Geoff estranged from his UK relatives is a widower living in Portland. He is in his late forties when he faces the bad midlife crisis of being forced into retirement. Unlike many it might be one of the best things to have ever happened to him recently. For sure the next bad thing that happens could also be considered candidate for the title of 'Usually a really bad thing that is actually for the best'.

Though the house had been listed almost five years ago as being in Emsworth, it was actually in New Brighton as it was north of the A27. The train station was on the south side of the main road so, Emsworth was used to describe most of this area unless people wanted to be clique and exclude themselves from other neighborhoods. Emsworth railway station also actually served Westbourne, New Brighton, Thorny Island, Prinsted and it could be argued Southbourne too. Southbourne was actually directly in the middle of Emsworth’s and Nutbourne’s railway stations.

Rachel stepped into the bay of her bedroom and looked in the furthest right pane. Being a floor lower than the attic bay window, she could only see a bit of the Coast of Hayling Island. It was her glimpse of sea to recall her odd dreams of the Pacific Ocean. They had lived here nearly five years and she had always had this bedroom. Glenda took the attic room above hers two years ago. Rachel wonders if Dad had finished the other side first if she could have got the room she wanted.

Unfortunately, the attic bay window room above the old main bedroom was finished second, and when Rachel turned it down it went to Sally, whom moved from sharing the third bedroom with Rachel to it, as soon as it was completed. When the windowless attic bathroom was finished against the north end wall of the roof, the original main bathroom of the house became hers alone, except when their Grandparents visited. Rachel constantly reminded herself of this fact to show herself that good stuff did still happen in her life.

Her Mother made friends in Emsworth far quicker than she had in Porchester. In fact as in her old memories or weird dreams they had seemed to live in Fareham, and only sleep in Porchester her memories as Geoff didn’t include her Mum making friends there. As surely she must have, it was one of several reasons she was seriously questioning if the memories were not made up. Rachel wished that her Mother’s two best friends in Emsworth weren’t Laura and Ester.

Well Laura wasn’t too bad. She was a perky ball of energy that had a lovely smile that seemed almost a permanent fixture. Rachel had never met someone before that just didn’t seem to get upset, ever. The problem was she had too much energy and got her Mother hooked on aerobics. Paired with the two spare finished bedrooms in the rear of the attic and it meant one was quickly re-purposed and filled with her Mother’s aerobic stuff. It also had a partially mirrored wall and barre added for Sally to practice her ballet.

Though she and Glenda usually were able to duck out of ballet practice they weren’t as lucky avoiding aerobics. All three girls were routinely press ganged into their Mother’s aerobic torture sessions. She’d never before thought she would curse having a large house with empty rooms. Her dreams of the earlier life living in smaller houses had never included dance torture.

Rachel had quickly learnt to not mention anything about what was going to happen, and actually a fair amount occurred differently. They hadn’t gone to live in Portugal, which meant the eight months before turning seven she had put into starting to learn Portuguese was a wasted effort. Their Dad had instead gone for a year to the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California to get his masters in Physics. Due to it being only a year instead of a typical two years working abroad there was no family travel provided so the family stayed in Emsworth. She was worried that with her Dad going to Monterey already he wouldn’t take the two years exchange officer program to work at the F.N.O.C.* when she was sixteen like he had before. Meaning she wouldn’t get out to California and meet Kathleen in University there.

She was unsure if the changes with what she had thought was a prior life were due to her causing the change in how the dreams of her prior life went, her memory not being perfect, or if it proved they were dreams and not real in the first place. Sally had never shown any indication that she was Daphne or a boy before. In fact if she declared that Sally was a boy they would likely commit her as she’d never met a more girly girl. No one could act all the time oblivious to a prior life. Finding there was a Kathleen studying organic chemistry in UC Berkeley would surely prove Geoff was real. So she had eight years to wait until she could prove definitively that Geoff was real.

Sighing, Rachel wondered what to do about her boredom. Due to being thought smart she had been bumped up two years, and at becoming ten a few weeks ago was finishing her first year of secondary school. This fact was definitely disliked by Glenda who at thirteen and in her second year of secondary, probably was worried they would be in the same third year next school year. She hoped it was just immature jealousy that caused Glenda to ensure Rachel’s life in Warblington was absolute hell.

Had she messed up her new life? From her dreams or memories of Geoff’s prior life, where it had just been the two of them, she recalled Geoff generally having a good relationship with his big sister. He had a good one with his parents until his late teens when he failed his Maths O-level, which should be no problem for her this life. Then again, this life she didn’t have a great relationship to mess up, as she already did that over the last five years. Rachel was sure it was Misses Fowler and her changeling conversations with her Mother that had soured her relationship with her parents.

Misses Fowler was Ester’s Mother, and she had definitely never been Ester’s Mum. For that reason Rachel forgave how Ester treated her, as she felt sorry she’d never had a Mum. Rachel had memories as Geoff of being raised by a loving Mum, which of course could be her imagination, but even if that wasn’t real she has five years of knowing that Glenda, Sally and her, were loved that Ester never got. Her Mother was still a good Mum to Sally and reasonable to Glenda. It could be her own fault. Maybe being a weird adult in a child’s body couldn’t be loved. She tried to act childish, but that only caused more problems.

They’d become a dysfunctional family and no matter how you sliced it Rachel knew it had to mainly be her fault. Maybe she was a changeling. If the fey messed up their spell it could explain her dual existence as both male and female. If the memories were true then as she was what was changed between that life and this then it was her fault her Mother treated her the way she did. Dad had always favored Glenda. In the memories of the prior life, Mum favored Geoff. Before Ester and Misses Fowler arrived, she favored the twins. Now, she favored Sally.

Rachel was constantly berated for not being like her sisters, and yet praised for being smart. It was weird she was constantly under pressure to study harder and behave like a lady as she was a disappointment being so much of a tomboy unlike her good sisters. However, her academic skills were lauded to all and sundry. In private though it was as if she wasn’t trying hard enough and she could do no right. If she didn’t feel sort of guilty of cheating with Geoff’s memories to lean on she would be disgruntled with how she, the girl that skipped two years ahead, was considered the family’s disappointment.

The other problem was that her parents wanted her to concentrate on studying and wouldn’t let her do anything she had suggested so far as a hobby to provide a break. Well that wasn’t completely true they had finally allowed her a racing bike instead of the three speed girl’s bike being handed down from Glenda. That old bike went to Sally instead, and she was made to feel she owed Sally for accepting it and enabling her to get an inappropriate bike for a girl. Maybe she imagined that. She was constantly second guessing whether her inadequacies in her parents’ eyes were dreamed up due to her own guilt or were actually present.

The cycling hadn’t provided her with what she desperately needed, friends. The local bike club in Emsworth, ‘The Kingley Nights’ was geared totally to mountain biking. If she put more effort maybe she could do better and find a safe way to get to a road bike club that was further afield. However, this was for fun and she wasn't even allowed to go riding on the Isle of Wight after using train and passenger ferry with her bike as he was when Geoff lived in Portsmouth. No, where the bike gave Geoff freedom, she was severely limited in how far she was allowed to roam.

It was her friends in the CC Weymouth bike club she missed. She’d never been anything better than average at cycling but they used to ride all over Dorset. She especially enjoyed their Weymouth to Dorchester trips up the scarp steep hills. She’d lost count of how many times they made that trek during the nearly three years Geoff had lived there the second time Dad was posted at Portland after returning from Portugal. As Dad had never worked a day in Portland this life, this was yet another nail to show Geoff was a figment of her overactive imagination. It would mean those friends too, were imaginary. Rachel sometimes felt her desire to cling to those memories was to prove she had, and therefore deserved in this life too, friends.

Unlike the roads around their house, the roads in Dorset were quieter. If they had lived there and she’d been allowed to do so much more as her memories said they did, she had to think it was not only because she was a boy, but the quieter roads and her having a group of friends that had allowed her true freedom at nine years old that at ten she still hasn’t got yet. True her parents allowed her a racing bike but it hadn’t lead to the friends it did last time, and her other choices of things she wanted to try, didn’t get as good a reception. She tried to stop herself from thinking that being a girl was to blame for this worse version of life. Sally and Glenda appeared happy. It was just Rachel’s life that seemed to suck compared to Geoff’s. Worse though was Geoff’s life seemed rather average with moments of something great. A child shouldn’t be jealous for that.

Her parents out right refused to let her learn the drums or guitar. Her Mother knew how to play flute and violin which she was teaching to Glenda. Mother also taught the flute to Sally. Sally had her ballet that neither other girl was interested in. Though they hadn’t gone to Weymouth, Glenda quit sooner, which Mother blamed Rachel for causing. If she wasn’t second guessing whether her prior memories were true she could possibly feel less guilty of being the problem. If they were true she still had to still feel guilty of making it occur sooner.

Glenda quitting was either due to her, as her Mother espoused, because Glenda dislike being shown up, as Sally quickly showed she was better at ballet, the teacher in New Brighton that was not as patient as the one in Fareham, the lack of her friend Anne in the class, or one or more of those combined with the fact she would have quit anyway eventually. Regardless it was another proof that her belief of what was going to happen was so much bunk, and no reprieve from the blame her Mother assigned her.

Rachel was increasingly of the opinion that Geoff was an imaginary friend she created when a child. Her parents never said she had stopped them from losing money so it could be just her overactive imagination. She got more things wrong than right so perhaps what she got right was pure coincidence.

Rachel was forced to at least learn piano, after her Grandma gave her piano to Rachel’s Mother. The upright Steinway had turned the ground floor study into a music room. A slightly frosted glass window had re-glazed the opening into the sunroom shut in order to keep the noise from traveling too easily into the rest of the house. If Grandma didn’t live near Northallerton in the north of England it probably wouldn’t be so bad. She liked the lessons her Grandma gave when her Grandparents visited. Unfortunately, her piano teacher was older than her Grandma and likely the strictest person Rachel knew from either life.

Misses Fowler demanded she practice and have her lessons while wearing dresses. “When young lady you finely learn enough from me to play the piano, you will thank me for not getting the bad habits of playing while wearing the tomboy rags you think acceptable wear. Do you think young lady you can perform wearing t-shirt and trousers?” It had been spoken to her so often that she could still hear it when her teacher wasn’t present. That and the sting in her wrists from being hit from a ruler for letting them sag during lessons. Learning to play the piano with back ram rod straight due to books placed on her head while doing her minor and major scales, wearing bloomin’ lacey dresses, and not allowed to relax her wrists was torture. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so adamant to not learn the flute or violin. She had fond memories of learning the piano as Geoff. They didn’t include dresses or any formal clothes, didn’t start ‘till he was twelve and didn’t include Misses Fowler, books or ruler slapping. No they were a time he shared with Grandma when the piano came to their second house, a three bedroom detached in Northallerton.

If she kept just spending her time with school books she could be placed in Glenda’s next school year and might not survive the bullying. With that thought she decided to get her bike out and get away. She needed a hobby, something to sink her time in so her parents aren’t upset if she isn’t the next genius in the making, something to make her happy, and maybe a friend.

Staying on B roads north of the A27 Rachel headed west on her bike toward Havant. She would normally then head north climbing the gentle slopes of the South Downs to avoid crossing the A3. She realized she should have gone east toward Chichester as she didn’t feel like making the climbs to the north. Hang on she was in Havant and this road went to Hayling Island. There was a footpath bridge that went over the roundabout and tunneled beneath the A27 so she could escape her parents’ imposed prison walls and actually see the sea. Not just a sliver but on this nice day the English Channel, the Solent, the northern coast of the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and possibly some of the naval ships.

Using sixty-five pence of her pocket money she bought a bag of chips and scraps from a fish and chip store in Havant. Wow a pound eighty for piece of fish wasn’t worth spending her money on. The scraps were the pieces of batter that fell off when frying the fish so it’s virtually like getting fish and chips and a quarter the price. Finishing her lunch Rachel wiped her greasy hands off by rubbing them together then rubbing them on her jeans and then continued the second leg of her journey.

A few of the lights were out in the tunnel beneath the A27. Trash and some graffiti and limited lighting didn’t lend itself to making Rachel feel safe. She mustn’t stay out too long as she wanted to return before it got into the evening. The road on the other side wasn’t too bad and she was quickly rolling toward Hayling Island. She got back on the footpath as the road seemed a bit busy and rather narrow when it became the bridge over to the Island. However, when the foot path ended on the other side she returned to the road now on the Island. The chips and scraps must have been what she needed as she finished the five miles faster than the first three to the chippy.

Before she saw the sea, before she saw the actual beaches sand, other than sand that had been blown onto the streets, Rachel saw a meadow of fabric cutting in front of the hazy sky’s blue backdrop. Seeing what seemed hundreds of triangles of colored cloth some rippling others taut while gliding left or right was attention grabbing. More noticeable than the flocks of seagulls that danced and shrieked to and fro reeling and copying their neighbor, the flotilla of yachts was something Rachel couldn’t take her eyes off.

‘*’ F.N.O.C. Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center provides weather service above and below the water for the US and coalition forces operating in the Pacific Ocean.