Serena’s broadside at me had hit home hard. I tried hard but failed to stop myself from bursting into tears. I screwed my eyes shut. I could not face seeing her face with the inevitable ‘I told you so smirk’ on it.

My episode of self-loathing carried on for a bit until I felt a hand on my hair. Someone was removing the elastic band that held my ponytail in place. Before I could protest, that person started to brush my hair.

No one had ever done that before. It was very smoothing if not downright relaxing.

“Thank you,” I said as I wiped the last of the tears away.

“It feels nice doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Perhaps it is time for a little pampering?”

“What do you mean?” I asked suddenly all ears.

Serena carried on brushing my hair before answering.

“Isn’t it time to drop the hard exterior that you present to the world? Not everyone is out to do you down, put you in jail and worse. There are some people out there who care for you. That includes me. I wasn’t sure at first but being with you these past weeks… I’ve seen that you are a nice and very kind person. That’s totally the opposite to how you were portrayed by your wife’s legal team during her trial.”

“You know about what happened in the Trial?”

“My brother told me all about it. We must have spent hours on the phone talking about you.”

I shook my head.
“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t let myself be fooled again.”

“Oh! You mean Jennifer and Jasmine?”

I got up from my chair and moved away from Serena.

“How do you know about them?”

“My brother silly. He saw what was going on between you and them at the trial. Then you just upped and disappeared as soon as the verdict came in. You went off the radar entirely until you ended up in hospital just before Christmas. He told me that they went mad looking for you. He told me that Jennifer got a reprimand from her bosses for abusing Police powers searching for you. She managed to get around it by giving her bosses a picture of your mental state. I’m sure that she went a bit OTT but it is clear that she was worried about you.”

“Do they know where I am?”

“As far as I know, they don’t. But why the angst?”

“All they wanted was for me to be a father to their children and then to stay at home looking after them while they carried on with their careers. I wasn’t having any of that. In some respects, they are just as bad as my former not so legal wife.”

“Ouch!”

“Yeah. Ouch.”

Serena sat down all the time looking at me.

"It all begins to make some sense now. It seems that you did have had feelings for them but you had been abused by your ex-wife and you weren’t going to be used again to let a pair of women have careers and all that.”

“Something like that… yes.”

“I’m not like that. You do know that don’t you?”

I shook my head.

“I’m not sure.”

“As I said before, I’d like you to be the manager here. That would let me be free to work with clients just like I have done with you these past weeks. I know that you can do it. We have time with this lockdown thing to get all the processes and procedures in place before we start taking fee-paying customers."

“What about me?”

“Oh, the thing about you living as a woman?”

“Yeah. That little one thing. The one that won’t go away.”

“Why not give it a go. Just the two of us. Loosen up a bit. Have some fun?”

I looked at this wonderful woman. My eyes became all watery once more.

“How can I? How can I when I fancy you something rotten? Answer me that one?”
Serena smiled back at me and laughed.

“Ok laugh but you have no idea how hard it is. How hard it has been these past weeks.”

Serena came over to me. Then she leaned over and kissed me.

“Now will you shut up about being the victim all the time?” she said when we came up for air.

---

Serena had me right in a corner with those words.

“I’ll try but it won’t be easy.”

She smiled at me.
“That’s at least a start.”

Then she added,
“There is a long way to go but I think that we have plenty of time.”

I could not argue with that. Getting me even half passable was not going to be easy.

“Where do we start?”

“Easy buster. If this is going to work then you will have to forget how you operate as a man and then learn to be a woman.”

“Oh?”

"Yes, oh! As you found the staff uniforms, why don't we start there? From now on, the only time you will appear as a man is to get your benefit from the Post Office."

“I was thinking about that. If everything is going to close down then it might be nice to get what I have outstanding before it becomes impossible?”

“That is a good idea. Why don’t we go now and I can see if I can get a few more supplies? I’d like to go to the butchers. There is one close to the Post Office.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

---

[21:30 23rd March 2020]

“That’s it then. We are in lockdown,” said Serena as she switched off the TV.

“It seems so final,” I said with a sigh at the end.

“It is going to get a lot worse. That American doctor that was on earlier tonight said some things that scared me.”

“Me too. This won’t end until there is a vaccine and then he said that it might not be enough to get rid of it entirely. The number of people who are saying that they won’t take it scares the shit out of me. We only got rid of Smallpox by vaccinating people all over the world,” I replied.
Then I added,
“If this goes on until the autumn, it is going to fuck up your business plans. No income but all the outgoings. The business rates for this place must be huge. I’d expect that you are not alone in that. There must be businesses all over the country in a similar state.”

“You mean ‘up shit creek without a paddle’?”

“Something like that.”

“I have some savings left but it is not going to be easy.”

“You are more than welcome to my fifty-seven quid a week.”

“You will need that for makeup and stuff.”

“Then I’d better speak to your brother tomorrow.”

“Why? Why would you want to speak to him? The trial is all done and dusted isn’t it?”

"Not quite. There was still some question over who owns the house that we… that is my fake wife and I lived in. Some of the CPS wanted it included in the asset forfeiture under the proceeds of crime act but your brother was trying to make sure that I got at least half of it because I paid the mortgage each month until we went our separate ways https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pakman+david. I would like to know, what if anything has been decided. If I am the owner then perhaps I can get it sold? After paying off the mortgage there should be around fifty grand left over.”

“Wait a moment, their sunshine? Are you saying that you want to put some money into the business?"

“Yep, at least in the short term. If I was an investor then I’d want to doubly make sure that whenever we open up, it is a success, now wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know what to say?”

“How about nothing. It is all ‘if this and if that and if something else’ at the moment isn’t it? Besides, a sale could take six months or longer to come to fruition if we lockdown for any length of time.”

Serena smiled back at me.

“I knew that you were a good person to have around.”

Then she gave me another kiss.

“That’s nice,” I said when we broke apart.

“That’s all you are going to get for now. It is time to get to work.”

“What’s first on your list?”

Serena smiled.
“Day 1 of living as a woman. Clothes.”

I knew that she meant the staff uniforms that I’d seen before.

Thanks to the various government support schemes and especially the relief on business rates Serena was able to manage the finances. For that, I was very thankful as it soon became clear that getting any sort of answer about the status of my old home was going to be next to impossible before the cows came home.

---

[July 14th]

As had become the norm, we sat and discussed the plan or rather her plan for the day ahead over breakfast. I’d become ‘Head Cook and sometimes Bottlewasher’. To her credit, Serena helped prepare ingredients for the food that I cooked for us and did most of the washing up by hand despite there being a perfectly good dishwasher in the kitchen.

For my part, I enjoyed having a professional kitchen to play in. There were plenty of ideas for meals on TV and I’d even ventured a few times into using a water bath to cook the meat we were having very slowly.

“What about a French theme for tonight? It is Bastille day after all…” suggested Serena.

“What sort of theme did you have in mind? I could whip up a Salad Nicoise from things that we have in stock or was it something else?”

“Soup de Poissons perhaps?”

I thought for a few seconds as I mentally went through the sort of ingredients we’d need before replying.

“Then I’d better make a list for you to go shopping then?”

Serena sat back and grinned at me.

“How about you do the shopping? If we go over to Leicester, you can get your benefit payments at the same time?”

“Me?”

"Yes, you. Isn't it about time that the new you went and did something without me by your side?"

I’d been dreading this inevitable step for several weeks now. Now, I knew why she'd insisted that I did my roots the previous day. Then she'd had a disaster with her hair colouring and it had gone horribly wrong. I wondered for a moment if the hair disaster was all part of her plan for me but then I rejected it. No sane woman would mess up her hair deliberately. It was so bad that it would take weeks if not months to sort itself out. I knew that Serena was very proud of her hair so I dismissed that idea in a flash.

“I suppose so,” I replied reluctantly.

“Good. You make the list for today and I’ll be in the office. I have a few bills to pay.”

Serena had been very coy all along about the money situation. All I knew was that she had zero income and a lot of expenditure. The government reliefs were all fine and good but her business had not really gotten off the ground before lockdown. The only thing that was of much benefit to her was the virtual axing of business rates. Even with that, it was clear that the current situation could not go on forever. I was due over £500 in benefits so I decided to get the cash and after doing the shopping, I’d put the remainder into her account at the bank. I’d made a note of her account numbers a few weeks before more out of interest than anything else and certainly for no nefarious reason.

An hour later, I got into her car and headed for Leicester. She’d added me to the insurance as a temporary employee of her business a few weeks before.

I shut the car door and sat there for a moment. I checked my makeup and clothes. Once I put on a face mask, I should be just one of the crowd going about their business.

With a deep breath, I started the car and drove away. I could see Serena watching me as I turned out of the drive. She’d put a lot of effort into today’s expedition. I had to hope that I didn’t let her down.

---

I returned to Serena’s place almost two hours later. My trip had taken me longer than I’d hoped because the first supermarket didn’t have all the ingredients for me to make the ‘Rouille’. After a bit of searching, I found the Harissa in an Indian Supermarket so I was all set.

“I was about to send out search parties,” said Serena when I came into the kitchen with all my shopping.

I smiled.
“I couldn’t find all the ingredients in the first place so I had to try elsewhere. The good news is that I have everything I need.”

“Well, you are back. How did it go?”

“No problem. I used the self-service checkouts.”

Serena smiled and shook her head. I knew that meant ‘you chicken you!’. In some ways, she was right but at least I’d been out on my own wearing women’s clothes and no one had screamed ‘that’s a man’.

---

“That was very good,” said Serena after she’d finished a second helping of the fish soup.

I had to agree with her, it was good and the final result had justified all the effort it took to make the dish properly.

“It was pretty good but the Rouille needed more garlic, lots more.”

“Speak for yourself. I thought that it was great.”

I got up and started to collect the dishes.

"Leave them. You worked very hard today. I'll clear up."

I just smiled back at her. I’d already cleared up the kitchen so there was little left to do.

“Ok,” I said smiling as I left her and went to relax in front of the TV for a bit.

That night, I had a nightmare. That wasn’t all that unusual but this one was different from all the others. I dreamt that I’d been exposed as a total fraud on TV and that everyone was laughing at me especially my former wife who'd for some reason had been released from prison on a technicality. It wasn’t nice at all.

I lay there thinking about my life and what had gone right and what had gone wrong. The latter list was at least double the length of the first. Then I remembered back to 2008 when on this very day, I’d set out on a trip around northern Europe that had been more than good. It had been memorable. I thought back to the episode with Marta Olson in a cabin not far from Narvik in Northern Norway. That was the night that I’d lost my virginity. For the first time in years, I wondered what had happened to her. We’d met on the train that wound its way over the mountains from Kiruna in Sweden. It was clear to both of us from the outset that we were sexually attracted to each other. After we’d had sex for the first time, I told her about my other desires. After laughing herself silly, she found some women’s clothes for me to wear. The days that followed were bliss.

Those pleasant thoughts allowed me to drop off to sleep and not have another nightmare.

---

The memories of that holiday all those years ago just wouldn’t go away when I was alone. Serena sensed that I had something on my mind but didn’t pressure me to tell her. Instead, she said one morning a few days later,

“I’m done with this hair.”

“What do you mean done?”

“I’m done trying to live with it. It is a total disaster and there is no way that I’m going out looking like this.”

"What are you going to do? Get a wig?" I asked half-joking.

“Nope. I want you to cut it all off. Right now, today.”

There was a look of determination on her face that I’d only seen a few times before. The first was when we’d met and she’d told me what lay in store for my rehab. I knew that it was over and above what normal people would have expected but I knew that trying to argue with her was a non-starter.

I sighed.

“What’s that for?”

“I sighed because I know that there is no hope of trying to get you to change your mind. You have that look on your face.”

Serena laughed.

“I suppose I do look a bit severe at times…”

“At times? Usually when there is some more torture that you want to put me through.”

She laughed again
“But this time, the joke is on me, isn’t it?”

“It is a big step to take.”

“What would you do then?”

She had me there but I felt that I had to respond.
“If I were you, I’d probably cut it short. Two or three centimetres and then let it grow out.”

That didn’t go down well. Her mind was made up and that was it.

One hour later, Serena was bald. By bald, I meant close-shaven smooth not just cropped close to the scalp. For some reason that told me that she was going to be like that for some time.

---

Even with all the distractions over her hair disaster, the memories of that holiday just wouldn’t go away. It was like an itch that needed scratching. My problem was how to tell Serena that I was going ‘Walkabout’ very soon. I was sure that she noticed my distraction.

I waited until she’d gone shopping the next Wednesday before using the computer in the office. I mentally planned my route before my accident. I was going to follow the path of the A46 South/Fosse Way and west until I reached Bath. Then I’d head towards Taunton and Exeter. There was someone I had to see if only I could remember how to find their house but that would come later.

That night, I decided to leave the next night. My biggest problem was how I was going to appear normal to Serena. I fell asleep thinking that it would be my downfall.

I went to bed the following evening feeling pretty pleased with myself.

At a little after 03:15, I crept downstairs carrying my backpack. The house was silent so I felt confident that Serena was fast asleep in her room on the other side of the house.

As I opened the back door, the room was suddenly flooded with light. Serena had been waiting for me.

“I thought we had gotten beyond this but apparently not.”

For once, I was lost for words.

Serena stood up and put on her coat.

“If you are going walkies then I’m coming along too.”

"Sorry, Serena. There is something that I have to do for me.”

She just glared back at me as if to say, ‘tough’!
[to be continued]