I, me, the one with the rapid-fire gob, it was still hanging open, so I hauled it shut by pure force of will, and sought the right words, hoping to avoid the reflex “Didn’t think you were a queer”. I may be ‘queer’ myself by most people’s definition, but I had to learn about homophobia. I’m as straight as they come, in every double meaning of that word, and the idea of two men together had always been a bit ‘ick’ to my younger self. I know full well how wrong those thought are, so did my best to make it ‘were’, but my hindbrain still kicks in at inappropriate moments.

Shit.

“I didn’t realise… that why the rugbyanderthals got nasty?”

He nodded.

“I’m no Alfie, Gem”

“Who’s Alfie?”

“Gareth Thomas, Welsh player. Absolute legend. Came out as gay after living a double life for years”

Suddenly, he was laughing, so I simply smiled until he had finished, or at least slowed down a bit.

“Share?”

“Oh, just the usual. Press got hold of the rumours and started doorstepping his teammates. ‘Are you shocked?’, et cetera. They all gave the same reply: they’d always known, what difference did it make, and what business was it of the reporter? It’s the other thing, my imagination, yeah? They usually do the ‘we’re breaking this story whatever; you can help us shape it, or take the consequences’ threat. I just imagine them trying that line on a number of people the size of Alun Wyn Jones or Ken Owens”

“Again, who?”

He shook his head, a little sadly.

“Wales and Lions rugby forwards, Gem. Just think ‘very, VERY big and equally hard men’, okay?”

My face must have betrayed me again, for his voice softened.

“What’s up?”

Bloody tears. They weren’t falling, but they were pricking my eyes.

“Sorry, Norm. It’s just, well, that bit about helping the press out or taking the consequences. I know what that’s like?”

“Really? When? Oh hell. Come here”

I let him wrap me up, as the tears ignored all my orders and dripped into his shirt, a solid lump in my throat stopping my words for half a minute, until I managed to swallow it down.

“You said you had an idea why I chose my name. What was it?”

He drew his breath in slowly, my head rising with his chest.

“After Charles Babbage, if I have it right. Difference engine”

“That’s it. I was also thinking of the French word for a computer, an ordinateur. Gives me a sense of integrating, putting things in the right order. That’s what I was doing, in essence. I couldn’t really afford to relocate, fresh start with a GRC, live in stealth. Oh, that’s a Gender Recognition Certificate. So I had a word with my old Head, and he was happy to become my new Head, if you get me. Then the Daily Heil came knocking, same old shit, trying to do a Lucy Meadows on me. She was… She was another teacher who didn’t make it. All thanks to an arsehole reporter I call Littledick”

“What did the school say?”

“Oh, Ryan was clear. ‘And? So what? This is private property. Fuck off and don’t come back’. I don’t think he actually said the last bit, but it’s what he meant. That was not quite what he said to the reptiles, anyway”

“And to you?”

“Oh, ‘Haven’t you got a class to go to?’ followed by ‘Unless you need to take some time off,; if you do, I’ll cover’. Sound man. Rag still ran the story, of course”

I could feel his nod, as his arms opened so that I could sit up again.

“He was always straight with me, Gem. He knew what I was, especially after Brian got smacked by that twat Tubby Mansell”

“Norm?”

“Why am I anticipating a loaded question? Go on”

“Did you fancy Brian as well?”

“Um, sort of, but there was always that little obstacle of him being absolutely straight. What about you?”

“Oh god, didn’t every girl? I just had three problems with that idea, though. I was absolutely in the closet, and I believe—no. I know I was successful at that bit, unlike Jules. Then there’s your bit about him being straight, so, you know, man in a dress worries”

I paused, soaking in the absurdity, until he broke the silence again.

“Third reason?”

“Oh, easy. He’s a little bit weedy for me. I like a bit of bulk; I think most trans women do, or at least the straight ones. Helps with the dysphoria, I suppose”

“Steph and Annie don’t seem to need bulk”

“Yeah, but they’re both weird. I mean, they’re musicians; it goes with the territory. With me, well, it was a bit academic. I fancied him, but if he had been a decent size, I’d have been worse than bloody Hannah, and even less successful. Awake enough for a little life history?”

He nodded, settling back into the settee.

“I said I was at Portsmouth. Once I was through my A-levels, and my place was sorted, I did the name change thing and let them know. I went there as myself from day one. A few boundary issues, but I kept myself to myself. Nobody needed to know, unless, if you get my drift. Same when I got back here. Took a year off, once my parents had their new place in God’s Waiting Room. Bexhill. Saw Mr Thomas near Brighton for the final fiddling, and that’s where I ran into Jules again, in the recovery ward. It was like Blue Peter, ‘here’s a fanny I prepared earlier’. Oh”

I pointed up at the ceiling, as a rhythmic creak quietly started.

“Speak of the devil. Mr Thomas was a very good surgeon, or so Jules tells me, and that’s her opinion you can hear”

He grinned.

“Sounds like it’s Brian’s as well, Gem. And I’m not going to ask yours”

“Norm?”

“Still here”

“I have to ask, though I shouldn’t. Me. Me, as I was when you didn’t know me, that is. Did…?”

“Did I fancy you, or rather ‘him’? No, sorry, but that sounds nasty. I, well, I fancy people for who they are. I saw a really silly word for it once, ‘sapiosexual’, about being fixated on the mind alone, but that’s not true in my case. I still need a nice smile, nice bum, usual sordid stuff. You were so locked away I couldn’t have connected. At least I know why, now. Anyway, I am now wishing I had brought some ear plugs”

“I’ve got some spare ones if you want”

“Please. Do they get vocal?”

“No idea. I put the plugs in as soon as I shut the bedroom door. There are some things woman was not meant to know”

“Nor man, I would guess”

I passed him a spare pair of ear plugs, and as I rose to head upstairs, I got another hug. Unfortunately, as I closed the bedroom door, Norm’s question was answered by both of our hosts in turn. I hoped my new friend had got his ears blocked in time. Note to self: remind Jules about ladylike language.

I didn’t go to sleep straight away, but, well… it was very, very intense, and unusually quick from start to finish.

We all went our separate ways after breakfast, and I noticed Jules casting sheepish glances towards Norm as she ate: ‘Sorry for making those very explicit demands right overhead as you were trying to sleep’. My unspoken plea to him was ‘please tell me that wasn’t you on the stairs to the loo just as I was finishing things off’. Things best unheard, other things best unsaid.

The Plot took more shape over the next few days, until we had a bundle neatly lined up and ready to go. Naomi and Ryan had both made the minor point that if we wanted Hannah prosecuted, we would effectively screw that by our actions, but Annie and Steph had pointed out quite reasonably that as our Independent Police and Crime Commissioner was not exactly a fan of the trans community, we couldn’t expect any action. Ryan rang, spoke to a copper without revealing any names, and got the expected negative answer, so our decks were clear.

The photo Naomi had produced for us was a classic. Hannah looked even wider than she really was, with the added bonuses of having a cigarette in her mouth and a hand raised ready to slap her younger child, the eleven-year-old. Then ‘Paula’ in Cardiff had an article in the Guardian about our Mysteron project, and how one racist bigot had complained. She was described as their ‘insight correspondent’, which puzzled me until I followed the link to her first book, which cost me a lot of sleep. Her mucker Phil had run it all past a set of press lawyers in case it could be defamatory, and he summed it up neatly in a Teams meeting with Annie and several more of us.

“They said it can’t be defamatory because it’s true, there’s evidence it’s true, she’s signed some of said evidence, and there’s a tape of her giving us even more evidence, so go out and shit all over her and give Annie a hug for old times”

Simon had done his usual puff piece for the upcoming Music Day event with BBC local radio, adding in comments about how the event was needed even more, referring to Hannah merely as a local bigot and reminding people of where that could lead, especially with reference to a particular grave in St Nick’s yard.

Caroline’s husband Pablo had an article coming out in a German newspaper about Best British Gammons and their incessant bigotry, and Phil, yet again, had managed to get the Independent interested in that story, and then, bless him, with the help of Mrs T, had a couple of the local rags ready to syndicate both of the nationals’ stories. Ryan, Mo Khan and myself had been interviewed, with the added bonus that because it wasn’t the Heil, none of us had to be photographed wearing a blue dress and court heels.

I have got a number of blue dresses, plus several pairs of heels bought when a complete new wardrobe was still an amazing thing, but I don’t think that applied to either Mo or Ryan. You never know, though. Mo, however, with or without dress or heels, was poised. Both his cousin the shopkeeper and Mehmet the Kebab/pizza/chips man took both of the local rags, left on the tables for sit-down customers in the case of the latter. Mo was chuckling when he told us about the cherry on his little bit of info.

“Oh, it’s Mehmet’s idea, bit like his kebabs: ‘You want salad on top? Chili sauce?’ He asked if it would be OK to stick the article up in his window, with a caption like ‘You’re not welcome if we aren’t’. And if Munshi next door just happened to see it, you know… I think we are cooking on gas here, people”

It was a nerve-wracking couple of weeks before it all hit, because we had to let the German article drop first, so that the Indy could pick it up. It came out on a Monday, the Guardian article dropped two days later, the Friday editions of our two locals carried their own versions, and that was indeed that little bit of added value, as Mo told us at our celebratory barbie the very next day, at Steph’s place in Charlwood, where we got to meet Phil, Paula and their other halves Kim and Paul, who’d driven over on Friday evening.

Paul and Paula? Oh dear. On the other hand, I had read her book, so I knew the background.

There were multiple spare beds across two big houses, as well as several tents, and an abundance of finger food plus an even greater input from Chez Norm. There was even a visiting family of Annie and Steph’s friends from Dover, who also had a dog; Bri and Jules had brought Diesel, purely in the sense of fairness and not just bone disposal, and the two hounds really hit it off. We started with a Plot meeting in Steph’s conservatory, where Mo gave us the aforesaid cherry, interrupted by frequent heckling.

“Oh, you should have been there! I wish I had been! Apparently, Friday night is their piss and chips night, where one of them picks up a bulk load of food from Mehmet’s while the other fills a trolley bag with beer and tart fuel—Sorry? WKD, Bacardi Breezer, brightly coloured fluids, that sort of crap. Oh? Right! ‘Slut fuel’ it is, then. Anyway, Ritchie McBride goes into the Grill to pick up the bulk order of a balanced diet, while Hannah heads into Munshi’s for the booze. Mehmet and his boys look at Ritchie, and point to the sign in the window, and of course they’re all sharpening their knives for the doner and the lamb chunks on the shish.

“So Mehmet says ‘Imam said some things at prayers today, Ritchie. About what your Missus thinks of Muslims. Door. Out. Don’t come back’, and next door, Munshi’s saying the same thing to Hannah, with his brother and two cousins along to help stack shelves, close-knit family, so on and so forth. May I offer a toast? Yes, it’s lemonade, sod that you are. To a well-hatched and well-delivered Plot!”

Brian was doubled up with laughter, Jules slapping, or rubbing, or maybe caressing his back, and she called out how she wished she could have been there to witness it. Mo smirked, holding up an envelope.

“Well, you can be, sort of. Both boys have given me copies of their security camera discs, and for some rather important reasons both come with sound. Yes, Naomi, you could have, but this way was quicker. Got a player, Steph?”

She had, so we gathered before it, and the afternoon got even better.

Brian sat up sharply at one point.

“Did she just smash that bottle?”

“Yup. Munshi made two copies of the disc. Police have the other one. All together now? Oh dear how sad never mind!”

I was floating after that double cherry. I had always suspected that the person who had outed me to the Heil might have been the slut, but I had never had enough proof. I still didn’t have any, of course, but I really felt that this could serve as my own revenge, by proxy. I took a walk out into the huge garden for a quiet moment, as stresses I hadn’t realised had been there for at least a decade suddenly unwound, and the wall I had been pushing against became an open door.

My tears were not far behind, nor was the arm that settled over my shoulders.

“I seem to ask this a lot, but are you okay?”

“Not sure, Norm. Just realised how much of my life I’ve been in, I don’t know. That thing on aircraft?”

“Brace position?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Locked and rigid, waiting for the crash. Today… It’s not over, never will be, I think, but, well, bully’s been smacked one, and this time it’s the bully who doesn’t have back-up. I’m just… Just wobbling a bit. Surprised at myself, I suppose. Suddenly realising how much stress I’ve been carrying”

“Stress is my job, Gem. Got my own, outside of work as well as the pro stuff. Been a busy few weeks with all this”

His arm was still there, and it felt nice, that little touch of human contact.

“Do you mind if I…?”

“Feel free, Gem”

I settled into his hug, slipping an arm around his waist, and it was like the most comforting blanket in the world, as I realised why so many women take gay men as really close friends. No threats, no complications, just comfort.

He settled his own head against mine, and we stood watching planes approach the airport, no need for words for at least a quarter of an hour, until he spoke.

“Gem?”

“Umhum?”

“I need to say something. I think you might have misunderstood what I said at Bri’s place”

“Oh. What have I said?”

“Not you. You think I’m gay, don’t you?”

I lifted my head so I could see his face.

“I’m confused now. I think I assumed that ‘gay’ might apply to a man who fancies men, marries one and then divorces him, and fancies my best friend’s man. Men who fancy et cetera men stylee gay”

He chuckled.

“The way those two moon over each other, I think that might end up as ‘husband’ in the very near”

“Really?”

“She’s head over, he’s besotted, and they are bloody well suited. And I think…”

He was blushing suddenly.

“I didn’t get those ear plugs in quickly enough, and then, well, both of them, oh dear. I wonder what the other campers must have thought, when they went to the New forest”

I settled back against him, and he sighed, squeezing my shoulder.

“I’m not gay, Gem. I’m bi. That’s… This is embarrassing as all hell, but I’ve started, so I need to get this bit out. That night, I was a coward. I wanted… If I say something wrong, please understand how I mean it, and why, and I will change the subject. I had to go to the loo”

Oh shit. It had been him on the stairs. I felt my own face burning.

“And?”

“I could hear”

“They were loud”

“Not them”

“Ah. Sorry. I do have my own needs, you know, so if it offends you that I---”

“Shush, Gem. You have no need to apologise. I was the coward, not you”

“Norm, how were you a coward? I’m lost”

“I… I wanted to knock on your door”

Shit.

“You wanted to knock on my door? Why?”

He tilted his head back, eyes screwed shut.

“Typical drunk silliness, Gem. I was going to ask if you needed another hand, or could I offer you something else?”

“Fuck!”

“Er, yeah, basically”

He looked back down at me, trying to smile.

“If I’ve overstepped, I’m sorry, but I have my own stress limits. I’ll leave you alone now, if you want”

The answer was out of my mouth before I could pull it back.

“I don’t want. I mean, I do want, but not for you to let go. You said you didn’t fancy me”

“I didn’t fancy Danny, because I didn’t know him”

“Nobody did, Norm. I couldn’t really let him out to play, could I?”

“I understand. But I am getting to know you, and what I am discovering is… You’re a very deep woman. And I’d really like to… oh shit. That’s almost as bad as the drunk one”

“Sorry?”

“I was about to say something stupid, that would have sounded wrong, and it’s not what I meant”

“Would it have been about plumbing my depths?

“Er, yeah?”

“But you meant ‘get to know me’, didn’t you?”

He nodded sharply, so I moved around and slipped my hands up to wrap around the back of his neck.

“Well, Norm, that would be wonderful”

I felt the nerves hit me, along with the shakes, and he wrapped both arms around me until they quit.

“Sorry, Norm, but I have my own desires and, well, you said you heard. I… I have never, um, had my depths plumbed. If…”

He kissed me, just like that, and it was soft, and it was sweet, and we have never, ever, looked back.

All that work I put into choosing a new surname! We double-barrelled them both, in the end.