus glances at the stage. Bettina looks uncomfortable and a little stern, but he knows that when she starts talking her face will light up and her words, coming straight from her heart, will win over everyone who hears her.

‘You like her, don't you?' Kate says.

‘Yes, I do,' Rufus says. Any discussion of life-after-divorce has been off-limits between him and Kate. He decides to make the most of this opening. ‘I'm not sure whether she likes me, though.'

‘The great thing about you, Dad,' Kate says, ‘is that all your faults are on the outside. So if she's got past that she probably does like you. Because you're all right, really.' She puts her head on his shoulder for a second. Daisy reaches for her hair.

‘Well,' Rufus says, ‘I think that's the nicest back-handed compliment I've ever had.' His tone is light but he's touched.

‘I mean it, Dad,' Kate says. ‘I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately.' They are both looking towards the stage, which might be why they're having the conversation at all. Rufus has noticed that Kate often chooses to talk to him about things that are serious, or personal, when he's driving her somewhere and they can't look at each other easily. ‘I think you and Mum should be happy. I would have liked it if you were happy together but that was never going to happen. And I think you brought out the worst in each other and you're nicer people separate than you ever looked when you were together.'

‘Thanks, Kate,' Rufus says, ‘I appreciate that. I really do.'

‘Well,' Kate says, ‘things aren't simple, are they? Even when you want them to be, they aren't. I thought things were simple, with Mike. I thought that he must love me and because of that he mustn't love his wife, but I was so wrong.' Elizabeth, Mike's widow, has made the effort to become an aunt to Daisy and a careful, at-a-distance support to Kate, something that no one would have predicted and that all of the Micklethwaites, in their different ways, feel shamed by.

Rufus puts his hand on the small of his daughter's back. ‘I'm proud of you,' he says.

‘Thanks, Dad,' Kate says, ‘I'm trying. To grow up.'

‘Me too,' Rufus replies.

More people are gathering. The crowd is making Bettina feel uncomfortable, way out of proportion to their holiday faces and cheerful chatter as they wait for the presentation to begin. She looks away, beyond the people, to the horseshoe of stalls. There's her own, the bookstall, then a table of jewellery made with bright beads and leather. Further along Bettina sees picture frames and mirrors that catch the sun and throw it in circles, slabs and shards on to the bodies of the passers-by, T-shirts with slogans printed by an enterprising sixth-former, more jewellery, patterned scarves, leather handbags. Then there's candyfloss, a hog roast, hot doughnuts, and a tombola and stall of bric-a-brac run by the local hospice. Behind the stage, heard but not seen, is the children's area. Younger visitors to her stall during the morning have reported a bouncy castle, pony-riding, duck-hooking, coconut shies. The churchyard with its higgle-piggle of gravestones lies to her right. Beyond it is Throckton proper, built around the long triangle of a marketplace where Adventures in Bread lives. The town spreads up the hill, a gentle slope, and new houses are starting to expand its edges even further.

And then Verity begins to talk. She introduces herself and the three finalists, and then works her way along the line. When it's Bettina's turn, she finds Rufus's face in the crowd and he looks straight into her eyes. He gives a little nod that says: I know you don't like this but you can do it.

‘So,' Verity says with an encouraging smile, ‘Bettina. How did you come to be in Throckton?' The real answer to this question is so vast and complicated that Bettina almost laughs. She's so glad that she did find a way for Rufus to help with the preparations. They'd thought of the questions that she might be asked and she'd written out answers, learned them, practised.

One of the practice questions had been ‘How did you come to set up the bakery?' and so she plumps for that one. ‘I had spent a lot of time working in other people's bakeries and had decided that it was time to set up on my own. I had a really clear idea of how I wanted Adventures in Bread to be, so really it was a question of finding the place that was already in my imagination. When I came to Throckton, I found that potential.' Verity is smiling, nodding, and still holding the microphone angled towards Bettina, so although she was about to stop talking she casts about for something else. ‘And the day I saw the shop here also happened to be my birthday …'

‘A good time for new beginnings,' Verity says, nodding. The crowd hums an assent. Rufus smiles an I-told-you-so smile: he'd said that people liked that sort of thing. ‘And how do you like Throckton life?'

Another one from the list. ‘I'm very happy here. In the past I've moved around a lot so it's unusual for me to be in one place for this long. It's a very welcoming place. And everyone seems to appreciate good bread.'

‘Yes!' says Verity. ‘Any future plans?'

‘Well,' Bettina says, ‘I'm always trying out new recipes, so there are always plans. One of my younger customers this morning pointed out that I don't have any chocolate bread, so I might have to think about that.'

‘Sounds delicious,' Verity says, and then it's over, and Bettina listens to the woman who owns the bed-and-breakfast and is by far the most articulate of them all. She speaks eloquently about how important Throckton is to her and to the visitors who rebook for next year before they leave.

So Bettina is quite taken aback when her name is called as the winner, and all the more so when she hears whoops and cheers from the audience. She picks out Rufus's ‘Bravo!' of course; she spots Elizabeth, her contact at the hotel, applauding with her hands above her head. Angie is jumping up and down and waving. She sees three, four, five regular customers waving and grinning. Her heart, which she half expects to shrink away, swells instead. Bettina is proud of herself, her little bakery, and the fact that she is standing up on a stage and smiling.

Rufus is waiting at the bottom of the steps. Bettina can feel how widely she's grinning. Perhaps, she thinks, this is what it's like to be normal. Maybe I am rejoining the world. Maybe I'm ready. She hugs Rufus. He looks shocked. She laughs. She realizes Daisy is next to him.

‘Kate's gone to talk to her friend with the jewellery stall,' Rufus says, ‘but Daisy wanted to stay with me.'

‘Hello, Daisy,' Bettina says, ‘I'm Bettina.' She never feels she's very good with children, because she's never had much to do with them. Daisy regards her with a stern stare. Her eyes are a pale blue-grey, the colour barely there at all in the bright sunlight.

‘She's not usually shy,' Rufus says.

‘What beautiful eyes,' Bettina says, then wishes she hasn't, thinking how often people have said the same to her, how impossible it is to know what to say in return.

‘Everyone says that,' and Rufus adds, ‘shall we take Bettina with us, Daisy?'

‘Angie—' Bettina begins.

‘Angie says it's fine. We checked, didn't we?' Daisy nods. ‘This is the lady who makes the croissants for you,' Rufus says, and Daisy stretches up a hand to Bettina, who takes it, a little skinny starfish of a hand warm on her palm.

‘Where are we going?' Bettina asks.

They're going for a pony ride. Bettina's heart goes from high to low in the time it takes for the three of them to turn round and head off. She hasn't been near a horse in fifteen years. Just the thought of horses, with their honest eyes and their perfect smell, makes her want to curl up and sob for all that she's lost.

There's a queue, and as they wait, Bettina half listens to Rufus prattling to his granddaughter, a slightly selfconscious question-and-answer about butterflies and ducks and trampolines. She wishes she felt more for Rufus than she does, which is something most accurately described as an appreciative tolerance, although she is hoping for something more, and sometimes it seems almost close enough to touch her, although it hasn't, yet. But then, it's always possible that she feels more than she admits to herself. Or maybe part of the reason that their relationship feels odd is because it's been such a long time since Roddy. With him, it was that first young flush and rush. With Rufus, she has something more measured, considered, but she has had none of the increments in between that might make what she's in now feel more natural.

The queue is moving forward, making a sudden jump as one little boy loses his nerve when he gets within touching distance of his waiting mount. Bettina is afraid that she might do the same. She wonders when she last got as close to a horse as she's about to get. Psychologists, physiotherapists, her father had all tried to persuade her that it would be a good thing if she could ride again, but she had refused. She knew that she couldn't put so much as a foot in the world that she had lost and maintain her fragile healing. And when she left the stables, she did leave a whole world. She missed so many things: the feel of a muzzle, soft skin and sharp whiskers, in the palm, the moment when you give a horse the cue to gallop and he takes it, the way that clean, warm leather feels in your hand. Fred saying, if you don't know how you are feeling, take a look at your horse's ears and they will tell you. For most of her first twenty years horses had defined her. Now, feeling her body thrum with fear, she realizes that the latter part of her life has been just as defined, but this time by the avoiding of them.

As soon as she was able, Tina had stripped the walls of her bedroom of horse posters, and put all her horse books in one box, all her riding and work clothes in another. Photos, rosettes, tickets, passes all went into a bin bag. The bronze statue of Snowdrop was the only thing that she kept, knowing it was too valuable to be thrown away, and that she couldn't bear to part with it.

Bettina is brought back to the now as Rufus nudges her, and says quietly, ‘Look,' indicating Daisy with his glance. She is almost shivering with excitement. Two ponies are making slow progress round a circuit marked with hay bales. One, a grey, looks too good for such pedestrian pursuits and knows it, tossing his head during the breaks between riders, although safe enough when someone is on his back and he is very firmly held by his handler. The other pony is a little bay, solid and round, well groomed and clear-eyed, and when it's Daisy's turn to be lifted up on its back, the look of sweet excitement on her face makes Bettina want to cry, which is not what she was expecting. She's been steeling herself for panic, or for memories terrible in their happiness.

But a gentle comfort takes her unawares. Some long-undisturbed part of her remembers, stretches, wakes as it sees Daisy's face, full of delighted awe.

Bettina has taken the camera from Rufus – it's heavy and looks complicated, but he assures her that it will do all the work for her, and so she presses the shutter button once, twice, three times as Daisy and her steed make their stately lap, Daisy as intent as a nun at her prayers. Then Rufus poses next to her, while she's still mounted. He gestures to Bettina to join him.

‘It's OK, Rufus,' Bettina says, ‘people are waiting.'

‘Here,' the mother behind Bettina smiles and reaches for the camera, ‘let me.'

And so Bettina finds herself standing next to Rufus next to Daisy on a pony. She smells the mixture of hay and heat and earth and apples and manure that her mother used to despair of getting out of her clothes. She's so overwhelmed that the next thing she knows is Rufus guiding her away, saying something about ice cream, while Daisy bounces in his arms.

At first, Bettina thinks she imagines the voice calling her old name.

But it isn't her imagination. ‘Tina! Tina!' hurtles through the air. Rufus ignores it, of course, because he doesn't know a Tina. Not this one, anyway. The call is getting louder, closer. Bettina thinks she won't be able to avoid answering it. She turns.

The sun is in her eyes, but there's definitely someone striding towards her, waving. She can't see who it is. She tells Rufus she will catch him up, and takes a couple of steps towards the stranger.

And she gets close enough and the sun goes behind a cloud and she's looking at Aurora Fielden, who engulfs and embraces her, smelling of hairspray and something floral, not CK One any more. Her body is soft and her grip is firm.