The Other Half of My Heart (13 page)

‘What happened last summer?'

‘Not much,' Roddy says, then, more quietly, ‘we were drunk. It was – nothing. We were both single. It just seemed like a good idea, at the time.'

Tina feels defeated, lost, the pit of her stomach a long way below ground. ‘Well, she's the person you're supposed to end up with, isn't she? In real life.'

Roddy looks up. ‘This is real life.'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘I don't.' He really looks as though he doesn't. Now that she has said the thing that has been haunting her since this romance began, Tina feels something in her deflate, a tension pricked away. ‘I really don't, Tina.'

‘I don't even have my own horse. I'm a good enough rider but I'll never – shine – like you and Aurora do. My ambition is to manage a yard. Yours is to win an Olympic gold. So is Aurora's.'

‘You're not telling me anything I don't already know.'

‘Well, you and Aurora are the right fit, aren't you? You match.'

Roddy stands up and walks towards his bedroom door; for a moment, Tina thinks he's going to walk out and leave her or, worse, open the door and usher her away. But when he gets to the door he stops, breathes, turns.

‘I can't believe you're saying these things, Tina. What have I ever done to make you think—'

‘You don't need to do anything. I'm not exactly your type, am I?'

‘Who says? Aurora's a nice enough girl, but—'

Tina laughs at this, inside, feeling further away from Roddy than she has since before they first groomed a horse together. Aurora Fielden, whose autograph Tina had almost asked for the first time she saw her ride, for heaven's sake. And to Roddy, she's a ‘nice enough girl'. But she realizes that if he doesn't see it now, if he really thinks that Aurora is a nice girl who is, essentially, no different to Tina, then she is on a hiding to nothing. At least she is tonight, when her feelings are jangled and her words are shredding the inside of her throat as she speaks.

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘We only sorted it today.'

‘Why didn't you tell me you were thinking about it?'

‘I'm sorry. I really thought I had. When we were at that show and I was talking to Aurora while we waited for the presentation. I thought you were there.'

‘I told you. I was cleaning out the horseboxes ready for the trip home.' Tina has been pre-empting any possible accusations of favouritism from her colleagues by volunteering for all the least popular jobs, including missing prize-givings in order to keep an eye on the other horses and get the horsebox ready for Foxglove when he returns with his latest rosette.

‘Oh. Well. It's really just a work thing. I often go somewhere else to train in the summer. It's two months. I'll come and see you. You can come and see me.'

‘That's not the point.'

‘What is the point? That I didn't ask your permission? Jeez, Tina, I didn't think you were going to be like that.'

‘What did you think I would be like? A pushover?' Tina knows she's taking the wrong course. She wishes she'd said: the point is, this feels like the beginning of the end of us, and although I know that that will come, I'm not ready for it yet. She wishes for the simplicity of the saddle, and the way that pressure of opposite heel and hand gets you back on the right track.

‘That's not what I meant.' Roddy isn't shouting, but it would be better if he were. His voice is weary, as though this is an old argument, as though she is being tiresome.

‘Tell me what you did mean.' She makes it a demand, and is half expecting him to refuse to answer her.

‘I thought you understood. How I felt about you.'

‘You never say.'

‘That's rubbish. I do say. I say you're my girlfriend. I say you're part of the family. I say you're the best thing that ever happened to me, Tina Randolph.'

You don't say you love me. Tina says these words so loudly in her heart that she can't believe he doesn't hear them. But Roddy doesn't. He just keeps looking straight ahead. Tina could say that she loves him, of course. But she doesn't. Because Roddy's words are making themselves at home in her. Girlfriend. Family. Best thing that ever happened to me, Tina Randolph.

‘Thanks,' she says, and she reaches out and runs her finger the wrong way up the bristles on his cheek. He turns his head, kisses her fingertip.

‘You can come with me, if you want. I'd love you to come.'

The west country, where she's never been. Two months with Roddy, waking up every morning with him, going to bed every night with him. Staying at the famous Fielden stables. Having the chance to see how another yard works. Seeing breeding as well as training.

A lot of new people to meet and explain to them that she doesn't have her own horse. The looks on their faces as they work out where she fits in the hierarchy, and decide she doesn't much matter. An hour-long ride in a Land Rover to get there. Watching Roddy ease himself into a new group as readily as he can saddle up a horse, while it will take her a month before she can really start to make friends. Watching how Aurora pulls everyone to her without even noticing, because her world has always been that way. Missing Sam when he comes down for the summer. Handing over her responsibilities to someone else when she's just starting to get somewhere. Abandoning her job to be with Roddy, when she has been so determined to have a career of her own.

‘I thought we would go on like this,' she says.

Roddy's face goes from puzzled to ‘is that all'. ‘We will go on like this. You'll see.' For him, the key has fitted, turned, opened the door, and that's the end of it. It's ‘Aurora's a nice enough girl' all over again. Tina thinks about trying to explain. She thinks about how, now, they are not exactly equal, but close enough. How, as Roddy's career grows, she will have the choice that he's just offered her, writ larger: become part of his entourage, or forge her own career and be left behind. Even if she's only left behind in the literal sense to begin with, how long can it be until she's someone from Roddy's old world, no longer relevant? These few months are both beginning and end. She looks at Roddy, who is studying her again, waiting, and thinks about trying to explain it all to him. She can't see that he will ever understand it. And she prefers his version; she can't share it, but she wants him to enjoy it.

‘Duty calls, Tina,' Roddy says, ‘that's all. I promise.'

‘Yes,' she says. She closes her eyes as he strokes her hair. She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she must have done, because she does remember Roddy coaxing her out of her clothes, over to the bed, as though she's a toddler who dropped off in the car on the way home.

She wakes folded into his arms as usual, and not at all as usual, sadness and sourness in her heart. It's before six, but she knows she won't get back to sleep. So she untangles herself from Roddy's arms and the bedding, puts on the grey dressing gown and, leaving him sleeping, makes her way down to the kitchen for tea in the quiet.

But Fran is already up and dressed and busy with papers at the kitchen table. ‘Habit,' she says when she sees the surprise on Tina's face. ‘I don't think I ever sleep past half past five. And I want to get this lot cleared so I can hack Mr Darcy out today.' Mr Darcy is Fran's horse. Although he's ridden in competitions by Ells, Fran and he are devoted to each other. ‘There's tea in the pot.'

‘Thanks.' Tina helps herself, slowly, thinking that Fran will go back to what she's doing.

But when she turns round, Fran is watching her. She says, carefully, ‘Are you all right, Tina?'

‘I think so,' Tina replies, testing the place where she hurts to see if there is anything broken. It's just bruised, she decides.

‘Don't worry about Aurora,' Fran says. ‘Roddy sees her as – I don't know. A sister. The competition. Not a girlfriend. He has one of those.'

‘Yes,' Tina says. And this, too, is part of the problem. Any situation in which she puts herself next to Aurora Fielden is disastrous. Pick the best horsewoman of the two: no question, it's Aurora. Who's better educated? Aurora. Who's nicer? Aurora, probably; at least in the sense that she's unlikely, at this moment (or indeed any other), to be feeling annoyed with her boyfriend for something that hasn't yet happened. Richer? Aurora. Prettier? Aurora. Better suited to being the girlfriend of Roddy Flood? Aurora, Aurora, Aurora. Tina takes a big breath and makes a big effort and tells herself to stop being so silly.

‘Thanks, Fran.'

‘Seriously, darling girl. The Flood men are all loyal to a fault. You'll come second to their careers, but you won't come second to anything else. And this is all about Roddy's career, to him.'

‘Yes, I know.' And she almost does. Almost. The difficulty is in keeping on knowing.

Tina does her best, and it works, a lot of the time. Roddy is the same to her as he has always been – well, the same as he has been since she has been his girlfriend – which helps, because it reminds Tina that his trip to the Fieldens' is a career move, nothing more, and, as far as he is concerned, isn't relevant to his relationship with her.

She has been given responsibility for settling a new horse in to the livery. Perry is a high-spirited, fussy grey thoroughbred who doesn't like anything new, so instead of being looked after by whoever is available he has a small team of grooms led by Tina. She spends a lot of time with him, starting early and working late.

She knows that the only way to calm a horse is to be calm yourself, and that you can't fool a horse, least of all one as tuned into his surroundings as Perry. So every morning she starts by taking Snowdrop out for a hack, and she lets him make her steady and calm, as he always does. Then she can go to Perry with the right sort of soul. By the time her day's work is done she is so in the habit of feeling at peace that it would be an effort to stop.

For the rest of June, without discussing or agreeing that they want to make the most of this time, Tina's nights with Roddy go from being three or four to five or six a week. It feels easier for work – often, now, she and Roddy are first in and last out of the yard, Roddy preparing for his trip and Tina working with Perry. But also, despite the agreement that two months apart is just something to be taken in their stride, the threat of parting is drawing them closer together.

They work long and sleep long and find themselves moving from the hope to the certainty that the other is close by. ‘There's no place like you,' Roddy says one night as they drift off to sleep, and Tina knows exactly what he means.

The day before the day of departure comes. Foxglove and Bobby Dazzler are prepared, and there have been drinks after work. Now Tina is sitting cross-legged on Roddy's bed, in his grey dressing gown, watching him pack. He is wearing only boxer shorts. When he and Tina had left the party, to a chorus line of winks and raised eyebrows and ‘aye-aye's, he'd pulled her into his room and said, well, it would be rude to disappoint them all.

She'd agreed, and because she'd showered and changed after work, undressing had been as simple as stepping out of her knickers and pulling her dress over her head. She had watched Roddy from the bed as he struggled with the buttons on his shirt, his fly. She'd wanted to see everything, and remember. Naked at last, he'd walked towards her, then stopped. Looked. Kept looking. Said: ‘God, Tina, you've no idea how I'm going to miss you.'

‘I think I do,' she'd said.

Afterwards, they'd dozed in the fading evening light, and were woken by the sounds of the last party guests leaving. Now, Roddy is putting piles of shirts and trousers, jodhpurs and T-shirts on the sofa, and balling underwear into a rucksack. He grins at Tina: ‘I've spent the last two weeks getting two horses ready for two months away. I'm doing my own packing in ten minutes. Is that the wrong way round?'

‘You know it isn't.'

‘Yes, I do.'

When his piles of clothes, toiletries, books seemed to satisfy him, Roddy pulled his jeans back on.

‘You need to get dressed,' he says.

‘Why? I thought I'd stay.' It comes out a little wounded. Roddy laughs.

‘Of course you're staying. I told Dad we'd do the last round of the yard tonight.'

‘Really?' Fred is famous for never letting anyone else do the last check if he is on the farm.

‘Special treat,' Roddy says. ‘Now, put your clothes on. I'll be taking them off again later, but it's getting a bit cool out there.'

So they make their way down through the house, out via the kitchen where Fred and Fran are tidying up and drying glasses.

‘Just going to do the rounds,' Roddy says.

‘All right,' Fred answers, and it looks as though he winks.

The yard is the not-quite-quiet quiet that Tina loves. It's made by twenty-six horses breathing, shifting their weight, one of the stable cats jumping from a roof to come and see what they are doing. Roddy walks to where Snowdrop is stabled. The horse looks around, whickers, and then goes back to his half-sleep. Tina puts her head on Roddy's shoulder.

‘You know the night we talked about me going away?'

‘Yes, I do remember that, oddly enough.' She moves closer, just to let him know that she's teasing.

‘Well, what I remember,' Roddy says, ‘is what you said about how you don't even have a horse.'

‘Oh, that.' Tina had been ashamed of that, afterwards.

‘Well,' Roddy says, ‘now you do. Snowdrop is yours.' His face had been solemn, but at the sight of Tina's he starts to laugh.

‘You can't do that,' Tina says, her voice a squeak, her eyes astonished.

‘I can. We can. Mum and Dad agree. We're transferring ownership to you.'

‘But – I can't afford him.' Tina has seen enough invoices for food, farriers, vets and tack to know. She cannot accept this gift. And yet she cannot take her gaze away from Snowdrop, glowing like a peach where he has absorbed the last of the day's light.