The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1588 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The walk from Caroline’s ward up to the female surgical one where Julie and Simon should be, served to let me dump the emotions from the previous interview. Caroline was a free agent once they discharged her from hospital, she had somewhere to live until the end of March. I didn’t know how she would cope, or should that be he? Whatever they were, they were no longer my problem, neither was Jenny. Although I’d offered her a place with us, I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t try to accept it. I think our paths have diverged too much to make them even parallel. I’m obviously too generous before I think things through–must try to rectify that.

Once on female surgical, I simply followed the laughter and knew it had to be Julie’s bed. Sure enough, Simon was entertaining our daughter and some of the nurses with the story of me and a certain Ken Young over whose head I dumped a dish of trifle. He was the man who pretended he couldn’t get funding for a sex-change op but was actually taking the piss–he was angry about the money being spent on such surgery and just making a noise about it. I saw him in a cafe and ordered a trifle which I then deposited on his head.

“Ah, the trifle queen,” announced Simon as I arrived at Julie’s bed.

“But why did you tip the trifle over his head, it’s not as if you needed a sex-change, is it?” The nurse looked me up and down carefully.

“I thought he was being a pig, and he disturbed my lunch talking about people as if they were objects. I offered my opinion in trifl-e-cate.”

“Very funny,” she laughed and went back to her duties.

I gave Julie a hug and a kiss. “How does it feel?” I asked her knowing that I’d not had much trouble at all I hoped she wasn’t either.

“It’s okay, I took some painkillers a while back–it’s missing out on food is the problem.”

“Yeah, does tend to get to you by the third week,” I offered casually.

“Three weeks? You said one,” Julie almost squealed.

“So, I was lying.” I shrugged, it is only one week without solids, but I couldn’t resist winding her up.

“You told me it was only a week she’d be off food–that’s all you were,” Simon was thinking out loud–I’d have to have words about this, if he starts thinking, we could all be in trouble.

“How’s Caroline?” asked Julie.

“She’s doing very well, or he is.”

Julie looked very concerned, “He?”

“Yeah, he or she is doing alright, but will be going back to Bristol once he’s discharged.”

“But I thought Jenny and she were coming back to stay with us?” Julie was a little out of the loop on this one.

“No–as far as I know, Jenny will be in hospital for some time and Caroline is going back to Bristol.”

“Why?”

“Julie, it’s a very long story.”

She looked at her watch, “You’ve got the best part of an hour–so spill.”

Simon made himself comfortable and I drew up a chair from an empty bed across the ward. I looked round the place, in Julie’s four bed bay, she was the only patient. Oh well, it made it more private.

“Okay, you sure you want all this?” I asked and she nodded. “No one comes out of it very well, including yours truly, or perhaps that should be especially, me.”

“Why, Mummy, you did your best,” protested Julie.

I hushed her, “I saw Jenny in hospital and on a whim asked if I could take her home for the Christmas weekend as I thought it would help her and resolve some of the pain she was feeling. I couldn’t have got it more wrong had I tried. She was lonely and so was Caroline. I let them get together, in fact encouraged it because two lonely souls could console each other. Not thinking it through, partly because I thought that Jenny was into blokes and so Caroline wouldn’t be of interest other than as a friend. I was right, she wasn’t of interest, but that didn’t stop her falling for Jenny in a big way. Then Jenny got naughty and began causing Caroline to think about reverting back to being a man.”

“But that’s stupid, if you’re a woman you can’t go back to being the man you never were in the first place, can you?”

“I agree totally, Julie, but Caroline was well and truly hooked, and it was partly my fault.”

“No it wasn’t–they were both adults,” Julie said firmly.

“Not quite, I think Jenny had changed since her humiliation and then accident. She was now looking to revenge herself on any male she could find, and Caroline walked into her sights–her gun-sights. Caroline being even more of an ingénue than you are, was a lamb to the slaughter.”

“What’s an angie-new?” asked Julie and Simon nearly fell of his chair.

“An innocent,” he supplied.

“So why didn’t she say that?” Julie protested to Simon.

“Because she’s a smart arse,” he retorted.

“Why is it wrong to use appropriate words if you know them, it’s not as if I was talking in Greek.”

“No, Babes, it was most definitely French.”

“Sacré bleu,” I gasped.

“Show off,” called Julie.

I shrugged, “You’ve either got it or you haven’t,” for effect I shrugged again.

Julie shook her head. “Well you haven’t, Mummy.”

“Doh,” I folded my arms and pouted. Simon sat there and laughed like a drain–sometimes I hate that man.

We chatted on with Julie until visiting time was over and I collected her dirty nightdress and gave her the clean ones. Her iPad was working fine, and she had watched some stuff on BBC iPlayer using her headphones with the pad.

I was more a user of laptops, especially as a net book will do more than an iPad in terms of running other bits and pieces like a dongle or a disc drive. My net book was also lighter than the iPad. Still, I suppose it’s about personal choice, and Julie was into iPods and iPads and such things, I wasn’t.

We kissed and hugged and so did Simon and her, it was nice to know they had a good relationship. As we left she said again, “I really can’t believe I’m a proper woman now–I’m so pleased.”

“Well that’s all down to your dad.” I said, apportioning praise where it was deserved.

Blushing like a pink lady apple, Simon replied, “I think it’s down to your mum, all I did was sign the cheque. She organised it all.”

“Well thank you both, then.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I’m glad the worst is over,” I lied, the worst was yet to come when they shove a fence post into a small cavity, but why spoil things for her?

“So it’s all over with Caroline then?” Simon half asked as we strolled back to the car.

“I think so, in some ways I’m glad it’s happened because I suspect she wasn’t quite as transsexual as she might have thought.”

“I find that very odd,” he said.

“Odd?” I echoed.

“Yeah, I mean you’re either transsexual or you’re not. You either want tits and a fanny or you don’t–surely you know if you do or not, don’t you?”

“I did, not everyone does. One of the unfortunate things about being part of a group is getting caught up with the excitement of others. It only takes one transsexual to be in a group of cross-dressers and half of them catch it and want to go full time and have surgery and hormones. It can destroy relationships or marriages which were just about on the edge of coping with the occasional cross-dressing.”

“You think Caroline was just a cross-dresser?”

“I don’t know what she is or was, except I don’t think she was a full transsexual, or isn’t yet. Don’t ask me what she is, because I don’t know.”

“Unlike Julie and you?”

“Um–I like to think we’re women, or Julie will be once we get the forms done and have her reassigned legally as well as physically.”

“Hmm,” he sighed to himself, “It’s funny, I really never thought of you as anything but, nor Julie, or even Trish and Billie, but Caroline–something about her that didn’t quite fit.”

“So why are you asking me?”

“I wondered if you’d picked up on it too. You had, but Julie hadn’t.”

“I’ve been about a bit more than Julie–Trish had picked up on it without recognising it.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me,” he said and bleeped his key at the car.