CHAPTER 12
We sat in silence for a few minutes as my mother’s story ran down. I noticed her look at me, really look at me, and there was something else there, something unspoken, and she seemed to shake herself and carry on.

“After he died, my Pete pulled right back from me, just stopped. I had had to work really hard to keep him from attacking your father, Laura, but the death drove him from me. Three years I had to watch him in the town, unable to touch him, wanting him beside me and still crying with loss from my child’s death, his murder.

“That’s what I think, you know. That’s what I call it when I cry at night. And Pete would, or could, do nothing to help, and then his wife died…sorry Peter, your mother died, and you were gone, both of you, off to York, and that was it for my dreams.

“And my glass is now empty, and I have said too much, and not enough, and I need to go to bed and start again tomorrow. Peter, do you have any idea how much you remind me of your father, how much joy you bring to my life by your presence here?”

Pete’s voice was bleak. “And what about my mother? How did she feel about all this…this love and stuff? Did she wish you both well?”

I could feel him tense, and for a moment I thought he was going to throw his glass, so I took it from him and pulled him to me, and his head lay on my breast as his fingers dug into my shoulders and he shuddered, just shook like someone freezing. I found myself gently rocking him again, until he calmed down. My mother came and knelt before us, her hands on his knees.

“Your mother was sick, Peter. She was totally obsessed with her shop, even to the exclusion of feeding you, Pete had to do that. She was almost like John used to be, but worse.”

‘Used to be’? Had I been worse than I was, I asked myself, and answered the question immediately: if I had not improved, the question would have passed me by. Worse than I had been was not a reassuring idea. Pete kept on.

“But you didn’t think to help her?”

“We tried, Peter, how we tried, it was one of the things that brought us together, if you can believe that. We were going to get her somewhere to stay where she could be treated, perhaps helped to deal with the compulsions, but we were too late. She got that gas fire in for the flat that last winter, and she looked so alive when I found her”

Mum reached out and took Pete’s chin, forcing him to look at her.

“Yes, Peter, when I found her. Who do you think was going round with food for her larder, and hot meals, and doing her laundry while the customers drifted away? Do not look at me as some predatory man-eater, out to steal your dad. I did everything I could to help him, AND her, and when we failed we comforted each other, and he stayed with her till she died. Don’t you dare sit there and accuse me of stealing your dad and hurting your mother! I loved your father.”
She drifted away again. “I still do, you know, but after everything he just had to leave, he said, and that was it, until you came home, and I could feel my dreams again instead of my nightmares”

She moved her hand from his chin and stroked his cheek. He continued to look her in the eyes, but the hard stare was fading.

“Mrs Evans, how could I ever hate you? But please remember, you weren’t the only loser back then. I lost my mother…”

“And yet you still gave to us, to me and my Laura. You were the only other person that understood her. And afterwards, when it all changed, you stayed her friend until you left, and you gave John three years of love at a bad time. How could I ever hate YOU, Peter?”

I was beginning to realise how much strength Pete had developed from his chair when my hand started to hurt.

“Pete, let up a bit, you are crushing my fingers”

He dropped my hand, and lifting his arm pulled me into a cuddle. I found myself with my head on his shoulder, my arm across his chest, hearing his heart hammering far too fast. That is when I had my out of body experience.

I do not mean some odd mystical nonsense, but a real feeling of detachment. I wasn’t blanking out into what I called a fugue, I was finding deep objectivity, as if these two were not my mother and my best friend, only friend, but two characters to analyse for motive and emotion, and there I was with them, another construct to break down. It felt profoundly different, though. It was more like watching a play than my usual pattern-seeking; I wasn’t looking for technical features, but for plot. Questions were piling up unanswered but demanding, children tugging at my skirts.

Metaphor. There I go again, out onto unknown seas.

What exactly did Mum mean, ’understood her’? More pressingly, why did I feel so comfortable in a dress and other things, in the arms of a bloody man? How the hell was he making it seem so natural for him to be holding some transvestite as if she were his lover? His woman, to be blunt?

The only thing that was screaming out at me from the scene was the fact that it was all so wrong, there was a very large elephant in the room that the other two were ignoring, and that was the fact of my true nature. Or was I missing something myself?

“Mum, what is it that you are not telling me?”

That was enough to confirm to my own satisfaction that there was more. She sat back on her heels, looking sharply at me.

“I see you are healing, my darling, but you have to trust me. There are things I will tell you later, when I am sure you are strong enough, but not now. Not yet. Peter, would you be a dear, and just remind her of some of your time together. I think you have understood that she has a few….small difficulties in remembering.”

He squirmed a bit to get his glass for a refill, and we naturally seemed to sink deeper into the settee and the cuddle when it was done. I felt profoundly disturbed by the way my body memory seemed to be taking over, and at the same time it seemed so natural. He caressed my cheek, and began to speak softly to the top of my head as I lay on his chest.

“You were a lovely, happy kid, Lor, when I met you, a real talent for invention. You know the way some children can take anything, a stick, a cardboard box, and it becomes a toy, something magical, the key to another world? That was you. Everything became a story, an adventure, and you read so much there were always ideas from other people as well, and you were never bored or boring because the world was so bright for you.

“And I have already told you the games you preferred, and the stories that spoke to you, and if that doesn’t say enough about how I understood you, then look at how you are now.

“All that stopped, after that night when you went to hospital, and when you came back you weren’t there behind your eyes. It was like that joke from Sharon, you were a pod person, you weren’t my best friend any more. I watched your back for four years, and I tried to liven you up, and then I had to leave….”

Mum interrupted him. “Peter, we have talked enough for one night. I do not want to overdo it, I have already told you things I thought I would take to my grave…

“Darling, help him to his bed and up to yours. We will have a family day tomorrow. Peter, when were you last on the Island?”

“Oh, decades ago!”

“Then we have a plan.. Ferry to Fishbourne, and a drive round, and dinner at Yarmouth.”

She stood up, seeming to creak slightly from sitting so long on her heels, and I sat up as well, feeling an odd reluctance to move away. I did as instructed, awaiting Pete outside the bathroom until he was done and then helping him to his nest in the conservatory before heading up to my own room.

He kissed me on the cheek before I left him.

I stood awhile in my dress, breasts heavy on my chest, trying to sort my feelings. I don’t mean emotions, though they were there, I mean literal feelings, as I felt like someone trying on a new skin. I was squeezing my hands into the fingers, pulling the eyes up my face so I could see. That is a very odd thing to say, I know, but everything I was touching and seeing was off, skewed from what I had become used to.

For starters, I was sexually aroused.
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My mother woke me with a cuppa the next day, and a hearty “Morning, Laura dear, I am making breakfast, it will be ready in about half an hour”

If that was not a hint, I don’t know what would be. It seemed she wanted me to dress for breakfast. Bugger. I leapt into the shower and spent a large part of the half hour depilating before slobbing into a long skirt and sweatshirt. With breasts.

I had spent my time in the shower trying to work out my situation, especially with the erection I had experienced in the night. It had been so insistent, so painfully hard…

There is no way to say this other than directly, and I do not want to get excessively prurient, but I will admit I masturbated to ejaculation with mental images of Pete behind my eyes. That was not good. I do not mean that it was not pleasurable, I mean that there were changes going on in my life that were disturbing enough and I wanted NO MORE THANK YOU!

To discover I was gay, or bi, or whatever, was just the icing on top of everything else. And now my mother wanted me dressed for the daytime.