The Other Half of My Heart (29 page)

Then, the thing she had feared since she moved from Missingham has happened: she has seen Roddy again. And Roddy couldn't care less, and they had nothing to say to each other. And now that that dread has gone, Bettina has no idea of what her world is. She thinks, maybe this is just what life is like, when what you've been hoping for and dreading for so long happens, and turns out so … flat. Not even crushed, or broken. Just nothing.

On Sunday afternoon, Rufus had brought Daisy over. As the rain hammering on the window had put paid to their planned walk-and-duck-feeding at Butler's Pond, instead they had mixed up fairy cakes in the kitchen and watched cartoons while they waited for them to cook. It had been a warm, sweet time, but when Daisy giggled at a cartoon character who ran off the edge of a cliff, Bettina felt as though she was watching herself.

She needs to keep moving, keep moving, to avoid that moment of stillness that is the preamble to the plummet. When she's feeling bravest – or perhaps when she's most tired, or least able to keep up her resistance – she sees that the absence of dread is also the absence of hope. So she keeps busy. She bakes and she cleans and she does her best to please Rufus, who she knows will love her if she lets him, and who she thinks she might love, a little, in a pragmatic, realistic, only passingly romantic way.

She wishes she could stop being tired for long enough to see clearly. She wants to step out of her life, just for a minute or two, to get the measure of whether she's being pragmatic or giving up; whether she is doing the best thing, or the wrong thing, or is too damaged ever to be able to do the right thing.

But because that isn't possible, she starts to prepare the ingredients for a chocolate orange cake, which Rufus loves. Then she imagines how pleased he will be when she tells him that she made it for him, as though he's adding it to his bundle of evidence that she loves him, although she can't say the words. And so even the baking of a cake, which should be simple, comes with an aftertaste.

Almost everyone who comes into the bakery as the lavender bread is cooling raises their nose to the air like a hound on a trail and says, what's that smell, the way they do when the Christmas stollen are baking.

Bettina has written on the board in careful capitals: ‘Bread-tasting at 2pm, all welcome.'

She's glad to see a group of people already gathered around the central table, as she brings out the bread: earlier, she'd put butter (salted and unsalted), honey (runny and on the comb) and olive oil out, along with plates and knives. Bettina has also set out the tray of small bowls with the ingredients, so she can talk through the process. She loves to see people understand the simplicity of bread, which is no more than flour, water, salt and alchemy. The pleasure is starting to outweigh her fear, although she has looked over her prompt cards while she ate a quick lunch, and written out a new one for her lavender loaf.

As Bettina puts down the bread and everyone gathered looks at it, she can see who she recognizes, and decide whether she can put names to faces or whether she'll ask people to introduce themselves. Elizabeth, who runs the quilting group, is here with her mother-in-law, Patricia. Elizabeth made the tea-cosies for Adventures in Bread and she champions Bettina's wares at the hotel where she works. Bettina often feels that if she had ever got the knack of making friends, Elizabeth would be one of them. Bettina knows that Patricia will mention that she bakes her own bread; knows, too, that she will quietly buy a Scarborough Fair loaf to take home with her. Then there's the recently retired headteacher, and the woman who breeds beagles and sits on the council; and there's another woman she doesn't recognize as a regular customer but who reminds her of Fran Flood. She goes back to the counter for napkins. When she turns back, she sees the woman has got up and followed her.

It is Fran. Older Fran, more tired Fran, Fran with kind eyes and her tawny-grey hair cut short. Bettina waits to be shocked or upset, but she's comforted. Fran was never anything but kind and understanding, and she was a friend to her father. If Bettina was an easy embracer of people, she would put out her arms. She smiles, instead.

Fran smiles in return, but it's a half-smile, dimmed by nerves. She says, ‘I hope you don't mind. I came to see you. I should have called. I didn't know there was a tasting.'

‘Of course I don't mind,' Bettina says. She takes a look in her heart and finds that she really, truly doesn't. ‘I have to do the tasting, though.'

‘May I stay for it?' Fran asks. ‘Or is that too much?'

‘Yes, stay, please,' Bettina says. Her pulse is a little skippier than usual as she sits at the table and prepares to launch into her welcome speech, as written on card one.

The sight of Fran is such a warm, friendly thing, answering the homesickness that Bettina has felt since she looked at her name in the visitors' book at the nursing home. But the worry about what's brought her here, the sense that this is never going to be over, gnaws. She hands out pens, paper, plates, knives, concentrating on her hands and the hands she is passing to. She asks the group to make their introductions, and she talks about how her bread is made, talking through the work she's done in the kitchen this morning. And then the tasting proper begins. Bettina is glad that she wrote out the new card.

‘This is a sweet lavender loaf. I started wondering about it when a friend brought me some lavender plants in pots. My father loved lavender. He used to say that you didn't get the scent until you crushed it, and that people are the same, only showing what they're made of when they're under pressure.' Bettina looks around the table and sees that Fran is nodding, solemn, not looking at Bettina. ‘The bread is still a little warm, so it's easier to tear than to slice. I'd like us to try it toasted and untoasted. Let's start with it untoasted, and then we can try toasting it when it's cooled a bit more.'

‘My John used to say that it's criminal to toast fresh bread,' Patricia offers.

‘Well, he was right, I'd rather have it fresh and untoasted too.'

Vindicated, Patricia nods. Elizabeth catches Bettina's eye, smiles. Bettina is trying very hard not to look at Fran, without making it obvious that she isn't looking at her.

And then Fran speaks. ‘You can tell such a lot by the way the crust breaks,' she says.

‘Yes,' says Bettina, ‘yes, you can.' She breathes in, out, slowly, focuses her attention on Elizabeth as she talks. ‘Take the bread in your hands,' she says, ‘and tear a piece off. Try it on its own first, then with one of the butters, and see what you think. You can tell me, you can write it down. It's up to you. Please don't tell me what you think I want to hear, because that won't help. I'd value your honest opinions, even if you think this is the worst thing you've ever tasted.'

She watches the eyes; even risks a glance at Fran, who, whatever her reason for coming, is treating the bread with every seriousness. Bettina's urge to cry is growing, building, as she looks at the woman who, unknowingly, threw her a lifeline by teaching her how bread could be made, and how the making of it was an everyday love, a way of making peace with each new morning that comes.

She has lost one mother, and, watching Fran out of the corner of her eye, realizes that there was another mother she has missed out on for fifteen years. She brings her heart back to her breathing and her attention back to her bread.

Watching her testers' faces is like watching a series of lights come on. One for the crust, one for the texture, one for the smell, one for the first hit of honey, one for the tang of the lavender. Bettina knows all she needs to know, about the bread. She itches to know why Fran is here.

‘Very good,' says the retired headmaster. His shirt is missing a button. Bettina remembers that his wife died, not long after he stopped working.

‘I'd like to try this with goat's cheese,' says Elizabeth. ‘If you have a spare I'll take one to work for the chefs to play with.'

‘Of course,' Bettina says. She is carefully slicing the other loaf now.

She puts the first four slices in the toaster, and steps away to ask Angie to bring a platter of cheese over. She realizes that she's breathing too quickly. There's sweat in her hairline and on her lip. She remembers the panic attacks of the early days of her recovery, brought on by the sound of a car backfiring or the screech of wheels on a television programme or even too many people in a room at once.

She puts her head against the door of the fridge, reminds herself that she doesn't need to panic now. Fran, as far as she can see, is joining in, talking to Patricia about making her own bread.

At last, the tasting session is over, with an all-round thumbs-up for the lavender and honey loaf, and Bettina nicking the tip of her index finger on the breadknife in her hurry to clear away. She uses the blood as an excuse to go upstairs and clean up. While she's there, she changes into a T-shirt unembellished by flour, washes her face in the coldest water that the bathroom tap can manage, and brushes her hair. She isn't upstairs for long, because she knows Fran will be waiting.

And she is.

‘Someone to see you,' Angie says, voice full of curiosity. ‘She's sitting round the corner. The woman from the tasting. I don't think she's been in before.'

‘Can you manage if I take her upstairs?'

‘Of course I can manage. Do you want me to stay on until you're done?'

‘Yes, please.' Josh hasn't been on his own in the shop yet. So with everything under control, Bettina rounds the corner.

‘Tina,' says Fran, rising.

Now Bettina looks at Fran, properly, and sees tears on her face; feels her own eyes tingle and burn. She says, ‘Fran. Why don't you come upstairs? We can talk there.'

Rufus's blue silk tie is on the table. He'd left it the last time he'd stayed, and Bettina had put it there to remind her to take it with her when she went to meet him for dinner, but had still forgotten to pick it up. She squashes her impulse to hide it. I'm thirty-five, she says to herself, I'm allowed to be in a relationship. But still, she wishes she wasn't. Or at least, she wishes Rufus's tie away for the duration of this conversation.

‘Have a seat,' she says.

Fran takes the end of one of the sofas, settles back and waits for Bettina to sit, diagonally opposite on the other sofa, before she begins.

‘Your father and I stayed in touch for a long time,' she says. ‘I don't know whether he told you.'

‘No, he didn't. We didn't talk about you.' Bettina corrects herself, ‘My mum wouldn't, of course, but I – I couldn't. He tried to tell me what was happening, but I couldn't—' Roddy was in the newspapers, the Sunday supplements, from time to time, though. She remembers Alice reading an article out, in a tone at the fulcrum of heartbreak and malice: although Roddy's agenda was clearly to promote a charity he was working with, the focus was very much on his bravery and determination after the terrible tragedy he'd suffered, the support he was getting from his family and friends, from Olympic hopeful Aurora Fielden. (She used to be ‘fellow Olympic hopeful', and Tina had wondered if Roddy had felt the loss of that one word as acutely as she did.) He's not the one who's suffered the tragedy, Alice had said when she'd got to the end of the article, and Howard had said, come on, Alice, the lad's paralysed. Alice had sniffed, as if to say, well, I'd hardly consider that to be a tragedy. Tina had taken the newspaper from the bin, later, and smoothed out and examined the article: she'd seen how tired he looked, how Aurora had a hand on his shoulder, and she had hoped for his happiness because she knew that she had lost hers. ‘I saw you all in the papers, sometimes,' she says, and then she adds, ‘My father never told me that my mother had vascular dementia, either. He was very protective.'

‘I think that's maybe when we lost touch,' Fran says. ‘He used to call me, or email, every few months, and we'd meet up. But I suppose he wouldn't have been able to leave your mother.'

Bettina remembers Fran as assured, comfortable, confident, but the woman in front of her now seems anything but. There are tears on her face; her palms are pressed together, rubbing, an anxious prayer. ‘We weren't – we weren't equipped, were we? None of us,' Fran says. ‘When I look back on it – your poor brother – I just wish I could go back and tell us all that we don't have to do anything immediately. We don't have to decide now. All those decisions we made, when we were least fit to make them.' She looks up, her hands suddenly still, as though Bettina is the person she's been praying to.

‘Yes.' Bettina reaches back to herself in her bedroom the day Alice had turned the Floods away. She had been tired and tearful, sorry and so very sad, thinking about how she had to choose between her mother, who had lost one child already, and Roddy, who had sat at the doorstep with his parents solid and strong behind him. In the next room her mother had wailed like an injured child, with part hurt, part confusion. She had heard her father, remonstrating at first then crying too. Bettina had made the only choice she could. She reaches back to that Bettina, that day, and she wishes she could – what? That's the question. Should she tell herself not to keep away from the Floods, not to go to France?

‘Fred won't talk about it at all,' Fran continues, ‘he never has. Can you believe that? He's never said a word. Not in all these years. I know what he'd say. He'd say talking about it won't put things right. But it might have helped me.'

Better surely to go further back and tell herself not to apply for a job in the stables, not to let Roddy get under her skin?

‘To be fair,' Fran doesn't seem to have noticed that Bettina isn't saying anything, doesn't seem to mind; continues, ‘Fred has done a lot. Everything Roddy needed, he's found. Physios, trainers for carriage-riding, everything you can think of at the right height. Fred has made it all happen. Roddy decided that he was going to live the best life he could because – well, because he thinks he owes it to Sam and to you, I think. Fred will do anything to support that. Except talk to Roddy. Or to me.'