Chapter 21

Who is Clare?

Suzanne emerged from her slumbers soon after I returned home with my new season ticket. I helped her to get out of bed, get showered and dressed. She didn’t say anything about my choice of clothes, and had promised that in future she would only comment on my dress or makeup if invited to do so. We then had some breakfast together, and I mentioned my trip out to collect a season ticket. She didn’t appear surprised that I should have ventured out dressed as I was.

‘That reminds me Clare, there are various documents that I need to hand over to you now that you’ve agreed to stay,’ she said going to a drawer in the bureau

‘Here’s the cheque book for your new bank account. You already have the debit card and the pin number. I’ve written down your date of birth, your mother’s maiden name and the answers to the other security questions in case you ever have to telephone the bank.’

‘Although the signature on the back of the debit card is relatively easy to copy, I suggest that you use the pin as much as possible until you’ve had time to practice using it’ commented Suzanne. ‘In fact we may as well report the cards as being lost so that they send another one which you can then sign. You’ll find that just over seven hundred and fifty pounds is transferred into this account each month, but don’t get too excited as I’ll want four hundred of that back to cover your share of the rent and for your keep. The remainder will be my contribution towards your pay. I know the arrangement sounds complicated but there are good reasons for doing so.’

‘That’s fine by me, in fact it all sounds very generous, Suzanne,’ I replied.

Here’s your new birth certificate and national insurance number. I’m afraid that you’ve aged four years overnight, but when you wear makeup you could easily pass for a twenty-four year old. Notice also that you are now an Australian citizen although you don’t need a work permit as you came in to the country on a five year ‘ancestry visa’. In fact you’ll soon be able to apply for UK citizenship, if you wish.

‘Wouldn't that would involve an interview when it would be apparent that I don’t have an Australian accent?’

‘You have a fairly nondescript London accent which would probably pass for most purposes, but if you want to sound Australian try to cultivate the ‘questioning intonation’ used by the younger actors on the ‘Neighbours’ or ‘Home and away’ soaps. There are also websites to teach actors to sound Australian.

‘Strewth cobber, it’s going to be enough learning how to speak like a Sheila without also having to learn 'strine,’ I said in a cod Australian accent.

‘Remember that we don’t all talk like Crocodile Dundee, responded Suzanne in perfect RP English.

‘Point taken, but you do seem to have thought of just about everything,’ I said.

‘I hope so.’

Don’t you think it’s time that you let me into the secret concerning Clare Simpson since I’m going to be living under her name and spending her money for the next few months?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘For a start, I want to know who she is and why you possess two sets of identity documents.’

‘Alright, If you make us both another pot of coffee I promise to tell you everything.’

Suzanne and I sat down together at the kitchen table and she poured me another coffee.

‘So you haven’t guessed about Clare then?’ she said.

‘No, what is there to guess?’ I replied.

‘That Clare Alice Simpson is me. It was the name that I was given when I was born in Melbourne in 1982.’

This came as a surprise to me, I’d always assumed that Suzanne was five or even six years older than me rather than just four, but I guess her medical condition had made her look older than she was.

‘So why did you adopt a new name when you came to this country?’ I asked.

She sighed.

‘I had a difficult childhood. My father was a successful businessman but he drank heavily. My mother was also a very troubled woman. She took overdoses of pills on several occasions before she eventually succeeded in killing herself when I was fifteen, just when I was going through my own emotional turmoil.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘At the time, I blamed my mother’s suicide on my dad’s drinking, although, in retrospect, I suspect some of his drinking was because of my mother’s erratic behaviour. She was beginning to realise that she had inherited a genetic condition from her own mother that was going to cripple and then kill her in a few years. What is more, she realised that she’d also probably passed on that condition to me. Of course I knew none of this until much later. I was so upset and angry after her suicide that I told my dad I wanted nothing more to do with him and left home.’

‘What did you do?’

I’m afraid that for three or four years I got mixed up with some pretty bad people who were heavily involved in dealing drugs. Eventually though, I came to my senses and decided that I had to leave the country and change my name in order to get away from them all. I then made contact with my dad again and learned the full circumstances surrounding my mother’s suicide. He gave me the money to come to the UK and when I was twenty-one he gave me enough to buy into a small business.

‘That was good of him.’

Yes, I suppose it was, but unfortunately it didn’t stop him from continuing to drink heavily after my departure, just as he had done so since my mother’s death. He was always able to hold his liquor and function quite effectively in his business, but in the end cirrhosis caught up with him. He died a couple of years ago. I then found out that he’d left a substantial sum of money in his will to purchase an annuity in my old name, not realising that I was now living and working as Suzanne Fisher.

‘Why didn’t he leave it to you outright?’

‘He still didn’t trust leaving me a lump sum in case I blew it all on drugs. So that explains why I have a monthly allowance arriving in Clare’s account, which will continue for the rest of my life. With hindsight, it wasn’t a very good investment on his part as they will only need to pay out for a few years before I die.’

‘I see,’ I replied, ‘but that doesn’t really explain why you needed to change your name to Suzanne.’

‘There were a couple of reasons, which I am not particularly proud of. I knew it would be only a matter of time before the police caught up with my associates and, although I was only on the sidelines of their activities, I didn’t want to be involved in any criminal proceedings, either as a defendant or as a witness. Also, there was one guy that I used to hang out with who was quite dangerous. On more than one occasion he threatened that he’d track me down and kill me if ever I walked out on him, and I never doubted that he meant it. That’s why I changed my name as soon as I arrived in London.’

‘So is this guy still looking for you now?’

‘No, the police prosecuted the ring leaders a few months after I left; my former boyfriend was arrested but agreed to give evidence against the others in return for a reduced sentence. It didn’t do him any good though as he was later stabbed by another drug dealer in prison a few months after the trial. They really were a bunch of thugs and I’d no idea what I was involved with.’

‘How about the Australian police, are they still looking for you?’ I asked, in a state of shock about what she had just revealed.

‘No, as far as I know there are no further charges outstanding. I think they realised that I was one of the small fry and that it wasn’t worth their while to come chasing after me half way across the globe. In any event, the only person who could incriminate me is now dead.’

‘I see.’

‘By this time I’d already established an honest and successful new life in the UK as Suzanne Fisher, running a beauty salon, but was also beginning to experience the first symptoms of my medical condition. I didn’t want to go back to living as Clare Simpson again; it would have involved too many explanations to my new colleagues. So, after dad died, I used my Australian passport to open a bank account in Clare’s name in order to receive the annuity and I periodically transferred the contents into Suzanne’s bank account.’

‘When did you give up the business?’

‘About eighteen months ago. My partner and I were quite fortunate as we received a good offer for it as a going concern. We both realised that I wouldn’t be able to continue working for much longer, and she wanted to move back to the West Country, and so we accepted and divided it up proceeds. There was more than enough money for me to live on for my few remaining years.’

‘So will it be quite safe for me to live as Clare for a while?’

‘Yes. As far as I’m aware there is nobody living in this country who has ever known me as Clare Simpson. The only official document with her name and photograph is her passport which is now almost ten years old, and so you should have no difficulty in renewing it in a few weeks’ time if you send my old passport and birth certificate to Australia House. We are the same height, build and have the same coloured eyes, and it was acquired before they started recording biometric data.’

‘What about the age difference between us?’

‘I can easily make you look a few years older when we come to take your new passport photograph. Of course, you’ll need to provide them with some confirmation of your address, but you can do that by providing the bank statements. Also, you will need to provide a signature from an established member of the community, who has known you for several years, to confirm your identity. I suggest that you ask your good friend Suzanne Fisher to do that for you whilst she still can. You’ll also need to copy Clare’s signature, but I deliberately made it simple and easy to copy when I opened the bank account in her name.’

‘You really have thought it all through,’ I said.

‘I believe so.’

‘Are you sure that there isn’t anyone else who might wish to get in touch with Clare Simpson one day?’

‘I don’t think so; I lost touch with all my school friends and my surviving relations when I got involved with drugs, and then deliberately broke with everybody else that I formerly knew when I came to this country.’

‘Alright, so that explains about Clare Simpson, but where did the name Suzanne Fisher come from and how did you manage to get hold of official documents in her name?’

‘Several years ago I shared a flat in Melbourne with a British girl called Suzanne Johnson, who like me was an only child who had left home following a family row after her parents had split. Unfortunately she died of a heroin overdose, which served as a wakeup call to me. My boyfriend was her dealer and didn’t want to risk any police investigation into her death so he paid to have her body taken to the outback where it would be disposed of by wild animals. Her body was never found and so her death was never officially registered. She was a year older than me but we looked similar and so I hung on to her various identity documents just in case I should ever need them.

‘And so you used them to avoid being traced?’ I said.

‘After I arrived in the UK and had successfully obtained an ancestry visa and work permit for Clare, I did a little bit of research about Suzanne Johnson, just to make sure that she had no close family who were likely to come looking for her. When I was sure that it was safe to do so, I adopted her identity. However, I also changed her surname to Fisher by deed poll just to make it a little more difficult for anyone from either of our pasts to trace her. When I die, I want you to administer the affairs of Suzanne Fisher, it’s the name by which I’ve always been known in this country, and will certainly be the one the doctors will put on the death certificate.

‘I expect that Suzanne’s Johnson’s parents are now wondering what happened to her?’

‘I think they had their suspicions that she’d been taking drugs before she left the UK, but I was not in a position to tell them. I know the address of her mother, and have written a letter to her explaining exactly what happened, but sparing her the details of the disposal of the body. I want you to post it to her it after I have died.’

‘What will happen to Clare Simpson after you die.’

She shrugged.

‘That will be up to you to decide. As far as I am concerned you are Clare Simpson. You will have to decide whether you wish to continue living as her and receive the annuity from my father or else revert to being Tom Evans.’

If you do decide to go back to being Tom, there is nobody that you will need to notify.

‘But I wouldn’t be able to continue living as Clare indefinitely.’

She shrugged.

‘I don’t see why not, if you choose to do so! I’d rather you had the benefit of the money from the annuity than the insurance company,’ she answered.

‘But won’t the insurance company want to verify that you’re still living from time to time?’

‘Yes. The bank will no doubt tell them if the account is ever closed and the money isn’t being collected. Each year the Company sends me a statement for tax purposes, but the income is never sufficient to warrant Clare paying any Australian income tax. This statement includes a form to record any change of address or other details. There will be a new form coming in April so I suggest you should write changing something — such as your telephone number. That should be enough to satisfy them of your continued existence for a couple of years. Thereafter you may have to forge my signature from time to time, but remember the insurance company is based in Melbourne and so they are unlikely to check up too thoroughly.’

‘I would however need to notify my father, I couldn’t just leave him wondering what happened to me.’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but you won’t need to worry about it for now, Clare. So far it is only me who has done anything illegal so let's hope you’ll have many months to think about it for yourself.’

It went quiet for a while. Suzanne had certainly provided me with a lot of information about her past to take in and process. I had no idea that her story would be so complicated and entwined with so much sadness. My own life had been totally uneventful in comparison. There was no doubt that she had done many wrong things in her past, but it was in her past.

‘So now you know the full story, Clare, I hope it won’t make any difference between us.’

‘You have always been kind to me, so there’s no way that I’m going to go back on my promise now that you need me.

‘Thank you,’ she replied.

‘In any event, I’m just learning how to enjoy my time as Clare.’

‘I’m glad, I wouldn’t want your time staying with me to be only work.’

Neither of us said much more to one another for the remainder of the day. I believe that we were both pre-occupied with our thoughts. I did various necessary chores to take my mind of what I’d heard. I did a load of laundry for both of us, then washed my hair and afterwards removed any traces of fuzz from my arms legs, face and armpits. I also carefully replaced my breast forms and put on some nail polish so I would have one less thing to worry about it in the morning. I also changed into some more feminine clothes and put on a little makeup, although without going over the top. I realised that I looked ok as Clare without the boobs and makeup, but felt more comfortable wearing them, all the same. Suzanne made no comment about my appearance; it was just as if I was exhibiting normal behaviour for her flat mate on a Sunday.

Whilst I was waiting for my hair to dry, I began to look on the internet for information about people who lived in a different gender from the one in which they were born. In no time at all, I’d unearthed a mass of web sites: encyclopaedia articles; sites offering medical or social advice; advice on fashion and makeup; autobiographical accounts; fictional sites; humorous sites; and even some pornographic sites. At first it all seemed overwhelming, but I began a task that would eventually take me several weeks; that of immersing myself in information and gradually understanding my condition.

Over the next few days it became apparent to me that I was transgendered and had always been so, although I’d gone through the first twenty years of my life without letting myself recognize that fact. It would inevitably take me some time to accept this about myself and to deal with it accordingly.

However, in seeking to describe the excitement of my gradually beginning to recognise my true self, I find that I have begun to stray from my chronological narrative. I stress that the process of self-discovery which had begun before Christmas took some time and in many respects was running in parallel to the events relating to my job and my living accommodation.