CHAPTER 4
In the end, the fear got to me. It had been a rush, leaving the old place with a chest, and it was a delight to be dressed so beautifully in the hypermarket, but the closer Roland’s little car got to our flat the more nervous I became, till I begged him to stop so that I could change. I was so frightened that I insisted it be done behind a hedge on a side road, and when I returned, in scruffy jeans and baskets, as Maman had described them, and flat in front, I felt as if a door was closed, slammed in my face. She saw, and had a tissue ready for my tears almost before they fell.

“If I had needed proof, Sophie, if I had ever needed your pain made clear, it is here, now. We move in a week, no? You move as yourself, you leave the flat on that last day, you ride with Roland, and you are Sophie from that moment. Is that acceptable?”

I could hardly speak, as the lovely dress–MY dress–went back into a shop bag, and my borrowed underwear joined it. One week. I had survived sixteen years of this, surely I could manage a week? The trouble was obvious: so close, I was, that I had been able not just to put a foot in the water but even to swim a short distance in the sun. Now, it was snatched away again, and I had to pull my boyhood once more around my shoulders and over my head. Rollo looked over his shoulder, and gave me one of those smiles the girls seemed to like.

The other girls seemed to like. Girl, that was me, one of them, one from a week’s time till whenever Death claimed me. How very odd to think of Death and to feel happy? I had looked him in the eye already, and seen nothing more than an easing of pain, but this, this thought, it was so different.

“Little sister, we have only a week. You have things to learn, and things to lose, and I do not just mean that boy’s clothing that you seem to have filled your drawers with for some reason. Until…my god, this is a strange thing, I am about to tell my new sister not to forget that she has breasts. Perhaps I should just go home and learn to be Polish”

Maman laughed. “That was the most peculiar way I have ever heard you say that you intend to become drunk, my son. Not tonight, eh? Let us save ourselves for our new home, and then…then we cook, and we have a proper meal, in the garden, perhaps five or six courses? I need the practice, anyway. We eat in the evening, in our new garden. Have I said that word enough times? Garden. A lawn, flowers, somewhere a girl needs to suit her pretty new dress, and we sit, and sip our wine, and watch the stars come out…”

Rollo and I laughed as one, and clearly the same thought had struck us, as he said what had leapt to my mind.

“Maman, you do know that if you plan such a thing as this, it will of course rain like a pissing cow?”

She smiled again. “Then we sit inside, and sip our wine, and watch the rain refresh our…garden!”

The day of our departure finally came, after a week that I had spent almost entirely indoors, despite the increasing warmth and lack of air. I simply could not face being Serge any more, and as I had insisted on changing clothes immediately on entry I refused to change back, which meant time indoors. I spent the time starting a diary, and piece by piece packing away my new treasures ready for the day. I also packed my old things, but where the new clothes were laid with care into a suitcase and some plastic garment bags, Serge’s worn and depressing tatters were consigned to some Carrefour bags ready for their delivery to the recycling bins behind the store. Rollo saw them lined up by my bed, and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I nodded, and they were gone. I felt as if I had just washed away a day’s grime, cleansed myself of some horrible stain. It was done.

In the end, the old sticks and fittings of the old flat seemed as if they were out of place for our new life, and we left in a medium-sized van that my brother had hired from a company by the coast, and the moment was there. My own bra, this time, my own fresh, personal lingerie, even if it was just two oranges and some nylon. The yellow dress, fast becoming a favourite of mine and, already, the one I knew would be worn in our garden when Maman cooked for us. Some lipstick, applied by my mother; nothing too much, she said, just to make the point. I smiled at her, and we stepped out of that door for the last time.

Straight into Madame Blanchard from the grocery store on the corner.

“Holy name of God, what in hell is going on? I knew the boy was a queer, but this? This? You indulge him so?”

Maman smiled, so sweetly it could have killed a more sensitive person. “Her. I indulge her. This is my daughter Sophie. You will please be polite to her”

“That is a boy in a dress! A travesty!”

“Elodie, this is my daughter, and we are now leaving, so if the matter causes you distress then it will soon be far from your sight, and in the meantime, if it does bother you, you may please to bugger yourself up your own arsehole, you and your sister and brothers. May God go with you, Elodie. Come, Sophie. Our garden awaits us”

She led me proudly to the van, where we joined Roland on the front seat, and she suddenly grinned.

“My sweet, remind me, if I ever forget, not to buy any food from the Blanchards ever again. She may just remember this day”

We both burst into waves of laughter, the sort that peaks, and stops, and then you look at each other and it starts again, and in the end Roland just started the engine and drove us on our way, with one word muttered into the air.

“Women…”

How I loved him at that moment, how my heart burst with my joy and pride in both of them.

It took us the rest of the day to move what we had into the new house, and Roland did a couple of trips with Maman to pick up some oddments of furniture, including a garden table and chairs, and then we girls worked out where things were to go, and how, and in the end I delighted in the simple acts of hanging my new clothes in the wardrobe or laying them in drawers. My clothes, and my room, and outside was our garden. We ate pizza that evening, from a little Algerian café on the corner, and Maman added a fresh salad, which we ate on new plates, and, oh, so much was new, and clean, and fresh, and ours.

The next day we went again to the big shops, but I started the day in a skirt and all those things that went with it, and we shopped as two women do. My mother had a plan for our meal, and it would be a mix of things we bought ready-made, such as some Picardy ficelles and Sá¨te fish soup, with rouille and the other trimmings, but she insisted that the main course would be her own work, and we took home a small salmon to cook with herbs and serve with spinach and vegetables and…

Home. It was hitting me with each second we spent in the shop, or walking the aisles, or sitting in the sun with a coca while we worked out what else we might do, and all of it, ALL of it, was as me, as Sophie, and though there were one or two glances, it seemed that a dress and a mother close by made all the difference I had ever needed.

“We speak to the doctors soon, little one. I am sure you have read as much as you could find, and I have tried to match you in that. It will not be easy, we both know this: you are no longer a child, you have changed perhaps too much already for it to be…my dear one, I must say this. You will never be a Bardot, nor even a Moreau, but you will be mine, and that is all the beauty I need from you”

I was stunned. So realistic, so casual, I had to try and match her. “Not a Bruni, Maman?”

“No, and I would not wish you so. A face, that is all, a face with no body. Too starved; probably why she is with that silly midget. No, I will do my best to hurry the doctors, but we must inhabit reality. That woman yesterday was just the first, so be prepared, and the way to be prepared is to know, really know, who you are. And who you are is Sophie Laplace, daughter of Julienne, sister to Roland, and that is all the world need care about. Now, what did you think of those sandals, the ones in the blue?”

And it was good, and it didn’t rain, and we sat in our garden, at our home, and we ate camembert and teurgoule after our salmon, as the stars came out and a nightingale began a song to welcome me to the world.