It turned out that Joe had harboured no suspicions regarding the biological sex of my sibling. He was certainly surprised by the news when I told him on Friday as he called round to the house after work, but was much less fazed than I might have imagined. Once he was sure that I wasn’t just trying to wind him up, he simply shrugged his shoulders.

‘That poor kid, she really has been through a lot recently, but if that’s what she wants in life, then good luck to her.’

‘Joe, you must promise me that you won’t tell anyone else about this, particularly as she is still so young. It’s just the sort of story the Reading Chronicle would love to publish on their front page complete with lurid headlines and references to the recent loss of her parents. If that were to happen, it would bring out a rash of social workers, and convince my mother that I am as irresponsible as she always feared.’

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes, giving me one of those smiles that make me go weak at the knees.

‘Don’t worry Jen, I promise not to tell anyone about your sister. What she does with her life is entirely her business.’

It is just my luck; for once I get to go out with a decent guy just at the time we’re both planning to move to opposite ends of the country.

I couldn’t stop myself from giving him a hug and a kiss, even if I did have to stand on tip-toe to do so.

‘What was that for?’ he asked.

‘It was to show my appreciation that you didn’t try to say something funny at Julie’s expense, and also that you continue to refer to her as my sister. Some guys would have been quite nasty about her once they’d discovered her origins.’

‘Only those who are unsure of their own gender identity and perhaps also a little jealous of her courage,’ he replied in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Julie has always struck me as being a very attractive young lady, and if I were a year or two younger I might even fancy her myself.’

He said this with a twinkle in his eye, but I attempted to stick my elbow into his rib cage, just the same, although in the event it ended up in his gut due to our height difference. Once he’d regained his breath, I proceeded to explain the purpose of my proposed evaluation. He smiled at the idea, but seemed interested by the concept.

‘So will you be prepared to help us with our evaluation exercise and give us the ‘blokey’ point of view?’ I asked.

‘I’ll do my best to help, but there will be two conditions.’

‘What are they?’ I asked.

‘Firstly, I’ll need to see how Julie copes with everyday life outside of her house and how she gets on with other people, if I am going to do the task properly. What about my suggestion that we should treat our younger sisters to a trip to the cinema some time? It would be a good opportunity for me to see how she manages.

‘You won’t tell your sister about Julie,’ I said, not as a question but as an absolute command.

‘No I won’t say anything, although Clare can be quite observant. If she makes any comment about Julie, I’ll deny all knowledge and assure her that she’s imagining things. I’ll also let you know afterwards.’

‘Alright then, if Julie and Clare are agreeable we can all go and see the latest Harry Potter film tomorrow night if you like. So what’s your other condition?’

‘That you provide me with a second copy of your questionnaire and that I get to evaluate you at the same time.’

‘Why would I want to take a ‘girlyness’ test?’

‘Because I think there is something of an identity struggle going on inside you as well. You’ve grown up as this rebel and tomboy, but I suspect that having to look after your kid sister has brought out a softer, more feminine side to your character, which you never knew was there. I also believe that you‘re just a little bit frightened by that discovery,’ he said giving me an inscrutable smile.

’What is this guy, some kind of amateur psychiatrist?’

I tried to give a dismissive sigh, whilst simultaneously blushing at what he’d just said.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Alright, I suppose so, but we’ll have to find a way of anonymizing the results, otherwise I may not want to talk to you ever again.’

Julie had been busy upstairs whilst this was happening, drawing up a list of her mother’s possessions with a view to valuing them for inheritance tax purposes. She was entering them on to the computer as I entered the room. She turned to look at me

‘Have you told him?’

I nodded.

‘So how did he react?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Why not come down and find out, he’s sitting in the lounge.’

‘Oh God,’ she responded with sudden trepidation. ‘Do I look alright?’

‘Of course you do,’ I answered smiling at the idea — there were hardly any occasions these days when she failed to come home from work looking anything short of gorgeous. ‘Now come downstairs and talk to Joe, after all he will be carrying out an assessment of you over the next few days.’

She followed me downstairs, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt as she did so.

‘Hi Joe, I gather you now know my little secret,’ she said, clearly trying to sound more confident than she was.

He got up and walked over to her, taking both her hands in his.

‘I’m afraid so Julie, but I want you to know that I am totally cool about it and I’m glad to have been taken into your confidence. I’m just sorry that I won’t be around to see you develop fully into a lovely young woman.’

With that he kissed her on the cheek. Julie went bright red and didn’t answer, but I could see that she was pleased by his reaction.

Eventually I left them talking together whilst I went to the kitchen and hurriedly threw something together for us all to eat.

Over dinner we arranged to go to the cinema the following evening, Joe having checked first that it was alright with his sister as well. He didn’t stay long after dinner though as he often met up with a group of guys for a drink on Friday evenings. This suited me as I had plenty of things to do. I therefore saw him to the front door.

‘Thanks for being such a great guy,’ I said.

‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ he replied kissing me. Then he added as an afterthought, ‘but of course you’ll have to await the results of my evaluation for my detailed comments.’

I stuck my tongue out at him and he left laughing. I went back into the house and found Julie in the kitchen clearing up after the meal.

‘That went much better than I imagined,’ she said. ‘I always assume that people will go ballistic when they discover about me and either want to thump me or else call the authorities and have me carted away to a psychiatric hospital.’

‘Joe is a great guy, and I believe we can rely upon his discretion, but it may not always be the case, so I think you’ll need to continue to watch your step.’

‘I know,’ she replied sadly, ‘but it is nice to know that there are a few people around who do not regard me as some kind of freak’.

I gave her a re-assuring hug.

‘Nobody who really knows you could think of you as being anything other than a lovely young woman. It is just a question of your having to deal with the prejudices of the ignorant and bigoted. It may seem difficult now, but it will get easier, particularly once you are an adult.’

After dinner Julie returned to her calculations and went to my bedroom I where I drew up a revised version of my evaluation plan. In this case my sister and I would each submit ourselves to the opinions of three others: Joe, Sue and I would evaluate Julie’s looks, her demeanour and personality. Julie would then take my place and the three of them would evaluate mine. Sue would receive the questionnaires, aggregate the scores, and record the comments in such a way that they could not be attributed to any one individual. I printed out the relevant copies for all the participants. I would hand over those for Joe when we met the next night to go to the cinema, and I would find an opportunity to give one to Susie the following day.

Julie was not quite ready for me when I arrived to pick her up after work the following day, so I got to have a brief chat with Susie, out of public earshot. My sister had already told her that we were all going out to the cinema together, and also how Joe had reacted to the discovery. I therefore used the opportunity to outline my revised evaluation plan and hand over the documents.

‘Are you sure you want to inflict this on yourself? It could be really embarrassing. What would you do if you end up scoring lower than your sister?’ commented Susie.

‘In some aspects I would expect to perform less well than her and wouldn’t be ashamed of doing so,’ I replied defiantly. ‘She already knows a lot more about makeup and hair styles than I do, but I would also hope to be able to demonstrate in other respects that there’s a lot more to being a young woman than the clothes you wear and how you do your hair.’

‘Alright, I’ll co-operate, but I hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘There aren’t many people whose opinion I would respect in such a matter, but for some reason I do trust you three to be honest — you never know, I might even learn something about myself.’

‘You might well do so,’ she echoed. ‘When do you want them back.’

‘Julie and I are driving to Nottingham on Monday and should be back Wednesday night. It would be nice to have them back on Thursday.’

Joe’s sister, Clare, turned out to be a typical fourteen year old girl, just beginning to discover the powers that would naturally accrue to her as an attractive young woman. She seemed to have an enthusiasm for young men in general, although, as far as I could gather, she considered most of the specimens that she came into contact with at her school to be lower forms of animal life. She was also quite scathing about most of the adults in her life whilst apparently retaining an affection for, and admiration of, her big brother. For some reason she also seemed to like Julie and myself as well.

Julie, who’d previously had very little contact with girls of her own age, seemed to slip quite easily into ‘teeny talk’ mode. (I suspected that Julian had been furtively observing his female classmates, wishing all the time that he could join in their conversations.) In no time at all they were comparing notes about boy bands and the actors playing Harry Potter and his friends. I squeezed Joe’s hand and gestured with my head to get him to notice their animated conversation. He ostentatiously took a notebook from his pocket and wrote something down.

‘You’d better not do that about me, if you wish to retain the use of both of your testicles,’ I whispered.

He gave me a cheeky grin and then wrote something down on the next page of his book.

I think we all enjoyed the film. I’d rather grown up with the Harry Potter stories and regarded the characters as my contemporaries, it was odd therefore to witness my little sister and her new young friend discussing them in the way that Susie and I used to do. Julie gave me no real cause for concern during the course of the evening, and I didn’t even worry when she and Clare went off to the ‘Ladies’ together.

Joe invited us back to his house for a coffee after the film. I was a little hesitant to do so as I have a horror of being paraded in front of the parents of my boyfriends like some prize heifer. However Joe assured me that his mum and dad were out and would not be back for some time. Clare promptly took Julie up to her room to discuss nail varnish, pop videos or some other equally weighty topic, so I joined Joe on the sofa, and handed over the evaluation.

‘If Julie can survive up there for the next hour without being discovered, I don’t think she will have too many problems in the future,’ commented Joe.

‘So do you think she’ll pass alright then?’

‘I think so,’ he replied. I’m not quite so sure about her sister though,’ he replied smiling, then put his arm round me.

‘Watch it, big boy, or you may just find yourself singing soprano in the choir next Sunday,’ I replied snuggling up to him.

When I came to filling in my copy of Julie’s assessment the following morning I found the task to be quite challenging. I didn’t want to undermine her growing self-assurance, yet at the same time I didn’t want to give her false confidence and so make her reckless. It was a fine balance intended for the time when I would no longer be around to keep an eye on her.

She had certainly created a good impression when we went out the previous day and Joe had confirmed to me by the phone that his sister had made no comment about Julie other than she seemed to be ‘quite cool’. Looking through the criteria there was no doubt that my sister would score quite well across the board, although some of that was due to padding, false hair, or her developing skills with cosmetics. However, she also seemed to be making an effort with her body language and voice, and Susie and I had gently nudged her fashion sense so that there were now fewer incongruities in her presentation than there had been at the outset. No doubt living with me and working in an all female environment was helping in this respect. I really couldn’t think of any area where I would now describe her appearance or presentation as either ‘manly’, or ‘boyish’, although there were a number of girls of my acquaintance where these adjectives might reasonably apply. There were certainly aspects of her presentation that might be described as ‘androgynous,’ but equally this adjective might be applied to myself as well. So why was I being so paranoid about allowing her a little more freedom to go out and meet people as a young woman? I suppose it was that I was really beginning to care about my young sister and didn’t want to think that any harm or unhappiness should befall her after I left.

This realisation brought me back to thinking about my planned departure date which was just over five weeks away. I even wondered whether I might defer entry to University for a year, until after Julie was settled and her financial affairs were sorted. But would I be any happier about leaving her on her own as a seventeen year old than I was about leaving her at sixteen, and what would I say to Mum and Dad? Also the new Government was talking about implementing a steep rise in University tuition fees beginning in 2012, which would wipe out much of my inheritance, and in any event I’d been looking forward to leaving the Thames Valley and going to Uni for the last few years. I may not have liked the idea but told myself that I would just have to harden my heart and leave Julie to fend for her self as best she could. After all, two months ago I’d never even met her and was barely aware that she existed. It was with these sombre reflections that I completed her evaluation as honestly as I could and added a few comments about what aspects of her appearance and presentation struck me as being not quite right or otherwise unusual in a sixteen year old girl, and how she might remedy them, before emailing it to Susie.

I felt pretty depressed and guilty for the rest of that Sunday. Joe was out playing cricket again, Susie was seeing her boyfriend and Julie was busy filling in forms on her computer. I felt so flat that I even thought about driving over to Bracknell to see Mum and Dad although I eventually decided against it. After all, I’d seen them only a fortnight before and didn’t want to have to answer any more questions about our trip to Nottingham on Monday or indeed risk saying anything about our planned week in Thailand at the end of the month.