Chapter 20

Saturday night and Sunday morning

Debbie and I completed our shopping and made our way back to Suzanne’s flat, arriving at about 5.30pm. Suzanne had given me a key to her flat before Christmas, and so I let us both in; my friend was dozing on the couch, but appeared to have been quite busy and had already laid the table for our meal. We put down our shopping bags and then gently began to waken her.

‘Hi, you two, I’m sorry, I must have dropped off,’ she responded, a little breathlessly, but seemed pleased to see us all the same.

‘Hi Suzanne, are you feeling alright? I asked.

‘Yes, I’m fine thanks, I just seem to get tired so easily these days, but I’m feeling better now.’

‘Have you ordered the meal for tonight?’ I asked.

‘Yes, don’t worry, everything is in hand. I know that you both like Indian food so we’ll be having a prawn curry, but it won’t be delivered until 7.30pm so we have plenty of time. Did you buy that bottle of champagne?’

‘Actually, that is going to be my contribution to the festivities this evening,’ said Debbie, ‘I’ll put it in the fridge to chill.’

‘I’ve bought a chocolate and cream dessert for us. It won’t be good for our waistlines, but it is, after all, going to be a special occasion and we all normally eat fairly sensibly.’

‘Thanks, both of you. Once you’ve unpacked your shopping you can show me what you’ve bought today,’ she replied noticing all the carrier bags.

‘As we have nearly two hours before we’re due to eat, perhaps you would like to try on your new outfit to show us Debbie,’ I suggested.

Debbie appeared to be willing to oblige us.

‘I know,’ said Suzanne, ‘why don’t we all three of us dress up in our best frocks for the evening. I won’t have much chance to wear nice clothes now that Elaine and Christine have gone overseas.’

Of the three of us, I was already dressed smartly, but I was quite taken with Suzanne’s suggestion, both to please her, but also for my own sake.

‘Would that be alright with you Debs?’ I asked.

‘Well I wouldn’t want to be the only one wearing trousers if you two decide to dress up,’ she said smiling. ‘But I’m wearing socks so I’ll need to pop out to the convenience shop and buy myself some tights, first.’

‘You’re welcome to have one of the pairs of tights that I bought this afternoon,’ I suggested.

‘And I can provide you with any makeup you might need,’ added Suzanne.

‘Since we are going to dress up, may I wear your long grey dress once again, Suzanne; the one I had on at your dinner party last November?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been looking for an excuse to try it on again ever since.’

‘Oh yes, I saw the photographs of you wearing it and you looked lovely,’ added Debbie.

‘I’m afraid I don’t possess that long grey dress any more, I’ve given it away,’ Suzanne said.

Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she smiled and added: ‘you’ll find it together with some other clothes laying on your bed. Come through and have a look.’

We went through to my bedroom. Suzanne had clearly spent the afternoon going through her own wardrobe once again and had passed on lots of different clothes to me, which were laying on the bed or else piled up on the chest of drawers. The dressing table also now had additional supplies of costume jewelry, cosmetics, and other items that might be needed to help me maintain my new way of life.

‘I think you’ll find that most of what I’ve chosen will fit and also suit you and that you now have everything that any well-dressed young lady might need,’ she said.

‘Suzanne, thank you, but you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, I already had enough clothes to be going on with.’

‘It was part of the deal — if you agreed to remain as Clare, I promised to provide you with everything you might need to do so. In any event, a girl can never have too many clothes. At least now you’ll have a choice of what to wear for any occasion.’

‘But I was only just beginning to get the hang of what clothes looked good together, and now I’ll have to start all over again.’

‘You’ve barely reached ‘O’ level standard,’ she said. ‘I expect you to have reached at least ‘A’ level before I die. You can undertake your degree level studies afterwards.’

I didn’t like it when Suzanne joked about her demise, so I attempted to divert the subject of our conversation to less morbid topics.

‘But it isn’t just going to be a question of learning about what clothes to wear; I’ll also need to discover what it is to live as a woman.’

‘Surely you’ve been discovering that over the last six weeks?’ said Suzanne.

‘Yes, in some respects that’s true except that now it is going to be full-time and also for the foreseeable future.’

‘You’re a fast learner and I’m sure you will get on fine,’ added Debbie.

‘Maybe, but I still don’t fully understand why I was born male, yet somehow feel more comfortable in the female role,’ I said.

‘You certainly appear to be more relaxed and confident when you’re living as a girl,’ added Debbie.

‘I noticed that on the first time I persuaded you to put on some of my clothes and became Clare. You, will no doubt wish to learn more about your condition and feelings, but I think you’ll find you are not alone in that situation.’

Now that I’d accepted in my own mind that my immediate future was going to be as a young woman, I was quite pleased with the reaction of my two friends, but I also privately resolved to spend some time looking on the Internet over the next few days to try and make sense of my situation and my feelings about myself.

‘Thank you once again, Suzanne, for all the clothes and for everything else that you’ve given me. I’ll let you have them back when I’ve had a chance to buy some of my own. It shouldn’t be too long before I can go shopping for myself once again, now that I won’t have to worry about clothing Tom for a while.’

Suzanne sighed.

‘As I’ve already told you, there’s no need for you to return anything that I’ve given you. I won’t be wearing them again, and it’s satisfying for me to know that you’ll now be making good use of them. However, I also understand that, as a newly emerging young woman, you’ll want to choose some clothes of your own and gradually develop your own look.’

‘So what’s your look going to be Clare, Goth? Punk? Hippy? Grunge? or Lesbian Chic?’ asked Debbie laughing.

‘How would I know what looks good on me?’ I replied, I’ll have to rely on you two to advise me.

‘You’ll soon get to know what’s right for you, but in the meanwhile, for this evening, I suggest we go for ‘Girly-glam’ look and we can take it from there,’ suggested Debbie.

‘Alright, ladies we have an hour and a half to help one another to get ourselves ready before the meal arrives.’

I helped Suzanne to take a quick shower whilst Debbie put all my new clothes away for me, then we all helped one another to get ready for the evening.

One thing that I had discovered over the last six weeks was how the clothes you are wearing, your hair, makeup and jewelry can all contribute to the way you feel about yourself and how you interact with others. If you look good, you tend to feel good as well and are fun to be with. During the course of the evening we chatted together happily on a wide variety of subjects unrelated to recent events. For once there was no mention of Tom, the fire, the loss of my job or Suzanne’s illness. There were still a number of questions in my mind to ask Suzanne about my status in her house and who exactly was Clare Simpson, whose identity I would be using. However, these topics might be best discussed later, when Suzanne and I were alone. For the time being I was happy to join in her enjoyment of company, and be accepted by both my friends in my new role.

We drank water with our meal which was quite spicy, but as we were eating the dessert Debbie retrieved the bottle of champagne, opened it and poured three glasses.

‘Ladies, I should like to propose a toast to my two friends Clare and Suzanne, and also to say farewell to a certain young man whom I needn’t name.’

‘I hope you will be happy in your new home Clare,’ said Suzanne, raising her glass.

‘Yes, and for a long time to come,’ added Debbie.

I could hardly argue with that, for both our sakes.

We drank the toast, then re-filled our glasses and continued chatting happily until after 11.00pm. Debbie announced that she needed to go to the toilet, and then would have to get changed.

‘It’s getting a little late for her to be travelling home on public transport on her own,’ I said. ‘Would you mind if I offer to let her stay with me tonight?’

‘Of course I don’t mind; you didn’t need to ask. Please now regard this as your home as well,’ said Suzanne.

A few weeks before, I would never have dreamed of offering to share my bed with Debbie, and she would never have dreamed of accepting, but now it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

‘Thanks for the offer Clare, but I really can’t stay tonight, as I’ve already made arrangements to go out tomorrow morning. But don’t worry, I’ll get a taxi.

There was something in the way she said it that aroused my suspicions.

‘Debbie, are you going on a date tomorrow?’ I asked.

Her cheeks became even more flushed than they had been as a result of the champagne.

‘And you weren’t planning on telling us?’

‘I wasn’t intending to keep it a secret for long, but I wanted to see how things went first.’

‘So what’s his name and when did you meet him?’ asked Suzanne.

‘He’s called Guy and I was introduced to him at my party.’

‘I never noticed you chatting to any ‘Guy’ at your party?’ I said.

‘That’s because you were too busy looking doe-eyed at my friend Andy; by the way what is happening on that front?’ she replied, studiously changing the subject.

I’d rather forgotten about my proposed date with Andy, given all the fuss about losing my job; but now things were settled there was no reason why we shouldn’t go out as planned.

‘Andy said that he would ring me on Tuesday. So what are you planning to do with Guy then?’ I said, determined to return to my original line of enquiry.

‘Nothing much, just getting to know one another.’

‘I’ll be expecting a blow-by-blow account when we next meet,’ I continued.

‘I doubt if it’ll come to blows, at least not on the first date,’ she replied laughing.

‘Well let’s hope that Guy’s the guy for you.’

The others rolled their eyes in disgust at my joke.

Whilst Debbie changed back into her trousers and jacket, Suzanne rang her local mini-cab firm and persuaded them to take her friend home at a discounted price, the cost of which we divided three ways.

‘Thanks for helping me to make up my mind and for everything else, Debs,’ I said as I saw her to the taxi.’

‘I’m sure you’ve made the right decision, Clare, you seemed so happy this evening,’ she said giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘I think you are probably right,’ I replied.

‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

‘And good luck with Guy!’

She blushed and waved as the taxi pulled away.

When I got back I found that Suzanne had fallen asleep on the settee, once again. I helped her to her room and to get undressed and ready for bed. I then went back to my room where I stood looking at myself in the full-length mirror for a few minutes. Debbie was right, I was sure that I had made the right decision, but there were still matters to be discussed with Suzanne, although they would now have to wait to the next day. In the meanwhile I would just enjoy the feeling of wearing that long dress and looking so good; it showed off my boobs rather nicely. I then remembered that it was more than a week since Debbie had helped we to stick them on, and that I ought to take them off for a little while to give my skin a chance to recover. Reluctantly I changed out of my dress, removed my makeup and began the painful task of peeling off my breasts. As I did so I found myself wondering for the second time in as many weeks, what it would be like to have my own breasts, but on this occasion I didn’t force the idea out of my mind and began to wonder how one might go about it — whether through taking hormones or having plastic surgery. There was so much I needed to discover about my new life. It was with those thoughts going round my head that I eventually fell asleep.

It felt a little odd to be flat-chested again in the morning when I woke, and so I took off my nightdress and examined myself in the mirror. The skin was a little red where the breast forms had been stuck down, and pale where it had been covered by them. My initial reaction was to want to replace my boobs again as soon as possible but I wasn’t planning to go anywhere and it was probably better for me to leave them off for twenty-four hours to recover, if I could bear to do so. I looked at my face in the mirror. I was wearing no makeup or jewelry and my hair was loosely tied back with a ribbon, yet it was undoubtedly Clare rather than Tom who was looking back at me. What exactly had changed over the last six weeks? Was it the way I looked and acted towards other people? Or was it more a question of how I saw myself? Perhaps it was a combination of both.

I decided to conduct an experiment. There was one pair of black women’s trousers and a fairly androgynous looking t-shirt among the clothes that Suzanne had passed on to me, and also some white trainers and socks. I put these on and brushed and tied my hair back into a pony tail, just to see what it felt like. I even went so far as to remove my nail varnish for the first time in several weeks. I again looked at myself in the mirror. Perhaps I didn’t look quite as feminine as usual, but I was sure that I would be able to walk down the street dressed as I was and nobody would bat an eyelid. In fact there was only one way to find out. I was going to need to acquire a travelcard for getting into work over the next week, so I put on a zip-up jacket, that further disguised my lack of breasts and walked to the station.

‘What can I do for you miss?’ asked the young man in the ticket office.

He seemed to be in no doubt about my gender; in fact I got the distinct impression that he liked the look of me.

‘I’d like a travelcard for Zones 1 and 2 please,’ I answered in what was now my normal speaking voice, but deliberately giving him a friendly smile.

My smile caught him a little off guard, and he blushed for a moment, but then recovered himself.

‘Fill in this form please, love.’

The ‘love’ confirmed to me that he thought I was a woman. No man would ever have referred to Tom as ‘love’.

A wicked idea went through my mind. What if I were now to fill it in using Tom’s name and sex; how would he react towards me then? But that wasn’t the object of the exercise, so I filled in all the details for Clare instead and passed it to him.

‘You haven’t ticked the box saying whether you want a monthly, quarterly, or annual ticket?’

I took a breath, wondering which one to choose.

‘As long as you will be travelling for at least three months it would be worth your while to get an annual ticket. You can always cash it in if you change your job,’ he said.

‘In that case I should like an annual ticket please.’

He ticked it for me, and we again exchanged smiles. It occurred to me that he would be happy to chat to me if I were to give him some encouragement, but other customers arrived at the window and so we didn’t continue with our pleasantries. A few minutes later I was in possession of a new season ticket. Tomorrow I would arrange to transfer Tom’s remaining funds into Clare’s account.

I’d now burned the last of the bridges to my former life. Tom had lost his flat, his job, and severed contact with his family, at least for the time being. The following day Clare would be embarking on a new job and would be around for some months to come, and possibly longer. Henceforth I would be living as Clare Simpson, so I now needed to ask Suzanne a number of questions about exactly who she was and where she had come from.