“Hey, Mum, you’re in a mag.” Emily looks up at me. “Are you a model? Is that why you’ve been away?”

This is the story of Penny. A closet Transwoman thrust into the outside world 24-7 when she would rather go and hide away. Perhaps the title should be Welcome to Penny’s Paranoid World…

From part eleven
I had talked to Alec about things that happened nearly twenty years ago, and I have not flown a plane for nearly ten years. It was almost as if they had happened to another person. Things that I had forgotten about, or at least hidden away and forgot.
I have a sip of my tea, but it has gone cold. Oh well. Mothers still asleep holding Fred. She’s smiling, I wonder what she is dreaming of.

And now as they say, read on…
I went to bed and had a sleepless night. Although I must have slept at some point, because the next thing I knew there was daylight coming through the open bedroom doorway and my mobile had the little green light flashing to show I had a text message during the night.
arriving friday on america airlines flight 6175 (a british airways flight, one of those partner flight things) at 7.09pm terminal 5 heathrow . pick me up please. see you then. love carol

Carol has never got text speak. Then again nether have I. All those letters and numbers jumbled together to make words. I much prefer proper English. It is a relief to know she is coming. I know it is just a quick look around with a keyhole camera inside me. I mean I am not bothered by them damaging the boy bits am I, I want rid of them. But things happen. People die when they never expected to on operating table, no fault of anyone’s. It just happens sometimes. It was just their time to go.

I will have to tell Carol that if that happens to leave Henry with Evie. It seems if he is not on the picnic table in the garden, he is in Evie’s little courtyard outside her back door laying in the sun. So he would settle down living with them, and as mother would once in America with Carol if something happened to me, they will soon forget me. Still look on the bright side, it may never come to that.

I am surprised really, I expected it to be around five in the morning, may be just approaching six at the most, but it is close to half seven and I am still dead to the world. Oh well, look at it this way. I have at least missed the Piranha Club as they met yesterday.

Anyway we have to be at Rosemary’s Hairdressers at five to ten. So I best get myself up and ready. I have the feeling Melissa will want to play with my hair again today. At the moment it is in a loose plait hanging forward over my shoulder. I have found that best way sleeping with long hair. It is already hard to think of it as having ever been short. And after a quick spot of lunch we better pop down to Morrisons in Portsmouth for the shopping. I am still not comfortable at the thought of going to the local supermarkets, so a fifty mile drive down the road to shop is ok with me. And I like driving anyway.

Last night the pretty weather girl with half her right arm missing said there was a cold front moving in across the North Sea from Russia and temperatures would drop leaving us with a cold morning with the chance of rain in the afternoon. I put the heating back on. Mother feels the cold. Although at times it feels like we are living in the tropics at home.

Still it gives me a chance to wear another of my sixties style dresses. This one is a mini, so tights today. It has a thick shortbread biscuit coloured material with a narrow V-cut at the boobs that shows a bit of cleavage. I can wear my cream suede two part courts with an ankle strap. I have them in black as well. They are comfortable to wear as well and are nice to look at.

When Melissa is near finished (Mother’s all done and having a cup of coffee waiting for Me! this time). The door opens and I hear Evie and Emily's voices. Emily comes round the wall and stands in front of me wide eyed and excited when she sees my hair. Which makes me wonder what Melissa has done to it. She washed it, then spent ages carefully brushing it out and has been taking forever blow drying it with me turned away from a mirror. Melissa has a sense of the dramatic where I am concerned!

Em dashes back to Evie. “Gran, Gran!” Grabbing her hand and pulling her back around the corner to look at me. “Gran. Can I have my hair like that, please? Please Gran. Please.”

She turns to Melissa with a pleading doe eyed look only a seven year old girl can manage. “Please Lissa.”

Melissa laughs. “I’m nearly done with Penny, Evie. It will only take about fifteen minutes, tops, to do Em as well.”

I am trying not to laugh as Melissa pats me on the shoulders to let me know all done. “So Young lady,” I ask her, “why are you not at school today?”

Em thinks about it and shrugs her shoulders, pulling a face as if to say ‘I don’t know’. She can barely contain herself watching me as I start to get out of the chair.

“Where are your sisters?”

“School.” Miss bright eyes quickly says as she happily skips past me into the chair.

As I go round the wall I see in the mirror what Melissa has done. My hair is big, and I really do mean BIG. Silky smooth, I look like I just fell out of a magazine shampoo ad. All I need is metallic dress and over the top make-up to complete the picture. Or a body hugging evening dress and a film premier to attend and I will have the complete high society bimbo look, down to a tee.

While Melissa gets busy with Em’s hair I sit on the sofa between Rosemary and Evie and relax. Rosemary hands me a cup of tea.

"Just made it."

"Thanks, Rosemary. I'm ready for this."

I look across at Mother who is in her own little world drinking her coffee and talking to Fred in her lap. I savour the taste of my tea and turn to Evie.

“Something wrong at the school.” I ask her.

“Ha! The first bit of cold weather this summer and the school boiler goes down. Shirley the Head teacher met everyone at the school gates. They have portable heaters on in the school hall for the kids that can’t go back home. The twins wanted to stay and be with their friends. Em couldn’t wait to get back in the car.”

The phone rings and saying there is no peace for the wicked. Rosemary leaves us to answer it. Left by ourselves, Evie quietly asks me how yesterday went. I tell her. She leans over and hugs me.

“See. You are a girl. You have been one all along, and if the doctors had got it right when you were young as they should have done. You would be a happily married mother with kid’s right now.”

She pauses, looking over at Emily who we can see in the mirror is beaming with pleasure as Melissa blow dries her hair. “So, what are you doing this afternoon?”

“Shopping.”

“And are you going to go all the way down to Portsmouth again?”

I shrug my shoulders not wanting to answer, having been found out.

“Thought so. You know you have to go to the local supermarkets sooner or later. Why don’t we go back to the farmhouse and have some lunch, and then we can all go to the supermarket together and you won’t be alone there.”

Emily comes downstairs wearing a dress that looks a lot like the one I am wearing today.

Evie laughs, telling me she had forgotten all about that dress, as she could never get Emily to wear it. She’s trying not to smile as she tells me. “Now, it seems she likes it.”

Evie has the two of us stand in the kitchen so she can take photos of us together on her mobile. She has Em stand in front of me with my arms down around her with Em holding my hands, then another with me bending down sitting on my heels beside Em who is grinning her head off as she posses with her arms around my neck. Then another with her pulling a silly face as she kisses me on the cheek.

It is fun and silly, but when the door opens and John and Johnny come in. I stiffen, panicking inside. My heart thumping.

John looks at us both, smiles and looks at his daughter. ‘And what are you doing at home, Little Miss. You don’t look ill. In fact you look very pleased with yourself at the moment’.

Emily schusses her father holding her finger up to her lips, telling him. “We are busy at the moment, daddy. Grandma’s taking photos. You have to wait and be quiet.”

"Well that's telling me." I hear John quietly tell his father while chuckling.

An amused Evie takes some more photos as I feel myself blushing even more, knowing we are being watched. When she is done. A smiling John moves over holding out his hand to me, saying “Let me help you up.”

To my embarrassment, I know I am blushing as I thank him. I am saved any further embarrassment by Emily taking a firm hold of her father and grandfathers hands and pulling them away to the sitting room, telling them. “You can put your feet up and have a rest while we ladies make you some lunch.”

Evie and I set too making chicken soup care of several cans of Mr Heinz’s finest. Evie chops up a cooked chicken from the fridge to add to it, while I do my best not to boil it. At home I would have just bunged it in the microwave. Evie however does things properly and has it on a hot plate.

I do like this kitchen. I feel really at home in it for some reason. I can’t explain why. I smile to myself. I have kitchen lust. Or is that kitchen envy! I laugh at the silliness of it. Mine is so basic compared to this one. Em helps by buttering slices of French stick loaf as I cut them off. I push away a wisp of hair from my face, blowing it away has not worked. As much as I like the kitchen I am embarrassed at being in John’s home at the same time as him. I am sure he is wondering what I am doing here all the time.

Mother does not seem bothered by any of this. She is making a fuss of Nelson, the old dog. He is happily resting his head on her knees, with his tail gently wagging away from side to side as she fusses and strokes him. She is lost in her own world with a happy little smile on her face. She once told me in better days that when she was seven. She had had a dog called Nelson, but he had to be given away when they moved into a flat when she was eight as pets were not allowed.

As well as the buttered slices of the French loaf, we have fresh soft rolls from the village shop. Emily is sent to get her father and grandfather while I go and get mother to bring her to the table.

“Hello there.”

“Hello.”

I am not sure if she really knows me at the moment, as she looks up at me with her little girl smile. “Ready for some soup?”

“No, I’ve had my soup. Thank-you.”

“No. You’ve been giving Nelson a fuss while we prepared lunch. It’s ready now. There is some nice chicken soup and a soft roll for you at the kitchen table.”

“Thank-you.”

I push her up to the table and give her the roll. She dips it in her soup and has a bite.

“Yummy. Thank-you.” She smiles at me for a moment, then turns back to the soup and tucks in.

Sometimes I want to both cry and smile at the same time. I feel so totally privileged. There may be an old lady in her eighties in front of me, but she is the youngest person in the room at the moment, as daft as it sounds. But you really can see the child in her eyes in that old face. And at the same time you cannot help but think of the person you loved and have lost as they stopped being your parent and you became theirs.

We all settle down eating. I look up to see John at the other end of the table watching me eating and blush. Embarrassed, I cover by checking Emily is ok. She looks up at me pleased and happy. Evie asks John if there is anything he wants from the shops as we are going shopping. I glance up to see him looking at her talking. Relived, I concentrate on my own soup and bit into a thickly buttered slice of French stick loaf.

Evie offers to push mother, so I can get a shopping trolley. We make are way into the supermarket with Evie and Mother just behind me and Em is beside me as my very own mini-me. She has one hand lazily resting on the shopping trolley handle beside mine.

I see us on one of those big tv’s they hang just inside in the entrance. We look like four generations of the same family. Mother and daughter with gran pushing her mum in a wheelchair behind them. It is only when I see mother in photos or in videos like this that I noticed how old and tired she has become. I do not really notice it otherwise. We just look so normal to me. I smile, even if it shows a fantasy image of the perfect family shopping.

We get a few looks as we shop, at me I think, but then I am easily the most paranoid person in the supermarket at the moment. But then I do have big seventies hair. I have to stop myself smiling as Emily does a little skip every now and again beside me. She seems so contented. She has already asked if she can have a comic and I said yes. Her favourite one goes on sale today it seems. So she cannot wait to get her hands on it.

With the shopping trolley three quarters full we hit it the magazines isle. With a look up to me for the ok, Em shoots off to find her comic. I debate with myself whether or not to buy a tv guide, but given that I never actually look at them when I do buy them. What is the point of buying one. My eyes look longingly at the model railway magazines I use to buy and turn reluctantly to the female glossy mags. Mother is looking at the children’s comics as Evie looks at the female mags above them. I bend down and ask her if she sees one she likes. She points to one with cats on the cover. I pick it up and give it to her.

“Why don’t you look at it till I need to pay for it at the till.”

Mother smiles and looks at the comic with lots of Cats on the cover aimed at five to six year old girls. She has had Womans Weekly all her life. Well, for as long as I can remember, and if I got her one now she would still be pleased to get it. But as soon as we got home, she would discard it unread. So now I ask her what she would like and her eyes are almost always drawn down to the children’s comics. Sometimes the CAT magazine, but mostly to the children’s comics. And if it gives her pleasure, who cares what anyone else thinks. I certainly don’t.

“Do you remember the magazine on the sofa at Rosemary’s?" Evie asks me.

I look at the magazine Evie is holding up. “Might be… why?” I really do not have a clue, but do not want to admit it.

She flicks it round to show an advert with a close-up of a woman’s head with big glossy hair. She is vaguely reminds me of someone. “She looks familiar.” I say, hoping for a clue.

Grinning and trying not to laugh Evie takes my arm and moves me over to a mirror set in one of the roof columns in the isle, holding up the mag so I can see the advert and my own reflection in the mirror...

“Good trick.” I tell her laughing, half looking at the photo. “I didn’t see you take that photo back at the farmhouse.”

Evie grins at me a smug look on her face.

“Melissa has made me look like a Bond girl from one of Roger Moore’s films. All I need now is a Bond Villain.” I laughingly tell her. Then we both say it together. “Donald MacTavish,” and laugh.

I look again at the photo Evie took of me, something is not right. I really am going to have to make sure I know what Melissa intends to do with my hair before I sit in her chair at Rosemary’s in the future.

“It’s not you.” Evie smiles back at me. “It’s a shampoo ad in the magazine. It’s.” she flips the magazine round to check the page.” Doutzen Kroes. Whoever she is.”

Ah! That’s why it did not seem right. I show my lack of girlhood, womanhood, knowledge, by saying. “Who’s that?” and looking closer at the photo I can see it is a hair product advert, now.

“A foreign model, I guess.” Evie looks at the magazine photo. And grinning mischievously asks. “You could be twins. Any chance you were adopted?”

Laughing I shake my head. In the past in my private fantasy’s I use to think on a good day with make-up on I looked a bit like Julie Christie in her thirties or maybe her forty’s. But this is just the big hair. It makes us look identical. That’s all.

Em comes to see what we are looking at, pulling her Grans hand down to see the magazine.

“Hey, Mum, you’re in a mag.” Emily looks up at me. “Are you a model? Is that why you’ve been away?”

She’s bright eyed and full of innocence and curious and not realising what she has just said, but Evie and I freeze. Evie gets her wits about her first, because I do not know what on earth to say.

“No, darling. Penny and this lady just look the same. They look like twins don’t they. So do you. Triplets! It’s the way Melissa did your hair today, darling.”

Em just stares open-mouthed at the photo and me, not believing a word her gram has said. Then realising she has been just told she looks like the model. Then we get a big smile followed by. “Cooooool.”

Evie glances at me and tells her. “Why don’t you go and get your sisters a comic each, as well. You can have another one today as well today. How’s that.”

“Yeah.”

Emily prances off doing a models runway walk back to the magazines, and it is hard not to laugh, even though we are both in shock. At least I am.

With Emily away out of earshot, and Evie moves closer to me apologetic. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you, but I didn’t want to spook you... When we were at your Beach Hut Saturday. The girls told me that you were their mother come back to them. Only you didn’t remember you were their mother yet. I didn’t know what to say to them.”

Evie sighs, glancing at Em who is studiously looking for her sister’s favourite comics. “You have to remember the girls have no memory of Susan. They were too young when she died. They just have the photos John has out to see. And you do look so like her. And I’m sorry as that is my fault too for adding to it by getting Melissa to give you super long hair.” She smiles at me. “But you do look good.”

She leans in our shoulders touching. “I expected John to react, I wanted him to react, and he did. But, I didn’t expect the girls to react as well. They don’t really remember their mother. She is just a photo to them. But up in their bedrooms away from us they decided you were their mother come back to them.”

Em holds up a comic to us to show she has one of them. We smile and nod to her. She goes back to checking out the comics.

“John is quite moved by the way the girls have attached themselves to you. They have killed off any relationship he tried to start in the past with any other woman.” She laughs quietly. “Mind you, there has only been three. One they told to her face they would not accept her as their mother when she came to the house and if she came back they would set the dog on her. The other two ran for the hills after one visit after they were very, very, scarily polite to them while standing watching their every move.”

Evie thinks for a moment. “I’m sure they haven’t seen Village Of The Damned, they are far too young to have seen that.” And certainly not for the twins to have read the book. Evie gives her head a little shake. “They are very determined on this. They want you back as their mother as they see it.”

Emily comes and dumps two comics for her sisters in the shopping trolley asks if she can have a dvd instead of a comic, then rushes off to inspecting the children’s dvd’s before we can say no. clearly she has one in mind.

“I know you like John. You blush every time he looks at you and positively glow at the same time. I know it has only been a week. But…”

I interrupt her. “I’m still very male, physically. I know I have my special front on that makes me look girl down below, but…”

“I know, and I am quite sure that will change soon. They have said you are a girl anyway, haven’t they.”

“Yes. But it would still mean an operation on the NHS, and that’s the way I will have to go as I can’t go private. There will be a waiting list. And then what will John think of all that. Be disgusted, I’m sure. I should back off. This is all a big mistake my being around them. The girls will be less hurt that way when John doesn’t want to know me.”

She put her hand on my arm stopping us. “Listen, you silly thing. Do want to be my granddaughter’s mother, honest answer now?”

I say it in almost whispered, “yes.”

Evie takes both my arms and holds me.

“Then trust me, and everything will be all right. I know you don’t think that. And I know everything is moving so fast for you right now. But this is who you were meant to be. Just trust me, Penny. Everything will work out alright.”

After that we made are way to the check-outs, and the café. Where Emily happily devours a cream donut. Oblivious to bomb she had just dropped in our laps. Despite what Evie said I still feel this is going to end in disaster and heartbreak for everyone. I just don’t know what to do. Evie has a little smile as Emily plonks herself quickly down beside me at the table in case her gran should try to sit beside me.

Mother sits drinking her coffee looking at her comic in a world of her own. She seems more and more distant from me now. More enclosed within herself. I shall have to warn Carol about that before she arrives Friday.

After picking up the twins Em has to sit on Evie’s lap for the short distance from the girl’s school in Mid-Steeping back to White Gate Farm. With the wheelchair and the shopping in the back the twins have to sit on the back seat with them. They are not happy about missing out on what they regard as ‘their’ backward facing seat in the back, and even more unhappy when they find out they missed out on the chance of a shopping trip with us this afternoon as well.

Evie tries to get me to agree to stay for dinner again. But if we stay for anymore meals, John will be giving me a bill when we leave. Besides, I have a lot to think about after Em’s little bombshell and what Evie has told me, and Henry needs to eat as well.

As we drive back home we pass the mad Jogger out again. I see who she is this time. We have not met before, but she gives me a friendly wave as we pass. She did not come to the Piranha Club last week. She is Claudia Harcort-Jones and lives in The Hall with her husband Charles Anthony Harcort-Jones. He is very posh, being something in the city of London. He has a little steam train that runs round the grounds of The Hall. And if I am honest I am very envious of that fact. They hold the village’s summer fate every year and he gives the kids and parents rides on it. Mother is frightened of it unfortunately. So I have never been able to get close enough to it to have a good look.

When we get in Henry is sprawled across the sofa in the late afternoon sun. But happy to get up and have a fuss and some nosh. I pick him up and he hangs over my shoulder like a dead cat watching everything behind us until we enter the kitchen and then he scrambles round to purr in my ear as I bend down to get his food from the cupboard. Jumping down to climb in over the packs of food to explore the back of his food cupboard. All thought of food gone for the moment as he checks out a potential afternoon napping place!

To be continued…

Sorry for the gap between 11 & 12, but for personal reasons I needed a gap between them. Sophie