This one's not for the faint of heart. Over the course of the story there will be death, suicide attempts, a fair amount of physical and mental abuse, some egregious torture and a hefty dollop of foul language, but hopefully a happy ending. Actually, the last bit's a given since it's me doing the writing, but between here and the end is a rocky road, so please if any of the above is likely to be triggering for you, please, please think twice about reading.

Chapter 7

I kept off school till the effects of the injection settled, which took us to the weekend. Following the doctor’s advice, I didn’t apply my first oestrogen patch till the Saturday. I’d chosen patches over pills and creams because they were more controlled release and because I could stick one in place and forget about it for a whole week.

The biggest change I noticed from the outset was the sad attacks. That’s what Paul called them whenever he noticed me having one. I’d become downcast and tearful and, if he happened to be around, he’d pull me into his arms for a short hug-fest. Another Paulism (although Paulism is mine). The hugs helped. That physical contact reinforced my sense of being loved and cared for, which quickly dispelled the mood.

School was different. I had to cope with the mood swings on my own a lot of the time, though I had friends ready to give me a hug when I needed one.

The A levels had lasted an extra week past the GCSEs, so I ended up being late joining my class for the post exam thumb twiddling. Usually this would be when we’d make a start on next year’s classwork, but with all my friends unsure which A levels they’d be taking without their GCSE results and me with nothing to move onto, we were stuck with the prospect of several weeks of hangman and other pointless activities until the end of term.

Actually, I should have anticipated better from Mrs W because she’d been running a successful private school for a lot of years.

We had the school leavers’ prom to look forward to and with nothing else useful to occupy our time, we were given the task of planning the event. Music, decorations, theme, even who to invite. Our school had an arrangement with a nearby boys school whereby we’d combine forces and alternate sites for hosting, but in preparation for the actual party, we combined forces with one group of us visiting the other group’s school with a view to collaborating on the venture.

It also gave us a chance to get to know the opposition so we could pair up for the dance. It was a far more enjoyable experience than anticipated with a lot of shared effort going into the different aspects, and it was also educational with no small amount of project management and technical input required. Most of us would be able to add it to our university applications with details of what we had done. Not an issue for me since I already had my university application sorted.

My brain didn’t feel like it was working at university capacity yet, and I was aware that I needed to adjust to my new hormone levels before settling on any thoughts for the future. I was already a couple of years ahead of the game with twice as many A levels as most people, so a year out didn’t seem like a bad idea.

The dads were happy with that decision because it meant I’d be at home for another year at least. The girl patches would also have just about done as much physical maturing as they were going to which meant I’d look more the right age when I went. I already had offers from every university I’d applied to with qualifications in the bag for most courses I’d been considering, so deferring the start was all it took.

I was leaning towards psychology and politics for my higher studies because the more I thought about my future, the more I felt I wanted to work specifically in the area of LGBTQ rights. That would need me to understand how politics worked as well as have a clearer idea of what tied an individual to one of those letters. I knew that Max’s distress had come more from having no-one to talk to, from having parents who refused to listen to him, so I saw myself lobbying for broader education on LGBTQ issues and raising awareness among those who didn’t understand what their kids were experiencing. Also for promoting LGBTQ support on Childline and other young person support networks. My own experience – the Gerald in me – had suffered badly from not having a sympathetic ear to talk to. I’m not sure if having a friend upon whose shoulders I could unburdened myself would have made my situation much better, but I couldn’t imagine things being worse than what Max had faced.

But we were talking about the prom, weren’t we? I’d been worrying about it on several levels, not least of which was being a week late joining the organised chaos of two single sex institutions coming together to plan a party. I worried that all the decent guys might have chosen their dates before I had a chance to pitch my own hat into the ring, but the pairing off hadn’t properly begun when I turned up, and I was cute enough to draw quite a few eyes, so in the end I had a wide variety of hunks of meat to choose from.

The other worry was my own hunk of meet, but Paul had his answer to that and taught me how to tuck my bits away so I looked like every other girl, ‘only cuter,’ he insisted. I could have gone in skin tight jeans if I’d wanted, but every party was an excuse for a pretty dress in my mind. It did mean that I could get up close and personal without worrying that something would get between us.

The prom was everything it promised to be – not surprising given the effort we put into it. There was the crowning of prom king and queen, which went to someone else thankfully. I didn’t need the attention, and I certainly didn’t need a plastic tiara. There were a few special awards though and I didn’t escape a little honourable mention in them. I was awarded baby genius of the year and accepted my mortar board hat, scroll of achievement and packet of disposable nappies with good natured embarrassment.

I experienced my first kiss as a girl – Max’s first kiss ever – that night too. With all the awards out of the way, there wasn’t much left to do but party, which meant eat, drink and dance. The dancing inevitably turned slow and romantic towards the end of the evening, and right at the end of the last song, he cupped my cheek in his hand and drew me towards him.

It was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped, and I didn’t even have to break up with the guy at the end of the evening. He’d just completed his GCSEs and I think he found my A levels the second time round just a little too intimidating, so he made his excuses and left me standing in the middle of the dance floor.

Boys could be so insecure sometimes. It was disappointing, but at the same time. Something of a relief.

With school out of the way once and for all we were free to take our family summer holiday, this year in Gran Canaria. We were booked for just after schools broke up this year since Pam and Lily had announced their joint lesbian wedding without confirming the dates just yet. The Canary Islands was a gay safe destination so Peter and Paul could enjoy a little open affection. As for me, tankini and tuck kept me safe enough and I enjoyed a fair amount of attention from presumably heterosexual men, and even a few homosexual women. The flirting was fun, but I didn’t let it go too far. It was early days yet, but I was convinced I could see a few changes in my body, which was probably why I ended up on so many guys’ radars, but I was all too aware of how badly things could go if even one of them chose to push his luck even a little.

As a family, we’d been keeping an eye out for the other things we’d been told to expect with the hormone tratment. I think the one that worried me most was the prospect of weight gain, but I suspected that might have been a male body’s reaction to lowering testosterone rather than increasing oestrogen, and since I’d never really had any to start with, it didn’t affect me. Either that or it meant weight gain in the right places as I left my preteen androgyny behind.

Max and I noticed the encroaching brain fog on occasions, but the unusual way our combined mind worked gave us a way to counter it. I’m not really sure how to describe it other than one of us would notice when the other was struggling with memory or cognition and would give a sort of mental nudge that shook off whatever was causing it. There were rare occasions when it caught both of us at the same time, at which point Paul would declare with some delight that we were having an attack of blondeitis. It never lasted for more than a day, and often served to reset my brain so I was more awake and alert when I recovered, so I almost looked forward to them. Sometimes Max and I would notice it starting with the other and, if we had nothing important to do with the day, we’d let it wash over us both.

Physically there wasn’t a lot to show at first. Max’s body – our body – had never had much in the way of either muscle or body hair so there wasn’t much to lose. Again something that I suspected was caused more by loss of testosterone than anything else. After a couple of weeks I began to spot a few subtler changes. My chest was definitely itchier and maybe a little squishier and my bum looked like it was changing shape a bit. My hair thickened noticeably and my facial features somehow seemed to look more childlike. Maybe it was in contrast to the full head of hair framing it, maybe it was a subtle change in texture – I was sure my lips at least had plumped and reddened – but I definitely looked prettier, or so I persuaded myself.

Max’s idea of relaxation these days involved coding. Yeah I know, go figure. Anyway, I’d leave him to it while I soaked up the sun or let one of the cute locals chat me up. By the end of our holiday, he had an app put together that ran in the background on our phone. It responded to a triple or quadruple press of the power button. In either case it would open up location sharing on Google Maps, link to a pre-set list of contacts and put a conference call through to those same people. If I did the quadruple press, it would, in addition, force the phone volume to maximum and give out an alarm sound.

Peter and Paul were impressed when I showed it to them and insisted that I set it up for both their phones and demonstrate it. I did so, wandering off to a secluded part of the hotel grounds before triple pressing the button. My phone vibrated at me once to tell me it was working and I started to speak.

“So, this should be like a regular call for you, only if you open Google Maps, you should see my location. Click directions and start and it’ll bring you directly to me. Four presses,” I did so, “and you’ll probably hear me.” The alarm was pretty loud. “Three presses turns that back off again. The call and location sharing will continue until I tell the app on my phone to stop.”

“This is amazing,” Peter said from behind me. “You could sell this for a mint.”

“Or I could give it away to all vulnerable people who could benefit from it.”

The fortnight ended and we took our tanned bodies and souvenirs back home. A fresh RSVP from the twins gave us a couple of weeks to prepare for the wedding. Something of a snub in that they’d not invited me to be a bridesmaid, but I’d long since developed a thick skin over such matters. Paul was a little more upset and retaliated by finding me a dress he was sure would outshine everyone at the event, possibly including the brides. I had several fittings to make sure it was perfect, including a couple of pieces of silicone gel to better endow my upper body assets, but other than that, my time was my own. I launched the app as a free no ads gift to the mobile community then passed on details of it to a number of support organisations who might know people who would benefit. I also wrote to a number of lobbyists for LGBTQ rights expressing my interest in being a part of their plans after the summer was over. They tended to work all year round, but they did their interesting stuff when parliament was in session, which wasn’t likely to be until September.

The date for the twins’ wedding approached. Apart from Peter and Paul, the only contact we’d had from anyone in the family had been the wedding invite, which was family business very much as usual. Over the years we’d escaped from Max’s previous life, he and I had grown accustomed to the idea that family was where you found love and acceptance, and just because Mum and Dad provided the genetic material for the body I inhabited, that didn’t make them my real family. Real family was my two dads who provided me with as much love and acceptance as any child could want.

With letters in the post and nothing much to do but wait, I turned my attention to neighbourhood relations.

I’d already had a fair amount of practice discussing the salient issues with our neighbours. As the ‘normal’ one in our family, they seemed to feel more comfortable talking to me about the dads, and in a lot of cases I’d been able to change minds and garner sympathy. There were some, like Miss Kerridge, who would not budge on their opinions though.

Generally, the older people were the tough ones, which I understood from personal experience because old age is a state of mind in which you become set in your ways. It leaves you with a considerably more restricted view of the world and an inability to adapt to new ideas.

Of course, my views hadn’t been quite the same as most folk my age, but I’d definitely become set in my thinking. Fortunately for me, sharing a mind with Max had helped fill in the ruts and restored our collective capacity for flexibility of opinion. I’d grown old once and had no intention of doing it again.

In my mind, you understand. Old body couldn’t be avoided, at least if you chose to stay in the land of the living, and I already knew the alternative to that wasn’t worth considering. Old mind though, that was a choice as long as you kept on top of it.

My experiences in growing old also helped us identify those rare individuals who had survived the decades while maintaining a flexibility in their world view. They were the pleasant surprises along the way, as much for the wisdom they were able to share as the unexpected delight at discovering allies where we’d more than half expected to find adversaries.

All in all, I considered my discussions with our neighbours to be a success. Working on the principle that I couldn’t expect to please all the people even some of the time, I’d focused on those I felt were likely to be open to persuasion and succeeded in bring pretty much all of them round to my way of thinking. Either they were inclined to agree with me in the first place in which case they became more so, or they were swinging the other way in which case I brought them back across the line.

Of course it helped that the dads were outgoing, friendly and helpful, so all I needed to do was help people see past the elephant in the street. Once they’d been convinced that two men in love with each other wasn’t a thing to be concerned about, they could see without any help from me that Peter and Paul were the sorts of people who could be relied on in a crisis and would put their own concerns to one side if you needed help.

It was a holiday though and a number of my friends from school invited me out for party nights and sleepovers. Despite the dads’ concerns I indulged myself. The Gerald in me was responsible enough to keep me from indulging too far, and I’d become pretty good at tucking my bits away, so even when half the girls at the sleepover had no idea about my unwanted extras, they never suspected. I did dance and dally with quite a few cute guys, but never allowed myself to be drawn into anything approaching a relationship.

Which meant I didn’t have a date to take to Lily and Pam’s double wedding, but perhaps that was a good thing. Bad enough my turning up to a family affair in a dress, a boyfriend would definitely have pushed things over the edge, and I didn’t want to be responsible for any brouhaha that might steal my cousins’ limelight.

The day of the wedding came and Paul fussed over me until we were very much in danger of being late. I didn’t begrudge him a single minute and absolutely loved the final result.

“There,” he said at last. “As close to perfection as we could hope.”

“I don’t want to outshine the brides,” I said.

He snorted. “I doubt you’ll do that. Pam and Lily will most likely opt for something in trousers, which I’ve always struggled to understand. I mean if they’re so adamantly anti-male, why is it they dress up as men?”

“I don’t think they’re anti-male, just anti-men. The dressing up is just their way of saying to the world, ‘there you are, this is what being masculine should be.’”

“I’m not sure you’re allowed to be this beautiful and this intelligent at the same time,” he answered. “Me, I chose beautiful…”

“Obviously…”

“Well honestly, you should opt for one or the other, or you’ll scare all the good guys away.”

“I already have some experience of that, Aunty Mum.” There was a term of endearment I’d come up with over the weeks she’d put into helping me through adjusting to my hormones, and I could see she loved it.

“Yes you do. Well that guy at your prom was an absolute pillock, and he will most definitely regret his decision to dump you in years to come. You know, I take it back. Be as fabulous as you are and one day the right man will find you. Or woman?”

“Man. Definitely man. And not for a while yet. I want to make sure there are no unpleasant surprises to find before I let anyone that close.”

“My word, beauty, intelligence and wisdom. What more hidden depths are there to find in you?”

I smiled demurely. Paul always had to have the last word, so I was used to letting him. Especially with Peter pacing a hole in the carpet in the room next door.

It was a civil ceremony in the grounds of some rich country estate. No church for Mandy’s girls, though that would probably have been a hard sell with it being an all-girl affair. Which is to say all those being married were girls. Paul had called it right with Pam and Lily taking the grooms’ positions and waiting for their brides, both of them wearing all white tuxedos, although with a very feminine cut. Knowing my cousins, the white was a little hypocritical, but I had no intention of being judgemental.

Not about that at least. There were a lot of guests and a great many of them were single men of about Pam and Lily’s age. Peter and I exchanged looks at the sight of the crowd. I was going to have my work cut out for me later. With being overlooked as a bridesmaid, I felt no guilt at all in allowing Peter to inveigle me into his plans to check out the male invitees.

Most of the women present had either come with a significant other – mainly other women in the case of Lily and Pam’s friends – or they were sitting at the top table, which made me the centre of everyone’s attention. I barely had to do anything beyond smile and sip at my champagne; they were all tripping over each other to impress me, and apparently the easiest way they could think of to do that involved explaining to me in detail how they’d come along to make a few quick quid out of the situation.

Lily and Pam’s brides appeared in very similar frilly meringues, and the ceremony ran through to its secular completion. It felt like it was missing something major in leaving God out of the dealings, but maybe that was just what remained of my traditional mind-set.

After the ceremony, all the young, single men continued to compete for my attention, making progressively wilder claims about how much they stood to gain from the afternoon.

I made a mental note of all the mercenaries, pausing to jot down names when I had a few quiet moments, usually in the loo.

That in itself made for an interesting turn around. The degree to which the men outnumbered the women meant that there was pretty much a constant queue of blokes waiting to empty their bladders of all the free beer, whilst the girls were in such a minority that we could come and go as we pleased.

I caught sight of Max’s sperm donor – we’d both stopped thinking of him as our dad – glowering at me from halfway down the line for the gents. I smiled and quirked an eyebrow at him as I slipped into the ladies to take care of my own business.

The restraining order was still in effect, though it had been eased for the day in order for us to coexist under the same roof while my cousins – his nieces – got hitched. He still couldn’t talk to me unless I initiated contact, which I had no intention of doing. He evidently didn’t approve of my using the girls’ loos, but even he could see how much of a riot we’d have on our hands if all those blokes who’d been chatting me up suddenly discovered I was similarly equipped to them underneath my skirts.

But it was obvious he wanted to make things difficult for me. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly five years, and here he was still trying to derail my train ride to happiness.

The gents’ line hadn’t advanced much by the time I was done. I had to walk past his scowling face on my way back, which didn’t do much for my mood.

“I have a spare skirt somewhere if you’d like to borrow it.” I couldn't help myself.

Neither could he. “You have no right going in there, you little pervert. I’m glad I disowned you.”

“You keep telling yourself that, old man. I’m going back to my dads.”

“You little shit. I’m your...”

“No, you’re not!” I hissed, rounding on him sharply. “You gave up the right to that years ago when you thought beating me into submission was a better parenting technique than listening to me.”

“I gave you life!”

“You contributed a few strands of DNA and you can’t believe how fervently I hope that none of it went I to making me.

“Do you remember when I told you the reason I tried to kill myself was because I couldn’t think of a way I could keep on living with you and Mum the way things were?”

“Bunch of fucking nonsense.”

“And that’s why you don’t deserve to be a parent. Why I hope you never will be one again. Why, and I can’t really tell you how much it hurts me to say this, why you’ll never be a parent to me.

“Now, that restraining order. I agreed to relax it enough that we could spend the day in the same building, and I know it was me started this conversation, but you obviously have nothing to say to me that I want to hear, so let’s see if we can get through the rest of the day without either of us saying another thing to each other.”

“Your mother...”

“Last time I spoke to my mother, she was as much of an inflexible bigot as you.”

He stiffened, then forced himself to relax. “You’ll do whatever you think is best as usual, but if you’re prepared to talk to me, the least you owe her is the same.”

“And the least you owe me is not to say another word to me. Today or ever.”

Despite the continued anger and outrage in his face, he flinched. He made as if to speak again, then thought better of it. He nodded once instead and stared me in the eye as if trying to convey that he was prepared accept my terms.

There was nothing left to say. Well, from his expression he had a bunch more he wanted to say but nothing I wanted to hear, and I had nothing more to say to him. I walked past daring him in my mind to say just one thing more, but he didn’t.

I hadn’t promised him anything, but when I arrived back in the main hall, I caught sight of Mum sitting at a table on her own. I walked across and sat next to her, placing a gentle hand on her knee.

She looked up.

“Max?”

“Not for some years now, Mum.”

“You look...”

Different? Pretty? Ridiculous? My mind filled in the blank with a random spray of suggestions. Not all of them were...

“You look just like I remember.”

“Well, my hair’s longer and not such a greasy mess, and I think I’m a little slimmer, but yeah. Yes. That’s kind of what the drugs do. They stop you from changing.”

“But... five years?”

“Getting on for that, yes Mum.”

“Why would you want to stay a child, and you’re still wearing dresses? It’s Peter isn’t it? He just wants to get his own back on the family.”

“Peter’s been amazing, Mum. And it’s Paul who keeps buying me the dresses, but mainly because I ask him to.”

“Paul? Who’s Paul?”

“My other dad.” I point him out, standing very close to Peter.

“You only have one father, dear.”

“Maybe, but I have two dads, and they’re both over there. I was kind of wondering if I had a mum still.”

“What kind of a question’s that? Of course you have a mother. Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Because last time I saw you, you told me you wanted nothing more to do with me. Because the last time you were given the opportunity to act as my parent, you promised one thing and did something totally other, or don’t you remember? You ask me why I want to stay a child. I don’t, but the law wouldn’t allow me to make any changes until my last birthday, and the drugs I’ve been taking in recent weeks haven’t had a chance to take effect yet. You ask me why I’m still wearing dresses, it’s because I’m that kind of girl...”

“You’re not a girl, Max...”

“And that’s why I don’t believe I have a mother. Because you don’t have a son. You never did. The person you think of as your son, as much as he was real in any way, died on grandma and granddad’s bathroom floor on Christmas Eve four and a half years ago, wearing your party dress if you remember. I’d love for you to be my mum, but it’s only going to work if you accept you don’t have a son. You have a daughter. You only ever had a daughter, and until you can see that, until you can embrace it, I can’t have you in my life.”

“Max, why are you doing this?”

“Abrielle, Mum. Or Abri. Max is gone, if he ever was in the first place. I’m sorry this hurts, but I’m Abrielle. Unless and until you can see that, I think it’ll just be too painful for either of us to be in each other’s lives. I do love you, but I need you to see me. The real me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know, Mum, and I’m sorry. Maybe next year you will.”

“Why, what’s going to happen next year?”

“The drugs, Mum. Like I said I’ve started my next course of treatment. The dad’s suggested I wait until after my exams before doing so, and that was just a few weeks ago. Not much to show yet, but I’m kind of hoping that within a year I won’t look quite so much like a child.”

“You mean...” There was a sourness to her expression.

“It’s what I want, Mum. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I wish you could just see it. I mean why are you so hung up on Max, on having a son? Why won’t you see the girl that’s always been inside of me? Why won’t you accept that I want to be her inside and out? Not that pathetic little half and half.

“I’m hoping that when you see me with breasts and hips and curves, then you’ll maybe see the real me at last.”

“Stop it!”

“What? The drugs or the talking like this?”

“Both. Can’t you see you’re deluding yourself.”

“Goodbye mother.” I stood and gave her one last sad look. I could see the distress in her eyes, but I had given her what I could, and she had nothing to offer me in return.

Peter, Paul and I weren’t on the top table – we hadn’t expected to be, I mean it was pretty full with four brides, their entourage and their parents – but our table was close to it. The reason became apparent when the speeches began, a short time later.

The fathers of Pam and Lily’s brides gave their semi-maudlin ‘such a lovely girl, sad to see you go’ speeches with just a hint of confusion over the absence of any grooms, or best men for that matter. Maddy gave an impassioned address on how fiercely proud she was of her two girls, fuelled by more testosterone than either of the previous two offerings. Or at least, if not testosterone then spiked oestrogen. Then it was my cousins’ turn.

Pam and Lily stood together and did the token complimenting of their brides and bridesmaids, which felt more like feminist solidarity than honesty or tradition.

Not that there could be a lot of tradition in such an all-female wedding. The closest we’d come was the twins’ brides enveloped in layers of taffeta and chiffon. The girls turned quickly enough in our direction.

“Uncle Peter,” they said in that disturbing unison some twins can manage, “wasn’t there a letter from Great Uncle Gerald which mentioned a certain sum of money for each man at our wedding? We count forty-seven not including family, fathers-in-law and husbands, which makes nine thousand eight hundred pounds. Each. What say we round it to an even twenty grand?”

So they weren’t great at maths. At least the error was in their favour. It put Peter in an excruciatingly awkward position.

“Why don’t we discuss it later,” he said, “in private?”

“Why don’t we discuss it now? In front of witnesses?” There was a hint of steel in the words, as though this had always been intended as a trap and a way of demonstrating how worthless men were. Even the gay ones.

Peter made to stand up, but I put a hand on his knee and climbed to my feet before he could fully respond.

“Hi Pam, hi Lily,” I said. “Hi everyone. I’m Abrielle. I’m a cousin to these two. I was there when the letter they’re talking about was found, and I distinctly remember it stipulating that the men in question should be your friends, and that Uncle Peter could take whatever measures he thought appropriate to verify that the friendships were genuine.

“Now it strikes me as odd that neither of you has a best man. If you had any genuine male friends at all, I’d have thought you’d invite one of them into that role, each. The fact that you haven’t brings into question the status of these others.

“I should mention at this point that I’ve spent the better part of today being hit on by one after another of the single guys here. Not all of them, I’ll admit, but most of them, and pretty much without exception they all said something about only being here to... how did that one guy put it? ‘To scam some queen fuck out of a bunch of money.’

“Now, since the letter gave our uncle final discretion on whether or not any particular individual happened to be a genuine male friend, I’m inclined to recommend that he discount all of this lot. Of course Uncle Peter, being the fair minded individual he is will most likely want to give everyone here a chance to prove themselves. I mean he did want to deal with this privately to spare you the embarrassment, but personally I have no such qualms. I mean if you’re prepared to pull a stunt like this on you own wedding day, I really don’t know what that says about you. As for you two,” I addressed the taffeta clad pair on the top table, “I know you just took your vows, but if you weren’t aware of the sorts of people you were pairing up with, it really isn’t too late to change your minds. Personally, I’m appalled at the thought of being related to these two.

“Anyway, why don’t we invite all the guys present who consider themselves to be genuine friends to Pam and Lily to stand up. Bear in mind that there’s a pretty good chance I will recognise you if we’ve spoken today, and if I’m prepared to shame my cousins on their wedding day, do you really think I won’t do the same for you?”

One solitary figure stood, buttoned his jacket, and turned to face the twins.

“I actually thought I was a friend,” he said, “to both of you, but if you’re prepared to do something like this against a member of your own family and on your wedding day, I’m not sure I want to be.”

With that, he turned on his heels and walked out.

“He’s one of the few I didn’t talk to,” I said to Peter, but loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Pam gave me a Gorgon’s stare which genuinely, although only figuratively, petrified me.

“You little shit,” she spat. “I thought you were supposed to be on our side.”

“Why? Because I’m a girl? Solidarity among sisters and screw every man who ever lived? That’s the exact thing that Great Uncle Gerald was trying to steer you and your mum away from.”

“What do you mean, ‘because I’m a girl,’ Pinocchiette?” Lily added her rage to her sisters. “You’re not even a real girl, and you never will be.”

That turned a few heads in my direction. My father’s, I noticed, was sneering in smug satisfaction.

I refused to let them get at me. I could feel the blush rising from deep inside me and I fought to keep it at bay. Fat chance, trying to fight a hormonal response. My oestrogen levels may have stabilised, but I was still more a slave to my feelings than their master.

“Come on,” Peter said climbing to his feet and putting a hand in the small of my back. “I don’t think we’re welcome here anymore.”

Paul stood too and led the way out of the room.

“What about our money?” the twins called after us.

“We’ll talk about it privately at another time. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

A bit of a forlorn hope perhaps after all that, but it was a mess of their own making and I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about my part.