This was a story I set aside to put up on Patreon last year. I don’t know if anyone read it. Certainly no-one interested enough to sign on to my page. It remains the only thing I have put on that platform. It’s one of the stories in a collection I sent to Erin for publication, should she want to. Anyway, here it is, in full, for your enjoyment as I hate to see a story wasted.
Marianne.

Chapter 1

In the inky dark room, the man in the bed tossed and turned and then woke with a jerk. He lay for some minutes before opening his eyes and looking around. His hand went to the side of the bed where his wife should be, and found only flat, cold sheets.

He groaned as he pulled the covers off and sat on the side of the bed then ran his hands over his body and realised he was naked. He staggered to the window and pulled back the curtains, blinking in the sudden light that assailed him.

He then made a rush for the bathroom where he relieved himself, washed his hands, dabbed his eyes and rinsed out his mouth. Going back into the bedroom he looked to see what he could wear and found only a pair of underpants, a pair of socks, a sweat shirt and track pants, and a pair of runners.

There was a look of horror on his face when he opened drawers and the wardrobe to find that these were the only male clothes at his disposal.

The more he looked, the more of his wife’s clothes he saw, the greater his expression of disbelief. If that was the choice he had, he would rather go naked.

He dressed in what now appeared to be his only selection and went downstairs to the kitchen of his house where he saw an envelope on the table, alongside a key, and her handbag.

On the envelope was written ‘Read this first.’ He left it laying there while he made some toast and coffee.

When he sat and opened the envelope he saw several pages in his wifes hand. As he ate, he read what appeared to be a normal “Dear John, I have left you’ letter first; one that said that she had seen an old friend and had gone off with him. It was short and to the point.

The next page started with the words “Keep the first page in case you need it. The rest of this should be destroyed before you leave the room as the contents could mean your death!”

He almost sprayed his coffee over the pages when he read that and was trembling with fear and anger by the time he finished what was written. He now knew that his marriage of the last four months had been a total sham.

His wife had never been his wife as she professed to have been a man in a very good body suit, and that he had been chosen as the groom because of his similar height, weight and appearance to his partner.

He, Jason David Tebbett, had been mildly drugged most of the time to ensure the stability of the situation, and last night he had been given a strong sleeping draft to ensure he wouldn’t disturb her as she left.

The letter went on to explain that she had often put him into a deep sleep while she shed her body suit and dressed in his clothes to go out.

Her name, Janice Dawn, was a total fabrication so that no-one would ever question why both their cards just had initials. The last page hinted that she (he could only know her as that), was very sorry that he had been put through all of this but that she was part of a security service and had been in great danger. Only a protracted period in hiding would save her life, and it had been successful, or so she thought.

The last few lines made him sweat as they told him that her enemies were still out there, and were getting close, so he should be very careful.

The last words were “I’m sorry I have taken all of your clothes but they all fit and suit my new identity, well except that I’ll need to buy bigger shoes. My credit card has access to an account which is still healthy and is now yours. There is money and other paperwork in the box that the key opens but the problem for you is that they will only open the box for Janice Dawn Tebbett. The handbag holds all of the paperwork you will need for that but the rest is up to you. Be careful, I really did like you. I am sure that if you use the imagination you put into your books it will fare you well.”

As instructed he burnt the papers over the sink before he did anything else.

He then looked in the handbag and found her purse with all of her cards, driving licence, loyalty cards and a folded piece of paper with the name of the bank and box number on it.

He put the key and the first page in with that paperwork and took the bag up to what had been their bedroom. He then searched the rest of the house and found nothing but his untouched wallet in an otherwise empty drawer.

In his study, where he wrote adventure novels, he sat at the desk and looked at the small amount of writing that he had done over the last four months, and the emails that he had got from his publisher screaming for more. His first two books had done quite well so there was a groundswell of interest that the publisher wanted to profit from.

The fact that his life had suddenly taken on aspects from his stories was not lost on him. This was strengthened by a banging on his front door and the conversation that followed.

He opened the door to see a policeman standing there with his warrant card in his hand.

“Mr. Jason Tebbett?” he was asked. When he nodded, the policeman carried on. “I’m Detective Constable Stafford. Is your wife in, by any chance?”

Jason said that no, she wasn’t, she was away visiting an old friend and wouldn’t be back for a few days.

The policeman looked past Jason. “We’ve had an anonymous tip that your wife may be in great danger. We would like to talk to her, in person, as soon as she can come into the station. If we cannot be certain that she is healthy, we may have to come back with a search warrant.”

Jason made the only decision he could at that time and told the policeman that his wife would be at the station to prove that she was all right as soon as she returned, quite likely in four days.

The policeman looked satisfied with the answer, gave Jason his card and went back into the street where his car was parked. Jason closed the door and sagged against the wall, his mind now totally clear for the first time in months.

He was back to being single after what now appeared to have been a homosexual relationship; his output had suffered but nothing like it would suffer should he be arrested for her murder or even killed by some unknown agency. He was in his house with virtually nothing but his ex-wifes’ clothing and two requirements for her to show up and submit to some examination.

It was almost too much for him to take in so he went back into the kitchen to make another cuppa and think for a bit.

He got a piece of paper from his study and sat at the kitchen table to write two columns, one showing what he knew, and the other with some random thoughts.

The first column was straight-forward – ‘marriage sham, bogus ceremony?’ – being the first entry. Then it was ‘Janice gone forever’ followed by ‘Janice needs to show herself’, and ‘Money in bank, how much?’

The random thoughts side had just the one main entry and that was ‘How on earth do I recreate Janice to a/ save myself from being arrested and b/ get hold of the box?’ This was followed, after a few minutes thinking ‘What happens after that!!!!’

He smiled for the first time that day and wrote another entry in the random thoughts column – ‘What would Lance Sterling do now?’

Lance was the hero of his novels and seemed to be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat with consummate ease. He then realised that the first step would be to see just what he had available to him.

He was back in the bedroom and looking through the handbag and taking more time he noted all of the names of the businesses on the loyalty cards and, when he looked at the picture on her license he noted that with the right hair-do he could present the identification with a level of impunity.

They both had dark hair that was shoulder length but he usually had it as a low pony-tail while Janice had hers fluffed up around her face. That was then he figured out how she could pass herself as him.

The next thing, he decided, was to see if anything had been left of the magic that turned a man into the woman he had held close and made love to. If there was, there would be a chance of pulling off the deception that he was close to committing himself to.

So he looked again, this time with a new direction. He found the body suit in a lower drawer, along with an instruction leaflet, some tubes of a sort of glue, and some more with a release gel.

There was another note that read ‘If you are at this point you must go through the proper preparations before putting on the suit”. It then listed the places he needed to go to and the people he needed to see. He noted that he had already seen the names of the businesses on the loyalty cards.

He had often wondered why his wife needed so many cosmetics and now he knew why. He thought back to their time together and the fun times they had. Early in their relationship they would play games imitating each other and also talking like people they met.

He said “Hello, I am Janice Dawn Tebbett. I want to assure the officer who gave me this card that I am fit and well and in no danger,” in her voice. That was when the die was cast a little further. He rang the businesses she had listed and was fortunate that they could fit him in that afternoon.

He went to his study and powered up his computer. The first thing to do was to email his publisher to say that he had been under the weather for a while but would get back writing after he had sorted out a few things.

As he sat at his desk his eyes were drawn to two photos that faced him, showing the two best times of his life. One photo showed him with his platoon when he was in the army. He had spent ten years in the catering corps but, because of his smaller stature, had been sent on every fitness course available. While never bulking up, he did become very fit.

The other picture was he and Janice on their wedding day. Now, looking at it, he saw that he did look a little dazed but it suddenly struck him that he really missed her as they did fit well together and, for the first time, he realised that he did love the person she was, even if she was actually a man.

Back at his desk, his author’s mind started picking over the problems he faced. They were all something he had sorted out before. The classic, ‘You’re deep in the shit, where can you find a shovel’.

He resorted to writing 101 and started writing a timeline for the rest of the week.

Firstly, he would need to follow the instructions, and go to the businesses in order, carrying the items Janice had thought would work.

Secondly he needed get supplies in so that he would not have to leave the house for at least three days.

Thirdly, he needed to test his new look out in public, and that was something he was not looking forward to. Then it was a visit to the bank to see what was in the box, followed by seeing the nice policeman at his station to assure him that Janice is well and in no danger at all. After that he could, hopefully, get on with his life.

He was deep in thought when there was banging on the front door. He thought it may have been DC Stafford back again but when he opened the door a very large man with a Zapata moustache confronted him.

The man had one hand in his pocket and the other holding a clip-board.

“If you’re selling something, I’m not buying, and if you’re the police I’ve already spoken to your lot today.”

“Oh, no sir, I’m Inspector Marko Branksovic of Interpol and I wish to speak with J.D, Tebbett.”

Jason noted that the man changed hands as pulled out an ID from the other pocket to show him. He had to admit that the man was well practiced in bull-shit.

Jason smiled at the guy and said that he was, indeed, J.D. Tebbett and how could he help. The man turned the clip-board to show Jason a picture that appeared to be taken from a surveillance camera which featured a guy with ginger hair and a beard.

Jason thought that if you took away the beard it would look like him. He had experimented with a beard in his teens so knew what he would look like.

“This man is wanted in several countries and we’ve been monitoring email traffic to try and track him down. A few weeks ago there was a mention of a J.D. Tebbett in one of the messages and I was wondering if you knew this man?”

The name under the picture was Peter Yardley. Jason said that he hadn’t seen anyone like that recently but did had a class-mate nearly twenty years previously who had ginger hair and a beard.

“Did your friend have a scar, perhaps one that looks like a bullet hole, on his left shoulder?” asked Marko. Jason said that he was sure the school friend certainly didn’t have one like that.

The Inspector then asked if Jason was married, and he said he was. When asked the name of his wife he truthfully said “Janice.”

“Is it possible to speak with her? She may have met this man.”

Jason told the Inspector that his wife was away and would likely be home the following Saturday should they want to talk with her.

He was given a card and then the Inspector said “I have heard your name before. Do you write books?”

Jason admitted that he did.

“Ah! You have that nincompoop Lance Sterling running around. The boys in the office read your stories; they say that a lot of it is quite believable but the gory bits are just not gory enough, not like they are in real life.”

Jason admitted that he needed to hold back on the really gory stuff or else he would be bumped into the Horror genre where there were much better writers than he was.

As he turned to go, the man said, “The only thing I find difficult to believe in the stories is where the bad guy gets distracted and is brought down. I’ve found that bad guys tend to shoot first and walk away. I’ll be back on Saturday morning, say, about ten? I hope to meet your wife then.”

He then walked back to the street and got in the back of a waiting Mercedes. Jason watched him go, went back into the house and closed the door. For the second time that morning he sagged against the wall.

Janice was to be around for the weekend as well. The one thing that he had tried to hide was the shock he had about the scar. Janice had one, exactly where described.

Back in the house he went up to the bedroom and, with a feeling of dread at what he was about to do, pulled a small suitcase out from under the bed. He read the list that Janice had left and packed panties and bras, a couple of skirts and tops, some hose and lace-up shoes. On top of the packing was the body suit and tube of sealant.

The final item was the handbag with a particular lipstick that had been her favourite. This went down to the kitchen and he dashed back to get his wallet as well.

He took these items through a door in the kitchen that led directly into the garage, where he unlocked his Audi and put the bag in the back seat with the wallet going into the glovebox. He then went and had a quick shower and brushed his teeth before putting the clothes on again.

He made sure the house was locked up and then got into the car and started it, waiting for a few moments while it warmed. He pressed his key-fob to raise the automatic door so that he could drive out into the road.

As usual, he pressed the door closer and watched while it shut completely before heading off for his first destination. The first stop was a shopping centre where he bought enough supplies to see him out the week.

He loaded all the bags into the boot of his car and then went back into the shopping centre again to get a meal in the food court. As he ate he felt a sense of release.

He didn’t have to eat all the things his wife had insisted on any more, and the chips tasted so much better bathed in forbidden sauce.

The next stop was across town and the places he was looking for. They were in a row of small, specialist shops and he saw that the following destination was only a few doors along so he parked the Audi in between the two.

He pulled out the suitcase and went into the first shop to see Anita, the person who was supposed to make him look like a woman. Even with the way Janice had presented, he wasn’t sure that he could pull it off.

Anita just laughed when he walked in. “Welcome back, Janice. If you’re not her now, you will be by the time you leave. Did you bring the suit?”

He put the suitcase on a chair and opened it for her to see. She pulled the suit out and held it up saying, “Excellent, this is the top of the range; we will have you singing soprano in no time.”

What followed, for Jason, was hours of complete embarrassment, interspersed with some pain. He had a full, all-body waxing and a laser treatment on his face. Anita said that he was lucky as most men needed two trips to get the right result, but he already had sparse covering below the hair-line.

He was given an injection in each buttock ‘to help you act right’ and then he was covered in a soothing cream and given a robe to put on with a cup of tea. After a brief respite he was ordered to take the robe off again, and put his legs into the leg holes of the suit.

Before it was fully pulled up he was shocked by the placement of an ice-pack on his genitals which caused them to try and burrow back into his body. This, of course, was exactly the effect required.

Anita held him still while her assistant pushed his testicles up into his body and then put his, now fully-flaccid, penis into a tube in the suit. With this achieved, the suit was pulled up and then he had to put his arms through the arm-holes and he suddenly had a body that looked, well, a little bit like his wife.

Anita told him to sit, stand, touch his toes and walk around to make sure the suit did not catch any-where. After a couple of adjustments the edges were turned back and he was glued into the suit. He was finding it strange with the weight of the breasts and the extra thickness around his hips and butt.

An odd development was that he was starting to walk with shorter steps and his feminine voice was getting more natural as Anita chatted with him and corrected some of his use of vocabulary. When she had deemed him as good as she could make him, he paid her with the credit card from his handbag. He was loaned a robe and slippers and sent along to the next call, a few doors away.

Here he was carefully inspected by Elaine, his next ‘torturer’ as he was thinking about them. She took the robe from him and sat him in a chair to work her magic on his hair and face. He came to the conclusion that Anita had left his eyebrows as a favour for her friend as these caused almost as much pain as the body waxing.

After another hour he had properly shaped toenails and extended fingernails, all now the same colour as his lipstick. His make-up made him look totally female, as did his new hairstyle with his hair now fluffed either side of his face. Looking in the mirror he saw Janice looking back at him. After Elaine had got him into the underwear she added a skirt and top from the case. He had the strange thought that he looked hot.

The shoes came last and he was forced to walk around while Elaine gave him tips on where his feet should be and how to flex his hips to give him a sway. As he paid with the credit card again he was given a few items that had been used that differed slightly from the ones that Janice used.

Before he left the shop he said, “I’ll never be able to recreate this look, I’ve never used cosmetics.”

Elaine smiled, “You won’t have to try. I used a semi-permanent on you. You’ll have to come back in a couple of weeks, once it starts to fade.”

She was outside the shop in a skirt and looked almost exactly like Janice. She put the case in the car and drove away, saying, “I’m Janice Dawn” over and over again until she started to truly believe it.

It was only when she approached her house did she realise that all of her male clothing had been left behind with Anita, and she had no intention of going back for it any time soon.

Chapter 2

She backed the car into the garage and put the door down again before getting out and opening the door into the kitchen, putting her handbag on the table. She carried the bags in and started putting the food away. As she did, she realised that now most of it was mens fare, and that another shopping trip will be needed to get the food a true woman would eat.

Taking the case out of the car she went up to the bedroom to hang and put away the unused items. She saw that the bed was still unmade so pulled it together.

Then she went to the drawer where Janice had kept her nightwear and pulled out a nightie which she draped over the pillow. In the bathroom she sat for the first time to pass water and needed several sheets of paper to clean up afterwards.

Then she went and made an evening meal for herself, using smaller portions but still felt full while washing up. That evening she spent on the computer reading everything she could on acting like a woman. Then spent an hour practising standing, sitting, walking and talking until she was so tired she could do nothing more so went off to bed.

Stretched out with the feel of the nightie against what skin was showing she felt different and, strangely, a bit excited about facing the morning.

In the morning she woke with a sense of purpose. She knew that she had to pull this off to stay alive, but strangely was starting to have odd thoughts about a new storyline that would never have been possible twenty four hours ago.

It was time, she thought, that Lance Sterling met a strong woman to help him out and carry the series on. Putting on a robe from the wardrobe she went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, taking a lot more care this time. Looking in the mirror she saw a well made-up Janice looking back and said, “Good morning, Janice Dawn Tebbett. Now is your time to shine.”

The normal toast and coffee behind her she went upstairs to shower and dress, this time looking at what was available, finally choosing a reddish denim shirt-waister with matching boots over black underwear and tights.

The make-up was still good but she added a little lip gloss and then used some scent for the first time. Witha couple of rings and a bracelet with a matching necklace she felt ready to face the world. The first thing on the agenda today was to get her ears pierced as this was the one thing Janice had, that had not been replicated.

She pressed the remote start to the car while checking that she had everything in her handbag. Today she would simply go around and see if anyone laughed at her or called her a freak.

It was a real test of her resolve to park and enter the local shopping centre but, as the morning progressed, it became evident that no-one saw her as anything other than another woman. Admittedly, one with a few mannish mannerisms but Janice had those as well, come to think of it. She got her ears pierced and had gold studs put in for the moment.

She shopped for some more feminine food and even spent some time trying on clothes and shoes. She needed more shoes as her feet were a little smaller than the ones Janice had left so had several trips back to the car with parcels.

Instead of the food court she decided to eat at a pub where Jason had been a regular, and nearly outed herself by greeting the bartender by name, just stopping in time.

She ordered a salad and a wine and was very pleasantly surprised when one of Jason’s friends, Alec, asked where he was and asked if he could share her table. She told him that Jason was off on a research trip to try and unlock the writer’s block that was troubling him.

She did not say much but allowed Alec to chat away about himself gave him a peck on his cheek when they parted. It was something that Janice had done which had annoyed Jason at the time but now realised it was a womanly thing, not at all amorous.

If she had been able to read Alec’s thoughts as he watched her go she would have revised the ‘not at all amorous’ concept.

She was so confident that she would pass muster at the bank, it became her next stop. Her time-line had set it three days from that first morning, on the Thursday, but she was ready to test the waters, even though it was only Tuesday afternoon.

Lunch with Alec, who had been a friend for some years and who had been taken in, had firmed her resolve. The bank was so easy she wondered why she had worried.

She had a big bag with her in case there was anything she needed to take away. It was not their usual bank so they had only met Janice. It didn’t take long before she was sitting in a private room with the box in front of her, the banks’ key already turned. She took her key out of the handbag and opened the box.

Inside was money, wrapped bundles of used notes, quite a bit as she mentally totalled the amount. There was also another bag that contained the paperwork for a Miss Penelope Anne Jenner, model and actress, and the photo looked like Janice with her hair pulled back into a high pony-tail.

With the paperwork was a house key and car key on a ring that also had a tag that read ‘Smiths Auto Storage’ with an address. Looking at the paperwork she saw that Penelope lived in an up-market tower block some way across town, near the river.

Mindful of what little spy-craft she had learned in the research for the novels she put all of the contents into her big bag and, when they came to take the box away, told them that it was no longer needed.

She signed the release papers with Janices’ signature and they gave her a cash refund for the few months left on the rental. Going to their usual bank she deposited some of the money in Jason’s account, telling the teller it was cash sales from an extensive book-signing tour her husband had made recently.

The next step was to pop into a ladies toilet. She put her hair into a pony-tail so that she looked like Penelope, before driving across town to park around the corner from the tower block.

Taking her handbag in the big bag she walked into the tower. There was a security guy on duty and he smiled, “Good afternoon, Miss Jenner, long time since I last saw you.”

She said that she had been away overseas on a film set and was just popping in to check on her things before heading into the countryside on a modelling job. He told her he was very lucky to be able to chat with such a lovely and successful young lady before she took the lift to the seventh floor.

The key opened the apartment door, and she used the numbers that had been with the paperwork to turn the alarm system off. The place looked comfortable and the appliances were all top of the range; however, there was a lot of dust on things which did show that no-one had been in to look around.

The bedroom revealed a full wardrobe of clothes in her size but, once again, the shoes were all a little too big for comfort. She found the safe that was listed in the paperwork and opened it to find a bundle of bearer bonds and yet more paperwork in the name of Penelope Jenner, including various lanyards with access to film sets and fashion houses.

She put the remaining cash into the safe, along with the papers she had taken from the box. The only things she kept were the driving licence and keys, which she put into a side pocket of her bag. She noted that the alarm numbers were the date of birth on the licence. If she needed to become Penny she would lose nearly ten years off her age.

She closed the safe and swung the picture back to hide it, then reset the alarm and closed and locked the door behind her as she left. Back in her car she drove home, all the while wondering just who her wife had been.

It was good to know that she had a ready bolt-hole if needed but, for the moment, couldn’t think of a single reason why she would. Back at her house she unloaded all of her new supplies and took all of her new shoes up to the bedroom.

She then tried every pair of the old shoes on and put aside those that could be tightened a little to fit, putting the rest in the boxes the new shoes came in and storing them in the spare bedroom.

Back into her study she looked again at her wedding photo, now identifying more with the woman shown then. She thought about the whirlwind romance that started with a meeting at a book signing, and completed with a registry wedding.

There was just the two of them plus two of Janice’s friends as witnesses while a third waited in the car to drive them to a country pub. It was then she had the sudden thought that she had been the fifth person there on the day, and that four is the optimum number for a security cell. The other guys on that day must have been the rest of the team.

She made herself something to eat and then went back into the study and started typing. The next novel already had three chapters so she revised those and then started the fourth with her new slant on life.

She typed all evening and, after a very restful sleep and breakfast, most of the Wednesday. By that afternoon she was sure that the next J.D.Tebbett novel would be a best-seller, and emailed the story so far to her publisher.

That evening she sat in the lounge with a clip-board and blank paper to nut out where the story would go from there. All in all, the day had been highly productive and not a little exciting by doing it all wearing a nightie and dressing gown.

Thursday she spent a fair bit of time on her appearance after her breakfast and shower. She had thought that the policeman could be a good person to have on her side in the short term so went all out to look attractive.

She drove to the police station and parked the car, getting more than a few looks as she got out and, she hoped, not because she flashed anything. In the reception area she showed the duty officer the business card and said that DC Stafford had requested her attendance.

When he came out to escort her to an interview room she had the odd thought that he was quite handsome, something that had not occurred to her when she met him while she was still Jason.

The interview was quite short, DC Stafford was immediately happy that she was well and safe. He asked about Jason and she told him that he had gone off for a research trip to try and clear the writer’s block of recent times and that, she said, posed a little problem for her.

She gave Paul, as DC Stafford insisted she call him, the business card from Marko, saying, “My husband said that this man will be coming around to my house on Saturday to talk to me. My husband didn’t trust him because he gave off the wrong signals. As a writer my husband is very aware of people’s intentions. He did say that you, Paul, seemed a friendly person so I can trust your judgement on this.”

Paul took the card and left her for a while. Coming back he had a superior officer with him, and was back to being official.

“Mrs. Tebbett, the call we had warning us that you may be in danger was taken to imply that you may have been in danger from your husband. This card raises the level of alarm because no-one with this name on the card is, or ever has been, a member of the police forces anywhere, and especially not Interpol.”

The senior officer then took over, saying, “Early next Saturday we’ll set up surveillance of your house so that we can take pictures of this man, and anyone who may be with him. DC Stafford tells me that you’re alone in the house at the moment so he’ll join you early as back-up should the situation get out of hand. He’ll be armed and my men will be nearby so you’ll be safe. Are you prepared to allow us to do this?”

She nodded and gave them her spare key so that Paul could let himself in on Saturday morning. As she left the station she had conflicting thoughts about the current situation, everything was becoming so complicated.

If Marko was the one looking for Janice, what would he do when they met in person? Only a few days earlier she had been a befuddled Jason, and now seemed to be centre stage in an international spy plot. All she really wanted to do now was to write her novel and tell her publisher that J.D. is now a woman. It would be as a woman that the next signings would take place.

She wasn’t sure whether it was the clothes, the feelings, the way she was now appreciated or just the injections that had tipped the scales. She only knew that she liked it, and was far more aware of things around her now.

Friday she took a break from writing and put a duster and some polish in her big bag, and drove to her ‘other’ address.

There was a new security guy who asked her where she was going and she showed him her licence and key before he said, “Sorry, Miss Jenner, I’ve only been here a few weeks, and this is the first time I have seen you.”

She looked at his name-tag. “That’s perfectly all right, Armand, you’re doing your job. I won’t be staying long as I need to be in the country on a photo shoot, but may see you again when I am back.”

Up in the apartment she found a vacuum and went about her cleaning with a will. It only took a couple of hours before the place was spick and span again. She then had a good look at the wardrobe and changed into jeans and a bright top and, taking some money from the safe, went out again to drive to a shoe shop.

Here she bought several pairs of shoes that fitted better and paid with cash. Back in the apartment she went through the shoe collection already there and, like before, kept the ones that could be tightened enough to be comfortable.

Adding the new shoes to the collection she put all of the unwanted ones in the boxes to be disposed of with the rubbish bag. At least she would be able to slot straight into the new persona if needed.

She then took some more cash and went to the Auto Storage and asked about her car. She was told that they would need two days to get it out of storage and prepared for the road, seeing that it had been there a while.

She asked about the money side of it and paid cash to extend the storage for another three months. Reading upside-down she noted that the car was a near-new Toyota MR2 sports car, not something that Jason would drive but strangely Janice could see herself, as Penny the actress, in it already.

That done she went to a good restaurant where she was given a seat at a small table. She had a very nice lunch with very attentive waiters. This was paid for with one of her Penelope Jenner cards.

In the afternoon she tried on some more of the clothes in the wardrobe and realised that, although it was all aimed at a younger girl, it actually suited her. During the afternoon she explored every nook and cranny of the apartment and also went and had a look at the other services the tower offered.

She really liked the gym and sauna, and now knew why there was a range of active-wear in the apartment. She thoroughly immersed herself in the persona of Penelope in case she needed to revert to it quickly.

Back at her own house she had a light tea and wrote until late. Before shutting down she looked at the emails and there was one from her publisher saying that the early chapters were brilliant.

He said that he thought that there may be a film in it. She went up to the bedroom and decided that tonight would be a good night to wear the sexy black piece of lace that Janice had worn the first night, although the Jason in her could not remember much of it at all.

She was woken at an early hour by noises downstairs, so put on a matching robe and went down to find Paul making a cup of coffee.

He almost dropped the cup when he saw her, and she wondered if the outfit was a little too sexy. He broke into a smile and asked her if she wanted a cup herself. They sat at the kitchen table and chatted and then she got up and rinsed her cup out.

He got up too and brought his to the sink, coming close behind her, close enough for her to feel his erection on her butt. She turned around and he kissed her, their tongues playing with each other.

She led him upstairs and helped him get his utility belt off before going into the bathroom to put lubricant in her false vagina.

When she got back he was laying in the bed with his manhood fully erect so she kissed, licked and fondled it before she allowed him to roll her on her back, pull the panties to one side and impale her. She was caressed and kissed as he worked his magic.

She never thought that the feelings through the body suit could be so intense. She was being loved by a man and then the thought came that it had been that way for the last four months. The only difference now was that she was taking, rather than giving.

Then, with his weight pushing her down on the bed, his mouth and hers locked together and the feeling of his dick now throbbing against her groin, she experienced her first quasi-female orgasm and Jason left the building to leave Janice totally in control.

As they lay with her head on his shoulder, he said, “What about your husband, you seemed pretty eager this morning?”

“Don’t you worry about him; he’s good with anything I do. The main thing, though, is what about your wife?”

“How do you know I am married?”

She told him that he had been wearing his wedding ring at the police station even though he had not done so this morning. That alone had told her that he was ready for a bit on the side.

She then added, “I’m married to a writer. It’s observations like that which can make or break a story. I’ve learned from a master.”

Eventually they decided to get going for the day and Paul went to the bathroom to wash his genitals while she pulled the bed together. While he dressed she had a shower and he inspected the rest of the house while she dressed in jeans, boots and a top with a sleeveless cardigan over the top. They then sat down and had a proper breakfast. Paul had his radio on and, around a quarter to ten it crackled into life with, “Subject car approaching.”

Paul took himself to the lounge room where he could see Marko coming up the path. When the man knocked on the door Janice took her time answering to allow the watchers to get good pictures.

She opened the door .“Yes, can I help you?”

Marko went into his spiel about the ‘person of interest’ and she said all the right things at the right time. She did not, however, add anything to what he had heard from Jason and he started to get a bit macho.

It was then that she said, “Look, I don’t care who you are or where you work. I’ve never met this person in the photo,and just want to go on living my quiet life with my husband. Now, if you don’t mind, I have housework to do. Goodbye!”

At that she shut the door and stood there trembling as she heard Marko walk away.

Paul came out of hiding and held her close until she was right again. The radio crackled once more as the Mercedes was followed as far as a convenient amber light where the pursuer had to stop or else blow his cover.

The senior officer came up to the house and Paul opened the door for him. Janice got the three of them a coffee and that sat at the table while the officer told her that she had done very well holding it together.

They had recorded everything and had even got a good photo of the clip-board with the photo of the ‘wanted man’ on it as well as decent pictures of the driver in the car. He said that she would be told of their investigations if it was something they could actually tell her. He and Paul then left.

The rest of the day was an anti-climax after the sex and the danger. She sat in the study and wrote a chapter of the novel which featured a lot of sex and danger and saved it under ‘Chapter XXX’ to be added to the novel where appropriate.

Sunday was similar, more writing. She had come to the conclusion that she liked the sex very much by doing it this way and had reservations about going back to being the man in the act.

The other thing that caught her by surprise was that she was starting to feel lonely.

Jason had always been a solitary person once he had left the army but, as Janice, it was another thing altogether. So she dressed nicely, locked up the house, got the Audi out and went to the pictures where she could be with crowds.

The film was pretty good and took her out of her funk. She stopped to get a pizza on the way home. She never saw the Mercedes that shadowed her on the way back and definitely did not see the non-descript Toyota 4x4 that shadowed the Mercedes.

The food and the film had settled her down and she wrote again until midnight. It was all coming along nicely.

She emailed the two chapters she had finished off to her publisher for comment and then saved the whole book to a USB stick which she put in her bag before going to bed, this time in a much more acceptable nightie.

It still took her a while before she slept; the thought of the sex the previous morning keeping her brain ticking over While, on one hand, she should have felt disgusted by a man having his way with her body, the core of her being was jubilant that she had the power to make men want to have her.

In the end she decided that if she was going to be a woman for good, she had better find a good man to keep her company. Tomorrow was Monday and she intended to take a trip into the countryside, or maybe off to just see the sea and get some fish and chips to share with the gulls. Tomorrow was going to be a good day, or so she hoped.

Chapter 3

In the morning the weather had changed. When she looked out the window she could see the rain streaks on the pane. She was still determined to have an outing so, after breakfast, she had a shower and dressed warmly. She felt very snug in the leggings and jeans with boots. A cami, top and jumper completed the outfit.

A few thoughts came to her as she picked up her bag so she went into the lounge where she had left the clip-board. She sat on the sofa and made a few notations which would help her with the next chapter, and then the phone rang.

She had a cordless system so went out to the kitchen to pick up the handset. When she said hello the voice on the other end was Paul. He said that they had sent off the pictures they had taken to various agencies to see if they could find out who Marko really was.

The problem was that they had a visit early this morning and the visitor was from ‘spook central’ down alongside the river. He had told them to back off as they may jeopardise an ongoing operation and, as such, there was not much more they could do.

While she listened to him she went back into the lounge where her bag was. She slung the long strap over her head so she had both hands and opened the bag with her left hand while her right held the phone to her ear.

Paul was apologising about not being able to help as she pushed the remote start button to warm up the car. The next thing she experienced was being picked up by a giant hand and being thrown over the sofa to hit the wall behind it with her head and, for her, the world went black.

The next time she opened her eyes she was in an ambulance and she could hear the siren wailing. The attendant was beside her in a flash and told her to lie still until she could understand what was going on.

He looked in her eyes and held his finger up to see if she could concentrate and seemed happy that she could follow it as he moved it from side to side. As the siren faded away she could feel the vehicle go up a ramp and the next thing was the doors opening and her stretcher being rolled into an emergency room.

She was asked if anything hurt and she said “Just my head”.

When he had finished looking at her the doctor told her that she was extremely lucky that nothing was broken and wrote a prescription for heavy-duty pain killers. The nurse went off to get her the tablets and, after she had taken two, the rest were put in her bag which had been still slung around her neck when she had been brought in. Her clothes were dusty, but a pat and a wipe saw them all right to keep on.

After about half an hour the headache was receding and she could feel the odd twinge in her joints and knew she would be sporting a few bruises for some days. She did not bother to think about what had happened, but started to question her sanity as a pair of armed policemen in flak jackets came into the room and asked her to follow them.

They took her out a side door and got her to climb into a people mover with blacked out windows. When she sat down and put on her seat belt they got in the front and drove away from the hospital.

Sitting beside her was a person she had never seen before. He said that she was very lucky, as it had been a bomb in the car which would have vaporised her if she had been in it.

“That was a serious attempt to do away with you, my girl. I know that you have somewhere to go but I don’t know where that is and don’t want to know. I can tell you that all you have is what is on your back or in the bag. The house was made unstable by the blast and eventually collapsed. The bomb contained a thermite element and everything has been consumed by fire as well. It was a good job that you were talking to that young Stafford at the time, as he was able to get the emergency services to you in time to pull you out.”

She said that she would thank him next time she saw him and was told, in no uncertain terms, that she now had to stay away from anyone or anywhere she had been before.

“Frequent a different area, meet new people, do other things but do not, under any circumstances, go near your old house. We will put it out that both the Tebbetts are feared dead in the blast, and it may be the one thing that saves your life. There’s nothing left for you to go back to, everything is gone.”

He tapped the shoulder of the driver and the vehicle pulled into a parking bay near the main shops. “Get out and walk away, Janice, we may meet again, and I hope it won’t be as I look down on your corpse.”

She thanked him and the police as she got out and then the vehicle left her alone, completely alone, on the pavement outside a shopping centre. She did the only thing she could in the circumstances, she went into the centre, went to the toilets and then found the food court for a drink and a cake special so that she could sit and think for a while.

She looked in her bag and she could see her Janice ID and then realised that the spook must have known her wife if he knew she had a bolt-hole. The first thing she could think of was that she needed to change her appearance so went to a public phone.

Pulling out the card with Elaine on it she rang the number and said that she needed to get a different hair colour for her job and it needed to be done today. Elaine told her that she would be fitted in as soon as she arrived.

She went to the centre taxi rank and took a taxi to an address near her destination, paying cash with a decent tip.

When Elaine saw her she said, “You look like you were pulled through a hedge, my girl” and proceeded to get her back into some sort of order.

Her hair went from black to a more auburn with blonde highlights and, when shown the Penny ID, Elaine reworked the make-up to give her a younger and trendy look. When she had finished being sorted out she felt a lot better but still asked for a glass of water and took another pair of pills.

She gave Elaine a hug and paid cash. When she thanked Elaine she was puzzled by the answer of “It’s OK, we don’t serve ghosts every day, you know.”

Elaine gestured to the TV set in the corner where a reporter was rabbiting on in front of a pile of smoking rubble.

She put all of the Janice ID into an inside pocket and put the Penelope ID into pride of place. Leaving the salon she walked several blocks before hailing a cab to take her near to her new accommodation.

Once in the apartment she took off every item of clothing and settled into a hot bath that she had drawn. It had been a very busy day, so far, and this was the first chance she had to figure out what happened now.

She made a mental list of the things she now needed to do but number one on that list was to stay below the radar. When she did get out of the bath she dried herself and used the powders and creams she found in the cabinet.

Walking, naked, into the bedroom she dressed, and with every item she put on, she repeated, “I’m Penelope Anne Jenner, famous actress,” until she was fully dressed in her new persona. She sniggered at the thought of having this sort of situation in any of the books. No-one would believe it!

There was a laptop that she had seen in the spare bedroom so went in and powered it up. It was password protected but she took a punt and entered the alarm code which worked.

Looking at the icons she saw one for a bank and when she clicked on it she saw an entry page with a name and password already showing. Entering the account she found that she was quite well off. There was a credit account with a good limit, a savings account with several thousand and she saw, when she went into that account, that she was getting a regular small wage from both a film company and a modelling agency.

With that page open she went and opened the safe. She found the cards that fitted the bank account as well as lanyards from both employers.

Back at the computer she looked at the emails and found a lot of spam but, in among it, was one that said, ‘Penny, good luck, I’ll be looking out for you, Janice’ which gave her a jolt.

There was a recent one which told her that she was needed on-set in a month for some weeks doing a film. It said that the screenplay would be sent to her by courier later that week.

There was another that just said, ‘Penny, call me as soon as you can, Adeline.’

When she picked up the handset and went into the phone book she found Adeline listed so pressed the buttons to call her.

The person who answered said that she was at the agency and she was then linked to Adeline who said, “Penny, dear. I know that you’re supposed to be having some time off but I need you urgently for a photo shoot, can you help?”

Taking yet another punt she used her Janice voice to say, “Of course I can. Where, when and will I be picked up.”

Adeline then told her she would be picked up at nine in the morning and that the shoot was some miles south of the city as long as the rain held off. “Thank you, dear, I hope to catch up with you in the future. You’re a real brick to help like this.”

When she hung up, Penny thought that this is one hell of a cover if it includes actual work.

Back in the spare room she looked in the bedside drawers and found a portfolio of modelling pictures that all looked authentic, and another, smaller file, that had pictures of her on set with the caption that had the name of a film she had never heard of.

She looked in the fridge and saw several microwaveable meals so picked one at random and heated it up. Getting a hot meal inside her and a good cup of coffee made her feel almost normal.

She then emptied her handbag and put everything remotely linked to Janice into the safe, even replacing the cosmetics with ones she found in the vanity. As far as anyone was concerned, she was now Penelope and there would be nothing to say otherwise.

She took the USB and put it into a slot on the computer and transferred all of the writing so far into a new file. She then spent a couple of hours writing before finding some nightwear and getting into her new bed.

It had been a very strange day, from being killed to being reborn as a younger model. It was something you couldn’t write about.

The next morning she was up with the lark, showered and dressed casually in jeans and sweater. After breakfast she brushed her teeth, picked up her bag and went down to the tower entrance.

At the right time a car pulled up and a woman got out, came in and asked for her by name. She certainly wasn’t just going to get in a car before making sure it was the right car.

They chatted as they went south, Penny making up a bit of recent history, seeing that she had not been given a life story to learn. At their destination, a country house, she was welcomed as if everyone knew her and the day passed quickly with her modelling.

She just allowed them to put clothes on her and followed the directions and requests of the photographer. The make-up artist commented her on her good job and just made subtle alterations as they worked, the extra just being wiped off at the end. She realised that if you shelve your own ego it was pretty straight forward, if a little surreal.

At the end of the day she said cheerio to everyone and was taken home again. She did ask if they could stop at a supermarket for her to get a few supplies and she had two bags as she went into her apartment. Something, she thought, was not quite right.

She put the bags down and walked carefully through the rooms, taking note as she went. By the time she went back for the bags to put away her purchases she was certain someone had been in as there were hints of things out of place. Nothing, however, had been taken as far as she could see; not even from the safe.

It was a worry but, in the scheme of things, not anywhere as bad as being blown up. She cooked, well, nuked, her evening meal and then wrote some more. The words just seemed to flow from her fingers.

Having been very lucky once, she saved the new work to the USB stick and put it in her bag. In bed she thought back through the day and decided that she had been interacting with more people through the day at close quarters than she had done since the day Janice left.

Of course, now she knew that it was all designed to keep her away from the apartment for the day. She had no idea just how many had a key to the place.

During the rest of the week she was out to photo shoots another two times with the poses becoming more and more structured. The photographer, who had been a little stand-offish with the first session, started to talk to her more and get excited at the results he was getting. Perhaps, she thought, it was all an elaborate plot to keep her busy and out of the apartment.

The papers during that week had a lot of information that she studied avidly. Pictures of the old house, stories of Jason, the well-respected novelist and his lovely wife Janice were quite good.

The pictures of the house remains and speculation about the cause of the explosion that ranged from a gas leak to a terrorist attack made her smile. She was hopeful that she would be able to sort out the insurance and the estate sometime down the track. Maybe spook central will come back into her life and wave a magic wand over it all.

As Penny she was in limbo and as the days went by the more she embraced her life. There were hardly any lapses into Jason thinking and everything was based on what a woman would think.

It took in what she ate, how she dressed, how clean she kept the place and especially how she wrote. Of course, she could not send her work to the publisher but kept churning out the words every chance she got.

As time went on her diet was having an effect on her figure, the constraint of the body suit making most of her weight loss being around her waistline.

Actually, the body suit was getting to be a problem. She didn’t have any release gel and her skin underneath was starting to itch, especially her breast area. She finally made the decision to call Anita and make an appointment for an overhaul.

It was an interesting day as she walked a few blocks, hailed a cab to take her to a railway station, waited for a train to come in before coming out with the crowd to get another cab to take her close to the business.

When the body suit was removed she felt as if her life was suddenly on hold. Anita was very careful with her inspection of the suit and made the comment that it had done well, considering how much it had gone through.

When Penny looked at her much smaller than normal penis she felt a sense of disgust and was in a hurry to get back to being a woman again. Anita did a full body wax but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. She willingly bent over for another couple of injections and it was with a sense of relief that she had the suit returned to her body and she was able to put her underwear and dress back on. She paid with her Penny card and took a circuitous route home again.

During the following week her bank account was boosted by a payment for her attendance at the modelling and her emails had an advert layout for her to look at. She was amazed at how they had taken simple pictures of her and turned it into something wonderful.

She had another email from the agency to tell her that there would be more jobs coming through. There was another email that caused the blood to drain from her face.

It said, “You just kicked over the hive and the bees are buzzing, well done.”

Thinking back to what she had done wrong she realised that the link must be Anita. She had paid cash with Elaine the second visit but had paid with her Penny card with Anita.

Both women already knew her as Janice, presumed dead. What this meant that Marko would be on her trail again and it wouldn’t take much to track her down with the bank information probably only a few clicks away to a good hacker.

For the next few days she made sure that she wasn’t anywhere that posed a risk. The Saturday, however, changed all that.

Her home phone rang Saturday morning. It was the photographer who said that he wanted to have lunch with her to discuss a project he had coming up. He gave her the address of the restaurant, and said it was just along the street from a train station.

She agreed to meet him and went about making herself look good enough to be passed off as a model. The day was warm enough for a skirt suit and there was a perfect one in the wardrobe. She left the tower in a silk blouse with a tight skirt and a jacket. For a change she was wearing strappy shoes with a bit of a heel as she was really trying to get used to walking in heels.

She hailed a cab, got him to drop her off at the station, and then walked towards the restaurant.

The take-down took her by surprise, as it should. A Mercedes pulled up beside her. The back door opened and a man pointed a gun at her. “Get in, quick, or I’ll shoot you as you stand” he snarled.

Then a voice behind her said, “You had better do as he says, he does tend to shoot first.” It was Marko behind her with his hand in his jacket pocket so she got into the car and was followed by Marko. She sat in the middle of the two guys and said nothing.

The driver took them north of the city and into a country area with larger estates. He finally pulled in through an imposing gateway and along a winding drive to stop in front of a house that must have been the main farmhouse of the original estate.

There was another man at the door and he was armed to the teeth with a pistol on a belt and a Kalashnikov slung from a shoulder strap. Marko got out and the other guy kept his gun pointed at her.

“OK, bitch, out of the car” he snarled.

She thought that he must be a real hit with the ladies as she slid to get out of the car. Marko was standing to one side with a silenced pistol now in his hand.

He waved it at her and told her to go towards the front door of the house. The guard stood aside and smiled at her as she went past, saying, “Seconds, boss?”

Marko just grunted and followed her in. He directed her to the back of the place, past the door to the kitchen, until she arrived at an old door with a lifting bar latch.

He ordered her to lift the bar and go in. When she did she saw that they were in a room which may have been built to house animals or feed in the old days.

The floor was rough earth and there were no windows. Marko put the lights on as he followed her, closing the door behind him. The sight before her made her blood run cold.

There were four iron beds in the room and two were occupied. One had the photographer, naked and showing signs of torture. He was shackled to the bedposts and gagged; as was the other man in another bed.

He, though, was in a much worse state as there were bloody bandages on his hands and feet and several gaping wounds on his torso.

Marko pushed her towards one of the other beds and said. “I’ll allow you the pleasure of taking off your own clothes, bitch. Then I’ll rape you and hurt you until you eventually tell me where the ginger man is. I don’t want to know now, even if you want to tell me; that can wait while I enjoy making you scream.”

She thought quickly and then swayed her butt as she took a step to the nearest bed, hanging her bag from the bedpost. She took off her jacket and hung it on the bedpost as well.

She then undid the buttons of her blouse and added it to the jacket, standing there with her black lacy bra in full view. She then took a step back, closer to Marko, and reached behind her to unzip the skirt.

She allowed the skirt to fall to the floor, revealing her black panties, the stockings and suspender belt. Keeping her back to Marko she took another step backwards as she stepped out of the ring of material on the floor. Now her legs were free to be used she straightened up and swung around to face him to put her pointy shoe directly into his balls.

As he started to fold he brought the gun up and she grabbed the silenced barrel with her left hand and brought the right hand to grasp his wrist. The gun, however, fired with a quiet phhhttt and she felt a searing pain in her side which made her really mad.

She broke his wrist and took the gun.

“I thought bad guys didn’t get distracted and always shot first”

She put a round between his eyes, blowing his brains out over the floor.

She looked through his pockets and found a flick knife which she used to cut pieces from his shirt and a long strip from his trouser leg. When she felt around the wound in her side she could feel that the bullet had taken a furrow across her body, just below the ribs.

She ignored the muffled cries from the two men as she put a pad on the wound and tied it in place with the trouser strip.

She went to the other guys then and said, “If I get brought back here then its curtains for all of us. Just hope it’s a good guy that comes back here next.”

Chapter 4

She picked up the skirt and laid it on the bed. She then took off her shoes because they had clicked on the stone floor on the way in. She put them on the bed then ejected the magazine from the gun to find six in it and she knew there would be one already in the chamber.

Sliding the magazine back with a satisfying click, she took a few deep breaths then quietly opened the door and went out into the passageway. She could hear someone talking in the kitchen so crept up to the door.

Peeking in she saw three guys at the kitchen table; two were from the team and the third had a snappy suit on.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the room, shooting the nearest man in the back of the head and the second one in the temple as he rose with his gun in his hand.

They both went down and the third guy was now rising, blood and brains splashed over his nice suit. His right hand was going towards his left armpit so she shot him twice in the heart.

He went back against the fridge and slid to the floor, leaving a bloody streak.

Leaving the kitchen she made her way towards the front door again. She crept slowly towards the door as she heard talking. She saw the guard chatting to another guy in a suit, perhaps the driver for the one she had just shot.

She hadn’t seen their car so it must have been parked around the side of the house. She weighed her chances and then, from the darkness of the hallway, shot the guard in the back of the head.

The other guy was quick; she had to give him that. He spun towards her with his gun already coming out of his shoulder holster so she fired at his body mass to slow him down and then, as he staggered, her last bullet went between his eyes.

As he went down she hoped that she was now alone.

She stood in the hall for a few minutes and there was only silence so she stepped outside but now her legs wanted to give way so she leaned back against the door-jamb and slid to the floor taking deep breaths and feeling the tears starting.

Just then a voice from the bushes called out “Jason. Jason, if I come out of hiding, please try not to shoot me.”

It was a voice she had known well and, with a catch in her throat she called back. “It‘s lucky for you that I’m out of ammunition, I would have shot you for calling me Jason. I’m Penelope now, and don’t you forget it.”

The ginger haired man from the photo came out from behind the bushes and came over to her, sitting beside her and putting his arm around her. His hair was not all ginger, at the moment, but the roots were showing up bright against the brown.

With the other hand he put a small radio to his mouth, “In now, building probably secure.”

Then two 4x4s came up the drive and pulled up in front of them. Three guys got out, armed and ready for a fight. He called for them to put on gloves before going into sweep the house.

Penny said, “There’s a big room out the back with a latch door. There are two guys in there and they’re in a bad way. Look for shackle keys as you go in the kitchen.”

When the three went inside she said, “Can you help me stand, please. I think that I may have lost a little blood.”

As he helped her there was a streak running down her leg. He got his phone out and pressed a speed dial number. When the call was answered he asked for three ‘special’ ambulances to take people to the clinic and sent them the GPS location.

He helped Penny to one of the 4x4s and opened the back so she could sit on the ledge while he sat next to her and held her close.

She smiled, “Just who are you, today?”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you the truth, sometimes it is hard to remember but I am Patrick Alwyn Jamieson, at your service.”

“Oh, great,” she said, “after all that we are back to sharing initials again.“

He looked at her and said, softly, “Penelope Jenner, dressed like that you look good enough to share my last name.”

He just held her for a while and then she said, in a small voice. “There’s something I want you to know, Patrick. It took a couple of days after you left but I discovered that I really missed your company. It no longer matters what gender either of us are, I know that I love you as a person.”

He kissed her and had a worried look on his face when she grimaced. “Don’t worry, my love” she said, “it’s the bullet wound. Can you get one of your guys to bring me out a glass of water, there are left over tablets in my bag from the time I was blown up.”

He went into the house and came back with her clothes, bag and a blanket over one arm and a glass of water in his hand. His face was ashen as he put the blanket around her. As she took the tablets he got his phone out and dialled a number from memory.

When it answered he gave a code number and waited to be connected. She could hear both sides of the conversation. The voice on the other end said “Patrick, I hope this is something I want to hear.”

“Chief, I’m at the country house of some of our less friendly comrades. Connie is here and will need treatment. Quinn is also here but is beyond treatment.”

“Did they kill him, the bastards?”

“No, chief, our operative did while he was having a coffee and a chat with the comrades.”

There was silence from the other end and then the voice said, “Patrick, this has been your responsibility for some time now so just do what you have to do and report to me in person when you can.” The line went dead.

Penny looked at him and asked, “Who is this Quinn?”

Patrick gave a snort and replied, “Just the second in command of the Counter Terrorism Squad. He must have been with them a long time. It does answer the questions I had about the losses we have sustained. There is going to be hell to pay within the service for a few weeks. I had my suspicions but they’re no use in this game. He has been very attentive to your situation and went ballistic, or so I have been told, when you dropped off the radar. Rogerson, the guy that took you out of the hospital, is my boss and we have been looking for a mole for some time.”

He then got back onto his phone and asked for a clean-up team and a demolition team and again sent the co-ordinates.

“I suppose it was my use of the credit card in my current name that triggered this situation. That was very bad tradecraft on my part,” she said after he had finished his call.

He told her not to worry because Anita will be picked up soon to see what she knows.

One of his team came out of the house with a couple of kitchen chairs which he set next to the 4x4. Another came out with the photographer wrapped in a blanket and sat him down before going back in.

The photographer said, “Forgive me, Penny. They took me late last night and hurt me enough to call you this morning. The bastards then went and hurt me some more. They were going to kill all three of us today and burn us in a big bonfire.”

Penny told him not to worry and watched as the other blanketed man was chaired out by two of the team and sat on the other chair, blinking in the daylight.

He looked at Patrick. “Let this be a lesson to you, young Patrick. This lady showed all of the skills and anger that the service has lost over the last few years. For too long we have tried to be nice and keep the body count down while our enemies have no such qualms. By the way; is that Quinn's driver over there?”

Patrick said it was and that Quinn was in the kitchen with a bullet in his heart.

The other guy laughed. “Never liked the chap, far too posh for his own good.”

Patrick gave him a hug. “It’s so good that we got you out, Connie, you’ve always been our voice of reason. I’m told the place has gone to the dogs since you were grabbed. Quinn had put it about that you had defected but I would never believe that.”

A couple of minutes later one of the team came out again. “Patrick, I think that you should come and have a good look at what we’ve found. There are enough fireworks in the cellar to make Guy Fawkes look like a mere sparkler.”

Patrick went with him inside and the older agent looked at Penny. “I’m James Connaught, Connie to my friends and I do consider you my friend for life.”

“I’m happy to be your friend, Connie; I am, for the moment, Penelope Anne Jenner and this gentleman beside you is a fashion photographer who just got caught up in things.”

There were distant sirens and then three ambulances came up the drive, the occupants getting out and fussing around them. Connie was put into one straight away and whisked off, the photographer was checked over and was able to walk into his to be taken away.

The medics that looked at Penny took their time over her wound, treating it with antiseptic, which hurt a lot, and then putting a good bandage around her waist.

The only thing she didn’t like was that they cut the body suit away from a point just below her ribs to a point just across her hips. As she was being looked at Patrick came back out of the house, putting his phone away.

He told her that he needed to tidy up here and would come and see her in the clinic as soon as he was able. He kissed her before her stretcher was loaded into the back of the vehicle. Soon she was on her way back to a hospital.

It was not a very long trip, less than ten miles, and she was soon in an operating theatre, minus clothing and body suit, being cleansed and stitched up.

That evening she was sitting next to Connie's bed chatting when there was a rumble and the windows vibrated.

“Sounds like thunder.”

Connie laughed. “Not thunder, my girl; that is the sound of retribution!”

Around ten the next day she had a visit from Rogerson, Patrick's boss. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and some flowers that a nurse had already put in a vase.

He sat by her bed. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Penny. I do have to chastise you for the extreme amount of violence you handed out but I suppose that you never got the memo that Quinn put out about keeping the body count down.”

She told him that she had decided, after Marko saying that she would be raped, tortured and then killed, that any level of violence on her part was justifiable.

He laughed again. “I’m not sure Quinn would agree with you but that is the past. I am here to talk about your future. As you know, it has become accepted that Jason and Janice died in the car bomb. As such, I will prepare paperwork which will be discovered at your lawyer's with both your wills. They will be dated some time just after your marriage. I think that Janice will leave everything to Jason and Jason will leave everything to Janice unless she dies as well. Then it will all be passed to his niece, Penelope Jenner. There will be a separate paper giving her all the rights to his writings and any income they produce in the future.”

Penny laughed and said that she had wondered if the service would come along and wave a magic wand. He then asked her what she and Patrick were going to do now and she told him that it was up to Patrick and her to discuss.

He then took a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase. By the time he left, she was a fully signed up member of the service, on a salary and had put her name to the Official Secrets Act. He told her that she would continue to stay at the apartment and would be called on for modelling and film work.

Both companies, she learned, were arms of the service. She would only be called on if her special abilities were needed, seeing that she would have a solid cover.

Early in the afternoon Patrick came in and gave her a proper kiss.

“Patrick, I’m sorry but the medics cut the body suit off. I’m back to being flat chested and have my dangly bit back. Mind you, that’s all it does now.”

He laughed. “My darling Penny, it really doesn’t matter to me about your boobs or other bits. There’s money enough to change all that permanently should you want that. It can be done here, on the quiet.”

Her face lit up. “Yes, please, that’s what I want. Then I can be your true wife if you will have me.”

He held her shoulders and kissed her deeply and asked, “Is that a proposal or an ambit claim? I will counter that by asking, will you marry me, again, my darling.”

She put her arms around his neck and they kissed with her ignoring the twinge as she stretched her stitches.

He then told her what had happened since she had been taken away in the ambulance.

They had removed the bodies of Quinn and his driver and taken them in their car to a quarry where the car was torched, making it look like an assassination.

The bodies of all the bad guys had been piled in the kitchen that was right over the cellar. He had teams going through the house and grounds and found a lot of information that will put a damper on their country’s plans for some time to come.

They had removed all of the phones and computers which were giving up more secrets. “They thought that they had lots of cover with Quinn so had started to get lazy,” he told her.

She asked about the sound of thunder last night and he nodded his head. “It may have been a listed property but all that is left now is a bloody big hole in the ground. The house and all the contents were literally vaporised. There must have been a hundred times more explosive there than was used in the Audi.”

They chatted about things and he told her that he had been into the apartment and removed all of the Janice paperwork, seeing that the cover was no longer useable. She then asked how he had been able to be so close at the farm.

“Oh, that’s the easy bit,” he said, “There’s a tracker in your handbag lining. You have had a shadow, on and off, from day one.”

He then asked. “It’s been really bugging me. Your docket said that you spent ten years in the Army Catering Corps, so how on earth did you have the skill to disarm Marko and the ability to kill his entire team. I saw the bodies and all of the bad guys were clean shots to the head while Quinn and the driver were mainly body shots. Add to that the cool head that let you field dress your wound. Connie has told me that it was like looking at a special forces veteran watching you work. He’s a big fan of yours now.

She laughed. “There are a lot of things that never make it to the official service record. It is true that when I enlisted I was in the Catering Corps. What the record doesn’t show was the fact that no matter how hard they tried, I was a lousy cook. My commander decided that he wouldn’t allow me to inflict my food on the soldiers so sent me on every course going. Of my ten years in the army I spent at least six on courses. I did fitness courses, gunnery courses, medic courses, self-defense courses; even writing courses which sent me down the path I now travel. No matter how many courses I did, no-one wanted a short and bad cook in their number so I just learned a lot. It all came in handy when I invented Lance, who uses his skills to oust the enemy and save the Empire”.

“Ah!” he sighed, “Lance the nincompoop.”

She punched him on the shoulder. “Have you been talking to Marko, he said the same thing? I bet you won’t say that when you read the third book, it’s a ripper so far and I want to get back to the computer and write some more.”

Before he left he went to talk to the doctor in charge and brought him back to her bedside where they agreed that she would stay in the clinic and go under the knife in a few days. The doctor arranged for bloods and tests to make sure she was ready to be feminised.

Two weeks later she was picked up by Patrick in a nice car. He had brought her an outfit to wear from the apartment, chosen with his own knowledge of wearing dresses.

They walked out of the hospital after going to see Connie, who was likely to be there for some time, and he drove her home. He had moved all of his clothes (most of it those he had taken when he left) into ‘his’ side of the wardrobe and had rearranged the drawers to give him some room.

He allowed Penny to rest and chat for the rest of the day and they went to the same bed that night. Penny was still not allowed sex so she relieved him with kisses, caresses and her mouth.

They slept well and woke up more in love than they had been before. No drugs or artifice were now present and Penny loved every minute now, just being Penny.

Patrick told her, over their toast and coffee, that she had been more ‘girly’ than him from the first day she had gone out of the house in a dress. He went to the office and she went into the spare room to power up the computer.

There were several emails for her, one from the lawyers telling her that she needed to come into their office ‘to learn something to her advantage’ and one from the agency sending their good wishes for her recovery from ‘her injury’. Most of the others offered a longer penis or untold wealth.

It was a few weeks before she and Patrick could have proper sex and they both enjoyed it very much, as it was indeed an act of making love.

She was now going into the agency a couple of days a week, driving the Toyota which had been retrieved from storage and now had a car park in the tower basement.

One day there was an email from her publisher who was asking if she could talk to him about the future of the first two books, and if she would allow a ghost writer to finish the third.

That one she answered saying that she had read her uncle’s books, and that he had sent her the first chapters of the third before he died, asking her what she thought about them from a woman's perspective.

She told him that she had started to write more chapters herself and wondered if they were in the same vein as Jason. She attached the extra chapters already written.

The photographer was back at work again and they had an interesting relationship with him being very careful with what he said and did, having seen her bring down a man much bigger than himself and shoot him in cold blood.

What mattered, though, was that the work they produced sizzled to the point where she was being approached to do catwalk appearances. With the scar she could not do any underwear or bikini shots but there was enough other work to make it interesting.

At least one day a week she was in the ‘spook central’ writing press releases and other propaganda with a female slant, the chief having decided that the service had been too macho for its own good.

The rest of the time she spent on novel writing and learning how to do her own make-up as the original work had totally faded. The publisher had welcomed her extra chapters and had sent out a press release that the J.D.Tebbett stories were now being written by P.A.Jenner.

When she had finished the third book it was released with much fanfare as a piece that had literally risen from the ashes. That it was a runaway success and welcomed by the previous fans was a bonus.

Everyone was surprised when the agency film company put up money to make a movie of it and then asked if the earlier books could be re-edited to make them as good. They could be made to show Lance Sterling and the spy game in general in a good light.

Everyone was happy at the outcome and the publisher made a lot of the books now being written by a successful model. Who would have thought that such a thing was possible?

Patrick and Penelope married on the first anniversary of their original wedding day. This time it was in a church and Connie was there as Best Man, even if he did need a walking stick.

Not having any lifetime female friends, Adeline provided a very famous model Penny had worked with to be the Maid of Honour and the press loved it.

The two women looked magnificent as Rogerson walked her down the aisle. Everyone looked their Sunday best but in her eyes, Patrick took the prize in his well-fitting suit.

That night they didn’t get much sleep and, best of all, she remembered every second of it this time around.

Marianne Gregory © 2021