I’ve got one green eye and one brown one. That’s what people notice about me first, but actually that’s pretty normal compared with the rest of me which is what this story is about. I don’t know who my sperm donor was, and I can barely remember my bio-mother. What I do remember was being slapped by and shouted at a lot by her. My bio-mother married and moved in with my stepfather when I was about four. She told Dad, I’ve never called my stepfather anything else, that my sperm donor disappeared as soon as she told him she was pregnant. My bio-mother died from ovarian cancer when I was not quite six and Bethan my baby sister was six months old. But I was lucky because Dad had adopted me when he married my bio-mother, so there was nothing for Social Services to make a fuss of, cos I wasn’t an orphan. You’ll probably get sick of me using the term bio-mother, but I refuse to call her anything else, because she was never my mum.

We’re a pretty big family now. There’s me, I’m Caroline but I get called Caro, my little sister Bethan who has the same bio-mother that I do, but Dad is her father. Alice and David are twins from Dad’s first marriage, their bio-mother just left them with him and disappeared. Dad married Mum when I was eight, and there’re Sarah, Peter and George, who are the children of Mum, and some guy she divorced for messing around with other women who’s never been in contact since, another sperm donor. Mum and Dad adopted each other’s children to make sure we were protected if anything happened to either of them, cos they realised how lucky Dad and I had been. Finally there’re Serena who’s two and Lucia the children of Mum and Dad. We haven’t met Lucia yet because she won’t be born for another three weeks. Mum says she’s going for a round dozen, and Dad’s cool with that. I’m twelve and have just started at the high school with Alice and David which was tough.

~o~O~o~

To explain it all I really have to go back to the beginning. I’ve always been a girly girl. Alice is the same age as me and is a tom boy, I don’t think she can even spell skirt or frock, and Sarah, who’s eleven, and Bethan, who’s six, are somewhere in between Alice and me on the girliness scale, a bit nearer me than Alice probably. It’s too early to tell with Serena. Mum says parents make all their mistakes on their oldest child, so with three of us the same age at least we’ll only get a third of the mistakes each. I reckon that means David drops unlucky and gets all the mistakes parents make with the oldest if he’s a boy and Alice and I get half each of the mistakes they make on the oldest if she’s a girl. Though I think Alice being the way she is means she gets some of David’s share too.

Dad’s a builder and has thirty men working for him full time. Mum used to be an accountant, I suppose she still is in a way, but she does all the paperwork, not just the accounts, to do with the business now. Dad changed the business from Joseph Deacon Builders to Joseph and Maria Deacon Builders. The reason I told you about what Dad does is that’s how come we live in what was a ruined old farmhouse that had an attached barn that’s now ‘converted’ into living space that will accommodate Mum’s vision of her completed family of fourteen of us. Dad bought the land too, but a neighbouring farmer rents most of it.

Mum didn’t think so, but we all had great fun living in the mobile homes while Dad’s men demolished the old buildings and started from scratch. He’d found some old photographs of the place as it was in the nineteen twenties. The place was much bigger then, which killed the arguments the council planners put forward about his plans having to be scaled down. Something about replacing like with like.

The demolition was done carefully so the old bricks and the sandstone and the green Buttermere slates, which I think ought to be called duck egg blue not green, could be reused. There weren’t enough of the old things, but Dad managed to find enough matching bricks and sandstone from demolished buildings and a company that made new Buttermere slates from recycled plastic and crushed up slate waste that looked just the same. He wasn’t supposed to use the plastic ones, but he said what the planners didn’t know about they wouldn’t get upset about. Dad said it would look just like it used to look on the outside when it was newly built, but it would be completely up to date inside and have modern foundations and a damp proof course whatever that is.

Designing the inside, especially the kitchen, made Mum happy. Dad gave her scale drawings of all the rooms on paper and little to scale models of kitchen appliances, bathroom suites and furniture, and she spent hours putting them in different places. Sort of like a dolls house really. She was going to have an office in the house, so she could work from home and look after us. She actually said ride shotgun on us. What made us happy was the overgrown garden. There was many a day when we couldn’t eat much because we were stuffed with soft fruit. Mum said we’d soon get a sickener of strawberries, but no matter how hard we tried it didn’t happen.

~o~O~o~

Looking back, my life has been a bit up and down, down to start with, then mostly up, but it’s going down a bit at the moment. As I said, I’ve always been a girly girl, but somehow there was a bit of a mix up and I got some extra bits that girls don’t usually have. Actually boys don’t have bits that look like mine either. And I don’t have the part where babies come from. I will when I’m older, though I won’t be able to have babies, but I didn’t know any of that back then. I’m not quite sure when I found that out, I know it wasn’t the first time I went to see the doctor which was when I was five so I was probably six or seven, but I was really upset to find out I wouldn’t be able to have babies. Of course being a girl, specially a girly one, meant I wanted all the girly toys and things when I was little. My bio-mum didn’t like that and I can remember being slapped a few times for not being interested in a fire engine and stuff like that. I can remember explaining to my bio-mother that they were toys for boys. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, cos she was shouting so loudly.

Things got loads better when Dad arrived, cos the shouting and slapping stopped. He told me he’d make it so I was his little girl too just like Alice and David, only of course David was his little boy. Dad took me to see our doctor just before the three of us started school. I wasn’t happy that I had to take my knickers off because I’d been told only not nice people would want me to do that, but Dad explained doctors were different and he’d hold my hand the whole time. The lady doctor smiled and didn’t take long to examine me. I felt a lot happier when I had my knickers on again. The doctor said I had ambi-something genitals. Some one told me later it meant, not fully girl nor fully boy. Even later I found out really it just meant uncertain, which I think was just a fancy way of saying they didn’t know what they were talking about. She told Dad we’d need to see another doctor too.

When my bio-mother died there was a lot of fuss about where I should live. My grandparents, who were my bio-mums parents, said I had to live with them. I didn’t like them because they were always shouting at me and I had to wear trousers at their house. I wouldn’t have minded so much if they’d been girls’ trousers. Dad went to what he said was called the family court with a solicitor and a piece of paper. He was only in court a few minutes and came out smiling. He reminded me he’d told me he’d make me his little girl. He said he’d adopted me when he married my bio-mother and I was his just like Alice and David and no one could take me away. I didn’t remember the word adopted, but that made me really happy. My grand-parents then saying they wanted nothing more to do with me because I was an ungrateful brat made me even happier.

I’d forgotten all about having to see the other doctor due the bother my bio-mother’s death had caused. It was a surprise when Dad told me we were going to see the other doctor, so I wouldn’t be going to school the day after. I was upset because I was going to miss baking cup cakes and had been looking forward to it. Dad told me we’d bake some at home to make up for me missing it at school. I’d always liked going to school, the teachers knew I had ambi-whatsits, and it was far less important to them than making sure all the children who had red hair and pale skin like mine put sun stuff on before play time, so we didn’t burn. We were teased for that by the other kids. They called us the peelers, but it was only fun, not bullying.

The next doctor was a man, and straight away I asked him, “Are you a real doctor? Cos if not I’m not taking my knickers off.”

He smiled at me and told me I was a very clever and sensible girl, but yes he was a real doctor. Dad nodded in agreement and took me outside to see the sign on the door that read, Dr. S.S.E. Forsythe with a load of letters after his name, and told me Dr. was short for doctor. We went back in and I took my knickers off and Dad lifted me onto the bed thing that seemed far to high to sleep on. This doctor was much quicker than the other one, and I soon had my knickers on again after Dad passed them to me. The doctor asked me loads of questions, most of which were silly. I told him there was no point in asking me questions about boys, cos how would I know the answers? I told him some of my older friends were starting to get silly about boys, and I’d been told eventually I would too, but at the moment the only boy I liked was my brother David, cos he was nice.

Doctor Forsythe told my dad a load of stuff I didn’t understand, but Dad took me for an ice cream and explained as we sat watching the swans on the river. “Doctor Forsythe wants regular blood samples so he can tell when you reach puberty. The recent blood samples could mean without help you would turn into a woman or a man. They just don’t know yet, Sweetie. They’ll know more when you are eleven or twelve. You know about ‘The Real Life Test?”

“Yes, you explained that before. It’s where women who look like men have to prove they’re women by wearing frocks all the time for like a year or even two. I don’t understand why they have to do that if they’re already women, cos it’s no big deal for a woman to wear a frock, unless of course they’re like Alice.”

Dad laught and said, “I don’t know why either, Sweetie. The important thing is you’ll never have to do that, and he wants the blood samples, so as soon as possible he can tell our doctor to prescribe you the medicines you need to prevent any development into a man and to help you develop into a woman. I know you don’t like them taking the blood samples, but it is necessary, all right?”

“Okay, Dad. Those medicines, will they stop me growing big muscles and a beard like you, Dad? I love you, and I think you’re very handsome when you make an effort to be, but I don’t want to look like you. I want breasts and all that. Not now, that would be embarrassing, but bigger girls get them while they’re still at school. I just want to look normal, like all the other girls in my class.”

“That’s the whole idea. One of the medicines will prevent you from starting to look like a man, and the other will help you to grow breasts and begin looking like a woman as you grow up. The doctor said, when you have finished growing, you could go to hospital, and they would make what’s inside your knickers look just like what Alice has. You won’t have to, the choice will be yours, but he said you could if you wanted to. You heard me ask about your birth certificate?”

“Yes, but I didn’t understand all that stuff about competent authorities.”

“What that means is he is going to write a letter and sign it as your gender consultant saying you are a girl. He’s going to write a letter to our doctor because she’s known you for a long time asking her to write one as well. I’ll send copies of both letters with copies of your birth certificate and your adoption certificate and an application that you are issued with a new birth certificate and a new adoption certificate that say you are Caroline Jacqueline Deacon and female. Your old birth certificate says were born Charles Jack Smethurst a male, and though your adoption certificate says you are Caroline Jacqueline Deacon it says you are male.”

I’d forgotten that my bio-mother’s surname had been Smethurst and that I was originally Charles Jack, because as soon as we moved in with Dad he’d insisted even my bio-mother called me Caroline. It had caused a lot of bother at the time, and my bio-mother had threatened to leave taking me with her. Dad had said she wasn’t taking his daughter anywhere. She’d forgotten that I was his daughter too then. There was a big argument, and she was back to shouting, but at least it wasn’t at me. She tried to make Dad sleep downstairs. Dad told her if she wanted to sleep somewhere else he couldn’t stop her, but he wasn’t sleeping anywhere except in his bed. She slept downstairs for a while, but eventually she did what Dad had told her and slept upstairs again.

I’m quite clever, but I’m glad I have Dad to explain grown up stuff to me. It hadn’t exactly been a fun day that far, but it had been okay, and it was going to be fun when we got home. I was looking forward to making cup cakes.

I was seven when Dad brought a lady called Maria home to spend Sunday with us. Maria had three children, Sarah, Peter and George. Sarah’s a year younger than me, Peter’s three years younger than me and George is two years younger than Peter. George was just a toddler then. They’re all really nice. It wasn’t long before Maria and her kids were coming round every weekend. Maria, Sarah and I had great fun cooking and baking, but Alice never joined us, cos she hates anything to do with kitchens. Alice, David and I realised that Dad and Maria were sneaking kisses when they thought there was nobody to see. That was exciting, cos it meant we might be getting a Mum. Alice is a proper Daddy’s girl, but she whispered to me, “I really hope Dad finds us a mum before I start my periods. That could be just too embarrassing for words. Having to talk to Dad about it I mean.” I wouldn’t have been bothered because I’d been glad that Dad was there when the doctors had examined me, but I understood what she meant.

Dad and Maria told us they were going to get married and were looking for a bigger house. Maria’s house was way too small for all of us, so they were selling it, and we were all going to live in our house till they found something better. Our house was a squeeze. Maria and Dad shared a bedroom, Alice, Sarah, Bethan and I moved into the biggest bedroom with two sets of bunk beds. Dad put cot sides on a bottom bunk bed for Bethan. David, Peter and George shared the smallest room with bunk beds and a cot. It was fun, but we had to be really organised. All big stuff had to live in the garage. Dad roofed over the gap between the house and the garage and turned it into a proper room with windows at each end so mum could go in there to do the washing and ironing even when it was raining.

The wedding was brilliant and Sarah and I loved our dresses. Alice was grumpy about wearing hers but I think that was just on principle. The boys and Bethan weren’t too fussed about what they wore. We all had a nice time, but the main thing was we’d got proper married parents. It wasn’t long before we were all calling our parents, Mum and Dad. Mum said she was going to start fining us out of our spending money if we didn’t put clothes for washing in the laundry bin in the garage and didn’t clear up after ourselves at mealtimes and after doing homework. We all thought she was being fair, she worked full time and there were a lot of us, so we shared out the work and we all had our own jobs to do to make sure we didn’t lose any pocket money.

~o~O~o~

Mum gave up working for the accountants and started working with Dad. Her doing all the paperwork meant Dad had more time to organise his work and his men, but it put even more pressure on the space in the garage which Dad had put heating in. I didn’t understand why but he told us never to mention that cos he wasn’t supposed to have done it. Dad told us Mum and he were now making more money than they did when Mum was working at the accountants, so he was giving us all a spending money rise which was excellent.

I was ten when Mum told us at dinner that she was expecting a baby. That was exciting, but she didn’t know yet whether it would be a girl or a boy. Of course Alice, Sarah, Bethan and I wanted a sister but the boys wanted a brother. Not long after that, Dad told us he had bought a farm and we’d be able to have ponies, but we’d be living in three mobile homes, big caravans [US trailers] he explained, till he’d rebuilt the place which was a ruin. He said that would take at least a year maybe two, and we would be moving in a month. He told us he couldn’t work on our house all the time as he had other work to do too which earnt money whereas working on our house spent money, but the three mobile homes would give us a lot more room than we had in the house we lived in at the time.

The three mobile homes were arranged on three sides of a square and Dad had roofed the space in the middle over as outside living space. In one corner between two of the mobile homes he’d built a proper bathroom with three baths and four showers. In the other corner he’d built proper lavatories with six flushing toilets. To start with everything emptied into a tank that had to be emptied somewhere, but the first thing they built wasn’t the house it was the underground thing that the toilet pipes went into and then they buried loads of coils of white pipes with holes in that the bath water went into. It was fun living in the mobile homes, though I could tell Mum wasn’t impressed, despite all the extra space we had.

It got really hot the first summer at the farm, so Dad brought home a huge inflatable pool to swim in, Dad said it was really for chemicals and called a lagoon. What ever it was it was fun. It was deep enough to actually swim in, maybe three feet or so, and you could swim five or six strokes across it and a lot more going round in circles.

There were only us there, so we never wore anything when swimming. My siblings knew all about me, and nudity had never been a big deal in our family. It had become even less of a big deal when nine of us had shared a three bedroomed house with one bathroom with a lavatory in it, a lavatory downstairs and later two showers and another lavatory in the garage. Dad had had to install the showers and the extra lavatory just so we could manage. I was just a girl with extra bits, which were small, who was going to get that fixed when I was older. My brothers only teased me the same as they teased my sisters, boys can be a pain, but my brothers were mostly nice. It never went beyond teasing and they wouldn’t let any of the boys at school go further with any of us. It was nice being one of the Deacon kids.

The next thing was, to the boys disappointment, Mum told us she was having a girl. The boys said she had done it deliberately. Mum told them to blame Dad which led to an impromptu lesson in the genetics of sex inheritance in humans, and naturally enough into why was I the way I was. Mum explained, she’s good at that, and I learnt things about my self I didn’t know. Put simply, I can neither be described as male, nor female, because I have a mix of XX and XY genetics in different parts of my body. Next year I’m going for a lot more tests including ultra sound to see if I have ovaries, internal testes, both or neither. In the mean time I have blood taken every two months. Mum asked, “Does anyone have any doubts that Caroline is a girl?”

My sisters shook their heads and David said, “There is no way she’s a boy. No boy would be seen dead in her clothes.”

Alice added, “There’re more than a few girls, including me, who wouldn’t either.”

Serena was born that year and I loved being able to play with and look after a baby.

~o~O~o~

Lucia was born the following summer and Mum told us all, “I’m not going to be taking the birth control pills. Maybe nursing Lucia will prevent another pregnancy for a while and maybe it won’t.” Which led to another impromptu lesson this time on human fertility and the effects of breastfeeding. All of us including the boys were fascinated watching Mum nurse Lucia just like we’d been with Serena. Serena still nursed a bit. Mum said it was for comfort, cos she was jealous of Lucia and that was normal with babies born close together. I told you Alice is a tomboy, well she is, but when I told her I wanted to nurse babies when I grew up she admitted she did too.

~o~O~o~

We live in a rural area that’s convenient for lots of work for Dad not too far away. That’s why it had taken him so long to find an appropriate place for us to live. A couple of times he’s lived in an on-site caravan during the week for a while when working on a big job that was a bit too far away for travelling every day, but most of the time he’s home every night.

Our local high school is a twelve to eighteen school, but it only has four hundred kids. In the past there’s only been three hundred kids some times with hardly any in the top two years. Apparently it’s been under threat of closure for years, but has recently been given a temporary reprieve if it can find some funding to replace some of the buildings and renovate the remaining classrooms. That September, Alice, David and I went to High School and that’s when my life hit the fan big time. I said it was going down at the moment, well that’s due to school.

It all started off well. Dad had filled in the forms and under the bit marked special needs he’d filled in about my gender situation and said all I required was privacy changing. He received a letter asking him to see the head teacher. He rang the head, and asked that the chair of governors was at the meeting and said he would be bringing me with him and would be recording the meeting. When he was told he couldn’t do that he replied, “No problem, Caroline, Alice, David and my other six kids will go to school in Almston, we’re planing on having another three and yours is the school under threat of closure. Do I have your attention? The chair of governors, Caroline, Alice and David there and it’s video recorded. That’s the deal or nothing.” The head objected that he originally hadn’t said anything about Alice and David or video recording. “Yeah well you hadn’t told me it wasn’t on then. So my price went up. I’m in business and that’s how it works. I’m still waiting for an answer.”

We all went to the meeting and the atmosphere wasn’t nice. The chairman of governors looked like a fat, greasy, pervy pig and started by demanding proof that I was a girl. Dad pointed out that he had already sent in the proof from the medical profession and any further requirement was an unwarranted and illegal invasion of my privacy. Alice was holding my hand and when dad said that David reached for my other hand. I finally summoned the courage and said, “Dad, I don’t like these folk. They’re not friendly and I don’t think I’d be happy here. I don’t really want to spend an hour and a half a day on the school bus, but I’d rather do that than go to school here.” David and Alice agreed.

The head master said, “Now listen here young lady—”

I’d had enough, and if I were punished later for cheek I’d take it, “So out of your mouth I’m now a young lady am I? Well I don’t want to listen to you. You suggested I was lying by being dressed as a girl. I don’t believe you’ve read the medical paperwork. I have, and what I didn’t understand Dad explained. So I’ll tell you what it says. I am a genetic chimæra. That means I can’t be described biologically as either entirely female or entirely male. Legally, which is what you are obliged to acknowledge, I am female. It says so on the certificates that you have received certified copies of. My doctors say I have special needs, which is merely a need for privacy changing. You are legally obliged to comply with that. But since I don’t want to go to school here, you won’t be troubled by any of that. Can I go home now, Dad?”

Before Dad could reply David said, “If Caro doesn’t want to go to school here I don’t either, and I know none of my sisters and brothers will either.” Alice nodded in agreement with him.

Dad shrugged his shoulders and said to the two men, “You had your chance, and you blew it. I shall be putting in a complaint along with a copy of the video. Good bye, gentlemen.”

When we got to Dad’s truck I started to cry. I’d wanted to in the meeting, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Alice and David hugged me all the way home. When we got home Mum took me up to bed. She tucked me in and said, “You have a sleep, Poppet, and I’ll bring you something to eat in an hour or so.”

Unknown to me while I slept there was a war council going on downstairs. Alice told Mum and Dad that the fat, greasy pig was a perve. Later I thought it funny that she’d described him in the same words I’d used even though I’d not spoken them aloud to anyone. Dad thought the head had been struck in a time warp a couple of decades ago. Mum knew a woman on the board of governors, and suggested she be shewn the video.

Mum’s acquaintance was shewn the video, and she asked for a copy to shew the rest of the board. I don’t know how what happened, but the chairman and the head resigned and Dad, Mum and the three of us were invited to meet the new headmistress and the new chairwoman of the governors who was Mum’s acquaintance. That meeting went a lot better, and Dad agreed to quote for the work required on the school. I didn’t know Dad was that crafty, but he quoted a good price which he knew was not the lowest quotation, but his guarantees of the work were better, and he said that if after the three of us had been there two years and Sarah a year he was happy with the way we had been treated, especially me, that he would reimburse a third of the price. When asked if he was prepared to put that in writing he said, “Yes in the sand at the sea edge at low tide.”

The three of us started school, and on our first day Mum was sent for after break to take us home. A boy two years older than us had started calling me names to do with my chimærosity, I know now that the proper word is chimærism or chimærisation but I didn’t then, so I’m leaving it like it was then. After he punched me in the face, David and Alice beat him up so badly he was taken away in an ambulance. Most of the damage to his face had done by Alice, she wears Doc Mart’s boots all the time. I told you Dad’s crafty, he’d bought us the latest bodycams with sound recording too to wear at school. They were so small if you didn’t know what they were you’d think they were a button.

The school wanted to expel the three of us, but Dad prosecuted the boy and the school too for failure in their duty of care to a pupil who they knew was a pupil referred to medically as vulnerable. The boy was given a caution with the proviso that if he was in trouble again before leaving school he would serve two years in a young offenders’ institution. The boy’s parents kicked up a fuss so Dad fired his father. He hadn’t even had the brains to find out whom his son had punched. He’d been working for Dad on the gardens, but now had to find work in the town. On what he could earn he couldn’t afford the travelling, and the family moved back to the town as soon as he’d found a job. The school was cautioned concerning their treatment of vulnerable pupils.

The school didn’t want to expel us any more, but the whispers and shoving in the corridors didn’t stop, and before it was even October the three of us told Mum and Dad we wanted to leave at the end of the term before Christmas. There we were back in the head’s office with the head and the chairwoman of governors like before except Mum was there too. Tell you seriously, if you think Dad’s bad he’s got nothing on Mum when she’s angry. We’d never seen her like that before. When we told them about it, even Sarah, Peter and George said she’d never been that bad before. Dad started by saying we all wanted to leave at the end of the term and why.

Mum followed with, “Who the hell is running this bloody school, the kids or the staff? My kids are coming home with new bruises every day, and I’ve started having them photographed at the doctor’s with their stories appended to the files as to how the bruises happened. I’m not asking you I’m telling you get the kids under control, or I’ll be suing you individually, severally and collectively for every damned thing a good set of solicitors can find. If you don’t know what that means I suggest you find out. Here,” she handed over a letter, saying, “One identical to this will be arriving tomorrow with a notary which will have to be signed for, but I’ll tell you what it says. My husband will be ceasing work on the school at the next break point in the contract for the negotiated price. I’ll tell you now, there will be no reduction in the price because you can in no way shape or form be said to have met your side of the verbal deal. Don’t bother telling me what kids are like since I’ve got nine and another on the way. I don’t give a damn how many kids you have to get rid of to stop mine getting hurt. We would rather the kids went to school here, but this isn’t a school it’s a bloody menagerie, and the apes are running it. I suggest you deal with it all, or I’m going to be starting a crusade to get the bloody place closed on the grounds it not safe for kids. I’ll remind you of the court instruction that you have to deal with vulnerable pupils better. If you don’t get it right I’ll be more than happy to see you completely fucked in court. Good bye.”

We were completely stunned by Mum’s language and as a result did what we were told. Mum turned to us and said, “Kids, get in the minibus. Come on, Joseph, there’s nothing left for us to say, and I’m not interested in anything they’ve got to say. They’ve said it all before and talk’s cheap. When the kids say they don’t want to leave I’ll start listening to the school. Maybe.” That was how we found out Mum was pregnant with the tenth of the Deacon kids. When Francine was born the boys started to feel out numbered and under a bit of pressure.

In the next month the school expelled six and suspended dozens. Alice loved it. If any of us got shoved into a locker she shoved them into a locker only harder. She traded punch for punch, insult for insult, and the only time she got hurt David put the boy in hospital. Nobody saw him do it, not even the boy, but every one knew he’d done it. There were a lot of kids who we got along with, mostly kids who’d suffered from the bullies too. We invited them back home, and they rode the ponies with us and went skinny dipping in the lagoon too on warm days. Most were surprised to start with but they soon got used to the idea, and as David said, “No boy can be excited for long in unheated water no matter how warm a day it is. They told other kids at school about the fun they’d had, and most of the school were hoping they’d get an invitation. After a while the hard core of idiots realised that if they hurt someone they’d get hurt dozens of times over a week, and nobody would have seen anything.

We decided to stay at the school because we did have some friends there, and there were loads of kids we got on with. Dad decided that we’d have a humongous Christmas barbecue rather than the usual party. The big barn was mostly empty, and that would be excellent if the weather went bad on us, but it was predicted to be cold, but dry, with a light wind. We built a bonfire too, and Dad managed to find a source of fire works. He said we could invite as many as we wanted from school, and had a friend of his who did whole hog roasts to supervise the cooking. Loads of our friends’ mums baked and cooked all sorts of food. There were over four hundred kids from both our schools and over a hundred adults too. It was brilliant. Dancing and eating then the fire works followed by more dancing.

There were dozens of little kids tucked up asleep in the bales. I’ve no idea where all the blankets came from, but I know Dad and his mates were taking it in turns to guard the booze to make sure we didn’t get our hands on any. Alice and I both had our first kiss with a boy that night. We talked about it every day till we re-started school in January. David told us he’d had his first kiss too at the barbecue, only with a girl, and that was good, cos we were like triplets and didn’t like any of us being left out.

Back at school things were good. The three of us kept score on kisses, and we were getting our share and more or less level with each other. I tried to find out if other close in age siblings did that, but if they did they weren’t admitting to it. The bullies were being given a hard time by the entire school. The older ones stopped attending despite the best efforts of the truancy officers, and the younger ones either started behaving like the rest of us, or went into a permanent sulk and had no one other than each other to talk to. By the end of the school year in July there were only six of them left. Only two came back the following September. I don’t know where the other four went to school. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the two remaining, ended up in the special needs group, and they learnt nothing there either. Tragic I know, but Tweedle Dee killed himself the following year. His mum said it was because he’d been bullied at school. The investigation shewed that was not true, and that he’d been ostracised because he had been a bully. Tweedle Dum went through school with us, left as soon as he could and disappeared from the area.

Any way back to our second year at school. We were joined by Sarah, and there were loads of Dad’s men there working on the next phase of the school rebuild. Some of them had worked for Dad for years, and we called them Uncle. Sarah caused a riot when Uncle Philip the foreman, who sometimes was our babysitter if Mum and Dad had to go out, gave her a bag of sweets to share with her friends. She kissed his cheek as a thank you, and as usual he kissed her forehead. He did that with all of us. The police were called, and it was only sorted out when Mum arrived and asked, “What’s going on, Philip?” There’s never a dull moment when one of the Deacon kids are around. Mum was pregnant again that year, and to the boys relief with Andrew. George said dad was finally trying which made us all laugh.

That was the year Dr. Forsythe had me in for a load of tests in February. He was a really kind man who I’d come to like a lot. “Well, young lady, it’s time to find out in more detail what you are on the inside as well as the outside. We know you are genetically a chimæra, but how much is what we don’t know. It didn’t matter before, but with puberty looming now it does. I could have had a lot of this done some time ago, but I couldn’t justify it till you had more confidence in us. The good thing about waiting is now you’re now physically larger and probably more developed we’ll obtain greater detail. I want to start with ultra sound, and I’ve sent the latest blood samples off. I was hoping to have the full results back by now, but unfortunately I only have the initial outline results. The full tests are more sensitive now, and they should tell us more, but they do take longer.”

“Will you be able to tell if I’ve ovaries or testes from the ultra sound?”

“Oh yes, and they’ll send the results to me via the computer faster than you’ll be able to walk back here. If you go up to the third floor and get them to do whatever it is they do, I’ll do the really important work, which involves a cup of tea and a few ginger biscuits, while you’re gone, and see you in about three-quarters of an hour. They’re expecting you.”

Mum and I went up to ultra sound where, after I’d undressed, they put a load of jelly on me from the bottom of my ribs down to really low. I hate taking my knickers of in front of anyone who’s not family, though my two main doctors are okay, and skinny dipping at home is okay even with kids from school there, cos we’re all too busy having fun to care. After the jelly stuff, the lady stared at a screen while rubbing a round thing all over me through the jelly. It seemed weird but better that she wasn’t even looking at me. Sometimes she pressed really hard, and every now and again I heard a click. She told me that was the machine taking pictures of my insides for Dr. Forsythe to look at. Eventually she finished and wiped most of the jelly off with paper towelling off a roll. She gave me some to finish wiping it off, but even then I felt kind of sticky, and knew I wanted a shower when I got home.

Dr. Forsythe was looking at pictures on his computer screen, which was the biggest one I’d ever seen, bigger even than the teachers’ in ITC at school which could look at four pupil screens full size at once, when we went in. “Hmm, well you are the most interesting person I have ever had the privilege of meeting, Caroline my dear.”

“So do I have ovaries or internal testes?” I asked.

“He looked kindly at me and said, “Yes, you have ovaries and testes, or at least you have one of each, my dear. I can’t make decisions for you that you will only be allowed to make for yourself when you are eighteen, but I can advise you on probable outcomes of what ever it is you eventually chose to do. I can do that now or later, you have plenty of time. What do you wish me to do?”

I looked at Mum and replied, “I want to know now. But I am a girl. I’ve always been a girl and don’t want to be anything else.”

He nodded and said, “Your ovary is beginning to elevate your female hormone levels, not much but it is probably due to the onset of female puberty. The latest blood tests will tell us more. Your testicle is not doing anything indicative of a male puberty yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t. Boys normally reach puberty later than girls because they have to be able to produce female hormones first which are then converted into male hormones. So your testicle could be contributing to your female hormones prior to the phase where male hormones are produced, or it may be doing nothing. I suspect the latter. You with me so far, Caroline?”

“Yeah. I get that. So what do you think is going to happen?”

“Unfortunately the USB port on my crystal ball is damaged, so I have to say I don’t know. But I can give you information that may help you. Let us say we do nothing and your testicle remains inactive, if indeed it is inactive at the moment, your ovary is likely to initiate a female puberty, you will grow breasts and your thighs and bottom will fill out like any other girl’s. If necessary we could assist with extra hormones.”

“What if my testicle is or becomes active?”

“You will have conflicting sets of hormones which could do anything from preventing a puberty of either sex or at the other extreme you could become a man with a deep voice, an Adams apple, muscle bulk, a beard, as well as breasts and a female fat deposition pattern in other words a female looking bottom. Or anything in between depending on a number of factors, some of which we will never know, and even if we did it’s likely we would not understand their influence. I don’t think there’s a specialist on the planet who could tell you more at this point. I really don’t think you want any of those options do you?”

“No. So what are the likely outcomes if you do something?”

“Let’s cover the one you don’t want first. Suppose we suppress the activity of your ovary. Your testicle may or may not initiate a male puberty. You don’t have a penis, but that could be surgically corrected along with the removal of your ovary when you are eighteen. By then at the rate developments in medicine are taking place you may be able to father children, but right now that’s not possible.”

“You’re telling me It’s unlikely I’d be a proper male?”

“Caroline, in my line of work we don’t talk about proper males or proper females. We could enhance your masculinity in many ways, if that were what you wanted. But that is not what you have been telling me since we met is it?”

“No. I want to be a woman. Some of the girls in my class are getting breasts, and I want them too. Not big ones, but like the other girls. So tell me about that.”

“I can ask your family doctor to prescribe tablets that will block any activity of your testicle and also tablets that will assist your ovary. Though I want to leave the latter till I have a clearer idea of what your ovary is doing. I’ll know when the full blood results are available, and I’ll let your doctor and your parents know what the implications are.”

“So I can become a woman?”

“Oh yes. Probably more so than you imagined. Look at this here, Caroline, Mrs. Deacon. This is your ovary, but this is a fallopian tube leading to a small uterus, but given your hormonal age it is of the correct size, and this is a fully formed vagina.”

“But I don’t have a vagina!”

“I beg to differ, Caroline. As to whether you will ovulate, have periods and be able to have children, it is impossible to say at the moment. Certainly we know you have always had a clitoris and a female urinary tract with the opening in the usual position for a girl, but you have a vagina too. It merely does not reach the outside. There appears to be no more than a quarter of an inch of tissue sealing it. It may be less.

“I suspect your lack of a vaginal opening and the extra material which probably derives from what would have formed the shaft of a penis in a boy fused with the material that could have formed a boy’s scrotum or a girl’s labia is why you were designated male at birth which wouldn’t have happened had you been born more recently.

“We are going to need you examined under general anaesthetic with a view to opening your vagina, which will need to be done before your periods, if you have periods, make you ill because there is nowhere for your menses to go. Since this is not a sex change, as the tabloids would put it, we do not have to wait till you are eighteen. This will be a necessary operation done in the interests of your health, and the surgeon will simply be, and I use the word strictly in the medical sense, ‘normalising’ your female external genitalia.”

“So I’m a girl?”

“Indeed, but you have always been a girl because of what’s between your ears, Caroline, not because of what we have discovered inside your body and what you can have the surgeon assist you to have between your legs. Even if you have a baby, which is beginning to look like a distinct possibility, you will always be a genetic chimæra, but legally you are a girl, and as I wrote in the letter to your school you are medically a girl which term of course includes what you are psychologically.”

“When can I have the operation?”

“As soon as my colleague has a time slot available. Mrs. Deacon, to do this either you or your husband has to sign your consent. I assume you will?”

“Oh yes. We thought Caroline was going to have to wait till she was eighteen. We’ll both be delighted to sign.”

“Well to play strictly by the rules, although my colleague can deal with Caroline’s external arrangements and vaginal opening now, it’s arguable as to whether he can remove her internal testicle before she is eighteen. To avoid any legal wrangles, which would lead to unpleasant publicity, it will be in everyone’s interest that he leaves that till then. We can completely suppress its activity for as long as necessary, but Caroline will be eighteen before the matter is completed. I’ll have the paperwork drawn up for you to sign. Take a few days to discuss the matter with your husband, there is no rush. In the meanwhile I’ll email your family doctor concerning the prescription. There’s no legal requirement for you to sign, Caroline, but I suggest you do because it may come to mean a lot to you in years to come.”

“Thank you. I’d like that. I know I asked before, but how long is this going to take?”

“Certainly you could be operated on at the beginning of your Easter holiday and able to go back to school at the beginning of the summer term. It is possible that you may need the first week off school, but I doubt it. How does that sound?”

“Brilliant.” I was so happy. I might not have had two of everything, but I had one of every thing that mattered, and was going to have two breasts. I didn’t care about the genetic chimæra thing, or what Dr. Forsythe said. I was a girl, and there was a good chance I would be able to do everything girls grew up to be able to do. I was crying all the way back to Mum’s car.

As I got in she asked, “Happy?” I couldn’t speak so I just nodded.

I told everyone at dinner that night what Dr. Forsythe had said. “So he said you really are a complete girl just like you wanted, Caro?” asked Alice.

“I don’t know about the complete bit, but if in years to come I have a baby which he thinks may happen, but he said, no promises, then I’d say that seals it. Wouldn’t you Alice?”

“I’d say.”

~o~O~o~

I started on the blockers, and, after Dr. Forsythe rang Mum and Dad about the blood tests, a few days later I started on the female hormones too. He said it was clear that my ovary was doing what they do in all girls of about my age, and my testicle was either doing nothing, or my ovary was suppressing what it was trying to do. I was booked in for surgery three days before school broke up for Easter.

~o~O~o~

I had my operation, and I was sore, but not in a lot of pain which I thought was brilliant till the heavy calibre pain killers wore off, and then it wasn’t so brilliant. But I could sit down with care on the rubber ring they gave me. I found out later from Mum they were what they gave to ladies who’ve just had a baby. By the time school started I was a little stiff, but it was not too bad. The kids wanted to know what had been the matter with me, so against Alice’s advice I told the girls the truth. Or at least a part of it. I said my vagina had been too small where it opened, and it could have caused me problems when my periods started, but it was now sorted out. David told the boys it was girls’ stuff and best not to ask. We knew the girls would tell their brothers and it would get round, but I was fine with that. One of the girls started asking really personal questions which I didn’t answer and ended by saying, “So you really are a girl? We thought you were one of those trans types.”

Alice answered for me, “Miriam, every time you open your mouth your brain and a load of shit drops out. We never gave a toss what you or anyone else thought Caro was or was not, because it’s none of your damn business. And by the way just what does your pussy look like? Any chance of a photo? Just to prove you’re a girl like.”

Miriam said, “You nothing but a filthy bitch, Alice Deacon.”

But her friend Jenny said, “That’s more or less what you asked Caroline, Miriam, and Alice is right it’s none of any one else’s business.”

~o~O~o~

A week before the end of term I had my first period. I felt terrible, but so happy. Alice had hers eight days later, in holiday time. Unlike me, she wasn’t thrilled by it, and was so ill she was in bed for four days with two hot water bottles. What really irritated her was the loss of holiday time.

~o~O~o~

The first one of us to get boobs wasn’t Alice nor me, but Sarah which really irritated both of us. Before the six weeks summer holidays were over she was as big as Mum and still growing. She was the same height as Alice and me but at least half as wide again across her bottom and drew looks from boys from a hundred metres. Mum said she was starting to look like her mum who’d been a big lady, but only five foot two. Alice and I were soon five six and still growing upwards if not outwards. David was six foot and starting to pile weight on his shoulders and thighs, all muscle. Eventually by the end of the year Alice and I had respectable boobs for girls in our year and my bottom was a little bigger than hers but not much.

Mum had been right, Sarah stopped growing at five three. Alice reached five nine and I five eight. We were both boy mad by then, but none of them ever lasted long. As soon as they realised the Deacon girls weren’t going to give them what they wanted they moved on. Word was we were all professional virgins, but as Sarah told one boy, “Better that than professional sluts. Do you really want to marry a girl that all your mates can tell you about how good or bad she was screwing in the park? Think about it dumb head.”

Mum was pregnant with Neville who she planned to be her last, unless she made a mistake which she admitted could happen. The three of us took our General Certificates of Education and stayed on at school for our Higher Levels. I had my testicle removed when I was eighteen over the Easter holiday and stopped taking the the inhibitors. I was also taking reduced levels of female hormones as my ovary had been gradually increasing its output for a couple of years. Tests shewed I was ovulating, and life was looking good in terms of my future chances of having a baby. I decided that there was a decided case against putting off having a family. Loads of professional women seemed to be leaving it too late and then requiring fertility treatments. I’d got the adds stacked against me to start with, so had no intention of doing anything that made things worse.

I talked to Mum with Alice and Sarah, and we all decided to marry, have our family and then get some higher education, or possibly do it whilst having a family via the Open University. Alice and I decided after leaving school we would find a job, enrol with the Open University and get our degrees under way whilst we were earning, and see what came up in the way of husband material.

~o~O~o~

David was the first to make a start on adult life, He was following Dad into the business, doing a building management course and serving his apprenticeship as a carpenter to Derek who worked for Dad at the same time. He married Louise when he was not quite nineteen, and was a dad before he was twenty. Sarah met James on the retail management course she was following, and moved in with him when she was twenty. They’re talking about marriage, but she’s having problems getting pregnant. She always did have a sense of humour, and she said the ultimate joke that life could play on the Deacon girls would be me being a surrogate mother for her. It was funny, but the truth is if it came to it I’d do it for any of my sisters.

Alice met Stewart at work in the solicitors office. She was studying Law with the OU. Eighteen months later she was married and three months pregnant. I wasn’t so lucky. I was in my final year of five with the OU studying accountancy and working at Mum’s old firm when I met Evan in a bar one night. Evan was bigger than David, had gorgeous green eyes and was very easy on the eye with an easy way about him talking to women. Yes, I was definitely interested. I’d met any number of potential men over the years, but all baulked when they heard about my genetics. Mum and Dad had both told me that if a man shewed any hesitation at all at that point move on, and I believe it was good advice.

Sarah rang the other day, she’s pregnant with twins, one of each, and still suffering from really bad morning sickness.

I told Evan the other night about my genetics. He didn’t baulk, quite the contrary he was fascinated, and started looking it all up on the internet. I can see why it fascinates him, he’s a microbiologist who works on restoring old varieties of vegetables that have become useless because of viruses, and he’s heavily into genetics. He knows a lot about plant chimæra, and said he was just ‘rounding out’ his knowledge. It wasn’t long before he knew far more about genetic chimærism in humans than I did.

It’s amazing what he does. He’s working with potatoes at the moment and the shoot tips can grow faster than the viruses can infect them, so a few cells are cut off the tip of an infected variety, sterilised, and used as tissue culture. It can take years to bring a variety back from the dead virus free. When he finally got the nerve to ask me, I had to give him quite a bit of encouragement, he said most of what he’d worked on was cloning using vegetative or asexual propagation techniques, but he didn’t think that would be much fun, so he suggested propagating me using sexual techniques. I thought he’d never get round to it. I don’t know how much fun there is or isn’t in cloning, but I do know the techniques he used are more than fun. When I told Alice what Evan had said I thought she was going to wet herself laughing, so he’s passed the ultimate family test, Alice. We’ve all got a pretty broad sense of humour, but Alice is the one an outsider has to convince to be acceptable to the rest of us.

~o~O~o~

We must have made a mistake somehow because though I wasn’t shewing on my wedding day that was just luck because I’d been propagating a little girl for three months. I prayed that my daughter would be just one sex, no peculiarities like me because it makes for a harder life, and life’s hard enough to start with. Juliana was a perfect, beautiful, baby girl with blue eyes that rapidly went green like my left one and both of her dad’s, but I’m still genetically fe-/-male, legally female, a wife, a mum and as Evan puts it when we’re at outs, ‘A bloody, cantankerous ginger at the wrong end of the month’. Men! What’s he expect? I am a girl.