How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster Read Free Book Online Page A

false, and Sarah Scott had sensed this, which was why she’d seemed so shaken. Something natural was needed, some casual, friendly overture which arose without effort, and could not be misinterpreted.
    Nancy went on watching and waiting, afraid that she might miss some significant sign which would direct her to the solution of this puzzle, this desire to find a way to approach Sarah Scott. Her presence in Amy’s old house was becoming unbearably tantalising, especially on a Sunday.
    Claire worried about the fate of her letter, but then she worried, fretted, about so many things. She worried silently, her head so often filled with this internalised anxiety. Those upon whom all this worry was lavished knew nothing about it. Tara, for example, had never known of all the nights Claire stayed wide awake thinking about her. Why had she done what she’d done? It was impossible to understand. Molly thought Tara must have experienced some sort of mental breakdown. She’d done what she’d done in a frenzy. Claire didn’t agree. True, Tara had a temper, and she was often unpredictable, often hyper, but the evidence was that the act she’d committed had been carried out with a cool efficiency. Liz said that they all had to remember that they hadn’t really been close to Tara any more after she married Tom and moved to London.
    They had all been to the wedding, though it was hardly what could be called a proper wedding. Claire’s wedding, a couple of months after Tara’s, hadbeen the real thing, six bridesmaids, a hundred and twenty guests, church service, the lot. Tara refused to be a bridesmaid. Liz and Molly agreed, but Tara said nothing on earth would make her wear a long pink dress. In fact, the dresses were not pink. They were a pinky lavender, quite different. Tara had deliberately appeared in black. Short, very short, tight skirt (and this was by now the nineties when short skirts were rarely seen except on young teenagers) with tights and boots, and an appalling shiny black PVC thing, neither top nor coat, that crackled during the service. At her own register-office affair Tara had been in white. A demure
broderie anglaise
dress. Tom, apparently, had chosen it, suitable, he said (or so Tara told them) for his ‘adorable child bride’. What Tara saw in this Tom, none of them could fathom. It wasn’t his looks – that was for sure. Or his charm, since he had none. It must, the three of them decided, be the sense of danger he had about him. They struggled to define this, but couldn’t. He more or less ignored them, but they could see how intensely he concentrated on Tara. He had, Liz thought, a magnetism about him, attracting Tara to him in a way none of them could understand. It was disturbing.
    Weeks passed, and gradually Claire began to accept that she was not going to get a reply to her letter, whether or not it had reached Tara now she was free. This ‘freedom’ was much discussed by the friends. What did it amount to? She had paid the penalty for her crime.
    ‘The past is behind her, over,’ Claire said.
    Liz said that sort of thinking was naive. The past would never be over for Tara. It would have to belived with, accommodated. That was the most that could be done with it.
    ‘She’s had to do it before,’ Molly reminded them. ‘Block out the past.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Liz, ‘but that was a past she couldn’t remember. She was only three when she went to live with the Frasers. She said herself she couldn’t remember anything however hard she tried. She just had to believe what the Frasers told her. It isn’t the same.’
    They were silent for a while after Liz said that. How shocking it had seemed to them that Tara lived with foster parents. They were curious, but too well brought up to ask direct questions, especially one: why? Nobody else they knew had foster parents. They half wanted Tara to reveal that she hated the Frasers, and longed for her real parents, but she didn’t. She complained about