It started out as a job interview and turned out to be the first day of the rest of my life. (As it always does!)

The Job Interview

What turned out to be the first day of the job interview started with a 5am alarm call in the hotel generously provided by the prospective employer. The publishing company had been recently formed out of a merger of three smaller ones. Several of the older staff had elected to retire or take redundancy rather than move to a new city. The post advertised was for an executive secretary. It was just what I was looking for; new town, new job, new life.

I had a good soak in the bath and washed my hair and combed it out into a classic long bob. I decided on a slightly darker foundation than might have seemed appropriate but the contrast with my light blonde hair creates a look that, I believe, suits me. Blue eye-shadow and black mascara brought out the light blue of my eyes. I outlined my lips and filled in with a deep red. Not only was it a look that suited me but I knew that the chairman conducting the interview had been a young man in the 1960s. Good research always pays off on these occasions. I put on my pearl earrings and pearl choker at my throat.

I then dressed for the role. I had put out a navy blue business suit with an above-the—knee pencil skirt with a kick pleat at the back and a bolero jacket with three quarter sleeves over a white satin blouse. Underneath I dressed for myself. Good lingerie makes me feel confident. A black corset with six suspenders holding up black fully-fashioned stockings really gave me a feeling of control. The platform bra of the corset left my nipples bare but they would not be too obvious under the ruffled front of the blouse. I slipped into my black leather stilettoes with four-inch heels. Picked up my matching shoulder bag and briefcase and surveyed myself in the mirror. I was ready to wow them.

The interview and the aptitude tests went well and by 3pm I was sitting in a room with the one other remaining candidate. I was confident that I looked the part and I certainly felt the part and had dropped a gentle hint to the interviewing panel that this was the way that I liked to dress for work. I re-crossed my legs and glanced down at my shoes. A bit pricey but they felt good! Heels are so important on these occasions. I glanced in turn at the other occupant of the room. She was dressed just like me! None of the other candidates, all of whom had now been sent away, had been similarly attired. One of the unsuccessful candidates had been wearing almost flat shoes with tiny kitten heels and still towered over the rest of us and the interviewing panel, poor thing. Another, clearly, in my view at least, didn’t want the job but probably needed evidence that she had attended at an interview to satisfy the unemployment benefit office. She had worn ballet flats with jeans. The black nail varnish and green lipstick were also something of a clue.

My competitor was a brunette and had put her hair up into a chignon. Her business suit was black over a royal blue blouse. She also wore black stilettos. Her makeup was exquisite. In short she was a stunner! In different circumstances I would have engaged her in conversation but we had not exchanged a word, just the odd ‘knowing’ look when one of the others had been called in and summarily sent on her way clutching an expenses claim form.

When the chairman came into the room again we both looked up expectantly and, as I learned later, both expected to be the next one called in. We were both surprised when the chairman explained that neither of us had been eliminated and hopefully, neither of us would be. However certain arrangements with business partners needed to be made and he would be grateful if we would accept the company’s hospitality for another night at the hotel with all our expenses covered and reappear at the offices at 10am the next day. A taxi was called for us and we made our way back to the hotel. It was in the taxi that I started to get to know Marianne for the first time. We decided to meet up for dinner in the hotel. In my room I had a nap, read the paper and had a shower. Luckily I had packed my LBD just in case and matched it up with stockings and a suspender belt. The dress is tailored to be worn without a bra and has removable cotton liners in the bust.

When I met Marianne in the bar her hair was down in a long bob and she was wearing the almost the same LBD! We both laughed it off and ordered drinks. I wondered about champagne. After all hadn’t the chairman said that we were both going to be employed? However we quickly agreed, as we were to find that we so often did, that this would be a bad idea at this stage. Something with a lower alcohol content would have to suffice for now. Over dinner we got on really well. I steered the conversation towards her when I could and where I couldn’t I gave her a highly edited version of my own history. After dinner Marianne prevailed on me to come to her room for coffee and, unwisely perhaps, I accepted. That’s when things went wrong, or should I say went right. She sat next to me on the sofa in her room pulled me to her and kissed me. It was definitely that, not ‘we kissed’, she kissed me. At first I let her. I was really drawn to her and wanted to be close to her but it would never work. I pulled away and made to leave.

“I am sorry,” I said, “I have to go. I am not….I am not… well I am not a lesbian.”
“Nor am I honey, not full time anyway, I couldn’t help myself. I have wanted to do that since I first saw you this morning. Please stay, It’s not as if you can get pregnant, is it?”
“No, I can’t, but you might.”
She looked at me, apparently trying to understand what I had said.
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Certainly”
“What was all that you told me at dinner about attending secretarial college in Brighton?”
“It was all the truth but not the whole truth”
She still had hold of my hand and I could not bring myself to pull away. Instead she pulled me towards her.
“Sit here, my love, and spill the beans. All of it, hold nothing back. How did you get to here?”
“How did I get here? A simple tale really, it includes childhood games, my twin sister, a dead end job, my parents imprisonment, international intrigue, quite simple really.

After our parents went to prison, no, please don’t interrupt, it will all become clear, my sister and I were made wards of court and sent off to different boarding schools. Nobody in the family wanted us. There was nothing we could do about it. We were not legally adults and the authorities didn’t know what to do with us except try to keep us from getting access to a very large pot of money which they believed that our parents had salted away somewhere. Well they were right about one part of it. There was a large pot of money but we didn’t even know about it, let alone have access to it. In any case once my parent’s lawyers had explained to them about the Proceeds of Crime Act which says something like “pay it all back or you can stay in prison until you do” the various bankers in foreign parts were instructed to press the appropriate buttons and a big chunk of taxpayers money went back to the taxpayer and Mum and Dad were given release dates appropriate to their sentences. Life changed in all sorts of ways over that period. The sports cars and the big house all went. Mum and Dad became distant figures who we saw only once a month in the family visits room of two separate prisons. Why such a long sentence when nobody was murdered and nobody, except the taxman, was a single penny worse off than they had been before? I think it is because the powers that be get really pissed-off when they discover somebody has been much cleverer than them.

Eventually we got out of school. At the age of 17, Sis and I were living in lodgings in Brighton. We had a few carefree weeks living in that lively town until our guardians booked Sis into a secretarial college and me onto a plumbing course. I ask you, me, upside down under a sink with a mole grip between my teeth. No way! I said that would rather be an accountant like my parents. Our guardians tried not to laugh but pointed out that the chances of any member of our family being employable in legitimate accountancy in the next hundred years was very, very slim indeed. I said that I would be a lawyer then. This prompted the same sad smile and shake of the head. I lasted about three days on the plumbing then dropped out. The college were glad to see the back of me. Our guardians seemed to lose interest once the money had been repaid. In any case our eighteenth birthday was approaching. Then we would be on our own. Meanwhile Sis was not at all interested in her secretarial course but far more interested in Val or Valentin to give him his full name. He was a Russian student staying in the same lodgings. He had come to Brighton to improve his conversational English. Judging by the grunts and squeals coming from the room next to mine most of the night that wasn’t working either.

On Friday of the first week of her course Sis announced to me that she too was going to pack it in. I tried to get her to stay on, after all we would need to find work when we came of age and a little secretarial skill would not go amiss. She accused me of expecting to sponge of her when she was still working and I was on the dole. So I said ‘who is going to feed you then, Val? Whatever they say you can’t live on love. That’s when she dropped the bombshell. Val wanted to take her home to meet his parents. I told her not to be daft. How would she, a ward of court, get out of the country? Val, of course, would fix that. Only one problem remained. How would she cover her absence from Brighton? Easy, she says, ‘you be me, just like when we were kids.’ All I would have to do would be hang around the lodgings for a few days in her clothes until it was too late to get her back. We had pulled similar stunts before. I had even gone to her school one day as her and the only result had been that the teacher had written to mum saying that Sis seemed to be withdrawn, preoccupied and even a little confused and perhaps she ought to be monitored over the next few weeks. I got away with the impersonation except that the teacher thought I, or Sis, might be pregnant!

On the Saturday night Sis left for Russia. I later learned that she travelled in a cargo ship from the port of Newhaven. She and Val probably stayed in the cabin all the way there! On Sunday I appeared as myself at breakfast (if Sis had turned up that would have raised suspicions!) and as Sis at lunch. On Monday, out of sheer chutzpah I attended at the secretarial college as Sis. Twelve Months later I entered the job market with a secretarial diploma and a firm grounding in business practice and etiquette as well as grooming, make-up, deportment, dressmaking, cooking, flower arrangement, fashion and style. I had even learned, from an expert, how to get in and out of a sports car without showing my knickers!

The fact that the certificate had my sister’s name on it was no real problem because I was happy and had found my way in the world. Mum and Dad had been released and gone abroad to start a new life. I was asked a few times, by a selection of rather irritated police officers, where my parents and my brother had gone but I said nothing and they soon lost interest. I suppose that didn’t want to think that my parents might have been even more clever that they thought. I got work in London for an oil company and began to work my way up the secretarial ladder. When I was appointed PA to their director of government contracts I thought that I had it made and started to look for a house to buy. All too soon! Such a post requires a high level security clearance. That I was not going to get. It wasn’t the fact that I was under an assumed name in an assumed gender. My diploma was genuine but my name was mud and mud sticks. As far as they were concerned I was my parents’ daughter. The oil company were very good. No hard feelings there. They found me a position in a publisher’s office where they had some sort of influence. Safe but not nearly so well paid. I had a month off whilst my predecessor worked out her notice period and prepared to become the mother of twins.

On the second day I was woken by a knock at the door of my flat at 6:30 on the morning. Suspecting it was more policemen I went to the door to find a cycle courier with a thick envelope for me. It was from Sis, via the London office of a shipping company based in Vladivostok. I had not been able to attend her wedding to Val but now I was being invited to attend the christening of my niece Anya in Moscow. The envelope also contained he British passport and a note explaining that she did not need it any more as she was now a Russian citizen. The note also said that I should destroy everything else except the ticket. Very ‘James Bond’. The ticket was a business class ticket to ‘Moskva’. I admit to being puzzled by that. Business class, almost ten times the cost of economy!

When I got to Russia I discovered that the ship which had taken sis to Russia and the Shipping line and a number of other large and successful businesses were all controlled by Valentin’s family. The penniless Russian student act had been because he is genuinely a very nice bloke and didn’t like the idea of flashing his wealth about nor the sort of people that it attracted to him. Sis had no Idea until they got to Russia.
I was accepted as female by my brother in law and his family and Sis paid for me to have breast enhancement in Russia. I stayed for nine months but it is not my country and I was a dependant there, living off Valentin’s family. I was also getting a little tired of his mother’s attempts to marry me off to eligible Russian men. I know I enjoy dressing and looking like this but I have never fancied a man! It’s just the way I am.

I got back three weeks ago. This vacancy was in the first newspaper I saw and here I am.”
Marianne had been watching me closely the whole time. She had also been holding my hand. She now let it slip but only to make more coffee. She barely took her eyes off me whilst she did that.
When she did she said. “I am not a man,”
“Oh I know that. But you thought I was a woman. You wanted a woman. I can’t give you that.”
She took both my hands in hers and squeezed. “You weren’t listening to me. What I am interested in is you. I am attracted to you. The fact that you are not a biological woman is an unexpected bonus. The fact that you present as a woman is the reason I had to make the first move. A man would have jumped on me long before that.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to. I am attracted to you too. Who wouldn’t be. I just didn’t know how you would react.”
“How I react is that all my birthdays have come at once! I may be female and glad of it but I really don’t much like the thought of some hairy arsed man pawing me for ten minutes then falling asleep and snoring. I want a partner who is sensitive to me needs and I really think that I might have found her…him… you!”
We kissed again. This time it was mutual.

I won’t trouble you with how we spent that night. I awoke just after 7am with light streaming in through the window. I was lying on my back next to Marianne, holding her hand. We each ordered breakfast sent up to our own rooms and parted reluctantly to get ready for day two of the interview. At the office we were greeted by the chairman and seated together with him around cups of coffee. He explained that the decision had been made to offer both of us a position with the company. One would be the post advertised and one would be an administrator for their new venture which was to be a specialist educational books publisher on a joint venture with an overseas partner. This was all new and a bit hush-hush until it was launched. Which of us would be offered which post would be decided today. He really hoped that we would accept because we were exactly the sort of people that the company needed.

We were then conducted into a conference room where a large screen had been set up with a camera for a conference call to the overseas partner. The screen came on to reveal a man in his sixties or early seventies with a white beard. He spoke in Russian! An off-screen interpreter repeated his words in English. Marianne gripped my hand under the table. After the initial exchanges of pleasantries the chairman moved the camera angle to reveal Marianne and myself and explained that one of these two ladies might be good enough to accept the post that had been discussed yesterday. The face in the screen reacted immediately with a huge grin. In Russian he said something like, ‘Oh, my friend, two beautiful ladies, would you like me to come over and conduct the interviews personally? Ladies, It gladdens an old man’s heard to see such beauty.” Barely missing a heartbeat the female translator’s voice said “Ah, they both look very… professional. Are they both suitably qualified?”

I couldn’t help laughing! Everybody turned to look at me and all including the face on the screen looked puzzled. I spoke to him in my best Russian addressing him by his first name and patronymic. I can’t remember the exact words but I thanked him for his gracious compliments and said that my fiancée and I would look forward to meeting him when he did visit.” He laughed. As the translator started to repeat what I had said in English he stopped her. There as some exchange with the off-screen presence end then the sound of a door closing. He asked me to tell our chairman that he would be absolutely delighted to work with me. I did so and everyone applauded. The chairman asked me if I accepted. I checked with Marianne. She smiled and nodded. Then our Russian counterpart asked if it would be possible to speak to me for a while. The chairman took Marianne away and I was left alone talking to a face on a screen. We are much more used to it now but then it was a novelty. He looked from side to side in a conspiratorial manner then spoke in almost a whisper.
“Your Russian is good, yes?”
“Your English is not so bad either!”
“It does not do to give away too much too soon”
“Sorry, did I make a mistake?”
“By the look of you, no. But I am an old man now and I have been in many countries and seen many things. I understand some things better than some of my compatriots who have not travelled. Let me see your throat, little one, turn to one side. Ah, I thought so. It is very slight and only obvious if you know what to look for. You spoke of your fiancée, Was it her sat next to you? I saw her looking at you when the rest were looking at the screen. Have you asked her yet?”
“How…?”
“You were unguarded. You said ‘nevesta’, A boy speaks of his fiancée as nevesta, a girl of hers as zhenih. I don’t think that the interpreter spotted it of if she did she presumed that it was a mistake. She was too busy trying to prevent me from insulting anyone. Have you asked her yet?”
“No, but I will”
“Good, good. All is well, little one. This is between us until you decide to make it public.”
“Thank you, uncle. Can I call you uncle?”
“I would be very unhappy if you did not! If I am your uncle I have to be invited to your wedding. Is that not so!”

And he was invited. The wedding was held only four months later as Marianne did not want to ‘show’ her pregnancy. The registrar quizzed me about my gender but accepted my word when I offered to show her my ‘qualifications’. The company were very good. You don’t do anything to upset the head of your highest earning department just because he likes to wear a skirt to work!

Our lovely daughter has just left school and put her name down for secretarial college just like her mum. Our son is 15, lantern jawed with black stubble and mad keen on rugby football. He wants to be a vetinary surgeon.

Am I sorry that he did not want to follow his father into educational publishing and fine lingerie? No. With his physique he would look daft in a pencil skirt and heels but I can say without too much fear of contradiction that I still look quite good.
And we still wake up every morning holding hands.