We were all most impressed with Josie yesterday; not only with the way in which she handled the incident involving Sarah, but also her suggestions for addressing the envelopes for Mum. She seems to be gaining in confidence when we are out together and I don’t think anyone that we’ve come across in Crawley has had any suspicions about her so far. She has even seen one or two people from her class in town, but they are in a lower year than the rest of us and so we ignored them, and since Josie now looks a year or two older than Joseph I don’t think any of them would have identified the girl who was keeping us company. Josie therefore seems to be getting on fine when she is part of a group although I still wondered how she might manage out on her own. I therefore made a suggestion to the others over breakfast.

‘Why don’t we send Josie to a lingerie shop on her own today to buy my bra, whilst the rest of us get the other items we need? It can be a special project for her and will be a good way of demonstrating to us how well she’s doing as a girl,’ I said.

‘Which shop do you have in mind?’ asked Jenny.

‘La Senza, in County Mall, near to the station. I can usually find what I’m looking for there.’

‘I’m not sure that I’d be confident enough to go on my own, and in any event, I wouldn’t know what to buy for you,’ Josie commented.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll explain to you what colour and size I need, and if you bring the wrong one back then you’ll just have to take it back to the shop and change it,’ I said with a smile.

Jenny and Karen agreed that this would be a good plan and assured her that she would be fine. After a little bit of persuasion and reassurance from us all, Josie eventually agreed do the shopping on her own. When we got to town I handed over some money and provided her with detailed instructions as to what I wanted. Jenny, Karen and I went looking for the printer labels and the surgical tape and we all agreed to meet up in a café half an hour after we’d left her.

We were at the rendezvous on time, but Josie didn’t show up and after ten minutes we began to become a little anxious in case something had happened to her, or we’d had expected too much from her. Eventually she arrived twenty five minutes later than promised, and carrying two bags from La Senza.

‘Is that one alright Sue?’ she said handing over the smaller bag.

I looked inside.

‘Yes, that looks fine thanks, but what kept you for so long?’ I asked. ‘We were just beginning to get worried about you’.

‘Sorry, but I had to go to a cash dispenser to withdraw some money from my account,’ she replied.

‘Why was that?’ asked Jenny

‘Well, I know you will all think I’m crazy, but in the shop they had a really lovely matching set of lingerie in my size for half price. The set was in the same colour as the baby blue dress that I’m going to be wearing on the Friday night, so I decided to go out and buy it.’

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to do. As you can guess, we were all surprised by this admission. All the same, we asked to see her purchases and couldn’t help but admire the light blue silky bra, camisole, suspender belt and knickers that she showed to us, nor deny that they were a real bargain for the price she’d paid, even if she would probably only have the opportunity of wearing them on one occasion.

‘They are great but now we’ll have to buy you some stockings to go with the suspender belt,’ said Karen.

During the course of the afternoon Josie was true to her promise and successfully printed out Mum’s entire address list on to the sticky labels, whilst the rest of us helped to stick them on to the envelopes. The completed pile, ready for posting, was waiting for Mum, together with her evening meal when she returned home from work.

‘These are really brilliant, and they look so professional; thank you very much girls.’

‘It was Josie who printed the labels, we just stuck them on the envelopes,’ admitted Karen.

‘You also now have a separately formatted file containing the names and addresses of your customers, if you ever need any more labels, added Josie. ‘It could form the basis of a new record keeping system.’

Mum was so delighted that she readily agreed to help us to manicure one another’s nails and pluck each other’s eyebrows during the course of the evening. Of course Josie had only recently had a manicure so she spent the evening experimenting with the makeup she’d bought, putting in and taking out some earrings into the newly healed holes in her ears, and trying on different outfits. We also insisted on her modelling her new lingerie in front of us all, together with the matching stockings we’d bought for her afterwards. She was clearly a little embarrassed when we asked her to do so, and so we kept our comments to how nice she looked. However, as soon as she went back up to the spare room to get changed, we had a brief discussion, which also involved Mum.

‘On Monday she bought herself some makeup and today it was some sexy lingerie, I think your sister Josie has been discovering that she enjoys being a girl,’ I said to Jenny.

Jenny was about to respond, when Mum interrupted.

‘Now remember that she is only doing what you asked of her. I remember Karen said that she wanted her both living as a girl and also thinking as a girl, so you can’t blame her for doing what you asked.’

‘You’re right Mum, and she has been making a very good job of it so far,’ answered Karen.

Before we went to bed on Tuesday Mum helped Josie to remove her breast forms, suggesting that she should leave them off for the next day, and then she would help to attach them again on Thursday evening so they could then stay put until we returned home after the convention. I watched: it was a little bit of a fiddly job, involving the use of a solvent, but eventually they came off without too much discomfort. The skin underneath was a little bit pale but there was no sign that they’d done her any harm

My sister Karen has been keeping in regular touch with Denise’s mother to find out how her friend was progressing. She was relieved to discover that all had gone well with the operation, and that Denise was due to be sent home on Wednesday afternoon. Karen asked if she might visit her friend on that day, but her mother requested that she should leave it for one more day, so as not to wear her out. However, she was perfectly happy for the group of us to go ahead with Denise’s original suggestion of holding a dress rehearsal at their house on the Thursday afternoon.

The weather on Wednesday was wet, and so the four of us spent the bulk of the day at home rehearsing, catching up with Mum’s housework or else in preparing the evening meal. We hoped that in return Mum might be willing to help us to do one another’s hair during the course of the evening. When she returned home from work Mum was amazed at the clean and tidy state of the house and her meal ready. She helped Josie to stick on the breast forms once again then us all to wash and set our hair. She also gave detailed instructions as to how we should deal with it when getting ready for our rehearsal the following day.

Whilst she was putting Josie’s hair in rollers I heard Mum raise the topic of computerising her business records with her, following the comment that she’d had made the previous evening. Both Karen and I have told Mum that she needs to do this, and we’ve shown her how to use a word processor, but we aren’t computer experts. Mum once even went as far as buying a special software package for her business but has never used it. She is a little bit technophobic and has never had the time to stop what she was doing, take stock and then begin to convert her existing word processed and paper records.

‘What sort of records do you keep Aunt Jean?’ asked Josie.

‘Well there is the appointments diary, our list of customers, our stock records and then of course my accountant keeps sending me these spreadsheets, although I never know what to do with them, other than read the printouts. Everything is in a bit of a mess really.’

‘It may not be as difficult for you to automate everything as you think. It may be possible to reformat your existing records and insert them in a database. It would require some more detailed investigation to be certain, but I could probably help if you wanted me to,’ she answered.

I could see that Mum was surprised that someone who was not yet sixteen could make such a suggestion. She said that she would think about it and speak to her again.