After the Pantomime

By Susannah Donim

A spare time hobby slowly turns into a lifetime choice for Nick.

Chapter 6 – After the Panto

Nick puts what he has learned as a Pantomime Dame to good use.

After the Dick Whittington curtain fell for the last time our stage crew had to strike the set so that the next show – the professional Panto – could move in. Meanwhile the cast had to change for the party and then help with packing up the costumes and everything else into Arthur’s two largest vans. In my dressing room Polly helped me strip and cleaned off my make-up, while I said a sad goodbye to my lingerie and dresses. My costumes and wigs were much more elaborate than anyone else’s, so Polly and I were the last to join in the packing. It was more or less all done by the time we got out, and we just had to load Sarah’s dresses, wigs and make-up onto the second van.

The Panto cast party was also the LADS Christmas do, which explained why the ballroom of the town’s second biggest hotel was packed with people I didn’t know. When we arrived, Tom, Josie and my parents were standing up at the bar talking amongst themselves and looking a little lost. I parted from the Whitmores with grateful thanks for everything they had done, and led my guests to our table which was near the back. My family were effusive with praise for the show and my performance in particular.

“Frankly, I didn’t know you had it in you,” said my father.

“I can’t believe how good you were at being a woman,” said my mother. “I don’t usually like Pantomime Dames. They always seem grotesque caricatures of women, but you got the tone just right. Your voice – and your mannerisms! I know it was supposed to be a comic performance – and you were very funny – but sometimes, if I closed my eyes, I could almost see my mother up there.”

She seemed wistful. Then she remembered, as I did, that Granny was an old bat.

There was booze and a buffet. By now it felt like we in the cast were all old friends but in reality I hadn’t known a soul there six weeks earlier. So the conversation at our table was mostly family stuff while all around us people were talking about the show, and comparing it with past triumphs.

Eventually, when everyone had eaten their fill and there were more empty bottles than full ones remaining, the LADS Chairman called for silence and announced the annual awards ceremony. Last year’s winners, ineligible this year, presented the prizes to their successors. They started with the minor prizes, at least from the point of view of us actors. First up was Set Design; someone I didn’t know won for Camelot. Then came Best Stage Manager. I guessed ours was out of the running following the curtain fiasco, even though it was hardly his fault. Polly was a popular winner of the prize for costumes. She’d done the wardrobe for three of this year’s five productions, but the committee particularly singled out her work on the Panto. In her little speech she kindly acknowledged the contribution of MyOwnCouture.com and recommended all the ladies check out our website.

Introducing the acting awards the Chairman explained that, in the spirit of the times, they’d done away with distinctions between actors and actresses, and were now giving just three prizes for ‘Best Performance in a Musical, Drama and Comedy’. But first, we were all happy to see Millie get the prize for ‘Best Newcomer’. She’d made a superb Dick, playing a difficult straight role with charisma, slapping her thighs heartily, and leaping around with great athleticism. She also looked fantastic in tights, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with it, despite four-fifths of the Committee being men.

‘Best Performance in a Musical’ went to the guy who played Arthur in Camelot. The Drama prize went to Beatrice in the summer open air production of Much Ado About Nothing.

As the Chairman announced the last award of the evening, my heart leapt as I saw Polly wheeling Arthur up to the front.

“The award for the Best Comic Performance of 2018,” the Chairman said, pausing for dramatic – nay, melodramatic – effect, “goes to Nick Rawlinson for Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington.”

That was a popular decision too, not least with my family and the cast of the Panto. I staggered to my feet and strode in as masculine a manner as I could to the front to collect my prize. Arthur even managed to crack a watery smile in the enthusiastic applause and the glare of the flash photography.

We all parted at nearly two o’clock in the morning amid pledges to keep in touch. Polly also made me promise to audition for a part in the Spring production, which would be one of Alan Ayckbourn’s early plays.

* * *

Over lunch on Sunday I was expecting the third degree from my mother about Ruth, but she was called away. This was unusual at this time of year. It wasn’t lambing season. In fact baby farm animals are rarely born in December, but then not all veterinary emergencies are to do with births. We all hoped it wasn’t an outbreak of some hideous agricultural disease.

So Dad and I were alone in a quiet corner of our local, with pints of Old Badger ale and steak and kidney pies. We spent most of the meal talking about our various business ventures, and whether Josie was pregnant. I thought not, but he said he knew they were trying.

“What was your mother saying about you and Ruth?” he said casually over coffee.

“No comment. I can neither confirm nor deny…”

“I wouldn’t blame you. She’s a cracking bit of stuff…”

“Da-a-a-d!”

“…but she’s engaged to Eddy, isn’t she?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me.”

“When I can, I will. I promise. Assuming there’s something to tell.”

“OK, I trust you.” He sighed. “But your mother won’t.”

“I know. I’ll steer clear until the situation is resolved… one way or another.”

* * *

There were still three weeks till Christmas. Ruth and Vicky worked hard to upgrade the website software. We now had the extension that animated the figure’s face as well as her body. It scanned the customer’s photo (assuming she had uploaded one) and matched many fixed points to corresponding ones on the template. So now when the figure strutted down the catwalk she was smiling and laughing and making sexy ‘come hither’ expressions – all with the customer’s own face. We tested it first with Vicky and it worked beautifully. Then Ruth embarrassed me by using the publicity photo of Sarah the Cook, wearing Auntie Elsie’s dark blue spangly dress. It even worked for her. It was positively grotesque (in my opinion), but it was undeniably realistic.

The next big thing was MyOwnCouture.com’s meeting with the Bank. This was to be on the Friday of the week after the Panto. On Monday Ruth called the team together in the upstairs office to plan what we would say. We would be allocated an hour and a half for the meeting. The presentation was to take no more than forty minutes, leaving sufficient time for questions.

“I’ll open and talk about the concept – the website and the user experience,” Ruth began. “I’ll describe how the software works in general terms, but we need to keep the details secret until we have appropriate Non-Disclosure Agreements in place. Till then it’s our Intellectual Property and extremely valuable. That should take about a quarter of an hour. Then I’ll hand over to Eddy to run a demo of the website. OK?”

“Do you know if any member of the Bank’s team is female?” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, we could demonstrate the site by actually making a dress for her.”

“That’s a great idea!” said Eddy. “Make them part of the demo. Pull them in.”

Ruth was nodding. Everyone seemed to like this plan.

“In fact, you might go further,” I went on. “When you’ve finished the design, you could send it from your laptop over the internet to the machines in the cowshed. If Mike was there, he could pass the design to the cutting machine, and then on to the fabricator. We could rig up a webcam and show them the dress actually being made. You could even show him packaging it up to mail to her – all in real time, during the presentation in their office, and while they’re watching.”

“That would be really impressive!” said Vicky.

“We’d need to ask the Bank lady for her measurements,” Ruth said. “She might be embarrassed…”

“Mike might need help,” said Vicky, ignoring Ruth’s objection. “I suggest I stay behind just in case. There wouldn’t be much for me to do in the meeting anyway.”

Mike hastened to agree. He looked pleased and relieved.

“It’s a risky strategy,” said Ruth. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Well there are various precautions you can take,” I began. “I mean, you can influence the woman’s choice of dress during the demo, to stop her doing anything too fancy. It would have to be a standard material and colour. You won’t be able to dye the cloth or print a pattern within the hour, but Mike can hold up ‘ones we prepared earlier’ to the camera, to show what you can do.”

“That should work,” said Eddy. “I guess the worst-case scenario would be if the machines break down, but they’re running smoothly at the moment. We’ve done half a dozen dresses since Nick’s Panto costumes with no problems at all. I say it’s worth the risk.”

“The point is to demonstrate the end-to-end process for real,” I said, “and that includes showing them why you need investment – because you can’t afford to automate everything; because you need new, better machines; because you can’t do the fancy stuff or work with exotic materials. As long as they can clearly see the potential, it doesn’t matter too much if something does go wrong. It just underlines the need for new investment.”

“What if they’re all men?” said Vicky. “Can you check with them?”

“I can try,” said Ruth. “If they are, I could ask one of them to bring his wife’s measurements along.”

“That would probably be the strangest request they’ve ever had at an investment meeting,” said Eddy.

Even Ruth laughed.

For the next hour we thrashed through the details of the presentation. We changed the running order. Mo was asked to prepare a series of screenshots from the website for Ruth to incorporate in her PowerPoint presentation. Eddy and Mike had to do the same for the machine control software, and also to take some photos of the machines working.

“You realise this will be a negotiation?” I said, as we were finishing up. “They’ll want a share of the business, and they’ll probably want to put one of their people on your Board.”

“Who are our Board?” Vicky asked.

“Eddy and I own 40% of the company each,” said Ruth, “and Nick owns 20%, so we’re the Board. I’m the MD; Eddy’s the Operations Director…”

“I thought I was the Technical Director?” said Eddy.

“Well, OK, you’re both,” she said. “And Nick is the Finance Director.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well you should have read the stuff that Will’s been sending us. We’re a limited company now, and therefore as a Director you are responsible for one-fifth of our debts if we go bankrupt.”

“Shit! Maybe the Bank will buy me out.”

“Maybe, but they’re not going to give you a hundred grand, are they? We’re not worth that much yet. You’d be better off waiting till we’re a rip-roaring success.”

“But it does mean that if you and Eddy fall out, I have the casting vote,” I said.

I really only said it for a laugh, but the black look on Ruth’s face was worth it anyway. Eddy chuckled quietly.

“Can I buy some shares?” asked Vicky, apparently oblivious to any atmosphere that might or might not have developed.

Ruth smiled. “Your faith in us is much appreciated, babe, but we’re not planning a share issue at the present time. As to your question, Nick: yes, we are aware that we’re going into a negotiation. Eddy and I have discussed what we’d be willing to accept.”

“And we’re willing to walk away if we have to,” he added. “There are other banks.”

“Do you need Will to come along?” I asked.

“I don’t think so this time,” Ruth said. “This session is just to get their agreement in principle. If they approve investment, there would have to be a subsequent contract meeting. We’ll definitely need him then.”

The meeting broke up and Eddy and Mike went back to the cowshed. Mo and Vicky returned to their workstations to get on with preparing the presentation.

“Thank you for your contributions, Nick,” Ruth said. “Your ideas were really good.”

“Nice to be appreciated.”

She gave me a quick glower for appearances’ sake and vanished into her office behind a closed door. Any further development of our personal relationship would have to wait.

* * *

I went down to the Club that evening. I hadn’t been there for over a month because of the show.

“Hello, stranger,” said Lee, emerging from his little office. “You were really great in the Panto. I was there on the Wednesday.”

The Club was closed on Wednesday evenings, so that was presumably the only night he could have gone.

“Thanks, Lee. Glad you enjoyed it. I was just wondering when the next Open Mic night will be.”

“Oh, we don’t have any during December – office parties and so on. We’ll start them up again in the New Year. Are you going to bring Daisy Duquesne out again?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. That was a one-off, but I have some new material I’d like to try out – as myself.”

“Sure, sure, but lots of people keep asking about Daisy. That would be really popular. I could put the word out…?”

“Well my new stuff is about my experience with the Panto. I wondered if I might do some of it in the guise of Sarah the Cook – without costume or make-up, of course.”

She was still somewhere inside me and occasionally clamoured to come out.

“Aren’t you afraid people will notice the resemblance to Daisy?”

“Well it hardly matters if Daisy never appears again, does it?”

* * *

Ruth didn’t manage to find out anything about the Bank’s negotiating team, but when we were ushered into their conference room at ten o’clock on Friday morning we were delighted to see that there was a woman on their side of the table. She was middle-aged, very smart in a frilly white blouse and a pin-striped skirt suit, and wore a friendly smile. Ruth, Eddy and I exchanged glances. We would go for it!

“Good morning,” boomed a dapper, silver-haired gentleman, clearly the senior executive. “I’m Richard Latham, Director of the New Ventures unit here. On my left is Margaret Villiers, my Deputy, and just so you know, she’ll be taking over from me around Easter so, if anything, you have to impress her more than me.”

He paused and smiled. She smiled. We all smiled.

“And on my right is Justin Sealey, our technical consultant. Justin, would you like to help our guests set up?”

Eddy was carrying our best laptop and the consultant helped him connect it up to a seventy-five-inch Ultra-HD monitor mounted on the end wall. He then plugged in an ethernet cable and Eddy was able to confirm that the laptop was connected to the internet. While they were doing this, Ruth introduced the three of us, briefly describing our backgrounds and qualifications. She called me her ‘Financial Adviser’. Apparently, I had been demoted from FD.

Ruth’s presentation was very impressive, both in its content and her delivery. She was clear and confident, giving just the right amount of information about the fashion industry and the potential size of the market to convince her audience of the potential for our services. She then moved on to the ‘user experience’, which she illustrated with screenshots from our website.

After a little less than fifteen minutes, she handed over to Eddy who explained what the software did. With the aid of more screenshots, from the cowshed control computers this time, he described our machines and how we proposed to develop them further when we had the necessary funding. He showed photographs of all our equipment and of the stores, which were full of dyes and bolts of cloth. He and Mike had put in a lot of work to tidy up and the cowshed had never looked better.

As far as I could tell, the Bank team were giving us their full attention and even enjoying the show. Justin was particularly interested in Eddy’s piece and interrupted a couple of times to ask quite technical questions. Eddy trod carefully, answering in general terms but blocking detailed enquiries with comments about ‘our proprietary software’. The consultant seemed a little frustrated but Latham intervened. He obviously knew the score; we were protecting our intellectual property until contracts and NDAs had been signed.

After finishing his slot, Eddy sat down and Ruth took over again.

“I’m delighted to say that we are already trading successfully. Our first big order was for the Lavenden Amateur Dramatic Society’s Pantomime…”

What? She hadn’t told me she was going to talk about this!

“After an accident destroyed a number of their costumes, they asked us to help replace them – at very short notice.” She started showing photographs of Sarah’s outfits as they came off the fabricator. “We made all the Dame’s basic dresses – several different styles and designs – in just under two weeks. Most of them were ‘bespoke’; that is, non-standard. After all, few modern women want to dress like a Pantomime Dame.”

Everyone smiled at that. Some men do though, I thought to myself, and it appears I’m one of them.

“So we had to program those from scratch,” Ruth continued, “but any new design only takes our programming team an hour or so to encode. Each of Sarah the Cook’s dresses needed at least two different materials; some required three. They are mostly in gaudy colours too, so we had to do a lot of colour matching and dyeing. But our system can do that efficiently, so the only delay was in waiting for the material to dry after the dyeing. I have some photos of the finished products…”

Pictures of Sarah – me – started appearing on the screen.

“Now, as you will see, the finished dresses are much more complicated, with all sorts of frills and flounces. That one has a false bodice and an apron. We’re not set up to do any of that, so they were done by the Society’s seamstresses. We think there could be a good market in theatrical costuming, and not just Pantos, but historical plays too. We’re confident our software can cope, but we would new machines to make all those accessories.”

I was aware that Margaret was looking at me oddly. First she looked at a close-up of Sarah, then me, then back at the screen. She caught my eye and smiled.

“The Society order was worth £2,000,” Ruth was saying, “and we’ve had seven further orders to date, with excellent feedback from our customers. Our web designer has worked hard to optimise our Internet footprint and there are clear signs that it’s working, but obviously we would do much better if we could increase our advertising budget. We’ll be leaving copies of our accounts with you, and Nick can give you our full financial picture if you need more detail.”

All of the panel were scribbling notes now.

“Finally, I imagine you would like to see a demonstration of our system in action?”

The Bank team were nodding and smiling, so Ruth took the bull by the horns.

Turning to the only woman on the panel, she smiled and said, “Margaret, if we made you a dress, I hope you wouldn’t think we were trying to influence you unduly?”

“You can do that? What – here? Now?”

“We certainly can.”

Eddy was at the laptop. She motioned to him to log in to our website.

“What you see on the screen now is exactly what a customer would see when she goes to our site. First she selects a type of dress from our range of styles.” Eddy clicked on the Style icon and the gallery appeared. “We have eleven basic products, but can offer variations on each, such as neckline, skirt length, shoulder straps, and sleeves. Do you see anything you like?”

Margaret glanced at Richard. He smiled encouragingly. Justin was grinning.

“Well I quite like that cocktail dress,” she said diffidently. She was pointing at the picture of the BodyCon dress, and studying the accompanying blurb. “Probably in a ‘medium’ fitting. I don’t think I can get away with ‘snug’ anymore.”

“Rubbish,” said Latham gallantly.

Margaret laughed. “Do you have it in a dark blue?” she asked.

“Certainly,” Ruth confirmed. “Let’s make that for you, shall we? Now we need two things: your measurements obviously, and a photograph. You’ll see why later.”

Eddy had put up the form into which the customer was supposed to enter their details.

“I’m not sure I can remember all those measurements.”

“Well they’re not all essential, but the more you can enter, the better the fit will be. I do have a tape measure with me…”

“Oh I don’t think I could…”

Latham interrupted. “I quite understand that Margaret might not want to be measured up in front of four men, like a prize heifer,” he said with a smile. “However I was going to suggest we take a short coffee break anyway. Why don’t you two ladies go to the powder room and get the measuring sorted out? I’d really like to see how this all works. I’m intrigued.”

I could have kissed him for that intervention. (Well, I couldn’t have kissed him, but Sarah or Daisy could have.) Margaret made no further objections and she and Ruth left to go to the Ladies’. Knowing his place, Justin took our coffee orders and went to the table at the back of the room where refreshments had been laid out.

“I must admit, this is a breath of fresh air, compared to many of the new venture proposals we have to wade through,” said Richard, conversationally. He accepted a cup of coffee and an oatcake biscuit from Justin. “We have to refuse some because they’re impractical; others because they’re too ‘niche’ and would struggle to find a market; but yours passes both those tests. After all, your market is half the human race!”

“That was Ruth’s thinking,” Eddy confirmed, “and if we can address the ‘accessories gap’, as she calls it, we can start doing really fancy stuff like wedding dresses.”

“I can see you’re not quite as au fait with the jargon as your partner,” Latham said, good-naturedly.

Justin joined us, handing me and Eddy our coffees.

“I’d like to see your designs for the new machines that will do all those fiddly bits,” he said.

Obviously he was also unfamiliar with the unique language of the fashion industry.

“I’ll bring them with me next time we meet,” Eddy confirmed with a smile, while implying that the consultant wouldn’t be seeing anything unless there was a next time.

We had used up all our allotted time by now, but the Bank team showed no signs of wanting to leave. Soon the ladies returned, chattering like old friends. Ruth was very good at this, I thought admiringly. Justin organised coffees for the two women and Ruth sat down at the laptop to start entering Margaret’s measurements.

“You boys don’t need to look,” she said sharply to us.

I didn’t think Margaret had anything to be embarrassed about but we dutifully turned our backs. Ruth continued.

“With the customer’s permission – GDPR and all that – we can encrypt and store her measurements for her, so she only has to enter them once. That should encourage repeat business. Now I just need to upload your photo from my phone, and I’ll show you what the customer would see next.”

Thirty seconds later, music started up on the monitor’s powerful speakers and a model with Margaret’s face and figure sashayed professionally down a catwalk in a beautiful dark blue cocktail dress. It was covered in sparkling sequins and looked very much like my dress when I was Ruth’s Auntie Elsie, except that Margaret the model was clearly much more beautiful and feminine.

Model Margaret looked over her shoulder and smiled at us. The real Margaret gasped.

“The CGI’s great, isn’t it? We think this will be a real selling point,” Ruth said, quite unnecessarily, judging by the open mouths on the panel. “The customer can see what she will actually look like in the dress she’s designed.”

“It’s even better than checking yourself out in the mirror,” said Margaret, “because you can see yourself from behind, and walking.”

“So that’s what you’d have looked like if you’d gone into modelling rather than banking,” said Richard, goggle-eyed.

“Oh hush,” said Margaret, who was clearly loving this. “Can you really make that dress?”

“Send it, Eddy,” said Ruth. “You can bypass the payment form, can’t you?”

Eddy nodded and clicked the Send icon. The message came up saying, ‘Sending design to Manufacturing’.

“He has now sent the encoded instructions to the cutting machine. Can you log into the control terminal, Eddy?”

Eddy switched windows on the laptop. A much simpler page with a few lines of typed instructions appeared on the conference room monitor. A steady beeping started up.

“That beep will be heard by the operator in the workshop,” Ruth explained, “telling him that a new job has started up. As you can see, the system gives him instructions on which cloth to load. When he’s ready, he hits Enter and the cutting machine starts up. Can you bring up the webcam, Eddy?”

Eddy switched to another window and suddenly we could see a view inside the cowshed and Mike clipping a roll of dark blue cloth into the cutting machine. He stepped across to the control machine, pressed a button, and the cutter started up. I noticed Vicky hovering nervously in the background.

“If I remember rightly, this design requires two pieces of cloth to be cut,” Ruth said. “One for the bodice and one for the skirt.”

The cutting machine finished and there was another beep.

“Now the operator has to carry the cut pieces across to the fabricator and lay them on the platen in approximately the position specified by the design code. The software knows the shapes of the different pieces and how to align them properly on the fabrication bed for stitching together. The machine won’t start until its sensors confirm that the pieces are in acceptable positions. They don’t have to be exact. Eventually we want to link the two machines together so that a human operator won’t be necessary.”

After a couple of minutes the fabricator beeped. Mike appeared and scooped up the completed dress. Vicky joined him in front of the webcam and he held the dress up against her. They both smiled and waved.

The Bank panel gaped, speechless.

“Well, I’m b…” said Margaret, and dried up.

“Exactly,” said Richard. He turned to Ruth. “Can you do one for my wife? I still haven’t got her a Christmas present.”

“I’ll give you the website address,” said Ruth with a smile, “and a price list.”

Latham laughed. “Well, I think we’ve seen all we can take in today,” he said. His colleagues nodded. “I just have a couple of questions. First, staffing. How many of you are there?”

“In addition to the three of us, there’s Mike who helps Eddy, and Vicky, our programmer. You saw both of them on the webcam. We also have Mo, our part-time web designer, and we retain Will Holford, as our legal adviser.”

She was clearly implying that I was a full-time employee, which was a little disingenuous, to say the least, but this wasn’t the time to contradict her.

“Have you a growth strategy?” Ruth looked blank. “I mean, if the business takes off as you hope, you’ll need more staff, won’t you? Have you planned how you’ll ramp up your numbers?”

“Not yet,” she admitted.

“I understand,” Latham said, kindly. “You might see it as putting the cart before the horse, but I recommend you put a staffing plan in place alongside your financial strategy. You won’t be able to deliver the latter without the former. We can help you with that anyway. If nothing else, you need to get a secretary for yourself and Nick. You’re going to be much too busy to do all the admin yourselves.”

There were a few more questions, which we answered by passing over copies of our accounts and the monthly reports of website traffic Mo had generated so far. Finally, Richard summed up.

“Well, I think I speak for the panel when I say we’re very keen to proceed to the next stage. We’ll get our standard pack off to you as soon as we can – NDAs, investment conditions, and so on. If we can get all the paperwork filled in before Christmas, we can get together again to finalise contractual arrangements in the first week of the New Year.”

That will give Will Holford something to read over the Christmas break, I thought.

“That would be wonderful!” said Ruth. “Margaret, would you like me to send your new cocktail dress here to the Bank or to your home address?”

“Here will be fine, thank you, Ruth. I can wear it to our Christmas party.”

“Don’t forget you’ll need a slip with it. I should have mentioned, we can’t sew linings into our garments yet. That’s something else we need funding for.”

“I’ll remember.”

Eddy disconnected the laptop and started packing up. We all got up to leave. There were warm handshakes all round.

When we got outside the building Ruth astonished me by throwing her arms around my neck and smothering me with kisses.

“What was that for?” I asked when I had got my breath back. “I didn’t do anything. I hardly needed to speak all morning.”

“We wouldn’t have even got here without you,” she said, now a little embarrassed by her emotional display.

“Plus you scratched her itch when she really needed it – three times, wasn’t it?” said Eddy, with a grin.

I didn’t remember telling him that. So I wasn’t the only one who’d been counting.

* * *

MyOwnCouture.com had several more orders before Christmas. Some were from people who had seen the name in the Dick Whittington programme, and one – gratifyingly – from Richard Latham for a Christmas present for his wife. They kept the team busy up till Christmas. Also Ruth and I spent a couple of days at Will’s office studying the Bank’s Investment Guide. They offered a number of options. All variations insisted on a seat on the Board, but the number of shares the Bank Director would be able to vote depended on the level of risk they believed they were taking, and therefore on the form in which we took their support. For example, for a simple advance of half a million, they would require 20% of the shares, which Ruth didn’t like. A more attractive option was that they would just buy and lease us the new machines we needed. For that they would only require 10%. But Eddy was keen that we own all our machines ourselves. He didn’t want to ask anyone for permission to make changes to them.

I also had to produce a five-year financial plan, which involved making some optimistic and completely unfounded assumptions about growth. Fortunately the Guide helped a lot there. Will sent off a list of ‘clarification questions’ in the last week before the Festive Season shutdown, not expecting the answers till New Year.

* * *

On the Friday before Christmas Eve we invited all our venture teams up to the Manor House for a festive drinks party. Those teams that hadn’t made their breakthroughs yet pumped Ruth and Eddy, Gerry and Steve, with questions, and I was glad to see their morale shooting up. I resolved to try and spend more time with all of them, even though that would mean spending less with MyOwnCouture.com. The party was the first time Ruth had seen the scale of what Dad and I were trying to do. After I had introduced her to the others, she seemed a little subdued, given the happiness of the occasion.

After the party everyone began disappearing for Christmas. Ruth went back to her parents up in Manchester. I soon found myself missing her company. Eddy was staying in the flat, presumably spending the season with his many boyfriends. So he and Ruth would be apart from Christmas Eve till the second of January. I wondered whether either set of parents would find that odd.

The five of us had a brilliant Christmas at home, doing all the usual stuff: eating and drinking too much, watching TV, and playing stupid party games. We were glad to get out of the house on Boxing Day. We went to the Club for a wine tasting party. We sat with Polly and Arthur, who was now getting around with crutches, much to his wife’s relief. In addition to the house band, led by Frank, the entertainment was provided by a young comedian who had started at the Club’s Open Mic night and had just turned professional. Tom wasn’t impressed.

“He can’t tell a proper joke to save his life. This is all just being rude about politicians and media people. Any fool can do that.”

“You’re better than him, Nick,” said Josie, “and Daisy’s much better.”

“Who’s Daisy?” asked my mother.

“Ah…” I said. I looked at Tom and Josie.

“Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets from the people you love, Nick,” said Polly quietly.

I assumed she was talking about Mum and Dad, but she knew about me and Ruth too, so…

“OK,” I said, “Daisy is me. As you know, I did Open Mic night half a dozen times this year. Once I did it as ‘Daisy Duquesne’. Josie helped me drag up.”

“And bloody good she was too,” said Lee, who had just come up behind me and had obviously overheard the conversation.

He pulled up a chair and joined us, uninvited. Well it was his club, I suppose.

“When we realised I could ‘pass’, we just thought my performance would be more effective if no one knew Daisy was really a man. I wasn’t trying to keep secrets.”

“It was seeing him as Daisy that convinced Charlie and Arthur that he could play the Dame,” said Polly.

“That explains a lot,” said Dad.

“I’m still not convinced he can,” grumbled Arthur. “He wasn’t a proper Dame.”

But no one was listening to him.

“So who else knows about Daisy?” asked my mother.

“Just the people at this table, plus Charlie,” I said. “Oh and Eddy, and Frank over there.” I didn’t think it was worth mentioning Harry and Mac.

“Not Ruth?”

“No.”

“Oh, Nick!” My mother sounded disappointed in me.

“What? She’s just my business partner. She’s not part of my private life.” I saw Polly raise an eyebrow. “Well not properly. It’s… complicated.”

“I like Ruth,” said Josie.

Tom nodded. There was an awkward silence.

“Anyway, when are we going to see Daisy again?” asked Lee, who wasn’t privy to the cause of the general discomfiture. “It’s been six weeks and people are still asking after her, and she’s the only female comic we have at the moment.”

“Yes, Nick, please!” said Josie. “It’ll be such fun.”

I had been looking forward to getting back to stand-up, but I’d intended to do it as Nick. Eventually they wore me down. I had to promise that Daisy would be back on the first Open Mic night of the New Year, the second Friday in January.

“Can I borrow your high heels again, Arthur?”

Mum and Dad looked at me, then at Arthur. Polly laughed.

* * *

Josie insisted I spend one of the days between Christmas and New Year with her. Her plan was that she make me up as Daisy in the morning, then we would go to the nearest large shopping centre for lunch and buy a new outfit for me to perform in.

“What was the matter with what I wore last time?”

“Honestly!” she said, exasperated. “You’re going to have to work harder than that if you want to be a proper girl!”

“I never said I wanted…”

“No woman would wear the same outfit twice for performing in public. Besides it wouldn’t fit.”

“What are you talking about? I may have put on a couple of pounds over Christmas, but it won’t make that much difference.”

“But we’re not talking about you, are we? Daisy will be two and a half months more pregnant. Your bump will have to be noticeably bigger. We’re going to get you a maternity dress.”

“Can’t I just have an abortion?”

“Absolutely not! I’m against abortions, especially for men.”

* * *

So I reported to Tom and Josie’s place at nine o’clock in the morning on the Friday after Christmas. I was soon up in their spare bedroom again, stripping off. The bed was covered in the familiar items that made up my Daisy disguise, plus a couple of new strange-looking objects.

“I’m glad to see you’ve shaved your legs,” Josie said when I was down to my underpants. “That will give us more options.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I mean, Polly did it for Sarah’s bedroom scene.”

“Yes, I remember, but that was a week ago. Your stubble’s getting noticeable. I’ll get my Ladyshave.”

“Hang on! It’s two weeks before my next appearance as Daisy.”

“But by then your legs will be really hairy again, and shaving them will be that much harder. You should do it every couple of days between now and the eleventh of January.”

So I had to stand in the bath while she removed all the hair on my legs. Unlike Polly she went all the way up to the seam of my briefs.

“Aren’t you getting a little carried away?” I said. “A six-months-pregnant lady doesn’t wear miniskirts.”

“You never know though. I’m just being thorough. I’ll do your arms and hands too, while I’ve got my razor out.”

I’d learned there was no point in arguing with my sister-in-law. Come to think of it, all the women in life seemed to be able to boss me around – my mother, Ruth, even Polly. Was it me, or them?

“OK,” said Josie, breaking into my unsettling thoughts, “how does that feel?”

“Stings a bit.”

“Well, I have some moisturising cream but you’re supposed to wait for half an hour before applying any lotion to newly shaved legs. I’ll rub some on then. We can start getting you dressed while we’re waiting.

She led the way back into the bedroom.

“Here,” she said, handing me a new grey spandex garment. “Take your underpants off and put this on while I go and clean up the bathroom.”

“What is it?” I said, examining it suspiciously.

“It’s a maternity panty. Here – read the box.”

She went back to the bathroom. I hurriedly dropped my briefs and stepped into the strangely-shaped garment before she could get back and catch me naked. She wouldn’t give a fig of course, but Tom might not understand. The panty was tight around my thighs but very baggy from my groin upwards. No doubt Josie was going to pad it out to make me look six months pregnant.

I heard the bath taps running, presumably as she washed my body hair down the drain. I picked up the box the panty came in. The label read, ‘Seamless, breathable mesh Mid-Thigh PettiPant Maternity Shaper. A Blend of Nylon and Spandex. Provides gentle support and a relaxing comfortable fit. Perfect under dresses to prevent thigh chaffing.’

Josie came back. She glanced at me, sizing me up.

“Are you sure this is the right size?” I asked.

“I think so. You’re a ‘Large’, which covers dress sizes 14-18.”

“It seems awfully loose,” I said, flapping the surplus material around my waist.

“Well it won’t be when we’ve filled it with padding, dummy.”

She reached for the pack of upholstery foam and her scissors.

So began the padding process. She cut off strips of foam and I crammed them into the panty, front and back, and forcing them right down to surround my genitals. From there we added more and more strips, gradually filling the panty up to the top. Josie had to reach down inside to adjust the position of the strips of foam and smooth them out. This became a little intimate and she couldn’t have failed to notice my growing erection – again – but she just laughed it off with another flattering remark about the Rawlinson family heirlooms.

By this time my butt was twice as big – almost as big as Sarah the Cook’s had been – and my waist had completely disappeared. The panty’s waistband – if you could call it that – was now half-way up my chest. This was a strange feeling, as I was normally used to my waist being approximately at navel level.

After a good half an hour of this effort, Josie called a halt.

“I think that works,” she said. “I was concerned that the foam would over-stretch the material and cause it to sag unnaturally, but that spandex is very firm. We’ve padded it out evenly and the panty’s natural shape looks just like a baby bump at the front and a big round bum at the back. It’s good enough; pregnant women aren’t all the same shape, after all. Let’s get your bra on next.”

She helped me on with a new bra in the same style as the panty, and began stuffing it with foam.

“This is a larger size than you wore last time as Daisy, because women’s breasts grow throughout pregnancy. You shouldn’t have too much trouble with this. It’s not as big as the one you wore as Sarah. Polly said that was 42D. I’m amazed you could move at all!”

“But that was padded with a different kind of foam. It was much lighter than this.”

“Well, the extra weight in all those feminine places should force you to move like a pregnant woman. At this stage of your pregnancy, you would probably be getting pain in your back or pelvis, so even sitting down and standing up can be a challenge.”

“May I remind you I’m not really pregnant?”

“Obviously, but you’re trying to make people think you are, so you should try to move like a pregnant woman. Slow and steady, and try to keep your back straight. Are you going to perform standing up or sitting down?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Anyway, it’s called stand-up for a reason.”

“But it wouldn’t be realistic for a six-months-pregnant woman to stand up for ten minutes if she didn’t have to.”

“I suppose not. I’ll ask Lee to put a chair out for me. Obviously I won’t be able to use the mic stand.”

“OK, and you should straddle the chair. Turn it around. Sit astride it, keeping your arms arched and resting on the chair’s back. Lean forwards. That’s how pregnant women are supposed to sit on hard-back chairs.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” A thought occurred suddenly. “You must have done some research. Am I going to be an uncle, or occasionally an aunt?”

“I wish.” She sighed. “No, Phoebe, one of my old school friends, has just had a baby, and I helped her through the pregnancy as her mother wasn’t around. Little Evie is gorgeous. I’m a godmother.” She snapped out of it. “Come on. Let’s get you dressed. I borrowed this maternity top from Phoebe. She’s quite a big girl – like you!”

It was a black polka dot smock that came down to mid-thigh on me. It had three-quarter sleeves and an elasticated waist which accentuated my figure and showed off my baby bump. We paired it with grey skin-tight trousers and black flats I borrowed from the LADS wardrobe. It was around half-past ten by now, so we stopped for a break.

“Just your wig and make-up to do now, and maybe some jewellery,” she said, as we sat down in the kitchen with our coffee and chocolate digestives. She grinned. “You realise you’ve worn make-up much more often than I have over the last month? You should learn how to do your own.”

“Why? I won’t need it ever again after Daisy’s performance on the eleventh.”

“You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure. If I ever get invited to a fancy-dress party, I’ll go as a cowboy.”

“Boring!” she said. “What about a Vicars and Tarts party? You’d make a much better tart than vicar.”

I laughed, thinking – not for the first time – how lucky my brother was.

“Come on, Daisy,” she said, “Let’s get you finished. Here’s your handbag. We need to get to the shops.”

“Why, by the way? Surely I’m dressed OK for the Club as I am? Why should we spend any more money?”

“It’s not about that,” she said. “It’s to get you out and about and comfortable as a six-months-pregnant lady so you can look natural at the Club. We’ll probably need to do it again next week for practice. It won’t hurt to get you some more things. Don’t you want to try a maternity dress on?”

I didn’t answer, but I had to admit she was right. I very much wanted to try a maternity dress on. I wondered why…

* * *

Josie and I had a great afternoon lunching and shopping as sisters-in-law. She only had to pull me up a couple of times for sitting with my legs apart or taking too long strides.

“Mothercare next, I think,” she said, as we repaired our lipstick in the Ladies after lunch.

It was quite fun browsing, pretending to be looking at baby clothes and nursery furniture. Then we found the maternity dresses, and Josie persuaded me to try one on.

“Anything but those hideous dungarees,” she said. “You’d look like a fat labourer with a huge beer belly.”

“Oh, thanks very much, sis!” I said, sarcastically, reaching for a couple of dresses.

“You’re a size 16, by the way; you might get into a 14.”

“Got it.”

I chose a sleeveless denim smock dress with floral embroidery on the pockets, and a smarter two-piece dress with a white lace bodice and blue pleated skirt. The latter might even be a good choice for Daisy’s stand-up routine – or sit-down, I suppose I should call it now. I looked around for the changing rooms and headed off.

“Don’t forget, you’ve got three months to go,” she called after me. You’re going to get a lot bigger yet! Don’t get anything too tight.”

“OK,” I said, chuckling at the thought of my bump getting bigger.

“I’m just going outside to call Tom,” she said. “Won’t be long.”

The assistant at the changing room asked if I needed any help. Obviously I declined politely in my best girly voice. I found an empty cubicle, put my handbag on the seat, and took my top off. I could try both dresses on without removing my leggings. I was a little surprised that I felt no anxiety about entering such an exclusively feminine environment alone, but gradually during the day I had felt a Daisy persona forming and taking charge, just as had previously happened with Sarah. It hadn’t worked that way with Auntie Elsie, presumably because I hadn’t been her for as long, and I was terrified of exposure for most of the time.

I tried the denim dress on first and stepped out of the cubicle area to examine myself in the large mirrors. The assistant couldn’t help but try a little sales pitch.

“Good choice, madam,” she said. “It’s a sensible, practical dress, just the thing for everyday wear.”

I smiled and agreed, enjoying the fantasy. Daisy would probably have bought it, if she had actually existed, I thought. I went back in and changed into the second dress. This was much more romantic, the sort of thing one would wear for a night out with the baby’s father. I didn’t see Josie coming up behind and joining me at the mirrors. She caught me posing in the second dress and twirling wistfully.

“That’s really nice,” she said, “though it doesn’t really go with your grey pants. We need to buy you some tights. But you should definitely get the dress for your show. It’s much more attractive than your black top. How much is it?”

I dropped my voice so that we wouldn’t be overheard.

“I’m not actually going to buy anything, you idiot! I’m not pregnant, or even a woman!”

I felt Daisy bridling at that inside me. Josie carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. She grabbed the label.

“Look, it’s in the sale – it’s only thirty pounds. How did the other one fit?”

“It was fine,” I hissed. “Now can we go?”

“I’ll buy both of them for you,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye, and loudly enough for the assistant to hear. “Because you’ve been such a good girl,” she added, more quietly.

“Allow me, madam,” said the assistant, seizing her opportunity and blocking any further attempts by me to stop my sister-in-law buying me two dresses. “Would you like to wear that one out? I can just take the label to the till.”

So with Mothercare carrier bags containing the denim dress and the clothes I came in, Josie and I made our way back to her car. I had to admit I loved the swirl of the pleated skirt around my legs. I was also aware of attracting more attention than I had in my boring black smock. Perhaps I would wear this dress to the Club. It would definitely be better with stockings and heels though…

“Well, that was a very successful shopping trip, I think,” Josie said, as I secured my seat belt over my bust and baby bump. “Don’t you agree, Daisy?”

“Yes, and thank you for the dresses.”

“My pleasure. I think Daisy is coming along nicely. I only caught a couple of people looking at you askance.”

“What?”

“Yes, a couple of women in the cafeteria obviously clocked you. Didn’t you notice?”

“No! Christ, I would have died…!”

“Well they were sitting just a couple of feet away and were watching you for a good half an hour.”

“So what gave me away?”

“I don’t know, but I’d guess your figure. If you look closely, and you know what you’re looking for, you can tell that your curves are just padding. They don’t move right. Female flesh jiggles and wobbles – certainly on a woman of your dimensions.”

“OK, that’s it! I quit. I’ll call Lee and cancel Daisy’s spot. Nick can go on instead.”

“No, no, no! Not after all the trouble we’ve gone to. Nobody will notice anything when you’re only on view for ten minutes at the Club. Your voice and mannerisms are near perfect now.”

It took her most of the journey home to persuade me to reconsider, and when we got back Tom joined in. They probably wouldn’t have succeeded if Daisy herself hadn’t weighed in. It seemed that she was a very determined, if imaginary, lady…

* * *

New Year came and went. Tom, Josie and I went up to London to see the fireworks and party with old university friends in Notting Hill. We had a great time with drinking games, strip poker, and casual sex (for everyone else). Unusually for us no one got arrested; perhaps we were getting old.

I was back at the Manor House by late afternoon on New Year’s Day and spent a couple of hours going through my emails. There were lots of messages of congratulations for my performance in the Panto from LADS members and supporters, some of whom I knew, many I didn’t. It was gratifying but it also made me sad that it was all over and I would never see Sarah in the mirror again. Charlie reiterated Polly’s invitation to audition for the Spring Ayckbourn. It was flattering but I saw myself as a stand-up comedian (and Pantomime Dame), not an actor.

More orders had come in at MyOwnCouture.com. They were well into double figures now, not even counting the Dame costumes for Dick Whittington. Those hadn’t been bought through the website, so I would need to chase LADS for payment. I was trying to remember who the Treasurer was. I knew I’d been told. Was it Roddy? I should also prepare an income statement for December. The Bank would want to see that at the next meeting.

Ruth asked us to be in early the next day as we’d need all hands to the pumps to deal with the new orders and prepare for the contracts meeting. I stopped to think. I never intended actually to work on any of my ventures. Just hand over the money, monitor the spending, and take my dividends as a major shareholder from those that succeeded, while stomaching the losses from those that didn’t. I even had dreams of selling my shares and making my fortune if any of them turned out to be the next Amazon or Apple. So how was this happening? How did I end up being an unpaid finance manager, cum office administrator, cum bloody secretary? I sighed. I knew perfectly well what happened. Ruth happened.

I dropped an email to Will to ask him what he thought of the Bank’s Investment Pack and check his availability. It occurred to me that Ruth should have done that (or at least her secretary), but she had been leaving all our dealings with Will to me. She probably felt uncomfortable asking him for help, given that we weren’t paying him – yet. Which reminded me: I would need to put an allowance into the business plan for legal fees.

There were more emails from the guys at my other business ventures. I would probably need meetings with most of them this week or next to review progress and go over their accounts. MyOwnCouture.com and the diabetic testing project were going well, and it looked like another one was taking off: virtual reality headsets which didn’t give you motion sickness.

Another of my ventures was with university friends who had set up a data analytics company specialising in town centre traffic information. Normally this was hard to obtain as it came from ‘official’ sources, and was invariably out of date by the time it was available. My guys planned to fly drones over their customers’ target areas taking very large numbers of photographs over a period of days. This would enable them to analyse traffic flows in and out of business parks, shopping centres, distribution depots, storage facilities, factories, etc. From that they could estimate sales, hiring, production and inventories weeks before official numbers came out. My support had enabled them to improve their drone fleet and cameras, and to beef up their number-crunching computers. They were at last generating interest across a range of retail and industrial businesses. We reckoned it would soon be time to approach a bank for major funding.

Sadly I reckoned I would probably have to pull the plug on our venture in fitness instruments which had gained virtually no traction in the last three months. The ‘Uber for Private Planes’ idea wasn’t looking promising either. It was a clever idea but it turned out that the owners of the planes were generally too rich to worry about empty seats on their flights, and there weren’t enough potential customers looking for the said seats. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Vicky and I arrived together at half-past eight the next morning to find Ruth was already in the office. We exchanged greetings; enquired how we all had enjoyed the holidays; and thanked each other for our gifts. Then we got down to work.

It was a busy week. Ruth and Vicky processed the online orders that had come in over the Christmas break and four new ones that had arrived since. All of the orders involved mods of some kind. One woman wanted a BodyCon dress with a higher neckline; another wanted an A-line with spaghetti straps; and so on. The software had been designed to manage that kind of mixing ‘n’ matching, so processing each order required no manual intervention. Most of the effort went on colour-matching and dyeing, and on printing the customers’ sometimes esoteric choices of pattern. Then it was just a matter of scheduling the dyeing and printing with the cutting and fabricating. We all looked forward to automating that.

Ruth was happy to hand over the management of the latest orders to Vicky, Mike and Eddy. She wanted to spend some time encoding a new offering: maternity dresses, which I thought was ironic, given my circumstances. Perhaps I’d be able to buy Daisy’s stuff from MyOwnCouture.com in future. Wait! What was I thinking?

On the Wednesday Will dropped in to talk about the Bank’s Investment Pack and their draft contracts. We emailed some clarification questions and made some counter-offers for the type of support we wanted and the corresponding number of shares they could have.

On Friday morning their response came. There were no show-stoppers. The contracts meeting was arranged for the last Wednesday of January. That was fine for me. I would be able to concentrate on Daisy’s second appearance for the moment. I still had to put my material together and memorise it.

I asked Ruth out to dinner (etc) on Friday. She said she would have liked to, but couldn’t afford to be seen out with any man except Eddy, as she had explained. I gently suggested we just did the ‘etc’ at her place. She said that she would have enjoyed a romantic dinner (etc), but without the tender precursor she just wasn’t that itchy at the moment, so didn’t need scratching. I briefly considered getting dragged up again, perhaps as Auntie Elsie so as not to risk being confused with either Nick or Daisy. That certainly seemed to get her excited last time for some reason, but I decided the idea was ridiculous, and hardly a good basis for a relationship. But did I want a proper relationship? Did she?

This wasn’t getting us anywhere. But then, was there anywhere to go? I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Ruth and Eddy were independent of the Deveres.

* * *

That weekend Tom was away on an agricultural college course, so I agreed to go out with Josie again as Daisy. The extra practice wouldn’t hurt. She had borrowed another maternity dress for me from her friend, Phoebe.

“What was the matter with the ones you bought me last week?” I asked, puzzled.

“Nothing, but Phoebe offered and I didn’t like to refuse.”

“You haven’t told her anything about me, have you?” I asked as she attended to my stubble with her Ladyshave.

“Only that I have a pregnant friend who is short of money. She was glad to help. We just have to return everything when you’re finished with it. She wants another baby soon.”

“Glutton for punishment, eh?” I couldn’t imagine anyone deliberately loading themselves down with the kind of weight I would be carrying. “I’m surprised she wasn’t more curious about me. I thought women liked to club together over pregnancy, new babies, etc.”

“Oh she was curious, but I told her you were on your own, separated from the baby’s father, and weren’t feeling very sociable. She understood.”

“Clever – and true enough. I’ve certainly never had intercourse with a man. Does that make this a virgin birth?”

“OK, enough blasphemy. Get your knickers on, Daisy.”

She helped me into another pair of maternity panties and matching bra, and adjusted the padding. I felt the weight and adapted my stance to manage the ungainliness of my six-months-pregnant figure. Josie passed me a plain, emerald-green ankle-length shift dress. It was sleeveless and I was a little worried that it left my rather obviously male shoulders bare.

“This is a dress!”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I mean I can’t wear my leggings with this, can I? Won’t I need…?”

She held out a pair of knee-high hold-ups.

“Thanks,” I said.

I sat down on the bed and struggled to get them on. My enormous bum and distended stomach kept getting in the way. Since I had the option – as real pregnant women didn’t – I should have put the socks on before my massive padding. I eventually managed to slip my nyloned feet into my black flats.

“Now you’ll need something on top of that,” she said, handing me a short white lacy cardigan, “to hide your muscly arms and shoulders. Just do up the top button. You’d never be able to fasten the rest over your enormous tummy anyway.”

“I’m not fat though,” I said, primly. “I’m pregnant.”

Josie chuckled. “Let me do your wig and make-up next. Then we can go down the shops.”

“OK, but I’m really not buying anything new for Daisy.”

She had me stand in the doorway for a photograph. I suspended my handbag over the crook of my arm.

“You look really demure like that,” she said. “Just like a sweet little old-fashioned pregnant housewife.”

I tried to smile shyly.

“‘Demure housewife’ isn’t really a suitable look for telling jokes on Open Mic night though,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. It would certainly catch a few people by surprise to hear some raw and vulgar stuff coming out of the mouth of a prim little preggy lady.”

I didn’t really do ‘raw and vulgar stuff’ but it was worth thinking about. Being a ‘prim little preggy lady’ might be a little embarrassing, but surely I was past that now, having been Sarah and Auntie Elsie in public? Not to mention naked except for padded ladies’ lingerie in Ruth’s boudoir…

We had a very pleasant afternoon at the local shopping centre. I tried on a few maternity outfits but managed to convince Josie that we shouldn’t buy Daisy any more clothes. But she had been quite right. The outing worked wonders for my confidence. Sitting, standing and walking as a woman was second nature to me now, and Josie had no need to remind me about keeping my legs together or using my hands and arms for balance in the feminine manner.

In fact, while I was standing outside the Ladies reading a woman’s magazine and waiting for her to emerge, a strange man tried to chat me up. Who does that to a pregnant woman? Wasn’t he afraid my husband would come along and beat him up? I struggled to respond politely to his advances without encouraging him or giving myself away. Fortunately Josie appeared and summed up the situation instantly.

“Come along, Daisy,” she said, ignoring my assailant. “The boys will be waiting for us.”

“Thanks, sis,” I said, when we were safely out of sight. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Now you know what we women have to put up with,” she said, with a snort. “But at least you know your disguise is effective. No one’s ever tried to pick me up outside the Ladies’.”

* * *

Life went on as usual for the next week. I went to meetings with all my other ventures. Gerry called to say that the bank funding was confirmed. He was talking to two small engineering companies about manufacturing. Meanwhile Steve had already lined up three hospital trusts and two clinical commissioning groups who wanted to buy devices as soon as they were available.

Orders were coming in steadily now at MyOwnCouture.com. Ruth had come up with lots of new designs and Mo added them to the website. I still dropped in to see Ruth whenever I could. I got the impression she wouldn’t have minded my company in the evenings but she still didn’t want to be seen out with me. I spent most of my leisure time honing my – that is, Daisy’s – act.

The big day arrived. Lee was happy to make his office available again as I still didn’t want to mix with the audience before or after my performance. I didn’t want anyone who knew Nick to make the connection. Lee promised I would be on somewhere in the middle of the evening, around ten o’clock.

Josie helped me get ready as usual. With some misgivings I had allowed her to persuade me to wear my ‘demure’ outfit. She did my hair – that is, my wig – slightly differently, to look more like a soccer mom. I carried my handbag, which I had decided was an essential prop. She dropped me by the Club’s back entrance at half-past nine and came in with me, bringing my suitcase with Nick’s clothes. After giving me a last-minute inspection, she went round to join Tom and Eddy in the audience.

Lee came to fetch me at just after ten. He laughed heartily at my outfit.

“Oh that’s brilliant,” he said. “Way to stand out from the crowd! OK, you’re on next. Huge audience tonight. I don’t know whether it’s because we haven’t had an Open Mic night for six weeks, or because I let everyone know you’d be on.”

I laughed. “It can’t be that. Daisy’s only done one gig.”

“Don’t be too sure. Anyway there’s a small group of your peers out there – Mac and Harry and the rest. They’re dying to see you as Daisy again.” I must have looked alarmed. “Don’t worry, they’re all sworn to secrecy. They’re good guys; they won’t give you away. Come on, now. Two minutes.”

* * *

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lee announced, “back by popular demand, and telling jokes for two…”

OK, Lee, that was quite cute.

“…please welcome – Miss Daisy Duquesne.”

I took the mic from Lee, stepped out into the spotlight and smiled for the audience. I did a little mock curtsey, as low as my padded figure would allow. I heard some gasps of surprise and a few uncertain laughs. A woman at Open Mic night was rare enough, but a pregnant woman, and one dressed like a suburban housewife? With her handbag over her arm, as if she were on the way to the hairdressers?

I wasn’t a raconteur. In all my performances as Nick, Sarah or Daisy, all I had done was roll out one-liners. I didn’t – usually – do observational humour. But there wasn’t much point in pretending to be a six-months-pregnant woman if I didn’t talk about that…

“Thanks for having me back. My performance last time was described by critics as ‘electric’ and by electricians as ‘critical’.

“As you can probably tell I’m quite a bit further up the spout than I was before. It’s on my mind quite a lot these days, so if you’re a man, you might want to look away now…

“It took me a while to get pregnant. It wasn’t happening. My husband has a sex manual but he’s dyslexic. I was lying there and he was looking for my vinegar.”

OK, that was just silly, but the silly ones often break the ice.

“So I went to the doctor and asked ‘Why aren’t I getting pregnant?’ I’m doing all the right things: I’m not drinking; I’m taking my vitamins; I’m sticking a pillow under my bottom. He said, ‘Are you having sexual intercourse on a regular basis?’ and ‘I said, well I can’t do everything’.”

They were getting going now, hopefully thinking I may be funny as well as funny-looking.

“For me, the weirdest stage of pregnancy was when people weren’t sure whether to congratulate me or buy me a gym membership.

“What’s the difference between a pregnant woman and a supermodel? Nothing—if the pregnant woman’s partner knows what’s good for him.

“I’m not sure if it’s the pregnancy hormones that are making me a bitch, or if I have a valid reason. If the baby can really hear everything from inside my tummy, I’m pretty sure her first word is going to be ‘Fuck!’”

That got my first belly laugh. I sighed inwardly. You can always rely on bad language to get a laugh, especially when you look like a demure little lady who wouldn’t say boo to a waterfowl.

“I’m really not looking forward to the actual birth. They say that when you are in the middle of labour it’s like watching two very inefficient removal men trying to get a very large sofa through a very small doorway. Only in this case you can’t say, ‘take it through the French windows’.

“My childbirth instructor says it’s not pain I’ll feel during labour, but pressure. In the way that a tornado might be referred to as an air current.”

There was a continual underflow of laughter now. From what I could tell, it was led by middle-aged women, and a few husbands – people for whom these were not so much jokes as memories, painful but nostalgic.

“But I intend to have a natural childbirth. In the sense that it’s completely natural to take drugs to alleviate excruciating pain.

“My husband asked when’s the best time to get an epidural – it’s immediately after learning that your girlfriend is pregnant.

“What’s the most common pregnancy craving? For men to be the ones who get pregnant. And what would be different then? Maternity leave would last for two years with full pay, and morning sickness would rank as the nation’s Number One health problem.”

Closing stages now. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, laughing and whooping.

“I just want to eat all the time. This morning I told my husband to put the chocolate biscuits somewhere I couldn’t reach them, so he put them on the floor.

“God gave men a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.”

…I wrapped up and took my bow. Lee came on, clapping. I handed him the microphone.

“Daisy Duquesne, ladies and gentlemen!” he called.

The applause got louder. I took another bow. I love this!

* * *

I hurried back to Lee’s office before any of my adoring public could catch me. I slumped in his desk chair and unpinned my wig. The sweat was running down my forehead, streaking my make-up. I reached for my handbag to get a tissue to dab my face. I bent down to get my shoes off. Josie would be here in a moment to help me change.

I was rubbing my feet and trying to reach round my tummy to remove my knee-highs, when the door swung open. I caught a quick glimpse of Josie but she was quickly elbowed aside by another familiar figure.

“Daisy Duquesne, I presume?” said Ruth. “So that’s why Charlie and Arthur picked you to be their Dame! It all makes sense now.”

She was furious.

Author's Note: As freely admitted above, when it comes to telling jokes Nick and Daisy are plagiarists. The author therefore wishes to acknowledge the great comedians from whom their jokes have been, er, nicked: Victoria Wood, Jo Brand, Sarah Millican, Joan Rivers. My humble apologies to any I have failed to acknowledge.