Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Esther sank onto the stairs, she’d have a job getting up, but she was too intrigued to wait until she reached the kitchen table, and she carefully unglued the flap so as not to rip the envelope. She peered inside and pulled out a sheet of paper, folded into quarters. The handwriting was old-fashioned copperplate, but had a few giveaway mistakes that made her think that the scribe was trying to disguise their handwriting.

  Dear Mr and Mrs Harrison,

  I am writing to you about your daughter, Louisa, as I think it would be helpful for you to see her as everyone else sees her.

  She is fat and lazy and needs to make her own way in the world. You keep her at home for your own ends and therefore you are selfish. She needs to move out and get a life.

  This letter is for your own good and for that of your daughter.

  Yours truly,

  A well wisher

  Esther gave an involuntary cry and dropped the letter as if it were on fire. Then she picked it up and read it again. No, no this couldn’t be real: it had to be a practical joke – a sick one, mind, but a joke all the same.

  Fat and lazy? Needs to make her own way in the world? Her heartbeat was rising and she felt a little faint. It was if someone had thrust a knife into her, but she couldn’t see them to allow her to fight back. Why would someone do this? OK, so maybe Louisa was some of those things – but only on the surface: she wasn’t really lazy, just a little unmotivated at times. She needs to move out and make her own way in life? Well, actually, she had a flat now – had had for three weeks – just hadn’t spent a night in it yet. But there were reasons for that weren’t there? What reasons? She couldn’t be arsed…? The sofa at home was warmer and comfier than her own one would be? Esther groaned again and covered her face with her hands. She felt violated. The fact that the letter was actually, well, spot on, meant that someone had been watching very closely.

  Who could have done this? Who would be so mean, so spiteful and so intimate in their detail? She looked out of the window, as if there might be someone hiding behind a bush to make sure that she had both received and read the letter.

  Perhaps two people had masterminded it, having spent weeks sitting on their sofa in the evenings, mocking her and her daughter? Had they laughed as they’d written it? Had they spent days agonising over whether it was the right thing to do or had they just pinged it off on a whim?

  Esther read it again, her hands shaking, and then she started sobbing: great big tears rolling down her face, her mouth open wide and yowling. She felt angry, humiliated and – the worst bit – impotent. She couldn’t argue her case, couldn’t tell anyone to stuff off and mind their own business. And the worst thing of all was, of course, that it was her own fault! Not only had she not quietly pushed her maturing daughter into making her own way in the world, she had started all this letter writing. It had been her that had made it the thing to do, and now it was only right that she suffered from her own brand of rough justice and, boy, was it rough…

  She put the rest of the pile of post down on the stairs, took a big gulp, wiped her eyes and crawled off to bed. Sod the ironing of shirts, sod bloody everything.

  Esther’s sleep was poor. She lay there in her big bed in the blandly immaculate bedroom and tried to get respite from her thoughts: but, no chance. She alternated between visions of Louisa sitting on the sofa, wrapped in her chenille blanket, asking for something that she could easily have fetched herself and a faceless couple, sitting on a sofa bitching night after night about her and Louisa until they thought the only decent thing to do was to write a letter.

  Then the thought struck her that maybe, maybe it would have been better if they’d written it fifteen years ago? She remembered back to the times before her stroke when she heard David telling Louisa to sit on the sofa and put the television on, as it was too cold outside for little girls. She would feel like shouting, it isn’t if you put a coat on her! But she knew that in two minutes she would be creeping out the door as inconspicuously as possible with a flask of soup and some fresh sliced bread for one of her ladies.

  She had always known that Louisa’s lifestyle wasn’t quite as it should be and that she should do something about it, but her thoughts were always that the current situation was temporary. When Harold gets out of hospital, he can feed his own cat. When Blod gets back on her feet, she can see to her own tea and when Social Services process their form, Lily and Elwyn can have proper care. Therefore, there would be no point in putting her foot down about David’s obsession with a thermometer to dictate what Louisa should/should not do that day – notwithstanding how close she was sitting to the fire when it was taken – as in a couple of weeks, Esther would be free of her obligations and could gently put a stop to it.

  However, the obligations seemed to be on a rolling programme. Blod rarely got completely back on her feet and so Esther would be phoning around for help for her and when she was on her feet, she couldn’t open tins. Lily and Elwyn might get their visit from Social Services, but a neighbour would fall in the meantime and the picnics in the park with her daughter would get put off for another season.

  “It’s not even that you get paid!” David would rant. “If you got something for it, it would be a start.”

  “I do sometimes…” Esther would mumble.

  David guffawed with incredulous laughter. “What? Like that tube of Toffoes you got last week? And what was it you got from that skinflint, bloody Harold? A pair of his dead wife’s socks?”

  “They were very nice socks; they’d never been worn.”

  “She’s been dead ten years! They’ve sat in her chest of drawers for ten years and the miserly old sod opened the drawer rather than his wallet and gave them to you! What’s that rate of pay? An inch of sock per hour of work?”

  “I don’t do it for the money.”

  “Yeah, but I have to work for five days a week for the money; we can’t all be as altruistic as you, can we?”

  And so it would go on.

  Esther mentally enacted the inevitable scene where she had to tell David about the letter… “Well, you didn’t think of that whilst you were ironing someone else’s Y-fronts, did you? Are you seriously going to throw that in my face after all those years of doing my best? That it’s all my fault for not letting Louisa out to play? Thanks a bunch. And why tell me tonight, for God’s sake? Don’t ruin Friday night for us as well, Esther, you know there’s a Frost on…”

  Every now and then a wicked thought came into her head – perhaps she should show Louisa: might make her get off her fat arse and take a bit of a gamble in life…

  Eventually she decided to do nothing immediately, but to mull it over. Maybe she could unearth a few clues if she asked Louisa and David some pertinent questions about who might hold a grudge or who kept offering “advice” to them about Louisa’s lifestyle choices or her default setting.

  Eventually she dragged herself back out of her bed and made it for the second time that morning. She was due at the hairdressers at three-thirty and the taxi was coming in an hour. Time enough for a quick lunch and tidy round and to make herself look passable enough to bear sitting and staring at for an hour in front of a well-lit mirror.

  At five to three, she was composed and sat on the bottom of the stairs waiting for her taxi. The letter had been hidden in her underwear drawer and no one ever went in there. She absentmindedly picked up the remaining pile of post and leafed through it, three for David, one for Louisa and two for her. She recognised her catalogue bill and left that for later. She opened the other one with one eye out of the window for her cab. The contents made her cry, “No! Not another one!”

  This time she held a typed sheet of flimsy paper that had been popped into the style of envelope that one might pinch from work. Her breath was shallow as she read it:

  Dear Mrs Harrison,

  As a long-standing acquaintance of yours, I think it is important that you are told that your husband, David, is having an affair. It is with Diane Dawson from admin and they w
ere caught in flagrante in the store cupboard at work. I don’t know where else they meet and do not know how long it has been going on, but suspect that it is for a number of weeks.

  I trust that you fínd the courage to sort things out.

  Yours truly,

  A well wisher

  A well wisher? Not another effin’ well wisher! She could really do without being wished so well so often. Esther gasped and then groaned and then laid her head on the side of the banister and groaned again. Her life was falling apart. What on earth was going on? This morning she had been a somewhat disgruntled contented person who felt that life needed perhaps a little re-papering, but not wholesale redevelopment. Within a few hours the guts of her world had been ripped out, chewed around and spat out onto the pavement.

  David? Her David? Having an affair with Diane Dawson? Surely not! David had been giving Diane Dawson a lift twice a week for eight years – had they been doing in flagrantes all that time? Oh good God, had she been ironing his shirts so he could look good for her, so that they could be ripped off again in a dusty store cupboard? Should she be screaming with rage? Sobbing with remorse? Maybe she should be hunting for a gun or a kitchen knife with a long sharp blade that she could go and charge on to the factory floor and stab him with, then walk into the office and stab Diane bloody Dawson before giving herself up to the police and accepting her life sentence with dignity and the conviction that she’d done the right thing and that justice had been achieved…

  Parp parp! The sound jolted her from her spinning thoughts. Damn – the taxi. That meant it was time to go and have her hair styled, supposedly so that she could look nice sitting next to her loving husband at the golf dinner the following evening. Oh, God, how could she just go and sit draped in nylon – or cotton as it was now – and have someone ask her about her holidays after having had the kind of day she’d had?

  She pulled herself to her feet and steadied herself on the banister. She’d have to, wouldn’t she? She had to keep a pretence of normality until she had decided what to do – the decision to stab everyone or to remain dignified needed to be thought through. But how could one make a thought through decision when the bottom of their world had been spat onto the pavement and smeared in filth? Parp parp! In a daze, Esther pulled herself to her feet, collected her coat and handbag, threw her shoulders back and opened the door.

  Esther always booked with the same taxi firm and more often than not, Shane was the driver. She would sit beside him and they would chatter away about the usual taxi things, ending the journey a little more right wing than when they’d started it.

  This time, Esther crawled into the back seat and sat behind him, mumbling in response to his chirpy “How are you today?” that she was a little out of sorts.

  They drove along in silence, Esther staring out of the window alternating between feeling sick, angry, confused and in despair. After a while she felt the car slow down and Shane cursed, “What a stupid bloody place to park. Look at that – right on the brow of the hill!” and he shook his head at two guys who were loading a sofa onto the back of a removal lorry. A couple were standing next to the open van, the man with his arms wrapped around the woman, as if he were trying to soothe her tears.

  It was the house on the hill along her bus route. It was the house with the lack of blinds. Esther bit her lip. Perhaps they were moving out because they felt violated in their own home? Perhaps they felt that everyone was watching them or criticising their lives and that they could no longer live there?

  Esther stared out the rear window until the lorry was just a dot on the horizon.

  They arrived on the outskirts of Tan-y-Bryn, with Shane mumbling about plans for a new one-way system for part of the town; Esther was only half-listening.

  “Yeah, and it’ll start at the Market Road and come out at Friar Street, you know, by the Tasty Bite Café – well, the Tasty Bite Café that was anyway…”

  “That was? Why, has it closed for refurbishment or something?” Esther was listening with full attention now.

  “No, shut full stop. End of last week. Real shame – I used to have my lunch in there sometimes, really friendly place. Good food too.”

  “Oh. Why was that then? Are they – moving abroad, or opening a new…boutique or something?” Esther was hopeful.

  “Nah, all closing and they’re going on the sick. They’ll live above the café. Nasty business really – they got one of them spiteful letters and, well, Pat Marshwood said that she’s lost all her confidence.”

  “I read about it in the paper – but, I thought they appreciated the letter? Y’know, said it made them look at their business with fresh eyes?”

  “Well, she said it did for a while, and then they just felt sick that they had been baking and cooking and serving someone as nasty as that and they hadn’t realised. Made her think about who else had been sat there, thinking it was dirty or moaning about it to their friends. Couldn’t face going in there in the end, made her feel tearful and sick apparently. Shame though. As I said, a nice couple; tried really hard…”

  Esther leant back against the seat. She felt as if she might be sick. What had she been thinking? She had just ruined two people’s livelihoods and made them ill and for what? A staleish cake and the failure to wipe the table with something more effective than a bottle of cheap cleaner and a used cloth.

  “Here we are, my love,” Shane said as they pulled up alongside the hairdresser’s. “What is it today? Shaved head or just a bleach blonde?” It was his little joke and she usually replied, “No, just a Mohican” or “I thought I’d have a purple rinse…” Today, however, she mumbled about not being sure yet, and thrust a tenner at him and stumbled out of the car.

  “Esther Harrison,” she said to the new girl on reception, “I’ve an appointment with Mona?”

  “OK, you’ll be with me, then. Mona’s off sick at the moment, so I’m doing her cuts. Would you like to come and take a seat?”

  Esther tagged along behind her, feeling dizzy and slightly out of control. “What do you mean, off sick? Is she OK? Has she got flu – it’s been doing the rounds, hasn’t it?”

  The girl fastened her into a gown and started brushing through Esther’s hair. “No – she’s not very good apparently. Had a bit of a breakdown – got obsessive compulsive disorder or something like that…”

  “Obsessive compulsive disorder?” whispered Esther.

  “That’s right, obsessive compulsive disorder. She can’t stop washing herself or something – sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it? Came from nowhere apparently. She’s trying to get treated, but there’s quite a waiting list, so she might be off for some time – you can’t have someone in here changing their clothes every half hour, can you? Gets nothing done! Now, what are we doing today?”

  “Just a tidy up and set,” Esther mumbled weakly. She could feel the sweat beading on her brow and her guts were churning. Obsessive compulsive disorder? A bit of a breakdown? It was all like a bad dream.

  “Are you OK?” asked the girl, as she led her to the sink.

  “Just had a bit of bad news today, it’s shaken me up a bit,” replied Esther, trying to pull herself together.

  “Oh, that’s tough. I had some bad news once…” and the girl was off. Esther knew that she could just sit and nod occasionally and she could get through this. Just don’t be sick or faint, she told herself. Please: don’t be sick or faint…

  Esther was settled under the heat-lamps and had a pile of magazines thrust onto her lap. She leafed through the contents pages; because she’d never had a weight problem, so many of the articles were simply of no interest to her. Improve your Zest for Life! No, not at that point yet. Coping with Loss – nor that, but maybe she should rip out the article and take it home – could be useful for future reading.

  Page 43 – What To Do If You Suspect He Is Cheating? Ah, now, this was more like it. Coming in for a haircut was obviously fate. Esther flicked to page 43 – quickly looking around her to check that no one
was reading it over her shoulder.

  Weight loss, increased care with appearance, unexplained outings or things taking longer than usual were listed as the signs. Right – now she was getting somewhere. Anger, rage, disgust, dismay, anxiety, incredulity and depression were the symptoms felt by the cheated partner – yes, she had run the gamut of those in the last hour and a half alone.

  What to do: now, this was the useful bit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple checklist: shout, scream, cry, cut off his testicles, shred his suits, and get a good lawyer. She needed to consider it first – what did she want from it by way of a result? Separation, Reconciliation, Revenge, Release? Esther gave up and put the magazine to the bottom of the pile. At the moment, she just needed a way through the rest of the day.

  Right, she thought, think clearly. Her scalp was beginning to burn, and that meant that she was nearly done. Presumably the first thing was to clarify the truth. If it were just malicious rumour and plucked from the air then she was worrying about nothing. Having a romp in a works cupboard didn’t sound like David’s style, although when they were first courting, they’d done it in her parents’ downstairs toilet – not very salubrious, but then they didn’t seem to need salubrious in those days…and opportunities to be alone together were rare.

  Perhaps she should meet him at work, wait for him in the car park. Catch him off guard and confront him. It could be sorted by the time they got home. Hang on, wasn’t he planning to pop to Louisa’s flat after work tonight? Why on a Friday night? Perhaps he’s meeting her there?

  Esther dived back to the pile of magazines and rummaged, pulling out the one she had read earlier. She flicked back the pages and checked the checklist: unexplained outings or things taking longer than usual. Right, David Harrison – show time!