Chapter 2

I followed the girls to the café on a shopping mall called Above Bar Street. It wasn’t very far, and had everything you would need, especially banks. There was a branch of the one I used, just five minutes from the office.

We all had a light lunch, with me following the girls to try the salad. It would not have been a good look if I had ordered a burger. I did note the range that they had, for when I was here on my own. There! I was already thinking about being here for real.

This is a little story I wrote, before I started on a two-story set of serials. It introduces the reader to a place that appears in the following posts.
Marianne

The Flip Side

I didn’t get caught up in cross dressing until I was in my late teens. It was a slow, but inexorable process. I suppose it came about from my choice of work. I wasn’t good enough for university, so left school when I was sixteen.

Chapter 7

We were back home, and the roast was cooking, when Geraldine appeared. There were ghostly tears pouring down her cheeks.

Chapter 5

I took my phone off the charger and turned on the laptop. I looked up the Tate Modern and rang the number on the screen. When it was answered, I told them my name and that I had found some interesting drawings in the attic of the house I was living in and asked to speak to someone about authenticating them. When the girl asked me who the artist was, I told her that they were abstracts and some of a really beautiful woman, and that they all had PP in the corner. I added that there were notes in Spanish which I couldn’t read.

Chapter 3

The first time I went outside, she couldn’t get past the door. I went up to her room and put a couple of her rings in my pocket and tried again. This time, she was able to leave the house. I rode to the Duke, with her sitting in the sidecar. When we arrived, she disappeared after telling me that it would be best that I didn’t see her. It might be odd if I kept looking at an empty space.

In the bar, I saw the barmaid and she saw me.

“Hello, again. You are starting to be a regular.”

Chapter 1

When I was young, I was the butt of jokes in the family. My parents often threw up their hands and declared. “Marcie, you really have no idea!” My name is Marcello Gambino, son of Italian immigrants who had come to England to get away from the stifling weight of family history in the old country.

Chapter 4

Monday morning, I packed a bag and took the train to Nottingham. I found ‘The Kings’ and knocked on the door. Jake, himself, opened it and beckoned me in. It had the usual set-up with cameras and screens, but nothing was turned on at the moment, so there was no record of me arriving.

Chapter 2

“Why so long?” I asked.

“Look,” she said. “We can make you fool a guy inside a couple of days, but you will have to be able to fool girls in the club that you are one of them and they can spot a fake a mile away. Before we take you down you will be tested out here to see if you can pass the girl test.”

When I got to my underpants, I hesitated, and Jane laughed.

“Carry on, we’re all guys here at the moment.”

Chapter 3

After we had finished the phone call, we opened a new bottle of wine and Molly opened a packet of crackers and cut some cheese from a wheel in her pantry. We were more settled with each other than we had been in any time in our lives. I knew that I had been fundamentally different from our brother but had never considered that it would need two weeks of wearing skirts for me to understand why.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that it isn't as bad as a lot of people think it will be, as I have plenty to post this 2025.
Marianne

Chapter 1

Have you ever had that feeling that you were being watched? I was out of the office getting lunch at my favourite kebab outlet when I had that feeling, like someone had walked over my grave.

Chapter 5

We saw a lot of each other as the school year drew towards its end. Charles was like a puppy dog with me, ready to help me sit, ready to get me drinks, and I expect he would be ready to hump me given the chance. Needless to say, I didn’t give him that chance.

Chapter 3

As I put bra and panty sets in a drawer, she gave me the quick list of facts.

“The first thing is that this building is dedicated to giving our operatives a new appearance and background to fit in with the people they’re sent to look after. It’s no good to send an obvious westerner to keep an Arab safe. We do enough to allow them to do their job without attracting undue attention. Bancroft calls it the Drama School, and we teach men and women how to act, sometimes as the opposite sex.”

This story is the last one for the year. It does treat the main character in a more sensitive way, but she does develop a libido. By my
reckoning, since the beginning of 2020 and my first posting to BC, this is my one hundredth title.

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

I settled back into a routine. Every two weeks, I took the extra day to get together with Fraser. I had almost forgotten being abducted and forced into this life. To be honest, it didn’t matter to me how I became Jacquie, as I was enjoying my work. I was very good for the house, as all of my winnings were for the house, and I won a lot.

Chapter 1

“You’ve got to know when to fold, know when to hold, know when to walk away, know when to run.”

They might not have been the exact words of the song, but they were running on repeat in my mind. I wasn’t in a good place, right now, and I think it was all of my own doing, although I didn’t know why.

Chapter 7

Chapter 5

We all went to the shop to take our pick. It was sixteen well-dressed and made-up women who were picked up by a bus and taken to the restaurant that the four of us had been before. We were ushered to a private room where Khepri was waiting with his parents. There was also Abbas, his wife, Heba, her husband, as well as a few of the Museum administration and Gyasi with his wife.

Chapter 3

When the girls joined me, they had several bags. I bought them all a lunch and we acted as if we didn’t have a care in the world. While we were eating, I had a text from Abbas to go and see him in the afternoon. We took the bags back to the hotel and then took a taxi to the Museum. In his office, he sat us down and showed us some paperwork.

Chapter 1

On sunny days I would sit on my window seat and think about how I had arrived at this point. Had there been times when I could have changed the outcome? Had there been stages where I could have dug my heels in and shouted “No!’? Would it have made much difference? The important thing was, that when push came to shove, I allowed things to move along in the same direction, wondering what the results would achieve. I was now at the fitting end.

All Hello’s Night

Harold Benjimin Harrigan was a loner. He had been a loner all his life. At school, he had merged into the background but did well enough to apply for a few good jobs. He wasn’t a handyman but had one redeeming skill that set him apart. It was the inability to become bored with repetition.

He landed a job with the London City Council. It was probably because nobody else was interested in being in charge of the public toilet maintenance, mainly making sure that they were cleaned regularly and ordering the tons of toilet paper.

Chapter 7

Cate was brought home an hour later, after I had put Jenny to bed. I had changed out of my dress and into a nightie and gown. When she walked in, I made sure to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She went off to change and we sat with our wine, talking about anything but what had happened that evening.

Chapter 5

“Would you believe that I would never have been on that ferry unless an American colleague hadn’t suggested a walking holiday on Palma. I was planning a trip to the Black Forest, not the Black Sea!”

We both smiled and I reached out to hold her hand. For three days, we met in the mess and spent some time in the small gym, getting our strength back. Around us, life in the submarine carried on, with drills breaking the monotony. On the fourth day, everything changed.