Free How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster

the feeling that they had to get to know each other again. They expected to slip effortlessly, within ten minutes, into the old familiarity.
    But Tara remembered how, the last time they’d all met, something like eleven years ago, she’d felt a slight sense of distance from the other three. Maybe, she thought, it was just a matter of how she was ageing differently from them. They were all only in their early thirties but the other three looked older, already on the cusp of middle age in her opinion. Claire’s cheekbones had all but disappeared andher hair, now in a stiff bob, made her face look even heavier. She’d taken to dressing in trouser suits which didn’t help. And Liz’s face was terribly lined for such a young woman, all doubtless due to her disastrous first marriage and the two miscarriages. Molly had put on weight in all the wrong places, but her face was still the same: chubby, cheerful, pink-cheeked. Only her clothes, apart from the new weight she carried, aged her. Fussy blouse, dreary grey skirt, and hideous brown lace-up shoes. She’d studied the three of them saying nothing, but aware that they, too, were aware of the outward difference between them. They might, she recalled thinking, even have envied her. She quite liked that feeling, that they were looking at her and listening to her and being impressed.
    She came away from that meeting sensing that there was a new distance between her and Claire, Molly and Liz. She told herself that since their lives were now so radically different they couldn’t expect to feel the same connection. But she wanted to. The puzzle was, why did she want to? She had Tom, she didn’t need these friends as once she had. They, of course, did not like Tom. They’d only met him two or three times but that, it seemed, had been enough. She was convinced class had a lot to do with it. Tom was clever, he had a better degree than any of them, and he was holding down a high-level job in finance, but he didn’t look or sound like a man who was ‘something in the City’. His Liverpool accent was thick and his appearance rough. Even in his City suit he looked dishevelled. And his manners … She had to admit he did not have the manners of a gentleman. But these things were minor compared to what her friends really held against Tom.They thought he dominated her, and despised them. They were wary, suspicious, uncomfortable in his presence.
    ‘You will look after her, won’t you?’ Liz had said to him at the wedding.
    ‘She doesn’t need looking after,’ Tom said.
    What was so wrong with that reply? She supposed it was the way he’d said it: contemptuously.
    What to wear?
    What to wear, for a car ride? On a Sunday? The problem overwhelmed Nancy, threatening to take all the pleasure from the outing. She’d have to wear one of those seat-belt things, and if she wore her coat it might prove uncomfortable. It was a thick coat. But if she just wore a jacket – she had three to choose from, all different weights – she might not be warm enough. Would there be a heater on in this car? There was no way of knowing.
    Then there was the matter of where they would be going, whether there was a destination in mind, one where she might be expected to get out of the car and walk about. In which case boots and her thicker stockings would be best. She didn’t wear trousers, never had. Everyone else did, a positive fright some of them looked, bulging out all over the place, but she never had. Skirts, dresses, that’s what she thought proper. Not always a hat, though. Once, she always wore a hat but often now she resorted to a headscarf, especially if she’d just had her hair set. They didn’t do perms any more, or the place she went to didn’t and she didn’t want to change to a place where they did. Her hair was still good. Thick,a bit of a wave in it, and it responded well to being set every six weeks.
    She was ready by ten. The note had said ‘about eleven’. She wished people