Cow Girl Read online

  COW GIRL

  Kirsty Eyre

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Copyright © Kirsty Eyre 2020

  Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Kirsty Eyre asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008382247

  Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008382254

  Version: 2020-06-08

  Dedication

  To my mum, the real Kay Oliver

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Farmerceuticals

  Chapter One: #SaveOurDairy

  Chapter Two: Chemistry

  Chapter Three: Friends

  Chapter Four: Valentine’s Day

  Chapter Five: Franglais at Fernbrook Farm

  Chapter Six: Chesterfield Royal

  Part Two: (Wo)Manning Up

  Chapter Seven: Dairy Milk

  Chapter Eight: Jelly Babies and Pyjamas

  Chapter Nine: Rancidity

  Chapter Ten: Mademoiselle

  Chapter Eleven: Bullshit

  Chapter Twelve: Pride

  Chapter Thirteen: The Wolf

  Chapter Fourteen: Going Agile

  Chapter Fifteen: The Calf

  Chapter Sixteen: Coventry

  Part Three: Cowgirls and Angels

  Chapter Seventeen: #CowGirl

  Chapter Eighteen: The Masked Ball

  Chapter Nineteen: Kat and Bear’s Wedding

  Chapter Twenty: Girl Versus Girl

  Chapter Twenty-One: Unfucking the Fuck-up That is My Life

  Acknowledgements

  Comedy Women in Print

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  FARMERCEUTICALS

  CHAPTER ONE

  #SAVEOURDAIRY

  I crouch beneath the mottled underbelly of a cow, her speckled udder dangling inches from my chin. It’s a wool-grey January day. London’s Covent Garden is awash with farmers, its cobbles splattered with dung and dusted with hay. The fifty-five-foot Christmas tree has started to lean towards a Gourmet Sausage van, which chugs and whirrs, the smell of Bratwurst and diesel intermingling with the stench of manure. Stall after stall of riding boots, fishing rods and artisan oatcakes line the edges of the piazza, their wares fingered by tourists and farmers. Five Holstein Friesians are penned outside Mulberry, a cacophony of grunts echoing under the rafters of the Royal Opera House arcade. Tongues lollop through the metal bars against shop windows. A jet-black cow with white knee-sock markings is being led over to the enclosure. Overwhelmed, she backs into a stall of handmade jewellery, sending fake pearls bouncing across cobbles.

  I should be focused on the task at hand, but I’m both desperate for the loo and wondering where on earth Dad is. He was meant to be here two hours ago and the drive from Derbyshire shouldn’t take this long.

  A man in a #SaveOurDairy fleece stands at a table piled high with cheese. ‘British dairy farming is on the brink of collapse,’ he shouts through a megaphone. ‘Premier Milk is to drop its “A” milk prices again, meaning a further drop in profits.’ The megaphone whines with feedback. ‘Every week another dairy farm closes. Support our dairy farmers!’

  A pigeon struts underneath a show-caravan in pursuit of a sandwich crust and I wonder if I can join it, the prospect of lying under a Scenic Getaway Motorhome for the next hour becoming more attractive by the minute. I hate dairy farming events. It’s not just the slogan-chanting country folk or the backlash from my vegan friends. It’s more that, having grown up in the countryside, I’ve been subjected to enough falconry displays, hound parades, jousting gerbils and country cads to last a lifetime. Were it not for Dad, I certainly wouldn’t be here right now, poised beneath a stranger’s cow.

  ‘Buy our “Milk for Farmers” branded milk!’ the #SaveOurDairy man yells.

  Bev and Kat approach in black leather jackets and a swirl of winter scarves. Bev’s Mohican only serves to accentuate their height difference. Today, it’s not its usual lurid pink, but that sort of murky blue-green that bad tattoos go in the sun. She runs her hand over it, and I worry for a moment that she’s going to ask me whether I like it.

  ‘Bill!’ Kat’s Kiwi tones fill the piazza. It sounds more like ‘Bull’. ‘Did you want one?’ She waves a hot dog at me, mustard dripping down her arm.

  I gesture apathetically to the udders above me. ‘I’ve got my hands full.’

  ‘Any news from your dad?’ Bev says, massaging her Mohican.

  I want to bite my fingernails, but I’ve been stroking a cow. ‘His phone is switched off.’

  ‘Three, two, one …’ The #SaveOurDairy man blasts his horn, startling shoppers and tourists alike.

  A giant digital display starts its three-minute countdown. Gently, I clamp the base of diagonal teats between my thumb and forefinger, squeeze firmly and pull down. A dribble of milk plips into the bucket. Squeeze and pull down. Another drip. I’ve clearly lost my touch, proving Dad’s ‘it’s like riding a bike’ theory wrong. Squeeze and pull down. Another drip. The latex gloves are three sizes too big and wrinkle like old lady’s stockings. I should have brought some from the lab. Where the fuck is Dad?

  ‘You’ve got this, Bill!’ Kat shouts aggressively.

  Maria joins them from the refreshments queue. She’s head-to-toe in active gear, in spite of her aversion to exercise. ‘Come on, Bilbo! I thought you grew up on a farm?’

  Marigold swings her bulky head round, all forelock and attitude. Her nostrils flare, puffing out clouds of warm breath, which spiral in the cold air. She holds my gaze through big, watery eyes, before turning back to her hay net. The guy next to me is having more joy with Daisy, milk spattering against his pail. Four neat, pink teats. I should know what to do, but I blocked that chapter out of my life thirteen years ago and am too worried that Dad is in a pile-up on the M1 to retrieve it from my memory bank.

  Maria leans over the enclosure rope, her breath heavy with free-range pulled pork and curried gherkins. ‘Pull your finger out! I’ve got a tenner on you winning 7/1.’

  Marigold swishes her tail and a matted dreadlock of hair, manure and urine whips me across the cheek. It stings, like lemon juice on a paper cut. And at that moment, I hear Dad’s voice loud and clear. I’m seven again and he walks Roberta, the most docile of the herd (long legs, and a black splodge the shape of Australia on her left buttock) into the yard. ‘Bump the bag,’ he says, gesturing to her udder. Bump the bag, of course.

  Gently, I buffet my head against Marigold’s soft, warm udder to simulate a calf feeding. Once. Twice
. Three times, before reaching for the teats and gripping the plastic bucket between my ankles. I squeeze and pull down. A stream of milk spirts out diagonally, first onto my shoe, and then into my bucket. Squeeze and pull down. Left, right. Left, right. I’m up and away, steady at first. Left, right. Until I find my groove. A little bit faster. Left, right. I move in closer, head cocked to one side, street entertainers and the Apple store rotated ninety degrees. Faster. Left, right.

  ‘Mar-i-gold!’ Maria chants, her rose metallic Reeboks disappearing in and out of view behind Marigold’s undercarriage.

  Left, right. Faster still, until I’m expressing like a steam train, fingers like pistons, sequentially squeezing a powerful jet of milk from each teat. Gentle but firm. Faster and faster until it’s a blur, I’m a child again, and this is one big game. Marigold chomps her way through her hay. I see Bev’s black leather lace-up boots. Kat’s burgundy suede ankle boots.

  ‘Mar-i-gold! Mar-i-gold!’ the girls chant.

  Feet I don’t recognize come into view. Suede loafers. Ankle boots. Nike Air Max.

  ‘Mar-i-gold! Mar-i-gold!’ The chant carries.

  Walking boots. Wedges. Garish pink Crocs.

  ‘Mar-i-gold! Mar-i-gold!’

  Vans. More Nikes.

  The crowd gets behind me. ‘Mar-i-gold! Mar-i-gold!’

  I’m milking like my life depends on it. Like Dad’s life depends on it. Which it does, in a fashion. Left, right. Why isn’t he here yet?

  ‘Five, four, three …’ A voice booms over the megaphone. ‘Two, one.’

  The horn blasts again, a man in wellingtons accosting the girls with a book of raffle tickets. When I clamber out, there’s still no sign of Dad. The bucket of frothy milk feels warm against my chest. I’m just about to dip my finger in and taste the cream, when two familiar figures emerge from an animal trailer in his-and-hers Parsons-Bonneville Premier Vets polo shirts and jodhpurs. Dread drifts into my stomach. There’s only one thing worse than being stuck at a dairy farming awareness campaign, and that’s being stuck at one with Lorna and Guy, the darling couple of rural Derbyshire.

  I duck back under Marigold, put down the bucket and take an interest in the gluten-free beetroot muesli sample I got given when I registered. In my peripheral vision, I see their shiny riding boots marching towards me in synchronized strides. They have the gait and precision of a pair of dressage horses. She’s seen me. Lorna Parsons: my dad’s vet and mistress of everything bovine. Lorna Parsons, who outed me to a bunch of octogenarians at my grandma’s bridge club. Lorna Parsons, who has known me since we were kids and has never ceased to humiliate me. I try not to think the words ‘bull sperm incident’ …

  She approaches me, square shoulders, athletic frame, mousy-blonde hair scraped into a ponytail, arms laden with rosettes. The silvery-pink horseshoe-shaped scar on her forehead shimmers in the light. Heat rushes to my chest. I stand up clumsily and only go and kick the bucket over, milk spewing across the cobbles and crawling into the cracks.

  ‘Billie!’ Her owl eyes single me out.

  ‘Hi.’ I hold onto my empty bucket and look around for my friends.

  ‘You remember Guy?’ She pulls her cap down over her forehead.

  Guy adjusts his Rolex watch and extends his hand. ‘Long time, no see, Belinda.’

  ‘She prefers Billie,’ Lorna says, with an air of superciliousness reserved for both of us; Guy for not remembering, and me for wanting to be called Billie. ‘Shame about your dad’s migraine.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, digesting this news and wondering how she got hold of it.

  ‘He rang from Leicester Forest services. Blinder of a headache. Poor thing had to stop driving,’ she says, the voice of authority on my own dad. My flesh and blood. ‘I told him to turn off his phone and try to have a sleep in the car before he sets off again.’

  I feel a mixture of panic and betrayal – Dad doesn’t get migraines and why would he phone Lorna before me?

  ‘Does my grandma know?’ I say, knowing that Grandma will be kicking herself for deciding to stay at the farm and sit this one out whilst her son is ill on the edge of the M1.

  ‘I called her.’ She smiles. ‘She’s sending your uncle Peter to pick up your dad.’

  How come I didn’t know about any of this? Why is she invading my family with her whiter-than-white do-gooding? Standing there, all king-of-the-castle with that smug smile on her face, with her equally smug boyfriend. I bet they have horsy nicknames for each other. Boak. I’m mentally poking her eyes out when the #SaveOurDairy man trudges over. He assesses the contents of my bucket, pressing his glasses firmly onto the bridge of his nose to stop them falling into the pitiful few millilitres of remaining milk.

  Lorna flashes me a smile. ‘Never were much of a farm girl, were you?’ She plucks a ‘Prize Loser’ rosette from the pile in her arms and I’m reminded of the times she used to make me play this horse-riding game on the bottom branch of the willow tree at the farm – she, always the winner, and me, always the loser, despite being three years her senior. She stands to face me. Her teeth are coated in black streaks and her breath smells of liquorice. My chest gets hotter as she fixes the rosette to my jacket, all fingers and thumbs, the pin pricking my skin.

  Maria bustles over, arms full of coffee and shopping. ‘I’ve lost Bev and Kat,’ she says, fiddling with the hearing aid hidden under her Sweaty Betty ski headband, her eyes travelling to Lorna and Guy.

  ‘Maria, meet Lorna and Guy,’ I say, aware that country and city life are about to collide. ‘Lorna’s my dad’s vet up in Derbyshire.’ My hands sink deeper into my pockets. ‘Lorna and Guy, this is Maria, my flatmate.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Lorna and Guy say in unison.

  ‘Hi!’ Maria takes a step forward, unsure whether to offer them the hand with the skinny cappuccino or the arm full of shopping.

  The country–city collision intensifies when Bev and Kat wander over, Kat’s eyes unable to leave the crotch bulge in Guy’s jodhpurs, a look of horror etched on her face.

  ‘These are my friends, Bev and Kat.’ I yank Kat’s arm, trying to break her gaze.

  ‘Hello.’ Guy offers them an assertive handshake, whilst Lorna’s eyes drift down to my Converse and stay there a while.

  ‘We like to show our support at these events,’ Lorna says, though I’m not sure to whom. ‘Were it not for dairy farmers like Billie’s dad, we wouldn’t be in business.’ She looks up, her large grey eyes level with mine. ‘How’s the PhD going?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ I say too quickly. ‘I’m still working on securing a scholarship.’

  ‘You’ve been working on that a while now, right?’ she says. ‘Three years?’

  Maria’s elbow digs into my ribcage, her eyes widening.

  ‘Two years,’ I say, one-upmanship suddenly vital.

  ‘It must be longer than that because you had to miss your dad’s sixtieth for a career fair,’ Lorna says. ‘We threw him a little party. You remember, Guy?’

  ‘Great canapés!’ Guy lights up his cigarette and blows smoke into my face.

  Guilt curdles in my gut. Why does she never cease to make me feel inadequate, selfish and about three years old?

  Her eyes run across the gold italic font of my ‘Prize Loser’ rosette. ‘We can’t tempt you back to the farm then?’

  They all look to me, country folk and city girls. The roof of my mouth starts to itch. Even when I press my tongue against it, it won’t go away. The whole reason for fleeing the country and coming to London was to get away from things like this: the stench of fresh manure, the wax jackets, the Lornas and Guys, ‘salt of the earth’ people driving 4x4 Porsches while others are beaten by the crushing misery of the failing dairy economy. Unleashing my inner city-girl was the best thing I ever did, and now here I am, in London’s Covent Garden, surrounded by dairy farmers; at the very crux of everything I escaped from.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Definitely not.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHEMISTRY


  The first day back at work after an extended Christmas break is always a killer, but an inch of snow makes this one particularly unappealing. Breakfast News’s Maroon McGinnis says Britain is officially experiencing the ‘Big Freeze’, and she’s always right because she’s a weather goddess. Today should be about building snowmen and frolicking in chunky knitwear, not trudging to Queen’s Research laboratories in leaky wellies and wet socks for a PhD fair.

  The lab is icy cold. Its windows gape to release the vile stench of beta-mercaptoethanol; a blend of rotten eggs and burning rubber. Paper hats and cracker jokes remain strewn across my work-space along with the ‘Young at Heart, Older in Other Places’ calendar that Dave bought me in last year’s Secret Santa. I flip the cover over to January and log on to my laptop to discover the PhD fair is – due to Queen’s heating problems – now being hosted by our pharmaceutical sponsor, Klein Selby Gilet, in their new building over the road.

  The KSG complex boasts award-winning architectural design and a biodiverse roof carpeted in turf, which today is lost in snow. Inside, a giant vase of purple orchids mirrors an identical arrangement at the other end of the reception desk. Blue-chip symmetry is key, which means the equidistantly spaced plasma screens on the back wall all show the same muted pharmaceutical news. The receptionist presents me with a tray of name badges. Looking through them, I can only imagine that I’m ‘Billy Elliot’.

  ‘So, what is your name?’ she says between phone calls.

  ‘Billie Oliver. Billie with an ‘i.e.’ Like Billie Jean King.’

  She takes a thick black marker to the badge in an attempt to transform ‘Elliot’ into ‘Oliver’, which means I’ll be answering to ‘Billie Ollvot’ for the rest of the day.

  The auditorium is a few degrees too warm and packed to the rafters with students from all over the world. I love that about London – the cosmopolitanism, the diversity, the anonymity: three things you don’t get on the rural Yorkshire/Derbyshire border.

  Sparkling water and freshly made coffee are the order of the day – a far cry from the festering ashtray of used teabags and polystyrene cups at Queen’s events. The windows have made-to-measure blackout blinds, allowing display banners to gleam under strategically rigged spotlights. Life-size stock images show airbrushed models in pristine lab coats and immaculate surgical masks, their glistening pipettes poised over sparkling-clean test tubes. ‘Healthier, Happier’. An energetic man with minty breath hands me a stress ball and asks if I’ve signed the ‘Stronger for Longer’ petition. I’m not sure whether he’s campaigning against a new drug or lobbying for better toilet paper.