CHAPTER 65
Monday morning was another delivery day, so it was all hands to the pumps, apart from Andy. Despite his sudden advances into being human, he still had a blind spot about the quantity of work the new stock entailed.

As usual, we girls did the necessary while Alice worked through the paper trail and Andy serviced pensioners. I felt a Word with Bev coming on, if he did not mend the ways we had assumed were irreparable before her entry into his life.

She popped in for a few minutes mid-morning, which gave me the chance to coo and gush about the new child, and suggest names. Some of the suggestions were less than serious, such as “Winker”, and I was nonplussed when Anne suggested ‘Radio Times’

“Why Radio Times, Anne?”

“Because it tells you……………what’s on”

“Oh, you sod!”

Bev changed the subject, smoothly but very directly.

“So how are things going with this Jon, Anne?”

She actually blushed, which answered a lot of the question without actually giving any answer as to specifics. Bev just laughed.

“It’s definitely a viral thing here, what with me, and Sarah there, and Suzy, and now Anne”

Suzy pretended anger. “What do you mean, ’and Suzy’?”

Bev laughed again. “There you are, walking like John Wayne, and you say you don’t want to tie him down?”

Suzy put a finger to her bottom lip, and said dreamily “Now, there’s an idea…”

The laughter was so filthy we had to clean the stockroom.

Alice popped her head in at about eleven. “Sar, I have an appointment with my doctor in half an hour, can you hold the fort till I get back? I’ve got most of the delivery stuff sorted already, so there’s nothing to worry about. Enid’s meeting me there”

I did my best to time the next remark to her taking a sip of tea. “Sounds a bit more than just a check up, if you need the support of your lesbian lover”

I was rewarded with a snort and a spray. This was turning into a silly day, which is the best kind. Smiling and joking with friends, a little horseplay, and before you know it the working day is over. At the appointed hour, she ticked off out of the shop on her heels to see the quack. I could not work out how she managed to stay on her feet all day n her choice of shoes, but I knew that it was all part of her exuberant explosion of femininity; after a life spent hiding behind the beard, she was shouting her nature to the world. There are few things that say ‘woman’ louder than high heels, and she wanted to scream it out. I couldn’t begrudge her that, but I pitied her for the pain she must have at the end of each day.

Three quarters of an hour later and she was back, Enid in tow, and bubbling with excitement.

“They said yes!!!! I’m on the list!!!”

Enid was looking odd, and I could see that while she was happy for Alice, there was also a lot of doubt and simple fear in her eyes. I tried to calm Alice down.

“Slowly, girl, slowly, what list?”

She grinned, and started to sing. “The first cut is the deepest, la la la la la”

I looked over to Enid, who sighed, but smiled. “Orchidectomy. She’s been given the nod for the surgery as soon as there’s a space on the list. She’s a bit hyper, so I shall take her for a cuppa to calm her down”

Off they went to the office, Alice still mangling the song. Things were finally moving for her, and she seemed so buoyant. My own removal had been done under the cloud of Joe’s assault, and so I hadn’t had the chance to celebrate my new life as Alice was doing. Never mind, she at least would have that opportunity, and I didn’t begrudge her it. A half hour later, she came out to the stockroom as we were finishing off, Andy in tow.

“Chap, ladies, I have a happy announcement to make. You have stuck with me through my changes, you have shown yourselves to be true friends, and so I hope this will be taken as good news. I have been placed on a list for the removal of two dangly little glands that I have no need nor desire for. I will soon be free of testosterone! I think we should celebrate! Coffees and cakes, hmmm? My serving wench Sarah will take the orders”

We popped out of the shop, and in her excitement she nearly flattened Dawn, our local bobby, with her PCSO Barry in tow. It’s a given that when you run a drugs den like our shop, you get to know the local police rather well. Dawn picked up on Alice’s mood, and grinned at me. “Good news?”

“The best. She’s due her first surgery soon, just heard today”

“Alice, that’s fantastic news! Can I have a hug, you lucky girl?”

Alice was hauled up against her stab vest, beaming happily. “I’m getting cakes and stuff in for the team, you got a few minutes to gobble something naughty?”

Before Barry could speak, Dawn was pointing at hm. “No!”

We left them to continue their patrol, at least as far as our office, and as I turned into the coffee shop, Alice set out over the pedestrian crossing, singing away.

The front bumper of the Subaru caught her just below the knee, and as I stared in horrified fascination she left the ground, bouncing up and over the bonnet till her head smashed into the driver’s door pillar. One shoe bounced off down the road, and just after her head rebounded her wig came right off, flying like a grey moth onto the tarmac.

Everything was slowed down, and even though I was sprinting, I didn’t seem to be getting there, but I did, and I felt my tights shredding as I knelt beside her, and the driver got out.

“Shit, man, look what that bitch done to my scooby, times like this I wish I had fully comp on the insurance!”

“Call a fucking ambulance, you wanker!”

“Hey, don’t you diss me, bitch! Hey, she some fucking tranny, yeah?”

I missed my punch to his groin, and he backhanded me hard across the face, just as Dawn arrived. I heard the asp hit his thigh just before Barry shoulder charged him, but I wasn’t listening to the rest of it as she was lying so oddly on the tarmac, legs and arms all splayed out and limp, and her head just looked WRONG.

I was screaming, I seem to remember, and then the ambulance came, and a police van, and the cunt was taken away yelling about tranny whores, and they were holding a paper bag over my mouth and nose, and Suzy and Andy were there, and…..

Anne went with her in the ambulance to the hospital while Enid drove me there herself. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t dead. That was the fact I kept telling myself, the prayer I repeated so that it would be true.

We arrived not long after the ambulance, and she was taken straight to theatre, and a little later Tony arrived, and I couldn’t stop crying. Then the doctor came out, and wouldn’t tell us anything because we weren’t family, and Enid pulled out a note that showed her listed as next of kin, and finally

Finally we started to get some information. She had a number of broken bones, mostly in the legs, and a couple in the face. The big problem was that her head seemed to be swelling, and he said something about opening her to relieve pressure, and I didn’t know what that meant, but Enid was coping better than me, and then Tony arrived and I could let go of my emotions at last.

Eventually, I stopped crying. Dawn arrived, white-faced.

“What a bastard. More concerned about his fucking car than the woman he hit. Cunt! How is she, do we have any news?”

Enid brought her up to date, as well as she could. “They are operating, trying to relieve intracranial pressure or some such. She has a lot of breaks, but it’s the head they are worried about. We won’t know for a while, so we will just have to sit and wait.”

Sit and wait we dd. Arwel was over that evening.