The judge looked at his papers again and then looked at the man who ruined my life.

Working Girl ~ Life Goes On! 2

By Susan Brown

Chapter 2

We approached the docks at Southampton from a taxi. We had taken a train from home and picked up the taxi from the station. Both Sheila and I were a bit quiet. Understandably, I kept looking over my shoulder. Were we being followed? I didn’t know, but there was a constant prickling at the back of my head making me feel as if we were being watched.

I was thinking of the recent events and the fact that we nearly had to cancel our holiday.

It was only yesterday that we were back in court for the sentencing of ex Step Daddy. His slippery lawyers had done everything but appeal to the Queen for mitigating circumstances, diminished responsibility and other rubbish. The sentencing had been put off three times, but eventually he was back in the dock looking angelic, shamefaced, remorseful and anything else that his slimy, slick suited legal team had coached him on.

I sat up in the gallery with Sheila holding my hand for support.

The Judge came in and we all rose and then sat down again when he did.

He shuffled some papers, took a sip of water, gin, vodka or whatever and then the usher spoke.

‘Will the accused please stand.’

He stood up, looking meek, or a poor impression of it anyway.

The judge looked at his papers again and then looked at the man who ruined my life.

‘David Roberts, I have already said what I think of you and I will not elaborate on that. After seeing the various reports and receiving information from Australia regarding your activities there, I have come to the conclusion that you are a man who has no morals and are a danger to the public. I feel constrained to pass a sentence to reflect that. You callously murdered your wife and defrauded her child of the family inheritance. You are beneath contempt and I will show you as much mercy as you gave your wife. I have no hesitation in sentencing you to life in prison with a recommendation that you will spend a minimum of 25 years without possibility of parole. As stated before, there are charges that have been made against you in other countries and further sentences may apply at a later date. Is there anything you wish to say to the court?’

He looked over at me. Even dressed as I was, he somehow knew who I was.

‘I have only one thing to say and that is Tony, you are as good as dead!’

Everyone in the gallery gasped at the threat and the judge had to bang his hammer several times to get silence.

‘Take him away.’

I blanched as I looked at his hate filled face. As he was taken down, he didn’t take his eyes off of me. I felt dread to the bottom of my stomach. I wanted to be sick. What had I done to him and why did he feel this way about me?

I felt a tug at my arm.

‘Come on, lets get out of this.’

I followed Sheila out of the courtroom and in a few minutes, we were sitting drinking some restorative coffee.

‘What will he do?’

‘Toni, you don’t have to worry about him. He can’t get at you now.’

‘He can get someone else to kill me.’

‘Not without money and everything has been taken away from him.’

‘Still…’

‘Look, it’s not unusual for people to blurt things out like that as they leave court. I’ve seen it lots of times on TV. In fact it’s unusual if they don’t say something nasty. Now are you going to sit there feeling sorry for your self or are we going to pack for the holiday. We’re going tomorrow.’

So here we were going into the docks after a hell of a week. I saw just one ship at the docks and wasn’t very impressed.

‘Bit small isn’t it?’

The taxi driver laughed.

‘You’ve got to be joking haven’t you?’

We got a bit nearer and then squinting, I saw some ants on one of the decks; I suddenly realised that those ants were people and the ship was ginormouse!

‘Bugger me with a pitchfork!’ I said without thinking.

Sheila tutted me.

‘That is not the way a young lady speaks.

‘You do it all the time.’

‘Who said I was a lady?’

Point taken.

I looked up at the white sides of The Princess Chelsy.

There was countless decks reaching up to the sky and finished off with four huge funnels like candles on an impressive birthday cake. It would take all day for me to count all the portholes, so I didn’t bother.

The ship could carry nearly 4000 passengers had four ballrooms, a West End Theatre, countless cinemas and on nearly every passenger deck there was a disco and at least one bar. You could either get fit in the four huge swimming pools and six gyms or kill yourself with the incredible choice of food and drink in the multitude of restaurants and bars.

The taxi dropped us off at the reception area and in no time, we were being booked in.

There were what appeared to be hundreds of people milling around waiting to go through customs. There was a bit of a delay due to the heightened security. I was a bit worried about my passport as it said I was a him when I had been booked in as a her.

I pulled Sheila over to relatively quit corner and told her of my concern.

‘Look Sheila, I’m worried I might get caught and slung into jail or something and no way do I want a rectal examination.’

‘Don’t worry, it will be OK.’

‘But do I look homogenized enough to get away with it?’

‘Homogenized, oh you mean androgynous. Well you are wearing jeans and a tee shirt and your hair is in a ponytail. I think that you look a bit, shall we say effeminate but you will get away with it. You might want to pop in the ladies and take off your makeup, earrings, bracelets, bra and false boobs, other than that, you will be OK. As soon as we go on board, you can slip into the toilet and put everything back on again.’

‘Who’s idea was this?’

‘Yours.’

‘I told you I was thick, why didn’t you listen to me?’

‘What and loose the chance of a bit of nookie on board a ship full of men wearing sailor suits. Are you mad?’

‘You’re disgusting and you a nurse too.’

‘Look, I’ve tried doctors and I had a stab at airline pilots, if this doesn’t work, I’ll try the army and failing that, there is a nice rugby team down the road from us. I’m bound to find someone from the first fifteen that is up to my high standard.’

I shook my head and made my way over to the ladies. I had to queue; what a surprise, but eventually I shut myself in the cubicle and using a little mirror from my rucksack and some cold cream, I ungirliefied myself.

I took off my bra and false breasts and stuffed them in the rucksack. Then I flushed the loo and went to see where Sheila had gone to.

Luckily, she was chatting up a tall dark stranger, so I found her easily enough.

As I walked over; she was giving him a piece of paper and after kissing her on the cheek, he walked away with a smile on his face.

‘I can’t leave you for two minutes.’

‘One, you have been ten minutes, two, you can talk and C don’t confuse me. Now lets give you the Sheila once over.’

She looked at me from top to bottom like some sort of medical scanner, she then got a tissue from her bag and dabbed the corner of one of my eyes, it came away black.

‘You’ll do; right they are letting people through now, shall we go?’

‘OK,’ I said reluctantly.

‘Hang on, I nearly forgot,’

‘What.’

‘They are going to search the bags. What have you got in there that might show them you are something different?’

‘Different…oh.’

I blushed as after quickly looking around, I then transferred my boobettes and other stuff to Sheila’s bag.

‘Phew, that was close.’ I said with relief.

We joined the long queue and eventually, my bag was being zapped through the security x ray. The burly customs man rummaged about in my bag and then handed it back to me. I smiled nervously, but he didn’t notice. Then after Sheila got hers through without any bells and whistles, we went up to one of the passport control desks.

This was the bit I was dreading. I just knew that I had this sort of guilty; I’m a bomber or mad axe murderer face on. I handed over my passport and he scrutinised it a bit, looked at my face and then looked at the picture again. My heart started going all floppy on me and I was coming over all unnecessary.

‘You’ve changed a bit.’

I said, ‘yes,’ in my deepest manliest voice that sounded as if I had just had a lungful of helium — more Minnie Mouse than Rambo —then I just went red and shut up.

His lip curled slightly.

‘Hmm, you may want to get your passport photo updated, erm Sir.’

He stamped it, gave me a rather unsavoury sort of, what I’ve found on the sole of my shoe, look and I was on my way,

My heart was in my mouth and I lost no time in looking to see if there was any medical facilities I could find where I could quietly have my heart attack without too much fuss.

Sheila joined me and we walked up the gangplank or whatever the called it and into the bowels of the ship. I kept looking around. I still felt uneasy, as if I was being watched. Is this what it’s like if you forget to renew your TV licence?

As we went through the large metal doors, my jaw dropped.

To say my gasted was flabbered would be an understatement. We entered into a large hall like area. There were desks dotted about and men and women in pseudo-naval uniforms and shiny plastic smiles ushering people to the desks for processing.

Sheila steered me over to the left and we found ourselves in a posh ladies loo. Gilt and gold plated stuff abounded and more marble than Elgin ever had. This, I imagined, was what the Queen’s loo was like, though I heard a rumour that the Queen doesn’t need to use toilets, mind you, it was in The Daily Planet and they keep saying that Elvis is alive and working in McDonalds.

Luckily the place was empty and we went over to the huge mirror, tastefully backlit to catch all your nooks and crannies, and Sheila slapped some makeup on me. In less time than it takes to soft boil an egg (three minutes if you like it really runny) I was back to being Toni again. I disappeared into the loo; it had wooden seats so my bum didn’t have to get too cold.

I had a noisy wee (I hate that don’t you?) then, after pulling up my panties and jeans I put my bra and blancmonges back in the cups. I squeaked a bit as the cold pink breastie stuff touched my bare skin. As you can see I have the female terminal…ternimoil….erm, stuff off pat.

Soon, I was out of the loo and following Sheila to the nearest desk.

‘Hi, how may I help you today?’

‘We need to find our cabins.’

‘Of course Madam…’

‘It’s Miss.’

‘Sorry, it’s been a long day. Can I have your names please?’

Sheila told her.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, you are in the wrong place.’

‘WHAT!’

I slunked back a bit; not wanting to be in the fallout of a Sheila rant. I felt sorry for the girl, but you don’t mess with Sheila without body armour.

‘You misunderstand, Mad…erm…Miss; you are first class passengers, did you not here your names being called?’

Sheila climbed back down from the chandeliers.

‘No, we were in the Ladies.’

‘That’s quite understandable. Excuse me for a mo?’

She picked up a phone and whispered into it. Then putting it down again she turned to us.

A member of the crew will be here in a moment…aah there he is.’

We turned around and saw a young boy, scarcely older than me walk up. He was wearing a bellboy type uniform, covered with gold or more probably brass buttons. He had a trademark cheeky grin on his face and yes a cockney accent.

‘Ullo ladies. Would yer likes ter follow me?’

We followed as the cheeky chappie talked nineteen to the dozen at us. God knows what he was talking about, as I only understood every third word.

We went up in a lift along a corridor up another lift until I swear we would be out on the roof or something. I thought of the Titanic and how far some of the passengers fell for some reason but luckily, we got off at yet another corridor. I was very impressed at then splendour of everything. Deep red carpets deadened our footsteps. The walls had tasteful paper on them and the ceilings would not have looked out of place in the Sistine chapel.

We came to a door and the bellboy — who I believe was named Arfer or something, swiped a card through a slit thingy on the door frame. The door clicked and opened. Arfer let us in, waving us through and followed on behind.

The room was vast. In fact it was a series of rooms — what Arfer called, ‘a sweet.’

‘I’ll er leave yer to ave a look round. If yer needs a hand give us a buzz on the jellybone.’

‘Do you need a tip?’ said the ever-practical Sheila.

‘Naa. Gives us somefin before yer goes home. Same goes for all the crew. Bye!’

He left us to ourselves.

We were oohing and aahing as we saw that we had a room each with en suite bathrooms and baths that you could have held a syncronised swim in. Next to the each bathroom, were some walk in wardrobes bigger than my flat in the odious Davis’s tenement.

There were two reception rooms, each big enough told a seriously large party in and
after jumping up and down on the beds and looking in drawers and stuff, we walked over to a large curtain and I pulled the cord. The curtains swished silently back.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Sheila.

I said nothing as words failed me. All we could see was the docks and beyond — the ocean. The view from here was to die for. We were not overlooked and we could sit out there naked if we wanted as no one would see us. Not that I would of course.

‘I don’t understand.’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I paid for economy.’

‘If this is economy, what the hell is first class?’

‘No the girl with the plastic grin said we were in first class. I was to far out of it to realise.’

‘Perhaps we’ve had an upgrade?’

‘There’s upgrades and there’s this.’ I said waving my arms about.

We went back inside. It was Sheila who noticed.

‘What’s this?’ she said walking over to the side where there was a marble table, with some champagne and glasses on a silver tray. In front of the open bottle was a sealed envelope. It had ‘Toni.’ on the front.

I tore open the envelope. Inside was a handwritten note. Sheila looked over my shoulder as I read.

Dear Toni,

I hope you like the surprise and the liberty I have taken to upgrade you. My brother has caused you so much heartache and I am sorry for that. I hope that this slight deception helps a bit to take the pain away and for you and Sheila to enjoy your holiday. I have left Two Thousand Pounds each for you to spend on what you like and I will be seriously annoyed if there is anything left at the end of your cruise.

What I said to you before is true. I consider myself to be your uncle. I do not have many relatives and in the short time that I have known you, I have grown to love you almost as a father. If you can reciprocate by being my loving niece, all the better.

Have a nice time and when you have had your holiday, come back to work as Pippa and everyone else here is already missing you.

All My Love

Uncle Peter

I burst into tears as Sheila just said, ‘Awwww.’

To be continued...

Please leave a comment...thanks