Free How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster Page A

wouldn’t be so vague. What on earth did ‘about’ mean? Five to eleven, five past eleven? And it hadn’t been made clear whether she should go across the road at ‘about’ eleven, or whether Sarah Scott would come and knock for her. Well, either way, she was ready by ten, sitting just to the left of her living-room window so that she could see if Sarah Scott came out of her door. The green car looked odd standing there. The other cars, at the other end of the street, were black or grey. Green stood out. It wasn’t, she thought, in very good condition. She could see a bit of rust on the back bumper, and there were one or two dents near the rear door, but maybe they didn’t matter. It was the engine that mattered. She felt quite pleased at realising this. She might never have had a car in her life, but she knew it was the engine that mattered.
    She didn’t like waiting like this, but she was always doing it, getting ready far too early, and then waiting long before it was time. Once, she’d thought this a good habit, one to be proud of having, but now she wasn’t so sure. It made time go so slowly, and it made her anxious. Often, when the clock still had twenty minutes to go, she’d be exhausted with all the waiting. She thought about going over at five to eleven, when at last clock and watch both showed that was the time, to knock on Sarah Scott’s door, but that might make her look too eager, even though she was. She wanted to seem casual. Not offhand – that would be rude, ungrateful – but casual would be fine. She was goingto let Sarah Scott come and get her, and when she did she was going to pretend she had forgotten her scarf – ‘Oh, is that the time?’ she would say – and keep Sarah Scott waiting just a minute.
    Casual.
    Sarah Scott didn’t have a map. Tara would have thought nothing of this, but Sarah knew she would need one. After all, she didn’t know the area. She’d chosen it at random and the main attraction was that she didn’t know it. All she knew was the bus route to work, and the town centre which she’d walked round. The coast road, which she intended to drive along, was to the west of the town. The bus, at one point, crested a hill from which there was a brief glimpse of the sea. This always lifted her spirits, even on one of the many grey days when the sea was merely a mass of dark matter, still and sullen, not a white wave upon it. She would find that road easily, surely. And Mrs Armstrong would know the way.
    At ten-thirty she was on the verge of cancelling the whole outing. The thought of sitting beside Mrs Armstrong for any length of time in a confined space, not knowing where she was going, made her sweat with apprehension. What had got into her, suggesting such a thing? It was madness, folly. She didn’t want her neighbour as a friend yet this would be interpreted by her, understandably, as a gesture of friendship. She would be committed ever after to continuing the uneasy relationship. Mrs Armstrong would likely reciprocate, and she would find herself invited to a cup of tea, and she would have to go, and it would trundle on, this ‘friendship’, and it would all be herown fault. It would be the beginnings of a false friendship, one that would never deepen into anything more than the neighbourly connection it really was. Was she so desperate to prove that Sarah Scott could make, could have, friends, that she was prepared to throw herself at Mrs Armstrong?
    But there she was again, comparing Sarah’s making of a friend with Tara’s. Tara hadn’t had to try. Friends had just happened. Friends had been made through people gravitating towards her rather than she to them. Or else they’d been made through events, not all of them dramatic ones like the rescue of the child in the river which had brought Claire, Molly and Liz to her. The sports she played had drawn people to her who went on to become good friends. Especially men. She hadn’t met Tom, of course, through