Moving away from home and going to university, is often a young person’s first real taste of freedom and adulthood. The parents are often seen to wrap their little ones in cotton wool and protect them from the big bad world. When that wrapping is taken away, many young people have a difficult time coping with reality.

Chloe Peters was no different from thousands of others like her. She grew up in a place that many like her felt was dead to the world for people like them. That place was the South Coast town of Worthing, which to her mind was one of those places that people come to die. The chance to ‘escape’ to the bright lights of Leeds was just too hard to reject even though a similar course was on offer just a few miles away at Sussex University that is located on the outskirts of Brighton. To her relief, her parents didn't even put up a fight to stop her from moving almost to the other end of the country.

They'd given her a good deal of freedom during her adolescence, and weren't as protective as those of most of her friends. Their 'cotton wool' level was limited to being on the other end of the phone if she got stranded somewhere late at night. Even so, Chloe wanted to spread her wings. What sealed it for her was her grandfather’s tales of going to Leeds Uni and everything. That everything included being there when ‘The Who’ recorded their ‘Live at Leeds’ album. He’d taken Chloe to a concert that they’d given in Hyde Park shortly before he died. She never forgot his tales of Leeds in the late 1960’s when their football team were right up there with the best of them.

Brighton while in her opinion, was a lot more alive especially in the nightlife than Worthing, she felt that the ten or so miles that separated it from her home town was not quite far enough to live away from home. She put that down to the fact that both of them had moved away from home at her age and the influence of their parents.

As a ‘fresher’ amongst hundreds of other ‘freshers’ she was in her element. University life agreed with Chloe and she even made a few close friends from her part of the Halls of Residence where she stayed. All her friends from her school days had scattered to the wind and despite promises to stay in touch, they didn’t. Consequently, those new friends became important to Chloe.

Christine Blake was her closest friend. She was a single child just like Chloe and unlike Chloe, her parents were in her words, very clingy. The scene outside the hall on the day before term started showed Chloe how bad they could be. Chloe stepped in and rescued Christine from them and their ‘long goodbye’ that seemed to be taking forever. That incident made them instant friends who just happened to live next door to each other in the Hall or Residence.

Now that they were free of direct parental influence, both girls bloomed. The formerly fairly introverted Chloe became much more extrovert, but she was careful not become too extreme.

As the term wore on, Chloe began to regret moving so far away from her parents. Leeds to Worthing for the weekend wasn’t an easy trip on a student budget. Going by train was out of the question which left the coach. The prospect of sitting on three coaches in each direction was not that appealing to her so she saved a little from her weekly budget until she had enough for a train ticket.

Chloe's schedule of lectures and tutorials meant that she could get a train to London just after 11:00 on Friday morning. She found a seat with a table whereupon she got down to working on an assignment that was due to be submitted the following Monday. Her work made the two hours of the journey to Kings Cross pass as if it was just a few minutes.

She was still pleased with her day when she arrived in Worthing. All the connections had worked perfectly including the bus from the stop near the station that would take her to within 100 yards of her family home.

Both her parents were out at work so she had the house to herself. After putting her dirty washing into the machine and setting it going, she took her things upstairs. Her room was just as she’d left it some six weeks earlier. She was home and felt good.

Chloe put her things away and took her washbag into the bathroom. As she passed her parents' bedroom, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It didn't register at first but as she was about to go downstairs to put the kettle on, it did.

She stood at the open door and saw two dresses lying on her parents’ double bed. These were not the sort of dresses that you’d wear to go shopping or even out to dinner but for dancing. The presence of several petticoats reinforced that idea.

She knew that her mother had once been a keen ballroom dancer from her comments as they had watched ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ together in previous years.

The fact that two dresses were lying there as if they were waiting to be worn piqued her interest. She knew from bitter experience that her father was an absolute klutz on the dancefloor. He'd stepped on her toes with almost every step of the one dance that they'd had together at her Uncle Bill's wedding a few years before.

Chloe left the room both puzzled and confused. Her mother had talked about taking up ballroom dancing again almost every year in the Autumn which happened to coincide with ‘Strictly’ being on TV. She wondered if now that she wasn’t living at home, she'd actually gone and done it.

But… the question of two dresses and the fact that her mother had not told her about it in any of their regular phone calls. She put the question about the dresses to one side. She'd often laid out several outfits on her bed before finally choosing one for a date. That was just something that she’d inherited from her mother but to have them out of the wardrobe for the whole day just didn’t seem right. Chloe was more of a last-minute sort of chooser.

Her deliberations were further cut short by the sound of the washing machine announcing that it was done and needed emptying.

---

Chloe was sitting in the dining room finishing off her assignment when her parents came home. She was surprised that they'd arrived together. This had seldom happened in the past five or six years.

“Surprise!” she announced as they came through the front door.

After a brief moment of shock both her parents embraced their only child.

“What are you doing here?” asked her father.

“Why shouldn’t I be here? This is my home, isn’t it?”

“That’s not what your father meant darling,” said her mother.
“Why didn’t you let us know that you were coming?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“It is that darling,” said her father.
“Is there anything wrong at University?”

“No. Just the opposite. I’m getting on fantastically,” said Chloe.
“My grades are very good so I decided to come home for the weekend.”

“Just a little homesick?” asked her mother.

Chloe smiled.
“Something like that.”

Her mother looked at her husband.

"Chloe darling," said her mother.
“Your father and I are going out tonight. It is a bit late to cancel it. I hope you don’t mind?”

“Are you going dancing? I saw the dress on your bed…”

Her parents looked at each other again.
“Something like that.”

“Is dad going as well?”

Her mother smiled.
“We’ve been taking lessons. He’s pretty good.”

Chole remembered that one dance with her father. Her feet were sore for days.

“We should go and get ready,” suggested her father.
He turned to Chloe.

“If you want to go out and see your friends, you can take the car. We don’t need it tonight. There is a pasta dish that will cook the microwave in the freezer. Tomorrow night, we’ll go somewhere nice. I’m sure your mother can stump up some cash for you to get something new to celebrate?”

Her mother grinned.

She was about to comment but stopped herself. Being able to drive the family car was almost unheard of, as was the unity between her parents. There had been a bit of tension between them over the summer months, but that had tapered off by the time she went to university.

Chloe was still trying to process his offer when her parents disappeared upstairs. Only the noise of their bedroom door closing aroused her from her temporary stupor. The voices of her parents were muffled but after a few minutes, she heard some laughter. That told her that all was well.

---

Chloe had just finished preparing something to eat when the front doorbell rang. She hesitated but her mother's voice shouted,

“Chloe, can you get that? We’ll be down in a minute.”

Relieved that the visitor or visitors were expected, she answered the door.

She did not expect to see two men in their thirties dressed up to the nines standing on the doorstep.

“Hello?” said a slightly stunned Chloe.

"Let them in," came her mother's voice.

“Please, come in,” said Chloe.

“Thank you,” said one of the men.
“You must be Chloe?” asked the other.

“That’s me. I am home from Uni for the weekend.”

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Mike and this is my husband Ewan,” said the first man.

Chloe wasn’t expecting that. Before she could get her brain into gear, she heard her parents coming down the stairs. Her mother came first. She was wearing one of the dresses that had been lying on the bed.

Chloe’s mother looked radiant. She tried to remember the last time she’d looked as good and failed.

Then her father appeared… only it wasn’t her father. It was but it wasn’t…

“Chloe, meet Jacqui.”

“Ladies… shall we go?” asked Ewan.
“The first dance won’t wait for us?”

“But…?”

“We’ll tell you later,” said her father… only it wasn’t her father’s old voice.

Before an astonished Chloe could even think of objecting or even asking where they were going, they were walking down the path to the road. Her parents were in the arms of the two men. The mystery deepened.

---

Chloe tried hard to stay awake until her parents returned from wherever it was that they had gone to for the evening but failed. She dozed off just before 10 pm. The sound of the front door opening roused her from her slumbers.

Once again, she was surprised to see her parents give their escorts for the evening a goodnight kiss on the cheeks.

When the men had gone, her parents came and sat opposite their daughter.

“We know that you have a million questions and…” said her father as he looked at Chloe and then at her mother,
“We were going to tell you all about this at Christmas but well, your surprise visit put paid to those plans.”

Chloe went to speak but her mother held up her hand to stop her.

“Darling, please let Jacqui speak. I know that this is all hard, but it is what we want.”

“Chloe, darling,” said her father.
“I met your mother at a dance at the end of our own freshers week at University. I asked her to dance and to my surprise, she said yes.”

“The only problem was that your father couldn’t dance. He tried his hardest but it was hopeless. He could not lead so towards the end of the song, we switched and bingo.”

Chloe looked at her father.
“It is true. It is something about how my brain is wired up.”

“But… you used to go dancing when I was little? Granny used to look after me…”

“We know. I used to do the dancing,” said her mother.
“And I looked on wishing that I was on the floor but I… we never found the right time until our last wedding anniversary. If you recall, your mother and I went off to Wales for the weekend?”

“Some swanky hotel in the middle of nowhere?”

“Exactly. It was my first chance to become Jacqui and dance.”

“Wait! Hold on a moment!” said Chloe.
“Dancing I can just about understand but? Going around in Drag is another thing entirely.”

“I knew before I married your father that sometime in the future, his other half would come out to play. After our weekend away, he wanted to do it there and then. You had finished school so…” said her mother.

“But your mother persuaded me to wait until Christmas. She wanted to have some fun first. Twice a week for the past month, Ewan and Mike have been our escorts to a ballroom in either Brighton or Croydon. They love dancing but needed female partners just to fit in. No one at the dance blinks at two women dancing together, but two men still raises a few eyebrows despite it happening on Strictly. It seemed the perfect solution.”

“Until I came home?”

“Yes darling. I wanted to call the evening off but your father was adamant that it was time to come clean. I have to say that Jacqui was on top form tonight. She and Ewan won the prize for best foxtrot.”

Jacqui smiled.
“Thank you darling. Don’t forget that you and Mike came in second.”

Chloe shook her head.

“Chloe, Jacqui will be here to stay after Christmas,” said her mother.
“These past weeks…”
She looked at her husband with a tear in her eyes.

“These past weeks have been the best in my life since I gave birth to you.”

“But…?” mumbles Chloe.

“I know that accepting me… or rather the new me will be hard but it is something that I’ve wanted to do for years and I know that I have the support of your mother in this.”

“What about Granny Johns?” asked Chloe.

“She’ll blow her top but that is only to be expected. What is more important is you? How do you feel about all this?”

Chloe was on the spot.
“At least you haven’t freaked out,” said her mother.

Chloe looked at her parents.
“Mum, I’m cool with this but there is one thing, and that is how good my new mum looks.”

The three of them burst out laughing.

---

[the next morning]

“Chloe, thanks for being so accepting of the new me,” said Jacqui over the breakfast table.

“I’m still a bit shocked by it all but as it is what both of you want then I’m cool.”

Jacqui smiled.
“Thank you.”

“Number 2 mum, are there any cool guys at this dance place that you go to? Ones that might need a dance partner who hardly knows her left foot from her right?”

Jacqui nearly sent the mouthful of tea that she’d just drunk all over the table.

All was good in that part of the more dead-than-alive town of Worthing.