Granada Road, Southsea
May 28, 1979

Another night. Another cheap hotel.

Tomorrow, another day on the road.

Putting out fires, that’s all they were doing.

It never ended.

But as Jeremy Egerton lies cradled between Yvette de Monnier’s ample thighs, he reflects that when all’s said and done life could be a hell of a lot worse.

He’s come a long way since that bitterly cold Friday evening at the beginning of March, when with sixty-nine pence and four cigarettes to his name, and having eaten nothing in the last forty-eight hours but a few broken cream crackers and a tin of cold baked beans, he’d swallowed what was left of his pride and gone out on the hunt for a lonely, middle-aged woman with more money than sense. To most guys used to getting the maximum return for the minimum outlay a few drinks, a curry and a shag might not have seemed much considering all the smart one-liners, winning smiles, forced laughter and insincere flattery he’d have to dredge from his repertoire; to Jeremy, down on his luck like never before, they’d seemed prizes beyond rubies.

He’d found her in the John Barleycorn, a snooty pub on the parade opposite Southsea Common and a rich feeding ground for a hungry would-be gigolo. She would have turned heads at a Hollywood premiere: immaculately cut black jacket and matching skirt; trim figure; flawless complexion; greying nutbrown hair cropped severely short all over, a style she shouldn’t have been able to carry off but did; and — no small matter for Jeremy this — the shapeliest pair of pins he’d ever seen. When she looked at her watch for the umpteenth time, as clear an indication as any that she’d been stood up, Jeremy had gone in for the kill.

He remembers homing in on his quarry, standing next to her at the bar and counting out the coins he needed to pay for his half of mild, then that rush of adrenalin as her beringed, damson-nailed fingers had pushed a ten-pound note into his hand and he’d realised he was onto a winner.

What he didn’t know was just how eager she’d be to satisfy his every sexual whim.

Jeremy had once told his mates down at the Talbot that if he ever found a French bird with false teeth who was prepared to take them out and suck his cock then he’d die happy.

“Don’t fuckin’ want much, do ‘e?” they’d laughed.

“Be careful what you wish for,” is what they should have said.

For Yvette had arranged the whole thing. The job on that breakfast cereal advert falling through, the DHSS finding out about the window-cleaning round and stopping his benefit, the cheque he’d begged his old man to send him going missing in the post, all of it was down to her. When someone with Yvette de Monnier’s connections picked you to be her chauffeur, bodyguard, bedmate and general right-hand man, you stayed picked.

Yes, he’s come a long way — and in the course of his journey he’s discovered quite a few things he wishes he hadn’t.

The device locked inside the suitcase hidden under the bed is only one of them.

As his eyes slowly close, Jeremy feels Yvette’s rough but oh-so-gentle fingers trace random patterns on his back. It’s rare that she shows him even this much affection — then again it must have taken some getting used to, experiencing a straight woman’s sexual urges after spending the majority of her adult life as a card-carrying lesbo.

What was it like, gradually finding out that you preferred men to women? What goes through your mind when you realise you’re crossing over the road and don’t want to turn back?

That poor bastard Richard Brookbank probably knew by now…

Before Jeremy can fall asleep, he hears the dull clink of plastic against glass and readies himself for the revolting slurping noises Yvette’s mouth makes when she puts her dentures in. It’s a small price to pay for regular sex with a body in such good shape as Rita Sirs had kept it before Yvette swapped with her. The doctor who’d been screwing her, and was now thrusting away between Carol Hodgson’s thighs every night, had obviously thought so too. Jeremy did wonder, however, if Rita had taken him to that God-awful estate on the edge of Barnsley or Burnley or Bramley or whichever grimy northern industrial town her daughter lived in with her three uncontrollable sprogs. All credit to Yvette for keeping so calm when she saw how obnoxious her grandchildren were — though she must have had some idea of what to expect because she’d insisted they leave the Rolls in a multi-storey and take a cab the rest of the way.

Talking of grandmothers, Jeremy would have quite liked a go at Kerrie Latimer if circumstances had permitted it. Bit broad in the beam, but he didn’t mind that. Feisty cow, though. For well over a fortnight he’d had the bruises to prove it.

It makes him grin to think that he actually got as far as trying it on with Richard Brookbank. All right, it was part of Jeremy’s job to find out how much the MoD had told her — practically nothing as it turned out, not even that Ruth had a kid — but he could have done that simply by keeping his ears open. Maybe he’d just wanted to be the one who popped Richard’s cherry, so to speak — and he’d have been doing her a real favour by sweet-talking her into spreading her legs for him, letting a seasoned stud teach her what it’s like to be a real woman instead of the professional virgin she was turning into. He might still get the chance if Yvette succeeds in recruiting her. She’s no oil painting, but she’s not a paper-bag job either. Anyway, you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire.

Yvette rubs her heels against Jeremy’s calves. He begins to come erect again.

“Was that good for you, darling?” she enquires.

“Pretty good, since you ask.”

“I’m glad, because I have to say goodbye.”

Jeremy sits up, frowning.

“You’re giving me the boot?”

“Of course not. But we’ll be working apart from now on.”

“Wait a minute, has this got something to do with what that old dear told you yesterday? You heard what the nurse said, she was drugged up to the eyeballs.”

“Despite the incoherence of her speech, Millicent Simmons revealed certain facts to me which are not open to interpretation. One was that she and her husband adopted Cathryn in April 1942. Another was that she continued to work for the Special Operations Executive after she returned from Singapore.”

“I don’t understand. How does that get us any nearer explaining Cathryn’s disappearance?”

“Last night my people informed me that in March 1942 the SOE mounted an operation in northern Romania. It was codenamed Belladonna.”

Jeremy feels his eyes widen.

“So this started during the war, not when you first went out there?”

“The Bucovina hive may have been collaborating with the Nazis. There were obvious benefits to both parties: the secret of what must have appeared to be a form of mind control in exchange for the opportunity to establish nests throughout occupied Europe. The details of the operation remain highly classified, however, and we’re going to have to cut through a great deal of red tape before we can access them.”

“But you’ve got your suspicions.”

“I wish that’s all they were.”

Jeremy waits for her to continue. He isn’t surprised when she doesn’t. This is Yvette de Monnier, a.k.a. Solange Malraux, the government agent who infiltrated Majestic-12, broke into the most heavily guarded sector of Area 51 and photographed the blueprints for the transfer device. She tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it. That she’s managed to keep the machine out of the hands of the British Secret Service for so long is reason enough to trust her judgement.

But although he’d never dare say it to her face, he thinks Yvette might be losing her touch. The disastrous events on the breakwater, the botched attempt at retrieving the notebook, the failure to identify Cathryn Simmons as the real target of the MoD’s convoluted conspiracy, none of them were in keeping with a reputation for ruthless efficiency no less an authority than retired Fleet Admiral Sir Kingston Ferens had assured him was richly deserved.

Could it be that swapping bodies four times in a matter of a few weeks had somehow diluted her special abilities? Was the person behind those compelling eyes only a shadow of the woman she’d once been?

Finally she rests her hands on his.

“There’s a sailing for Cherbourg at 1500. I intend to be on it.”

Jeremy’s frown deepens.

“You’re going to Romania,” he sighs.

“I have to.”

“What about me?”

“You’ll be in the north-east with the Vaseys. One of their daughters has started behaving oddly.”

“Infected?”

“From the symptoms Mrs Vasey described, I think it’s possible. You’re to make an assessment — discreetly, of course — and report in.”

Jeremy grunts his assent. It’s no sort of job at all, just something to keep him busy and make him feel he’s contributing to the cause. And in that dead, half-demolished dump of a town, Northcroft.

“One more thing,” Yvette goes on. “I’ll be going to Romania as a man.”

“Oh yeah? Got anyone particular in mind?”

“You.”

One thing you could rely on with Yvette de Monnier, she didn’t mince words.

As impeccably groomed as a senior local dignitary waiting to be introduced to Her Majesty in person, Jeremy Egerton stares out of the window at the early morning sunshine creeping across a world he’ll soon be seeing with very different eyes.

The sea, the beach, the promenade, the shelters, the benches, the roads, the pavements and the buildings…

How will they seem to him?

Might the very air he breathes feel changed?

It wasn’t going to be like playing one of the ugly sisters. Nobody would be in on the joke. There’d be no knowing winks to the audience, no muttered asides in a normal voice.

And no way of telling how long it might be before the curtain came down.

He’d tried to talk Yvette out of this — Jesus, how he’d tried! — but she was having none of it. There was no time to debate alternative courses of action, she’d told him.

“Cathryn has been in Romania for a month, enough time to have found a way to smuggle herself and Niamh Latimer into southern Bucovina. If she’s breached the cordon, both she and Niamh will almost certainly have been transformed into kuzkardesh gara.”

“So there’s a good chance you could be wasting your time?”

“Far from it. If they have been converted, someone has to ensure that they don’t come back.”

Jeremy hadn’t asked her how she intended to perform that task. If Yvette considered Cathryn so dangerous she was prepared to go to these sorts of lengths, she’d have no qualms about putting a bullet in the woman’s brain.

“I won’t be taking the transfer device,” she’d added. “That has to stay in this country. I know it’s a huge responsibility, but it’s also your insurance policy. Once you’ve used it the device will retain a copy of your subconscious as it was at the time of the transfer. In the unlikely event of you being infected with the meme all you have to do is attach it to the top of your spine and the virus will be deleted.”

Just like that.

No buttons to press, no levers to pull, no dials to watch.

Technology so advanced it might as well be magic.

Or from another world…

His next tactic had been to point out that the meme infected the brains of both sexes. She’d dismissed it by explaining that not only did it take far longer to overcome the male ego, but as someone who’d spent several months as a heterosexual female she’d enjoy a temporary immunity from its effects while her mind adapted to its new body’s preferences.

“So you’re saying gay men are safe from this thing?” he’d wanted to know.

“No, they’ll eventually be turned. Just as all kuzkardesh gara are bisexual, regardless of their previous orientation.”

Jeremy hadn’t felt very manly for saying it, but he’d agreed that the freedom to be straight, gay or a bit of both was well worth making a few sacrifices for.

Now he’s counting down the minutes to a time when he won’t feel manly at all.

His eyes wander to the double-breasted jacket, the neatly pressed trousers and brightly polished shoes he put on while Yvette took her turn in the bathroom.

Her choice — but then everything always is.

What kind of outfit she has in mind for him he’d rather not know until he’s wearing it. He doesn’t think it’ll include a pair of Levis.

The door opens and closes. Jeremy keeps his eyes fixed on the wall to the right of the window, not wanting to catch so much as a glimpse of her reflection in the glass.

He tries to shut out the sounds he can hear behind him, each one bringing the transfer that little bit closer. He makes no attempt to regulate his breathing; Yvette has assured him it doesn’t matter what mental state he’s in when the exchange is made, his mood will be stabilised by the GABA inhibitors the device will stimulate his brain into producing.

That’s the suitcase being dragged from beneath the bed. Now she’s unlocking it. Removing the protective wrapping. She must be holding it in her hand right now.

He’ll be okay. He knows what’s about to happen. Apparently that makes the transition go all the more smoothly.

He still feels as if he’s standing on a gallows with a noose around his neck, waiting for the trapdoor to open.

“Are you ready?” she asks him.

“No, but so what? Just get it over with.”

“Lean your head forward,” she instructs him. “You’ll feel a slight pressure at the base of your skull. When it increases you’ll know the exchange is underway. At the conclusion of the process you’ll be the one holding the transfer device. Try not to drop it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a vested interest in keeping that thing in good repair.”

He feels her move his ponytail to one side. Something cold and metallic makes contact with the skin just below his hairline. He isn’t sure, but it seems to be vibrating somehow.

Now it’s pressing harder.

Keep staring at the wallpaper, focus on those interlocking spirals.

Oh God, they’re moving…

I want to be sick.

Everything’s too bright.

Too yellow.

All I can see is that light.

It’s gone wrong! I’m dying!

I’m nowhere.

I’m nothing.

It’s all gone.

Whatever I was, it’s gone.

Gone…

Jeremy stares at the silvery ovoid filling her field of vision. Very slowly, she becomes aware of the fingers she’s using to hold it against the back of Yvette’s neck.

They’re Jeremy’s own fingers, though she remembers them being fatter and smoother.

Of course she does. That’s how they were until…

At the conclusion of the process you’ll be the one holding the transfer device. Try not to drop it.

Jeremy withdraws the machine carefully. She’s distracted by the sickly sweetness on her tongue, an aftertaste of the adhesive holding her dental plate to the roof of her mouth and her lower denture firmly against her gum, but manages to hand it back to its keeper without letting it slide from her grasp.

Only when Yvette smiles down at her does the colour leave Jeremy’s cheeks.

“I’m giving you fifteen minutes to get acclimatised,” he says, “then we start your briefing.”

Jeremy doesn’t hear a word.

“Your body knows how to be female. You don’t have to train it. Let your subconscious take charge and everything will come naturally to you.”

Jeremy turns from the window. Yvette is packing the one suitcase he’ll be taking with him, throwing in socks, underpants, toiletries and the like with typical male carelessness.

“Yes,” she says quietly, her ears still not attuned to either of their voices. “Yes, I’m sure it will.”

“Don’t think of yourself as a woman. You’re just you.”

Jeremy finds her hand going once again to the curly brunette wig she wears over her close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

“That’s what I’m trying to do. It isn’t easy.”

Not when you can’t look down without seeing your bust. Not when you’re constantly aware of your bra straps pressing into your shoulders. Not when every step you take seems to be a tight-rope act.

But all that will pass. In the ninety minutes since the transfer she’s learned to put on make-up from scratch, fasten her suspenders without resorting to a single ‘F’ word, and become proficient at adopting the posture and refinement one might expect from a lady of breeding who has reached a certain age. She’s achieved this despite losing her acting abilities to Yvette; what she’s inherited from him remains to be seen.

She doesn’t even miss her penis. In fact she’s finding it hard to remember what it felt like to have one.

“Your brain is essentially the same as it was before the transfer,” Yvette had explained. “The only thing that’s changed is that its episodic memory system has been overwritten.”

“You make it sound like I’ve always been a woman, my brain’s just been fooled into thinking I was once a man.”

“That’s what a cognitive psychologist would say, certainly.”

Jeremy had decided she’d rather not pursue that line of reasoning any further. She knows that adjustment is a two-edged sword; it comes at a price, one she’s not at all sure she wants to pay.

And this isn’t like one of those stories she remembers from magazines such as Fiesta where the guy always finds himself inhabiting the body of a voluptuous sex goddess who just happens to be a lesbian and whose girlfriends are every bit as gorgeous as she is. Instead she’s a forty-four year old woman — admittedly a good-looking one — who wears dentures and a wig, takes Phyllosan and suffers from any number of annoying little aches and twinges she’s only now becoming aware of.

No good moaning about it. When you team up with Yvette de Monnier, you don’t get to call many of the shots.

Now comes the crunch. She has to go downstairs, explain to the landlady that she and her husband have to leave in a hurry and therefore can’t stay for breakfast, then pay the bill.

As a woman.

Life’s a giggle — if you don’t weaken.

“Wish me luck,” she says to Yvette as she picks up her handbag from the dressing table.

“Don’t forget to check that your seams are straight.”

Jeremy hadn’t.

The Rolls-Royce glides away from The Hard, the pony-tailed young man at the wheel its sole occupant. The vehicle swings right into Queen Street, heading for Portsmouth’s new continental ferry port and the afternoon sailing to Cherbourg.

Jeremy Egerton wonders if she’ll ever see it again.

Without the slightest inkling that she’s less than a hundred yards from the spot where Yvette swapped bodies with Richard Brookbank six months ago, Jeremy turns back to the station entrance and the two young men in British Rail uniforms waiting dutifully beside her four large suitcases.

“The 13.50 to Waterloo. Front first-class compartment,” she instructs them.

Both youths very nearly trip over their own feet, so keen are they to obey.

That is what Jeremy has inherited from Yvette de Monnier.

Well well well. It looks as though fun might not have been left off the menu after all.

She climbs the steps to the cramped booking hall, where she buys a ticket to Darlington with Yvette’s Visa card. Having to take such care over every word, movement and gesture only adds to the air of poise and elegance she first felt emanating from her in the Avalon Hotel’s dining room.

How hard the men tried not to stare at the swellings beneath her prim but snug white blouse! How reluctantly did the women admire its embroidery!

At the newspaper stall Jeremy selects a copy of Au Courant rather than the Motorsport Monthly that first caught her eye. She doesn’t think it’ll hold her interest until she reaches London, let alone the north-east, but if she perseveres with it she might gain valuable insight concerning the issues that affect women in her age group.

As she makes her way along the platform, a sudden gust of air that’s managed to find its way from the harbour tries to lift the hem of her dark grey pleated skirt. For a moment or two it escapes her detection; she can’t actually feel the material through her stockings, in fact it’s as if she’s wearing nothing from the waist down except her shoes. Something else she’ll have to bear in mind.

The first-class compartment is empty, yet Jeremy still takes her seat as demurely as she can, crossing one thigh over the other and arranging the folds of her skirt so they cover her knees. She glances up at the luggage rack, sees that all four cases have been stowed there securely, then opens her magazine.

From the inside front cover stares a stubbly Latin type advertising a fragrance Jeremy’s never heard of. She knows that the model’s brooding eyes, sulky expression and strong bone structure exemplify the kind of look many women find irresistible, but why? Is it because he gives the impression he can handle himself in a fight, and will therefore be able to protect them? Surely there must be more to female sexuality than that.

Doors slam, one after the other. Three long whistles, each louder than the one preceding it. The electric train glides forward. The first stage of Jeremy’s journey has begun.

When it ends she’ll meet the Vaseys, who Yvette has said will pick her up at Darlington station.

Dr Andrew Vasey, former lover of Rita Sirs.

And his wife Carol, who used to be Rita Sirs.

Interesting business, working for Yvette de Monnier.

The train stops at Portsmouth & Southsea, then Fratton before picking up speed on its way to Havant. Still distracted by the face whose appeal she can’t quite fathom, Jeremy’s heart misses a beat when she hears the compartment door slide open — but it’s only the ticket collector.

One sweet smile later she’s talked him into having her luggage taken directly to the taxi stand when they arrive at Waterloo. She has little doubt that he’d have brought her a cup of coffee and a slice of cake from the buffet car if she’d asked him to.

Dependable. That’s the word to describe a guy like that.

Pliable. Considerate. Willing to please. Definitely a one-woman man.

The swarthy hunk in the perfume ad couldn’t be more different.

Suddenly she gets it.

He’s a challenge. He needs to be tamed, to be moulded into shape.

And the most effective tool a woman has at her disposal, by a country mile and then some, is sex.

Is that why — assuming it was done right, of course — women are supposed to enjoy making love so much more than men?

Is their physical pleasure enhanced by the knowledge that satisfying their partner is helping to fashion him into the person best suited to provide for their particular requirements?

Or is Jeremy reading too much into it?

There’s one way to test that theory, mate, and you know what it is.

She can’t.

It’ll mean taking a rock-hard prick into the slit between her legs. While that might not be so bad, she’ll have its owner slobbering all over her.

Except that as the woman she’s the one who’ll be setting the rules. And she’s already proved to herself that men are putty in her hands.

She can’t.

It’s not her body.

Then again, it’s not really Yvette’s either.

She can’t.

The very idea’s ridiculous.

But to spurn this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? She’d regret it to the end of her days.

Jeremy turns the pages, heedless of the beautiful chalk downland outside. She soon comes to another picture, no less arresting than the first. So involved is she in the subject’s powerful physique that she fails to become aware of the tongue licking her parched cherry lips, or the hand cupping her left breast.

As for the wetness soaking her panties, she notices that all right.