Long before the hands on the clock have crept round to half-past three I’m thoroughly bored. The only thing on the television is a bowl of wax fruit, I’ve read every newspaper, magazine and brochure in the lounge from cover to cover, and played so many games of noughts and crosses against myself I don’t know if I’m still me or I’ve changed into the person I’m trying to beat. To make matters worse, the rain has arrived as promised and shows no more sign of letting up than a heavyweight boxing champion who had discovered five minutes before climbing into the ring that his latest challenger was not only having an affair with his wife but had also insulted his mother, made lewd advances towards his under-age niece and defrauded his grandparents out of every last penny of their hard-earned savings.

Damn and blast the woman! Just when I was beginning to warm to her, she had to go and pull a trick like that.

“I’m setting you free for an hour or two,” Kerrie informed me after we’d dropped her beloved casket off at the Gladstone — or rather after we’d lugged it up two flights of stairs to her room — and Sylvia sauntered in to announce that she’d managed to get in touch with Carol Vasey, then arranged for the two of us to have lunch with her at the Wooler, a pub in the swankiest part of New Stranton on the edge of West Park. “It’s for the best, sweetheart. If Carol still feels under suspicion, she’ll be much less likely to come out of her shell if I’m with someone she knows lives nearby.”

What does Carol think I’m going to do, hide a microphone down my bra so I can surreptitiously record their conversation, then make a transcript and send it to the Daily Mirror? Stand on an orange box in front of what used to be Ingram’s reading it out through a megaphone?

Who needs all this Agatha Christie bullshit anyway? So Mademoiselle Malraux might have been trying to blackmail Helen. A load of good it did her. And even if we knew for sure that she sent the casket, how can we prove that the memories it triggered caused Helen’s heart to fail?

Old Elsie was right, some things are better left alone.

Like how Suki Tatsukichi could have left a religious cult and shortly afterward joined a secret branch of the MoD, where she was given a higher level of clearance than the Prime Minister.

Or that a photograph of another member of this cult came into the possession of Helen Sutton, who happened to have taught both the girl Suki was chosen to help through her adjustment and the person responsible for stealing her original body.

Or that Suki found her a job in Northcroft, where Helen died only days after the theft occurred…

The stench must have them holding their noses in Tahiti.

I’m hunting among the jigsaw puzzles and board games for a pack of playing cards when I hear the front door slam shut.

“Ruth? Where are you?”

Kerrie Latimer, back from her slap-up meal at last. I wonder what she was stuffing into her face while I had to make do with a cheese and tomato sandwich and a strawberry yoghurt?

That’s weird, there’s no sign of her car...

The stupid cow’s run out of petrol, that’s what she’s done. Well, if she imagines for one nanosecond that I’m about to go traipsing down to Cockburn’s for a gallon in weather like this she’s got another think coming.

But much as I’d like to, I can’t avoid her for the rest of the week.

“In here,” I call.

“Right,” she says, stamping in from the foyer. “Whatever you’re doing, leave it and come with me.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

I grab my cagoule and follow her outside, feeling like I’ve just been caught looking for conkers when I’m supposed to be sitting an important maths test.

Trusty sidekick? A puppy on a lead is what she should have asked for.

Thankfully the Beetle is parked a mere ten yards along Marine Parade, and the engine is running.

“Get in!” she barks.

“Okay, keep your hair on.”

I settle in my seat, pushing my fringe back from my forehead. Kerrie takes a moment or two to refresh her make-up, then turns to me with storm-filled eyes.

“You’ve got some serious explaining to do, my girl,” she launches at me.

“What are you on about? What did Carol tell you?”

“She told me lots of things. But I don’t intend to discuss them here. I want you to take me somewhere we’re in no danger of being disturbed.”

“Fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Said without moving a single eyelash.

I instruct her to take the same route as this morning, but to bear left at Cemetery Road under the cavernous Throston railway bridge, as if we were heading for New Stranton. After about a mile I ask her to turn left again. We cross the single-track line that connects Northcroft with its neighbour and enter the devastated dockland, a place for which the word ‘shameful’ might have been specially coined.

Formerly partners in prosperity, the two boroughs now glare at one another over a desperate landscape, petty princelings in a conquered kingdom contesting the succession to a non-existent throne. Office buildings, warehouses, foundries and engineering works stand idle and boarded up. Crumbling brick walls enclose compounds piled high with rotting wood, discarded sheets of corrugated iron, rusting storage tanks and obsolete machinery. Flotsam drifts upon the scummy surfaces of abandoned timber ponds, collecting in fetid corners to mingle with the burgeoning heaps of refuse littering their shores. Mournful rows of condemned wagons wait in weed-choked sidings, denied the kindness of one final shunt to the scrapyard. Above them the sinister outlines of redundant harbour cranes hover like spectral carrion birds.

The road comes to an uncertain end between sand-strewn mounds of rubble and broken glass. Away to our left, sorry ranks of lamp posts no one has thought it worth taking the trouble to remove betray the former presence of a grid of streets going down to a beach now become a graveyard for old washing machines, bicycle frames, mattresses, sofas and car tyres. On the side of a workmen’s shack some local wag has sprayed an apposite salutation:

Kerrie eases the Beetle to a stop next to where she hopes the kerb will be.

“This is that awful place I could see from the cemetery, isn’t it?” she says. “What happened here?”

“The port authority went bankrupt. They relied too much on the coal trade. When that all started going to the Tyne at the end of the ‘60s they didn’t have the money to make the docks suitable for the big container ships you need nowadays for seaborne traffic to be viable. They were given the chance to merge with Teesport, but they turned it down. Too many vested interests, I suppose. Then they lost out on the contracts to build the new oil rigs. The factory owners saw which way the wind was blowing and cut their losses. What makes me laugh is they keep saying they’re going to flatten the place and put up modern, purpose-built units. I mean, we can’t fill the industrial estates we’ve got. If they’d only listened to the–“

I break off, aware that she’s miles away. I think about lighting a cigarette, but I’ve left my bag at the Gladstone so I occupy my mind by wiping some of the condensation from the window. The rain is still falling heavily, giving me little option but to stay where I am and wait for her to let me know what I’ve done wrong.

She opens her mouth, then hesitates, as if by going on she’ll commit us both to a course of action from which there can be no return.

“Come on,” I sigh. “Get it off your chest.”

She turns to me, laying a hand on my sleeve.

“I want you to think very carefully before you answer this question. When did you last see Helen Sutton?”

I feel the blood freeze in my veins. Although the MoD’s file on Ruth made no mention of Helen, neither did it give me any reason to believe that I’d inherited the ability to speak French like a native. With such crucial gaps in my knowledge, I run a serious risk of ending up in a situation I can’t talk my way out of.

Well done, Suki. First-rate job.

“What d’you want to know that for?” I pout in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.

“Just tell me.”

“The day we finished at Hart Street, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. It was more than ten years ago, don’t forget.”

“It couldn’t have been last October?”

I’ll make it easy for you. Hart Street school. Miss Sutton’s class. She told us to sit together right at the back because you always came top in tests and I was always second.

I knew it.

I fucking knew it.

Ruth came to Northcroft before she took my body. She came here with a specific purpose in mind, failed to achieve it and reckoned she’d have a better chance if she was disguised as Richard Brookbank.

Because Helen would have trusted Richard enough to welcome him into her home.

I wasn’t just a decoy.

Ruth wanted something from Helen — something so important to her she concocted an elaborate scheme to steal the transfer device and manipulate Richard’s movements so she could swap bodies with him.

And the MoD let her, because they needed to find out what it was.

The question is, did it have anything to do with the kuzkardesh gara? If so, how did a humble lab technician learn about them?

You work for us now.

Blindfolded, it seems, and with both hands tied behind my back.

I need time to digest this information more thoroughly — but that’s the one thing Kerrie doesn’t look as though she’s ready to give me.

“October,” I echo tonelessly.

“You were spotted one afternoon driving away from the school.”

“Who by?”

“Carol’s daughter Elaine, who has children there.”

“She was mistaken.”

“No she wasn’t. Elaine spoke to Helen later. She confirmed that it was you.”

Marvellous. How the hell do I get out of this one when I don’t know what else Kerrie was told?

I wait for her to continue, but the ball is in my court and likely to stay there. Maybe if I concede a few inches of ground now it might encourage her to say more, and I’ll have some idea of what I’m up against.

“All right, you win. When things went belly up with Tim and all I got from my parents was ‘we told you so’ I thought I’d make a fresh start. I hadn’t decided where. Northcroft was just one of the avenues I explored. I don’t know why I was under the impression Helen might have been able to help me. I was never one of her favourite pupils.”

Is that the beginning of a smile I can see creeping across her face? It bloody well is, you know.

Take a bow, Rich. You’ve dodged the bullet yet again.

“Yes, Elaine said that she didn’t lend the sympathetic ear you were hoping for. That’s one of the consequences of behaving selfishly as a child, sweetheart. Teachers tend to remember that at the expense of your more positive attributes.” She reaches out to touch my shoulder. “I understand why you didn’t mention this before. Everything to do with your husband is off limits, full stop. That’s your choice, and while I think it’s the wrong one I respect you for sticking to it. But if we’re ever going to solve this riddle we have to work together. Three people lost their lives that night, and after what I’ve seen and heard today I’m beginning to wonder if any of them died from natural causes. I can’t give the matter my full attention if I feel you’re keeping vital information from me. The fact that Helen told you she was considering leaving the profession, for instance.”

“It slipped my mind. I’m sorry if–“

Three people?

But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

It’s that runaway train again. If I keep my mouth shut it might just steam on by.

But the whistle is imploring me to step onto the track, and I’m powerless to resist.

I have to know.

Kerrie’s hand has moved to cover mine. Her face is full of concern.

“Are you unwell, sweetheart? You’ve gone very pale.”

“You said three people died. Helen Sutton. Bob Hodgson.” And now my mouth’s so dry I can scarcely move my tongue. “Who…who was the third?”

“A boy you and Elaine’s sister were at junior school with. Richard something or other, in a car accident. I assumed you knew.”

My head feels as if it’s been smashed against the side of a cliff. The numbness spreads, affecting my arms, my hands, my legs...

Sad, isn’t it...that some are remembered and others aren’t.

Richard Brookbank’s body lies decomposing in the ground. I will be trapped in this bag of flesh, blood and bones until I too have breathed my last.

I will be a woman for the rest of my life.

November 4, 1966

My saviour turns and walks back across the grass, leaving me to my fate. I can’t find the strength to run away, so I resign myself to what must surely follow.

But Basher makes no move to renew his assault. Instead he is sobbing like a little girl whose favourite doll has just been torn to pieces by a vicious bully.

“She didn’t...she didn’t ‘ave to do that to us,” he wails. “I would’ve said I was sorry.”

“Do what to you?” I ask, mystified by this not unwelcome turn of events.

“Yer don’t wanna know. Yer just don’t.” Tears still streaming down his face, he holds out a hand. “Mates, eh?”

I’m too relieved to refuse.

“Yeah, all right.”

“Don’t say owt to anybody, will yer? If they ask yer, tell ‘em I knacked yer again an’ now we’re even.”

Basher races along Tennent Street as though all the devils in hell are in hot pursuit. Of what happened to him that November evening on Neptune’s Triangle he will never breathe a word to a living soul.

The dream fades, nudging me into that nebulous state between sleep and wakefulness.

Basher Howell was a changed lad after that. He stuck in at school, passed his 11-plus and only ever got into fights if he saw someone was being picked on. He used to say life was too short to make enemies just to prove how hard you were. I can recall Miss Cattrick telling the deputy head what a strange thing that was for a kid his age to come out with.

When we went to Westbourne I realised that Mademoiselle Malraux had done me a huge favour, since the Stranton lads had it in for us ‘cod heads’. None of them had a second go at Bash, mind. While we were never what you’d call best friends, I discovered later that hanging about with him saved me from the kind of treatment they dished out to Piggford, dragging him up to Summer Hill and leaving him tied to a tree all day with his trousers around his ankles. Not only did he have that to put up with, he’d get home to find he was in trouble for knocking off.

Then, at the start of the Fifth Year, our French teacher introduced us to the new assistant, with her shiny dark hair and lovely oriental eyes. Bash didn’t seem to remember her at all. But that was when he stopped coming to school regularly. Not many weeks were to pass before the morning assembly where we would be told that he had jumped from the top of the Transporter Bridge and drowned in the oily waters of the River Tees…

And at last I understand what may have driven him to that.

There is no safe haven in which I can drop anchor, no refuge from the storm that has broken.

Only the silence and solitude of the tomb.

I think she’s come down with something. Has there been a lot of ‘flu about?

More than usual. We’ve had a bad winter, of course.

Mmm, it was the same in the south.

Kerrie and Sylvia helping me to my room. How long ago was that? Three hours? Four?

What do I care?

Nothing matters any more.

Nothing.

Richard Brookbank is dead. I will be a woman for the rest of my life.

For the rest of my life...

I cover my face with my hands. I want the world to end tonight. Whether America invades Iran and the Soviets respond by pouring tanks across the border, or an asteroid lands smack in the middle of ICI Billingham it’s all the same to me.

As long as I don’t see another morning.

Very slowly, as though every chemical reaction taking place in my muscles has to be initiated separately, I raise my head from the pillow. In what remains of the light I study the now familiar configurations of tiny freckles peppering the skin between my elbows and the sleeves of my T-shirt, then watch the recurrent motion of my breasts as I take in air and expel it.

My freckles.

My breasts.

Not Ruth’s.

Mine.

For as long as I continue to exist.

I’m female, and I always will be.

Why didn’t you tell me, Suki? Did you think it was kinder to let me discover the truth on my own?

Or was it guilt that stilled your tongue?

And what did you say to my mother? What pack of lies did she lose sleep over after she’d consigned her only child’s coffin to the cold and the dark?

Fuck you.

And fuck everyone who was involved with creating that bloody machine.

Serves you right if it brings society crashing down around your ears.

I pound my fist into the pillow again and again.

Why me?

What was my crime?

It isn’t fucking fair!

You can’t go on like this, Rich. You’ve got to pull yourself together. Nobody’s going to turn the clock back. That part of your life has ended. You’re a girl now. You’re Ruth. There’s no escaping that fact. The choice is yours: cope with it or lose your mind.

The despondency ebbs enough for me to sit up, swing my feet to the floor and take a series of very deep breaths. There will be no repeat of the near breakdown I suffered when I first arrived at Tower House. It seems I’m made of sterner stuff these days.

After all, nothing has changed during the last few hours. I’ve been a girl for nearly five months, and if I’m honest with myself becoming male again would take quite a lot of getting used to.

But I always thought this story would have a different ending. Often that was the one thing that stopped me from giving up altogether.

I walk across to the wash basin and rinse my face. The eyes looking back at me from the mirror are clouded but composed. The time for recriminations has not yet come. If I want to preserve my sanity I must first learn to accept my situation, to view being female as a challenge, not a curse.

Easy to promise, so very hard to deliver.

A gentle tapping sounds at the door. Towel in hand, I open it to find Kerrie Latimer on the landing wearing a typically probing expression.

“Oh, you’re up and about!” she says cheerily. “Sylvia’s in a bit of a kerfuffle, I’m afraid. I think she’s worried that she might have an invalid to care for on top of all the other things she has to do because you’re on sabbatical with me. I said I’d check on you before I went to my room.”

“I’m fine. I just needed to lie down for a bit, that’s all.”

She leads me back to the bed, sits beside me and places a motherly palm on my forehead.

“You don’t seem to have a temperature. Tell me the truth, was it the boy I mentioned?”

“No, I uh…I barely remember him.”

She looks anything but convinced.

“Will you be okay for tomorrow? It’ll be a tiring day. I’m meeting Carol at the solicitor’s at three, and I still want to go to Hexham.”

“No problem. In fact I was just wondering if I should put in an hour or two at the bar.”

“Well make sure you take it easy. You won’t be much use to me if you’re running on empty.”

When she’s gone I light a cigarette and sit on the end of the bed to stare at the red glow shining through the ash.

Richard something or other, in a car accident.

One sentence. Eight words. Thirteen syllables.

How little it takes to spell the end of our hopes and dreams.

But at least the person who took them from me is no more. Justice, albeit of a particularly unsatisfying kind, appears to have been meted out.

Are you certain about that? Do you really think she could have been erased from the picture so easily?

Enough!

What’s done is done. I must put the past behind me, once and for all.

I stub out my cigarette, then sit at the dressing table to brush my hair and see to my make-up. Deftly applying mascara to my lashes, I realise that the girl in the mirror isn’t there any more. All that’s looking back at me is my own reflection.

A reflection of the woman I have had no choice but to become.

The only thing that remains to be decided is what kind of woman I’ll turn out to be.

The evening has drawn to a close without incident. Sensing my mood, few of the customers are prepared to engage me in conversation; those that do limit their discourse to the weather and next month’s general election. Can Jim Callaghan and his beleaguered Labour party withstand the Tory propaganda onslaught? Will Margaret Thatcher be elected as the country’s first female Prime Minister?

Believe it or not, there are people who actually care.

After ten o’clock I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve made up my mind to get drunk once everyone’s gone home — it won’t take much, considering I’ve scarcely touched a drop in five months. The alcohol itself won’t do me any good at all, but the prospect of a reward at the end of the shift has helped me get through the last hour and twenty minutes without biting anyone’s head off.

Then the rugby lads come in, their training finished for another week. Normally I’d return their suggestive banter with interest; tonight I just let it wash over me. I know that some of the younger players are involved in a contest to see who’ll get off with me first, and the best of British to them. Although the loss of my male inhibitions means I can abide a certain amount of familiarity from both sexes, I look on anything more intimate than a friendly arm around the shoulder as an unwelcome invasion of my personal space.

That may have to change soon. It’s odd to think that after so many years of regarding women as trophies to be competed for and displayed like mooses’ heads in a hunting lodge, from now on I’ll be the prize, I’ll be the one the virile young studs are chasing. I don’t need to consult Marjorie Proops to know that the most effective way of removing myself from the game is to target the player I dislike the least and arrange things so that he catches me.

Let the good times roll...

Well before twenty to eleven I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not going to allow any extra drinking-up time. The regulars know better than to argue the toss if they can see I’m ‘in one’, and when the marginally taller of the Sewell brothers — Peter or Steve, I can never remember which is which — lopes back into the bar it isn’t to ask me out for the third Wednesday in a row but to fetch the box of matches he’d left on the table.

And to round off a perfect day?

Here comes J G Egerton, runaway winner of the Upper Class Twat Of The Year award. Looking more sheepish than an Australian shearing station, he watches his fiancée flounce upstairs, then slinks towards the counter. I finish collecting the empties before I acknowledge his arrival with a cursory nod of the head.

“Busy?” he enquires, his haughty gaze following my every movement.

“Par for the course.”

“Couldn’t turn in without apologising for this morning’s hoo-ha. Suffice it to say ‘twill not happen again.”

“Forget it,” I tell him. “Ancient history.”

“Very decent of you, my dear. Er, I suppose I’m too late for a nightcap?”

He would ask for a fucking drink now, wouldn’t he?

“Not if you’re a resident,” I sigh. “What’ll it be?”

“Scotch. Single malt, I think. With ice, if you have any. You’ll join me, I hope?”

His patrician eyes blaze, burning off my resistance to his easy charm.

But I don’t smile. Not tonight.

Maybe not ever again.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I admit. “It’s been a long one.”

I pour Egerton a Glenmorangie, and myself a vodka and lime. When I hand him the glass, he doesn’t waste the opportunity to let his fingers slide across mine. I’m almost tempted to lead him on for a while, then give the two-timing cunt the knee in the groin he deserves.

“Actually there was another favour I wanted to beg of you, if you’ll indulge me,” he grins. “Enjoying our stay tremendously, top-notch in every way. But the lady would prefer a continental breakfast, in her room if you could manage to swing it.”

The idea certainly has its merits. If Yvette de Monnier and Kerrie Latimer steer clear of one another tomorrow morning the UN Security Council can adjourn its emergency session free from the fear of a conflict that would make all-out nuclear war seem like a playground squabble over a bag of midget gems. On the other hand...

“I don’t know what Norah would say to that,” I tell him, though I have no doubt whatsoever as to her reaction. Force 9 on the Richter Scale, probably.

“Naturally there’s a crisp oncer for the enterprising young lady who sets the ball rolling, so to speak.”

A quid? A whole quid? And all for me?

Makes up for everything, that does.

I want to tell him to shove his money so far up his arse it’ll block his windpipe. But I’ve got this far without insulting anyone, and that’s got to be worth an extra shot once he’s fucked off and left me alone.

“In that case I’ll see what I can do.”

“Splendid! Knew I could rely on you.”

Egerton takes two pound notes from his wallet and places them on the counter, then drains his glass and wishes me pleasant dreams.

I don’t answer. I can’t.

The wallet fell open for less than a second, but that was long enough for me to have caught a glimpse of the membership card it contained.

Royal blue, with a yellow crescent moon and an eight-pointed star.

The official emblem of Portsmouth Football Club.

It’s yet another strand in the Gordian knot that has been tightening ever since Derek Graveney gave me that package.

In Portsmouth.

And if that’s a coincidence they never listen to reggae in Jamaica.

Not that it makes a scrap of difference now.

I put both of Egerton’s notes in the till, then pick up the single vodka I poured myself at his insistence and hold it beneath the optic. I press the bar once, twice and again for luck.

“Rest in peace, Rich,” I say as I lift the drink to my lips.

It doesn’t touch the sides.