The Other Half of My Heart by Stephanie Butland Page A

caravanning – or ‘hitching the wagon’ as Alice called it – without Sam and Bettina. Everything changes, Alice had said, but I think it gets better. Even when it was good to start with.
    And now, after a few days that have both dragged and flown, here is Tina, sitting in the Floods’ kitchen, watching Roddy’s mother Fran take a loaf of bread from the oven, turn it upside down and knock on it. Seeing Tina’s face, she says, ‘If it sounds hollow, it’s done.’
    She knocks again, a question on her face, and Tina nods: ‘I see – well, I hear.’
    Fran puts the bread in the middle of the table and sits down next to Tina. ‘Those boys of mine are always late down. Fred will be asleep in the bath. Roddy will be getting his hair just right for you. Shall we do the crossword while we’re waiting?’
    It feels strange to Tina to be here as a guest. She’s been in before, of course, running errands for Fred or squashed around the table with the rest of the staff for updates or celebration drinks. During the day this is a working kitchen, an Aga with a dog bed in front of it at one end, piles of papers and catalogues on the table, boots in the corner, dust on the dresser, an unruly crowd of mugs and plates ever growing by the sink. But this April evening, with the heavy curtains half drawn against the apricot sky beyond, lamps lit and the smells of bread and meat and the quiet of a day’s work done, it feels like a home.
    Roddy comes down first, before they are halfway through the across clues. He is wearing jeans and a checked shirt that’s buttoned at the cuffs, loose at the neck. He is barefoot. Tina is even more glad she’s refused heels: apart from being out of place on her, they would have been out of place here. She looks at Roddy’s toes. He lost a couple of toenails after a tussle with a new arrival last summer. The horse had stood on his foot while being unloaded from the horsebox; the nail of the big toe on his left foot is half growing back. Tina remembers Ells saying as much as lascivious proof that she had seen Roddy naked; Tina blushes at the memory. Roddy kisses her on the cheek and ignores her blush, or doesn’t notice. Tina isn’t sure whether ignoring or not noticing would be preferable. She wishes there was a recipe for starting a relationship, or that everyone had the same set of rules. He says, ‘I’m glad you came.’
    â€˜Tina brought gingerbread,’ Fran says. She’s put it on a plate, a long china oval with blowsy roses and a chip on one end. The sticky surfaces of the cake gleam.
    â€˜Lovely,’ Roddy smiles, ‘I didn’t know you could cook.’
    â€˜My mum helped,’ Tina says, then wants to bite off her tongue because it makes her sound twelve, not nineteen.
    But again, Roddy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t comment. He just sits down next to her with a tack catalogue. ‘I was hoping you’d help me choose. We need new flysheets and stable blankets for Snowdrop and Foxglove, at least. Bea’s and Bob’s are getting a bit hard up, too. There’s only so long TLC will hold them together.’ Tina is sitting on the chesterfield that takes up the wall opposite the dresser. It’s cracked from the heat at one end, piled with cushions and Whiskers, the ancient cat, at the other, so she and Roddy sit close together in the middle. Most of the horses at the stable are at livery, and their owners provide all of their kit: it’s the Floods’ own mounts that Roddy is shopping for. Here’s something Tina can get absorbed in, forgetting that she’s on a date, let alone a fourth or fifth one, if Sam is right. She and Roddy are comparing the dimensions of different blankets when Fred walks in. Tina makes to stand, but Fred waves her back into her seat. She realizes as she leans back that Roddy has stretched his arm along the back of the sofa. Of