How to Measure a Cow (3 page)

‘Friends?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Neighbours?’

She hesitated. ‘One woman, she lives across from me, an elderly woman. She brought me a plant.’

‘That was kind. Did she ask your name, where you were from, where you worked – anything like that?’

‘No. She just gave me the plant. A chrysanthemum.’

‘Not a nosy neighbour, then.’

‘No.’

She thought that if he messed up the froth on his coffee one more time she’d scream. She should be meeting his eyes, but she wasn’t. Her eyes were either lowered, or else she was looking over his shoulder at the queue for food. Evasive, she was being evasive. Evasive was bad. And there were silences, long silences, while he studied her and played with his coffee. Should she be trying to fill them? Should she initiate conversation? Wasn’t that his job? Resentment built up in her mind, the feeling that whatever she said, however she acted, tiny things that were completely insignificant would be pounced on and interpreted to her disadvantage.

‘There is a letter,’ he said, ‘but you don’t have to receive it.’

This made her look at him properly, trying to read his expression. His voice gave nothing away. Flat, imparting the information but nothing more. He waited, raised his eyebrows slightly. She should ask who this letter was from, did he know, and to which address it had been sent. But she didn’t. She was being offered a letter and it could only, she thought, be from one of three people, so she wanted it. She hadn’t had a letter for years, except for official communications
which, though they came in envelopes, hardly seemed letters, or what she judged to be letters. Personal, handwritten, private.

‘It can be sent to your new address,’ he was saying. ‘Just say the word.’

He smiled slightly and she hated his smile. It was the kind of patronising smile she’d seen too often on the faces of people like him. There was even, within it, a trace of enjoying his power over her. He’d probably read this letter, or someone had. It would look unopened when it came to her but it would not have been. Already, it was spoiled, but she told him that of course she would like it. She did not add ‘please’.

He nodded, said he or a colleague would see her in three months’ time, but that he hoped she knew she could contact him at any time. She need never feel she had to manage on her own; she had support. It was her turn to nod. She wasn’t going to say ‘thank you’, or how grateful she was, or how she appreciated this ‘support’. She stayed at the table while he walked away through the crowded café, wondering how far he’d come. She could have asked him that, but she’d asked nothing. Had that been clever of her? Or had it made her seem hostile? She was so tired of constantly wondering how she looked and sounded, aware that in trying so hard to be anonymous she was presenting herself as odd, a strange, nervous, bland woman who was Sarah Scott.

It went on and on in her head, a desperate litany repeated so that it could become second nature, but it never did. She didn’t recognise this woman’s life except for the few bits that matched her own.

I am Sarah Scott.

I am forty-three years old.

I am divorced, with no living children.

I am from Canterbury originally.

I have no siblings alive.

I trained as a nurse but retired through ill health.

My mother is dead.

My father is dead.

I like to read, mainly non-fiction.

I am nine stone four pounds.

I am five foot six inches.

There was more, lots more. She was bound to have forgotten half of it. Did it matter? It might, they’d said.

The new neighbour was a creature of regular habits. A creature of rigorously regular habits herself, Nancy gave her credit for that. Left her house at 7.00 in the morning on the dot, returned between 5.45 and 6.10, which suggested the time depended on getting either the 5.20 bus or, if she missed it, or it was too crowded to board, the next one. She never put the light on in the hall. Nancy herself automatically snapped the light on as she entered. Everyone did. The hallways were dark even on the sunniest days, what with the front doors being solid wood with no glass panels and no fanlights above. This woman entered her house in the dark and put no light on for a full ten minutes or more. How did she manage to see her way round? Nancy couldn’t understand it. When a light did go on, it was always in the bedroom. The curtains, the thick red curtains, remained open even though the light was on. Nancy, standing well back from her own bedroom window, and with only the staircase light on, could see straight in. It was not her fault.

The woman, who she had learned was called Sarah Scott, lay on the bed, on Amy’s practically new, expensive bed which she had hardly had time to enjoy. Nancy knew it was Amy’s bed because she had enquired after its fate when the nephew came round. This news pleased her. It would have been shocking if the brand new, costly bed had been carted off to a sale room, or even taken off by one of those house-clearance people. But the bed stayed, and this Scott woman obviously appreciated its comforts. She lay on it, every evening, for at least half an hour. Nancy couldn’t see if her eyes were closed, but she certainly gave the appearance of being asleep, lying, as she did, so very still. Odd, though, to have the light on if she was sleeping. She must come in extremely tired, to have to go and lie down like that. Her job must be exhausting, but what could it be? Nancy had not yet found out, though it would emerge through the usual channels. She’d hear soon enough. Meanwhile, she was content to know her neighbour’s name before anyone else. The postman told her. He was young and careless, and if she had had any letters sent to her, beyond bills, Nancy would not have trusted him to deliver them. He put letters through her own letter box which were quite clearly addressed to number 29 and not 19, and she had reprimanded him for it, making him take them back the next day and redeliver them to number 29. He laughed and said, ‘Righto, missus.’

He had a red cart he pulled along. So lazy. Nancy saw no need for it. He was big and strong as well as young and could quite easily have carried a sack as postmen had done all her life. So lazy. And the way he left the cart at one end of their long street while
he carried a bundle of letters for the first twenty houses was irresponsible. Anyone could pilfer from it in the time it took him to return. But he had told her the name of the woman who now lived opposite her. She hadn’t asked, she would
never
have asked. He’d delivered just one letter to her but nevertheless had noted her name. That, in Nancy’s opinion, was fishy, but she could hardly complain considering he had passed the information on to her which he most certainly had no right to do. She’d badly wanted to ask was it Miss or Mrs Sarah Scott, but of course she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. It was the novelty value, she supposed. New people hardly ever moved into their street. It was not that sort of street. He liked having a new name, he said. Made delivering more interesting. What nonsense. He made it sound like something special when it was a job any fool could do, just sticking stuff through letter boxes.

Sarah Scott: Nancy quite liked the name. Sort of posh, she thought, though she knew plenty of very ordinary, decidedly unposh Sarahs. Scott was not a local name. It wasn’t, she reckoned, any kind of local name, even if it must have originated, she supposed, in Scotland, surely. Sarah Scott wasn’t Scottish, though. The two words she’d spoken when the plant was given to her proved that. She was from away. Away? Nancy realised ‘away’ was a very vague term. She decided that what she meant was that Sarah Scott was not Cumbrian, or even northern. So what had brought her here? And on her own. No visitors in six weeks. Was she to be temporary? Someone drafted here for a limited amount of time to do some particular job? Nancy didn’t think so. Sarah Scott
didn’t look important enough. She didn’t look as if she did any sort of work that might rate her being sent for specially.

One day, sooner or later, she would need help of some sort. This knowledge was a great comfort to Nancy. It didn’t matter how stand-offish or reclusive people were, the time always came when they couldn’t manage on their own. It was a rule of life, one she’d learned over many years of acute observation. Sarah Scott’s time would come.

Tara waited for the promised letter with a mixture of apprehension – though she didn’t know what she was apprehensive about – and something that was near to excitement. She suspected it might be from Claire. Claire had written once. She hadn’t replied to this letter, resenting, as she did, its tone. Neither Liz nor Molly had written at all. They’d never been letter-writers. They were phone people, regular calls, which in Molly’s case were liable to go on a long time. If they had made calls, she never heard about them. Who would they have called, anyway? They didn’t visit either. None of the three. She’d been surprised by that, but got used to it. There would be reasons, she expected, though this realisation hadn’t stopped her being resentful. She knew how
she
would have responded.

She tired herself to the point of numbness, thinking about this letter. All day, standing at the conveyor belt, her hands automatically lifting, pressing down, she shook slightly with all this absurd agitation about its arrival. Repetitive jobs, she’d already learned, needed attentive minds. Such a simple action she
was performing, so easy it could be done, surely, in her sleep. But it couldn’t, that was the shock. To think she’d been educated for this. Nobody would believe it. She didn’t believe it herself. Tara couldn’t be doing this, not with her talents, her qualifications. It was Sarah Scott doing it, stupid Sarah Scott, silent Sarah Scott. She talked to no one, except for the obvious pleasantries, the polite good mornings, the comments on the weather. Her silence didn’t seem to bother the women she worked with. One or two of them, in the brief breaks, made an attempt at communicating but nobody asked direct questions. They were all tired, as she was herself. They wanted their shifts over, and then home as quickly as possible.

There was no spark in this Sarah Scott. Tara was startled by how completely she’d given in to this woman, how that had been part of the plan, for her, Tara, to fade away and be resurrected as another, better person. A plan that was succeeding too well.

It was why the letter loomed ahead as so significant. A link to a life left behind, but still hers.

A REUNION: CLAIRE
wanted to have a reunion, a celebration, twenty-five years on, but of course Tara should be present or it would have no true meaning. It was Tara, after all, walking on the opposite bank, who had dived into the fast-flowing river and grabbed hold of the child’s foot. Liz quickly followed, and together they hauled the little boy out and Molly began the life-saving procedure she’d only just learned at a first-aid class. Claire was the one who ran back along the river path to the pub, the Bull’s Head, to get them to phone for an ambulance. Oh, how fast she had run, heart thudding, breath coming in such gasps because she wasn’t used to running. Her finest hour … that was what Dan said, sarcastically, every time she reminisced, which she did once a year, remembering the date of this dramatic event all too clearly, a summer’s day, perfect blue, cloudless sky. And the boy’s life was saved.

They were local heroes for a while, even Claire who had merely run for help which, by the time it came, had not really been needed. Molly had done the necessary.
But all four of them were photographed with the boy they’d saved and a piece was written about them in the newspapers. That was how they became friends with Tara Fraser. They were already all in the same sixth form but Claire and Molly and Liz had known each other since nursery school. Their mothers were friends, their fathers commuted to London on the same train. Tara Fraser didn’t have these connections. She was thought of as a bit wild, known to ‘give cheek’ to teachers, known to be defiant in the face of authority. She dyed her auburn hair black, then purple, and had ways of getting round all sorts of rules about uniform that irritated teachers.

But after the famous rescue, Tara became part of their set. They began to move around as a quartet, Tara influencing the others in all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Her language was awful. She used the F-word frequently, quite shocking the other three, but there was no stopping her. Led by Tara, they too began circumnavigating rules and regulations, enjoying the small thrill it gave them. Claire was called into the headmistress’s office and told that she was now proving ‘a disappointment’.

‘You are a prefect, Claire,’ the headmistress said. ‘It is up to you to set an example.’

Claire hung her head and apologised, but the moment she left the room she rushed to the others and mimicked the headmistress, basking in Tara’s approval. Such good times they had, and then school ended, and they all went off to different places but kept in touch, always.

Claire was the best at keeping in touch, at rounding them all up, two or three times a year, and organising a
lunch or supper. She sent handwritten notes, thought quaint by the others. She liked writing them, she still did. It was a habit of hers to drop a short note, expressing concern, when she heard someone was ill, or that a husband/wife/partner had died. Often, the recipients of these notes were neighbours she didn’t know at all well, but still, they deserved some compassion. It didn’t matter if they were never acknowledged. Well, it did, but Claire knew it shouldn’t, not to a truly caring person. She stifled a slight disappointment when, if she later met a person to whom she’d sent a sympathetic note, nothing was said, no mention made of her thoughtfulness. Some people were like that. She was not.

She had written to Tara, after deep thought, when she read in the newspapers what she was said to have done. She’d spent ages toiling over this missive, trying to convey sympathy without attaching blame, even though it looked as though Tara was very much to blame. There had been no reply. She didn’t write again, and she didn’t go to the trial. Of that she was deeply ashamed, but when she had tentatively floated the idea of going her husband had been adamant that she should not. It would do no good, Dan had said. Far from being a gesture of solidarity, it would be acting like a voyeur. But at least, when one newspaper dug out the old story of the rescue of the boy, and tracked Claire and the others down, she had stood by Tara, emphasising all her good qualities. There had been some pretty close questioning, though, and she knew she hadn’t come out of it well. Did she keep in touch with Tara Fraser? Oh yes, she certainly did. So when had she last seen her? Claire struggled … Six months
ago, maybe a little longer. Last talk on the phone? She couldn’t be sure. At this point, Dan had arrived home, furious to find she was letting herself be interviewed, and dragged her inside.