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Letters from Tara · November: The First Five Minutes

The draft she did not send

Danya,

I am writing this on the bus back from the library and I am so cross I keep missing my stop.

We have a group presentation for the urban geography module. Twelve slides, ten minutes, four of us: me, a girl called Mei, a girl called Bea, and a boy called Fergus. It's worth a quarter of the mark.

Our first meeting was today. It lasted an hour. Fergus had already made a plan. He'd made the slides, actually, empty ones with titles on, before any of us had said a word. He said he'd do the introduction and the conclusion and the talking in the middle "to keep it tight", and that Bea could do the maps, and I could do the statistics, and Mei could "pull the references together at the back".

And here is the thing. In the seminar in week one, Mei had the best idea anyone had all term. She said that instead of reading about the market in town we should go and ask the people on the stalls what has changed. Our tutor actually said "ooh". I wrote it down. And today, Mei sat in the corner with her laptop and said nothing, and Fergus's plan didn't have her idea in it anywhere, and I sat there for a whole hour and I didn't say it either.

I knew the whole time. I could feel the sentence in my mouth. I kept thinking I'd say it when there was a gap, and there wasn't a gap, and then the plan was on the screen and everybody was nodding and it felt too late. So I nodded too.

I don't know why I'm like this. I

The draft stopped there. Tara read it the next morning in the kitchen while Hollie made porridge for four, and she did not feel hot this time, as she had over the pans. She felt tired. It was the same thing again. She had seen exactly what was wrong, and she had waited, and the waiting had turned into the plan.

She put the draft in the back of her notebook, behind the other two. There were three now.

Mei, in the corridor

She saw Mei on Wednesday, outside the lecture theatre, queuing for the one working water fountain.

"Can I ask you something?" Tara said. "Your idea in the seminar. The market. Asking the traders."

Mei looked surprised that anyone had remembered it.

"Oh," she said. "Yes. I still think it's good. My aunt has a stall in a market at home, and every year she says the street has changed, and nobody ever asks her how." She shrugged. "But Fergus has a plan."

"You could say it at the next meeting."

Mei laughed, not unkindly. "I'm not going to say it in front of Fergus," she said. "He's already made the slides. The plan's done. If I bring it up now, it's like saying his plan is wrong, and it's not wrong. It's just not that. And anyway, I'm on references." She filled her bottle. "It's fine. It's a quarter of a mark."

It was the same answer Tara would have given. That was what made it so hard to hear.

Tara walked back to the flat thinking about the first meeting. She tried to remember when, exactly, it had been too late. It was not the end of the hour. It was earlier than that. It was the moment Fergus had opened his laptop and turned the screen round and there were the empty slides with titles on. Before that, there had been about five minutes when nobody had decided anything, when Fergus was still taking his coat off and Bea was looking for a plug. If she had said it then, it would have been an idea. After the slides went up, it would have been an argument.

The cheapest time to say the thing, she thought, is before there is a plan for it to be against.

She wrote that on a sticky note and stuck it inside the front of her notebook.

The second meeting

The second meeting was on Friday at two, in a booked room on the third floor of the library with a whiteboard and a radiator that clicked.

Tara got there first, on purpose. She sat down, and took out her notebook, and opened it at the sticky note. Her heart was going faster than it had any right to, over a geography presentation.

Bea came in. Then Mei, who sat in the corner. Then Fergus, at two minutes past, unwinding a long scarf and saying sorry, sorry, the lift was broken, and reaching for his laptop.

He had not opened it yet. That was the moment.

"Can I say one thing first?" said Tara. "Before we look at the slides."

Fergus paused, laptop half out of his bag. "Sure."

"In the seminar in week one," said Tara, "Mei had an idea. We go to the market in town and ask the traders what's changed, instead of only reading about it. Mrs Akhtar, our tutor, actually said "ooh". I think it might be better than anything I'd have done with the statistics. I just wanted to say it before we decided anything."

There was a short silence. The radiator clicked.

Tara's ears were hot. She made herself say the second thing too, the one she had practised on the stairs.

"And can we go round and hear from everyone? I don't think Bea or Mei said anything at the last one. I didn't either."

Bea, who had been drawing on a napkin, looked up. Mei looked at the table.

Fergus, it turned out, was not a villain. Tara had half expected him to be cross, and she had been ready for that. Instead he put his laptop down on the table, still shut.

"I forgot about that," he said slowly. "The market thing. I was in that seminar. It was a good idea." He looked at Mei. "Why didn't you say it on Monday?"

Mei went pink. "You'd made the slides."

"I make slides when I'm nervous," said Fergus. "It's a thing I do. I didn't mean they were finished." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I thought if I had a plan, nobody would have to worry. I didn't think that meant nobody would say anything."

Twelve slides

It took forty minutes to make a new plan, and it was much better than the first one.

Mei explained the idea properly, quietly at first and then not quietly at all. They would go to the market on Saturday morning, all four of them, and talk to as many traders as would talk to them, and ask the same three questions: how long have you been here, what has changed, and what do people never ask you about. Bea, it turned out, had a grandad who used to have a fruit stall and knew exactly which questions traders liked. Fergus was very good at turning a mess of notes into something with a beginning, a middle and an end. Tara would do the numbers after all, because there would be real numbers now: how many stalls, how long people had been there, how much the rents had gone up.

"Twelve slides," said Fergus, at the whiteboard. "Four of us. Three each."

"And everyone presents their own three," said Bea.

"Everyone presents," said Fergus. "Including Mei. Especially Mei. It's her idea."

Mei did not say no. She said "OK," very quietly, and then, after a moment, "I'll do the first three. I'll tell them about my aunt."

When they left the room it was getting dark, and the library lights had come on across the square. Mei walked down the stairs beside Tara.

"Thank you," she said. "For saying it."

"I should have said it on Monday," said Tara.

"So should I," said Mei. "It's my idea."

The letter she sent

Danya,

You asked me last time how you know when it's too late to say something. I've been thinking about it all week, and I think I've got an answer, at least for me.

It's earlier than you think. It isn't the end of the meeting. It's the moment somebody puts a plan on the screen. Before that, a thing you say is just an idea. After it, the same thing is an argument against someone's plan, and much harder to say.

So this time I said it in the first five minutes, before anyone opened a laptop. It was somebody else's idea, actually, a girl called Mei's. Saying it took about thirty seconds and my ears went hot. That was the whole cost.

The plan is completely different now. We're going to the market on Saturday to ask the traders what's changed. Everyone is doing three slides. Mei is going first.

I'm still the person who waits. But I waited five minutes this time instead of an hour.

Tara

P.S. Three drafts in the back of the notebook now. All of them stop in the middle of a sentence. I'm starting to think that's where the letters I should have sent begin.

The question for your own table

When did you last know something in a meeting, or at a family dinner, and wait until it was too late to say it? When, exactly, did it become too late?

Something to do

At the start of the next plan you make together, a holiday, a weekend, a meal, before anyone writes anything down, go round the table and ask each person for one idea. Say the quietest person's idea out loud first.

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