Finding Julia Chapter 15

By Julie D Cole

I went back to our table and sat down next to Eve to eat my lunch. I still felt in a daze. Eve obviously noticed and took my hand.

‘What’s wrong because you look uncomfortable?’
‘It’s just that Professor Nightingdale spoke to me as if she new me. She said I looked very pretty and I should take care in the sun because of my fair skin. Do I know her?’

‘Please drink some water and eat something and take one of your tablets to calm down. Do you want to go to the room to lie down?’
‘No I’ll be fine. I just need to understand what’s happening to me. Am I going crazy? Professor Nightingdale recognised me as a girl and called me Julia I’m sure.’

‘Well that’s your name isn’t it?’
‘My name is ….. My name is Julian not Julia. I’m your boyfriend.’

‘Julia please. Just calm down. We all know who you are around this table. Just relax and be yourself and to put your mind at rest we’ll try to have a chat with Professor Nightingdale later.’

I sat back in my seat staring out of the windows at some fishing boats and a speed boat that was giving them a hard time.
Eve urged me to answer her.

‘I’ve got no appetite. Ever since we arrived I’ve felt in a state of confusion and it all seems to have started the first night at dinner. Do you think it’s the food or something?’

‘No I’m sure it’s nothing like that. I’m fine and so are all the others so it can’t be the food.’
‘What is it then I’m feeling so strange these days.’

‘All I can say is that you seem so much more alive and you look so much better in yourself. These last 2 days you’ve had a smile on your face and colour in your cheeks enhanced by make-up. No wonder Professor Nightingdale complemented you. That colour dress really suits you.’

‘Thanks. I like it too. The dress is yours though, but it fits quite well. The complements should be to you because it was your choice not mine. I have no experience about style or fashion compared to you.’

‘Do you like it? It’s yours if you like. You may keep it.’

‘No I can’t it’s yours and I don’t want to spoil it.’

‘Don’t worry I have enough outfits for the two of us. Sharing is caring isn’t it? It’s not like we are here for a long vacation or anything. It’s just a few days.’

I began to feel much better after I took a few sips of water and decided not to accept the offer of wine and I managed to eat most of the salad items and some fresh bread with butter. By now the others were tucking into cake and deserts which I avoided. Eve left the table and I saw her talking with Professor Nightingdale and her wife Ann.

It gave me chance to slide across into Eves seat to talk with Georgina at last. She had been chatting with Pips and Jenna but she turned her attention to me. I didn’t know what to say to get to the questions I really had in my mind. She smiled so I complemented her on the presentation and told her how I admired her courage to stand up and talk about it. I took the opportunity to ask about Professor Nightingdale and how she’d helped turn her life around.

‘Well as you know from my presentation she saved my life by persuading me not to jump. I was feeling so lost and I felt all alone in the world. She offered to take me somewhere to sit and talk so I climbed down and we sat in her car for a while. Traffic was busy and drivers were peeping their horns.’

‘So she was a complete stranger?’

‘Yes I had no idea who she was or that she was a professor. She didn’t seem that much older than me although she obviously is and she took my hand and eventually I stopped shaking. I think she guessed what was wrong without me having to go into detail. I didn’t look like I do now. I was stronger and my make-up was cheap that I hid in a case at school along with the dress, underwear and shoes. I was sharing a room at the time and I’d been disturbed whilst being myself. I was dragged out into the quadrangle and before I knew it half the school were out and they were laughing at me and calling me names.’

‘Didn’t the teachers come to help?’

‘No they just stood by. Then my house master came over to me and took me to the headmasters office. He was angry and he rang my father to tell him that I had no place at their school and I was suspended.’

‘Did you want to be a girl?’

‘No I am a girl. I knew then that it was more than dressing the part. I told the headmaster that I hated the school and I didn’t care if I was suspended. I was born a girl.’

‘So did your parents come to collect you and take you home?’

‘My father said he would drive over after he finished work so I was sent back to my room and told to change back into my uniform and escorted by a senior student. He said he felt sorry for me and he thought the students had been cruel and unkind.’

Georgia was sobbing and told him that nobody ever listened to her and she was treated as an embarrassment to her family. Her father would be really angry when he arrived for wasting his money and would punish her. The student hugged her and then allowed Georgia to change in privacy in her shower room. Her upset turned to anger so she locked the door behind her, threw her uniform out of the window and sat on the floor to cry. The boy was knocking on the door and trying to dislodge the lock so she leaned against the door telling him to leave her alone.

He seemed to go for help so Georgia looked for an escape. She realised the window was big enough for her to squeeze through if she climbed on the sink. It was a struggle and she contemplated jumping to the ground even to kill herself but it couldn’t be guaranteed as it wasn’t high enough. She reached a drainpipe that was loose but strong enough to take her wait and scrabbled down to the ground. She ignored her clothes that were scattered on the ground and scaled a fence and ran across the fields to the main road. She intended to hitch a lift anywhere but the traffic was light.

As she approached the village she saw an open backed truck and climbed aboard hiding behind its load when she saw the coast was clear. Within an hour the truck had pulled up at traffic lights in a built-up area on the outskirts of her home-town Manchester. She jumped out of the truck and she saw the bridge so she headed towards it. She stopped as she entered the footbath over the bridge and stopped and leaned against the fence looking down to the water below. It was a busy canal used for transporting goods rather than pleasure craft.

As she stared into the murky waters below she felt really down. She hated the idea of going home to listen to a non-stop barrage of abuse and threats of punishment. She had suffered it as long as she could remember and nobody ever listened if she tried to explain.

It took a while for her to pluck up enough courage to end it all and the more she reflected on her life the more upset she became. She’d encountered bullying as long as she could remember even from girls in her class. If she went into the boys bathroom she’d be ducked in the sinks where cleaning staff filled their mop buckets. If she dared to dream of entering the girls bathroom dressed in her boys uniform the screams would echo all around the school as some bully girl would drag her by her hair down to the floor and to the exit. She wasn’t accepted wherever she went.

She explained that she had known from the age of four that she was a girl just like her elder sister on who she doted. She’d played with her rather than her two brothers one of whom was older and the other several years younger. She kept away from the boys as much as she could without her father intervening whilst her sister would laugh and giggle with her and teach her girly games and how to dance.

She would be included in the plays her sister arranged with her friends and even allowed to borrow a leotard to put on a dance performance for her mother and parents of their friends. But as she got older this was discouraged.
She kept the leotard and built up a stock of hand-me-down clothes from her sister in the following years that she wore whenever possible but more and more in privacy.

She knew that her sister knew how he felt and she confided in her about her true feelings. She’d tried to support her with her parents when everything blew up one evening. It all came out after Georgina had been bullied and beaten by a group of boys on the way home from school.

Her face seemed so sad and pained whilst she was telling me her story and then she told me that she decided to climb the barriers and then the fence of the bridge ready to jump down into the canal and end it all. She had to wait for a long convey of barges to travel under the bridge but she was determined to jump. That was when Professor Nightingdale appeared at her shoulder. She persuaded her to climb back down telling her the water wasn’t deep enough to drown and that she wouldn’t like the taste anyway so it was no way to go.

All the time I was captivated by her tear filled beautiful blue eyes. How could anybody mistake her for a boy. Why couldn’t her parents help and see the daughter they had? Her sister could see.

She was of slight build and perfectly in proportion. I couldn’t stop myself.

‘Are those real breasts?’

‘Yes of course they are. They have been enhanced a little but the medical treatment I had after Professor Nightingdale intervened helped them form.’ She had taken Georgina home and sat and talked at length with her mother before her father arrived home. Her mother was horrified at the prospect of losing her child and began to understand that it was nobodys fault and nothing to be ashamed of. After a few weeks Georgina was allowed to dress and present as a girl and Professor Nightingdale kept a close contact.

‘How did your family react to your change in appearance?’

‘ Not happy at first but I suppose they saw the change in me and with input from a colleague of Professor Nightingdale things started to change. I finished my education like this and everything was explained to students by the headmaster who was really kind. Nothing like him at the boys only school.’

‘So now you live and dress as you like and I assume your family have accepted the situation.’
‘Ha ha. Not so easy. It took a lot of persuasion from Professor Nightingdale that I wasn’t some form of mental case and that I was unlikely to ever change whatever they might do. The risk was me throwing myself under a train or taking an overdose or even slashing my wrists.’

‘Would you have done any of those things?’

‘Well would you have done that. You were in the same situation once weren’t you?’

‘What do you mean? Who told you that? Are you telling me that you know more about me than I do?’
‘Julia. Why don’t we sneak off and have a coffee together and have a proper chat. I really like you. Do you think we can be friends?’