The Story Starts Here
Once again I can hear the church bells ringing in the distance; I walked onwards through the village heading for I don't know where.
The service had started by the time I reached the church so I paused for a while to listen to the singing, while pleasant to listen to the choir the mixed congregation was different, although I had to admit they tried their best.

Chapter Three Continues Here

The meal finally ended and we all returned to our home, it was getting late but everyone wanted to talk about me. Oh it wasn't anything bad just about how far we were prepared to go with my living as a woman for the next three years and when everyone left in the early hours they appeared satisfied with the answers they got to their questions.

Chapter One Starts Here
It wasn't my fault as they eventually found out, for years I had come bottom in every school exam. They all though I wasn't interested but they were far from the truth, of course I was interested.

The day the trial of the terrorist started the newspapers were full of the story that Judge Parker had been assigned the case in his court, Judge Parker was man who the full of the law in every case he had judgement over. If the accused were found guilty they were unlikely to find one iota of compassion from this man, like his famous American namesake there wasn`t an ounce of mercy in the man especially when it came to capital offences.

The invasion happened unexpectantly, we woke up and found that several hundred thousand enemy troops had invaded our small country as to why we never knew. Our own troops had been stretched to limit for the few years fighting in other countries supposedly in the name of peace under the United Nations and NATO.

We soon arrived at the shops and the shopping spree started, mum was really enjoying herself choosing lingerie, dresses, skirts, tops etc all the clothing and accessories that a girl needs, we stopped for lunch at a place mum knew and was owned by another of her friends, was there any shop owner that she didn`t know ?.

Christmas Eve Day and there were still a lot of people doing their Christmas shopping or picking up thing that they had forgotten. The shopping centre was busy just as it was on normal day, except that is for one one small corner were a Santa`s Grotto was situated. The girls dressed as elves and a rather large man dressed as Santa Claus. The queues were long and noisy and the parents were in line with their youngsters after paying whatever the amount was to see Santa.

I don`t know what happened, one minute I was lying in a stinking cellar with a couple of broken ribs, arm and leg and several stitches in my head thanks to my ever loving parents and the next I`m living a totally different life.

I might be better if I explained what happened over the last couple of days.

I was walking pass the local church of some village miles from nowhere, the service seemed to have just started and being cold,tired and hungry I went inside hoping at least at to get some warmth into my body.

The tiny community consisted of around a dozen family units, everyone with only what they could carry and homeless, our group met up somewhere around the country. Hard times had hit all of us due to the Global Reccession, as we trekked around the country we came across an abandoned village, form the looks it had been a mining town but the mines had closed in the 1980's and with no other work in the area the people had packed up and left.

The next day found James and Annabel at school as usual, they were told not to mention the impending move to anyone, it wasn`t as if they had any friends that they could tell anyway.

James was back at the hospital the next day, it had been decided that they should try leg braces to make him more mobile, the company hired for the task of making the braces had been interviewed by both Dr Graves and Dr Wells. due to the fact that he still had to wear light bandaging the leg braces would have to be of a special design.

There weren`t many occupied houses left in the neighbourhood, most had people had sold up and left, Ajax Constuction had been offering well above the value of what the properties were worth but there were still a few that refused to sell even when strong arm tactics were used. the ones that had moved all had young children and had found jobs elsewhere.

The following day the meeting re-convened except this time there was only Rodger, John Stewart and Dr Wells present,