CHAPTER 36
So many changes to my life began that day. It wasn’t just the stress and challenge of learning to handle multiple tons of recalcitrant wagon, but the solitude I was left with in the Cannock house.

Mam and Dad were back on the road a week after dropping me off, for the simple reason that we needed the income, and that was how we got it. I had Carol and Peter next door, of course, which meant a regular meal in their company, as well as the steady supply of my drugs and hormones. That actually brought another major change in everything, as Carol insisted I had to go straight, which threw me for a second. She caught my expression, grinning happily.

“No, woman! Not wearing a twinset and listening to Cliff Richard! Have you registered with a GP yet?”

“No”

“Well, you need to. Get your medication above board, which would save me and him fussing about, for one thing. Also gets it on record, so it’s transferrable”

“What do you mean transferrable?”

“Oh, come on! You really intend to live your current life in bloody Cannock? Your next one might be worse, so make the best of this one, love. Dharma and karma!”

I took her point, and two weeks after my first meeting with Little Miss Fluff, I was standing before her counterpart in a surgery just off Church Street. This time, the receptionist was much older, in a bobbly wool suit, pointy-framed glasses attached to a neck chain.

“Can I help you?”

“Um, yes. I’d like to register as a patient here”

“Are you local?”

I gave her the address of our winter house, and she nodded.

“Aye, that’s ours. Name?”

“Deborah Petrie Wells”

The usual details followed, and then came the crunchy one. The Parsons had never, to my knowledge, involved a doctor in the gentle and loving care regime at their happy home in Runcorn, probably because five minutes of his time would have resulted in several years of prison for them, so I had to think fast, stretching my memory back well over a decade.

“Previous doctor? Oh… hang on… that would be, um… Doctor Howard, up at Connah’s Quay, Flintshire. Don’t know if he’s still there. To be honest, the surgery might not be either. Not been there for over ten years”

She took off her glasses, holding them in one hand as her eyes narrowed.

“What reason would you have for not seeing your doctor in a decade? Amazingly fortunate in our health, are we? If I write to them for details, for your medical records to be transferred, what EXACTLY are they going to tell me?”

I tried to stop them, but I could feel my hands starting to shake, and she clearly noticed.

“Doris? Take over here for a bit, will you? Just be a few minutes, ta!”

Still without her glasses, she turned her gaze back onto me.

“That door there. Go in, take a seat. Wait. Or clear off now and we forget all of this. Your choice. Not mine”

It had to be done, so I did as she said, feeling horribly alone. No Mam or Dad, Carol not with me to spare her any possible fall-out from being associated with me; it hurt, and I couldn’t stop the shaking in my hands.

Five minutes after I had sat down, Mrs Bobbly entered, shut the door behind her and took a seat on the other side of the little table.

“Right, young lady: what is going on here? I will tell you right now that none of our doctors will write out a scrip for a junky, so if that is what you are here for, you can forget it and sod off right now, pardon my French”

I couldn’t speak.

“So that’s it? What were you after? Valium? Heroin?”

I muttered something, and she demanded I speak up.

“I’m not a junky, Miss”

“Well tell me what you are, then!”

“Um… the records you want from Flintshire will be in the name William Wells”

There was a clear moment of disconnection between her mind and her mouth, which hung open for around three seconds.

“Oh. OH! I see. Like that April Ashley person…. Oh. I think I should start over again, and I am sorry. Just, well, the way you’re dressed and that. We get a lot of chancers in here, and it’s always ‘My medical records will catch up’ and that. Have you had, you know, it all chopped about and that?”

My confidence was returning steadily as I came onto what would become extremely familiar ground, being the fascination of straights for other people’s knicker contents. I confirmed that no, I hadn’t been chopped about, and she seemed to recover her professional composure a little.

“Why such a gap between doctors. Miss Wells?”

“I was… I was in a home”

Her eyes widened.

“Not that place in Carlisle? Or the other one in Runcorn?”

“Runcorn”

“Oh shit! Sorry. Shouldn’t use language, but. Shit. I see, now. I am so sorry, love. Are you OK? Now?”

“I suppose I am, as best as I can. Just want to make sure it stays that way, which is why I want to register with a doctor”

“Your records will be in a lad’s name, though…”

Before I could reply, she shook herself, almost a shudder, then gave me a smile for the first time.

“Would you mind waiting a few minutes, love? I need to talk this through with one of the doctors, and I think I know which one would be best. Would you like a cuppa while you wait?”

What I really wanted to do was run away, but it needed to be sorted, so I found a smile and nodded my thanks for the tea, which was in front of me five minutes later, along with two digestive biscuits.

I think it was the biscuits that put me at ease, as I couldn’t really envisage being handcuffed with crumbs on my chin. Ten minutes after the tea arrived, Mrs Bobbly was back, bringing another smile.

“Doctor Nugent will see you. Out this way; second door on the left. See it?”

As I slipped past her, she whispered “And sorry, love. Really sorry”

I knocked at the door in question, and received a “Come in!” in a woman’s voice. I entered, seeing a thirtyish brunette in a paisley blouse with plain slacks.

“Miss Wells?”

“Yes, Doctor”

“Please take a seat. You have caused all sorts of upset to poor Maureen. She normally eats patients and spits out the bones, so it takes a lot to fluster her”

“I’m sorry for that”

“Not at all. Now, she indicates that you are what we call a transsexual. Would that be accurate?”

“I suppose so. I just think of myself as a woman”

“Well, we shall see. Maureen tells me you haven’t had the surgery to complete things, so if you wouldn’t mind, I would really like to examine you. Are those real?”

“Are what? Oh, my breasts? Yes”

“So you have been on some form of hormone replacement regime, then. I will not ask how that has been managed, as I rather suspect you wouldn’t tell me. Am I right?”

I found myself smiling again as she prattled on, for I felt nothing coming from her but sympathy, and nodded.

“OK, then. We shall deal with what we have here rather than what is past. Now…”

She did the usual stuff with blood pressure and heart, height and weight, before writing out a slip of paper for a nurse to take some blood.

“Now, Miss Wells, I will really need to examine you fully. If you wish, I can ask for a chaperone during the process, which would be your choice, but I will be honest with you in that I am going to do my best to ensure that the number of people who know about your circumstances remains as small as possible. If that is acceptable, please undress, just down to your underwear”

She made sure all the curtains were drawn, before locking the door, and I slipped out of my clothes, standing before her in bra and knickers as she made notes.

“Has anyone told you about breast examinations, Miss Wells? For pre-cancerous lumps? You do it like so…”

She worked through a few other checks, then frowned.

“I will need to see your genitals, please. I am sorry. I won’t touch you, but I may ask you to manipulate—move—them for me. Is that acceptable?”

I nodded, turned my back on her and started to roll down my knickers. As I bent my left leg to slip them over that foot, I heard her hiss.

“WHO. DID. THAT?”

I slumped.

“Already spoken to the police, Doctor, but I don’t want to get into a court thing because, well, you know”

Her voice softened.

“Would you mind if I examined that area properly, Deborah?”

“It’s Debbie”

“Debbie. Thank you. May I?”

“Go ahead”

She was quick, and after her inspection of my penis and testicles, she asked me to dress again.

“Debbie, I can guess how those injuries arose, but you were clearly treated by a very talented doctor or nurse. The… the repair work is excellent. The culprits?”

“One’s dead; the other’s banged away for life. They both moved from Runcorn to Carlisle”

I noticed her knuckles whitening as she gripped her pen.

“I rather think that answers my question. The seamstress? Someone you would prefer remained unknown?”

I nodded, and she gave me a real smile, as soft as anything I had seen that day.

“But someone you love deeply, yes?”

“Oh yes”

“Good. All I need to know, but please pass them a message. Tell them that they have graced the medical profession. Now, I need you to see the nurse for those bloods, and then I shall call you back for a chat. We need to discuss anti-androgens, as well as a properly controlled hormone regime. This route is clearly the right one for you; I am just sorry that you had such a dreadful journey to it”

I rose to go, and she shook my hand with real warmth. Just as I opened the door, she called after me.

“Oh, Debbie? Just curiosity, but was there a boy called Bowles in that place in Runcorn?”

“Yes, I believe so. Why?”

Her eyes flickered, just a little, then the smile came back, rather more tightly.

“Can I suggest you pick up a copy of one of the national papers? You will want to read what they have to say about him”

I slipped back out, past a smile and wave from Bobbly Maureen, and looked for a newsagent. I found one next to the bus station, and for once surrendered to what my parents had always damned as papers unfit even to line a cat’s litter tray, and it was there, in far too much detail.

Arthur Henry Bowles. I remembered him, absolutely, and if I had it right, he had had something to do with the closure of Mersey View, stabbing somebody. This time, his place in the paper was assured by his abduction, rape and murder of three young men. They didn’t call it rape, of course, not back then. It was only ‘indecent assault’, but to me it was rape, and in my soul I knew exactly where it had come from, what had turned a silent little boy into a monster, and it involved the sound of footsteps on the stairs in the middle of a Runcorn night.