CHAPTER 1
“Jill, you up yet? Busy day today, get that arse out of the bed!”

“Such sweetness in the morning!”

I buried my head back in the pillow, and noticed the marks. I really, really had to get used to cleaning my face before bed. I didn’t use much, just a bit of stuff round the eyes, mostly, but I could just about guarantee that I would be seeing a raccoon in the mirror.

My head needed a shave again. I had decided that if I was going to have holes in my hair, then I might as well go the whole hog. Wigs are hot things, and another layer of hair just made them hotter. A few passes with the razor, and I was left with enough stubble to stop it sliding off. I stumbled to the bathroom as the smell of bacon hit my nostrils, and yes, I was looking at a bald raccoon with a gold stud in each ear. Arse. I started the clean-up just as the doorbell went. There was a bit of muttering, and then the door slammed as Larinda called out again. “Jill, it’s here! Want me to bring it in?”

“Aye, please, pet”

Finally. I had never bothered with wigs much in the past, in the same way as I avoided bras. I had had nothing to put in a bra, and as I never went out I had had no need for anything to cover up my baldness. That had changed with Larinda’s arrival into my life, and I had used two different artificial wigs for the necessary finishing touch. This was different; this was her engagement gift to me, a lace-cap wig in human hair. I tried my best to avoid thinking about the circumstances that lead girls to sell their hair, and lifted it clear of the box.

Light brown, slightly wavy, and just about long enough to hit my shoulder blades. And expensive. I found myself doing a quick inventory of my appearance, with some winces at the memories.

Leg wax. Ouch.
Arm wax. Ouch
Back wax. Very ouch.
Chest wax…we should really have considered what six months on oestrogen would do to the sensitivity of my nipples before starting that particular game. Then again…

Larinda had shaken her hand afterwards, to get the blood flowing where I had squeezed it, and then smiled, leant down and whispered “Want me to kiss them better later?”

Now that memory, that was definitely a pleasant one. Now, when did I have my next appointment with the needle woman? Three days’ time…I needed to shave. Give her two days’ worth of stubble to work on, even though there was so much less of it now. Another happy memory: compensation from the court case had gone a little way towards paying that particular bill, so my nasty little bigot had ended up contributing to my electrolysis. Only fair, to be truthful; he had started things. Let him help with ending them. I wandered down for breakfast with my new hair, and my fiancée was just dishing it up, wrapped in her oversized dressing gown.

“Tuck in, lover, but don’t get used to this. Still got to slim you down, got to see about dresses, yeah?”

“Love, I have told you: there is no way on Earth I am going to get into some bloody meringue. Smart suit, that’s my bit, just with, you know, a skirt to it, aye?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, and don’t expect me to be dressing up. Lady in red, that’ll be me. Always wanted to do the full Kate Bush thing, yeah?”

“What?”

“So bloody eloquent as well as lacking in taste! ‘The Wedding List’, what else?”

She laughed. “I’ll go with the colour; don’t need the extras. Want my spouse alive!”

She turned serious. “I know this ain’t exactly a conventional do, right, what with two rings, and two skirts and stuff, but at least this way it’s bloody legal. While you still have your bits we can make sure they can’t take nothing away from us if it turns to ratshit, yeah?”

She mellowed a bit. “What you got today, anyway?”

“Couple of restaurants, one Indian, one Nepalese”

“Well, take some cheap hair, don’t want it all stinky. Remember, the boys are down tonight, and we’re cooking, so it’s busy busy. Good job I get the staff discount”

That had been something I had taken great pride and joy in. My lover had been so tied up in her inferiority that she had never looked beyond the horizons she had imposed on herself, and personal assistant/receptionist was about the highest she had ever thought she could achieve, where ‘PA’ actually meant office dogsbody. The pride came from the fact that she had simply gone out and done something without seeking approval first. The joy came from the fact that she had understood me well enough that she knew she did not need my approval, and she was thus doing very well as a trainee manager for a branch of a national chain of supermarkets. To some people, that may sound like a rather low level of ambition, but it was a start, and there was a new sparkle to her eyes and bite to her conversation. She was no longer a conduit, someone to be told what to do, but a decision-maker in her own right. I pitied her ex-husband; was he somehow mentally or visually impaired not to have seen what he had? Never mind: his loss, my gain.

No. Our gain. I knew better than to do myself down, for what had improved in our lives was driven by both of us, not just the one. We worked well together, that was the truth. One of those moments, then, when I hated the hormones I was taking, because the mood swings, and the tears, were too frequent, and I was glad I had done nothing thus far beyond cleaning my face.

“What’s the plan, love?”

“Alec’s picking them up from the airport; be in about five thirty. Round here for seven, drinkies, and I’ve got a pork joint in. If I start it when I get home, should be ready for seven thirty. Can’t be arsed with doing a proper pud, though. Want me to pick up some frozen crap for afters? Posh ice cream or something?”

I had a thought. “No, tell you what, pet. Just get enough pear halves, extra big ones, for two each, aye, and some chocolate sauce, oh, and if they have any some fresh raspberries, and a bag of grapes, small as you can, not the big ones, aye?”

That morning was typical of my life just then. I got into a trouser suit and onto the hybrid, trouser legs rolled up just enough, and cycling shoes with SPD cleats over my knee-high stockings. Moderate heels in the pannier along with work kit, and out into the town. A few stares as I passed the general public, but then again I was no longer a mystery. The trial had seen to that, and we had adopted the blindingly obvious strategy of going to the press before they came to us. Front page of the local paper, inside page in a few nationals, the odd imagined comment of “Oh, I think I know him/her/it” and the excitement died down remarkably quickly. So, I pedalled away, straight to the Indian, avoiding seeing the kitchen, and down to it.

Three hours later, trying not to rub my eyes, and I was out the door. Not much, just a few private claims, and a suspicion that the declared take might be just a tad too small, but then after the slapping MAC had given to Khan a year and a bit ago word had got round and there was almost a deluge of honest restaurateurs. There was a thought.

“Larinda Simmons”

“Hiya, pet, just had a thought: could we squeeze the other John in? Don’t want him feeling a bit left out, like”

“Don’t see why not, lover. Want me to give him a bell? Then I can pick up the necessaries. Joint’s plenty big enough”

“That’ll be great, pet. Just getting a bite and then on to Reigate. I’ll hop the train back, assuming no problems with the visit. Oh, and get some vanilla ice cream as well”

“Laters, then!”

Sod diet, I had fish and chips sitting under the Reigate tunnel out of the rain which had just started, and then whizzed through the Gurkha place, which was being a little too naughty. I noted down as much of the menu split as I could find, and then the drinks purchase, ready for a drinks/food exercise back at the office, and then found my way through heavier rain to the station, soaking my hair and trousers. The only good thing about a wig.

Home and change from the wet stuff, and this time into a dress, what there was of my breasts pushed up with a couple of chicken fillets, and the cleavage was quite adequate, thank you, as my earlier heaviness had translated into saggy bits on my chest which were slowly filling out once more. How could I have thought, ever imagined, that this couldn’t work? Friends, support, it was all there.

I set the pork going as instructed by the woman I loved and sometimes feared, and at half past five she was home, checking her watch as she entered the house.

“Roast on?”

“Aye”

“Potatoes, carrots, parsnips?”

“All peeled”

“We have about forty-five minutes, then, before we need to change”

“Pardon?”

“You are dense sometimes. Forty five minutes before we have to dress don’t mean we can’t undress early. Upstairs, you!”

Afterwards…afterwards we showered together. I was first downstairs, with a touch of panic as I remembered I had asked for ice cream, and slammed it into the freezer just in time. Parboil the potatoes…I caught sight of my left hand, ring in place, and smiled. Larinda had justified it on the basis that, firstly, it made my hand definitely, feminine, then that it would keep random (blind?) men from pestering me, and finally that she had bleedin’ asked me so it was her job to do so. How could I refuse such trainee managerial logic?

Roasting pan out, decant some of the pork fat into it and roll the part-cooked potatoes around in it together with the parsnips, and into the top of the oven. Water on for carrots. Shit!

“How, pet? We’ve forgotten apple sauce!”

“No, you have forgotten it, I haven’t. Jar in the bottom of my bag”

Ah. “Just going to start preparing the dessert, aye? Needs to be in the fridge a bit”

I filled each half-pear with alternate layers of ice cream and crushed raspberries, then set them open-side-up in the fridge. Time…oh shit, people would be there soon.

“How you doing, love?”

“Just about done. You?”

“Need to get dressed, if you can do my face”

“You’ll have to do your own; John Wilkins is here”

“Eh?”

“I can see him from the window, leaning against a wall over the road”

Once more he had slipped, it seems. So anxious to be on time he was achingly early. I passed her on the stairs as she went for the door.

“I switched the kettle on, pet”

“Clothes laid out for you on the bed, yeah? I’ll go and collect our little man”

I heard the door bang as I entered the bedroom, her heels ticking down the path, and I looked at what was left for my delectation. A dark blue dress, size 18, with a cross-over front that allowed it all to hang in folds and pleats to cover my shape. Underwear, functional and comfortable, as were the tights and the kitten-heeled court shoes. Plain, elegant; nothing like that disaster of ‘sexy dressing’ she had tried so long ago.

A basic face. One simple necklace of gold chain to match the studs, which still caught my eye weeks after I had finally gone for it. The new wig. My public.

He was in the living room, clutching a glass of wine and looking embarrassed again.

“I didn’t want to be late, Jill, after the two of you were so kind to invite me”

I smiled, and took a glass of my own. “John, look at what you just said. Who rang you?”

“Larinda”

“But you still thought to say ‘the two of you’, aye?”

I started to laugh, and at my fiancée’s enquiring eyebrow I added, “I could wonder if you are trying to make up for all our previous time together, if I didn’t understand you had---nope, welcome to our home, John, and cheers!”

“Have you heard from James?”

“They are away camping again, should be back in a week. Riding down to Bordeaux and getting the bus back”

He nodded. “Good birding there. He will be busy”

“Worry not, mate, he’ll be back soon and we’ll fit in a trip to your place, aye?”

That brought a very, very clear memory, of saying to myself that he would never, ever be my mate, and then I thought of how wrong I had been about so many other things, such as my entire life, and then Larinda was rising to answer the doorbell. Noise, laughter, a particularly deep voice, and then the living room was full. I had a hug from Rachel and a kiss from each of the boys, and there were things to put in the kitchen and more importantly in the fridge.

Fossy, in particular, held up a supermarket carrier bag with a grin. “Four stotties and a tub of pease pudding, with some good ham to go with them”

Rachel pushed past him with a sneer. “Sod that northern crap, been chilling this at home, so get it in the fridge first. Want Bucks Fizz for starters, yeah? Hiya, John!”

I did as told, and it struck me that I seemed to be falling slowly into the housewife role, almost by default. That was no complaint; it was simply that once Larinda spread her wings, once she realised her own value and worth, her personality emerged like a butterfly and took wing. No odd fantasy of female dominance there, just a far more equal partnership than her ex-husband could ever have expected. That brought another smile, which became broader, as first I remembered interminable stories about feminised men and strident women, and then seized on the fact that now, almost always, I understood that I was myself female, and always had been.

Alec noticed, and came over to me. “Going well?”

“You should know, pal. I could ask you the same, but it’s a bit obvious, aye?”

“Ah, Gillian, just a cliché, same as always, but that’s because there are certain commonplaces, certain truths. We both broke a bit, and our wounds sort of fit together, if that’s not a bit of a gory analogy”

He seemed distracted a little. “Problems?”

“In a sense. Jobs, really. Look, I might as well let you know: he wants to move down here. Just got to find him a job that’ll let him feel he’s not living off me”

“Hell, I don’t know what there is. I’m a bit institutionalised; been in the same job most of my life. I can ask about, but it might be a bit naughty”

“Something will come up, Jill, and you know what? That’s the great thing about him: he has me thinking of next week, next month, rather than last year. Come on, booze and food, yeah?”

Not only John Forster, it seemed, but his brother too. Rachel was as forthright as ever.

“This one don’t get away, not ever, yeah? But there is no sodding way I am ever going to live in some bleeding northern ice cave, yeah?”

There was a cough from John. “If I may…I once read that it isn’t that bad around Newcastle. Only for four months of the year is it cold, wet and windy; the rest of the year it’s Winter”

A moment of silence, and then the laughter began, and I saw Alec make an obvious mental note. John Wilkins, with no planning, no stage notes, had just cracked a joke.

I cracked the bubbly.