The Other Half of My Heart by Stephanie Butland Page A

emailed to ask her instructions now that the initial six-month contract was up and her tenants had moved out, Bettina stopped fighting her fate. She packed up what she needed, gave away what she didn’t care about and returned to the dreary suburb of Guildford where her parents had lived when Missingham became unbearable. She travelled to the nursing home and sat with her mother in the mornings, when the light seemed more likely to catch a facet of the woman she remembered. She learned to dissemble and distract when her mother didn’t recognize her. She resisted the urge to talk about her father, knowing that her mother would give her nothing more than a puzzled look that would make her feel as lonely and cold as the first snowdrop of January.
    On Bettina’s thirty-fourth birthday, she made her visit early, taking gingerbread still warm from the oven. Her mother greeted it with a simple delight that made her daughter, shamefully, envy her for a moment. And then Bettina took three trains and got herself to Throckton, and met an estate agent who showed her round a café that seemed as empty and forlorn as she was, a kitchen whose grime made her blanch, and a flat that would do if it wasn’t quite so dark. Here was work, and plenty of it. Here was a place that didn’t know her. Here was home. Bettina shook hands on a three-year lease that afternoon, and on the day she got the keys and stood in what would be her home and her business, she realized that it had been almost fifteen years since she had spent as long as three years anywhere.
    And now here she is, sitting on the floor, crying.
    It’s almost a relief when morning comes and it’s time to go to see Alice. Bettina takes the
Throckton Warbler
article about Adventures in Bread to show her mother, even though she knows it’s a redundant exercise. The photoshoot had been horrendous. The photographer, as unpleasant as Verity had been kind, had posed Bettina in the kitchen, where he’d complained about the light, then the shop, where he’d complained about the limited space. In the end she’d stood, struggling to smile, in the street outside, clutching an armful of baguettes while the photographer had knelt on the ground in front of her, trying to get the bread, Bettina and the shop sign into shot. Bettina’s only comfort was that the angle made her virtually unrecognizable, all chin and cheeks and little points for eyes. As her eyes were the thing that everyone seemed to recognize first about her, the fact that they were as good as absent from the photograph meant that she was pretty much in disguise.
    It takes a while to get to her mother’s nursing home, which is only one of the reasons that she makes the journey just once a month. She goes by train, taking the branch line into Marsham, travelling a couple of stops on the main line, and then taking another branch line out again, which is a two-and-a-half-hour door-to-door trip at best. ‘I know you get travel-sick,’ Rufus had said, when he was still trying to please her, ‘but going by car would only take an hour and a half. We could go very gently, and you could try magnetic bracelets – Kate uses them with Daisy—’
    â€˜I’ve tried that,’ Bettina had said.
    â€˜Ah, but you need one on each wrist …’
    â€˜Really, Rufus, no,’ she’d replied, more sharply than she’d meant to, ‘I like the train, it gives me time to think. And anyway I just don’t like cars. I get sick, really sick, and it’s not worth it. Believe me, three hours on trains makes much more sense than one hour in a car if you’re throwing up twice a mile.’ Which was true, and he’d nodded, and dropped the subject.
    But she does like her time on the train, so long as she keeps her thoughts on the right track. She manages the journey carefully, keeping busy with lists and emails, spreadsheets and planning, so she doesn’t