CHAPTER 19
Once refuelled, we set off for the lumpier part of the ride, and it was the drag by Turner’s Hill that stretched the group out. We gathered once more at the crossroads before some rolling stuff took us to a little cluster of greenhouses.

The sky was paling, and mist was closing in around us. The leader gave his little speech again, about gathering at the top of the next hill, the infamous one that had surprised some Tour de France riders a few years before.

“We gather together at the top, and there we shall pay homage to those who summit in good style. I f descending for another go, remember to do it with caution as others will still be on the way up. On the other hand, the descent to Brighton not actually will be rapid, and there is a speed camera, whose activation remains the goal of hardened and proud Friday Nighters. Onwards and upwards, and then downwards for breakfast”

Ginny had a word with him, explaining our own plans, and people were off. Ditchling Beacon is a steep little bastard, but it has false summits, and there was no way I did it in style, but it got done. Dennis passed me three times, once downwards, the sod, but Ginny just rode steadily up with me and talked as if there was nothing going on beyond a gentle training ride.

“What do you think of Steph?”

“I….liked…her…she’s…got…a…sense…of…hum…our”

“You’re getting there, Price! Fitness coming back. No fry up, though, not even today. We’ll peel off after the camera”

Finally, after the horse sign, I topped out, cameras flashing away and scattered cloud pink above a carpet of mist as the sun rose. The great man was into his stride again, as soon as the tail-enders had brought up the last of his flock.

“Well done, and stylishly, every Man and Woman Friday. Next month we adjourn to the pearl of Essex, Southend on Sea, by way of Bread and of Cheese, but for now it is a descent, as leisurely as you desire, and breakfast on Madeira!”

Ginny led us off after the speed camera, which didn’t flash for us, and eleven bodies arrived at their new house in varying states of tiredness. Fritz and Ffenela, their cats, were doing the usual feline display as we clattered in after stowing the bikes. Mums, we haven’t been fed for at least a month and you have neglected us most cruelly. Scratching, headbutting and general pampering may redress this for today, but we have long memories. As Kate sorted the cats, Ginny started pulling stuff out of their fridge as the kettle started to warm up. Samosas, couscous, cake, bananas, more cake, a variety of odd vegetable stew things. It was an odd meal, people shovelling the food in as they had odd conversations that stopped and started abruptly as they began to nod off and then woke with a jerk of the head. Eventually, it got too much, and the girls started to hand out mats, blankets, duvets and so on as people found chairs and odd bits of floor to curl up on.

An odd housewarming, where the celebration, as such, had been the ride down rather than in the house itself. I dozed off on a camping mat under a spare duvet as others snored and rustled around me, and savoured that feeling I had had, at the very beginning of the ride, at the airport, that life was there to be taken.

The girls woke us all up around noon, so we didn’t end up wide awake for Saturday night. Lunch was porridge….I kid you not. People drifted steadily away as the day moved on, until it was just Dennis and myself with the girls. Kate was curled up again on her woman’s lap, wrapped in a huge dressing gown.

“You two riding back, then?”

I snorted. “Dunno about the king of the mountains here, but I am taking the train. Then it’s housework, as I think my maid is on her day off”

“Weekend, Price!”

We said our goodbyes at the back door, cats twining around our feet, before Den and I clipped in and rode through the busy Saturday crowds to the station, just catching a Three Bridges train before it pulled out. He was thoughtful.

“Such a pity….she’s just my sort”

“What, Ginny? Apart from being gay, that is!”

He grinned, and I had to clamp down again.

“What about this dance thing then, Adam? You really up for it?”

“Oh yes, though I am guessing there is a stitch up somewhere. Far too many knowing looks and little grins for my liking. What about you? You dance?”

I chuckled a little, just to myself, asking a man to dance... Den grinned once more.

“Oh yes, best sort, get to dance properly with lasses! Never could get into that solo shaking thing”

“Do you play?”

“Can’t even sing, pal. I dance OK, but music is something I listen to done by other people. Hang on, we’re coming up to ours. Fancy a pint tonight?”

“Er, no, I can’t”

H gave me another of those steady looks, and I saw ideas scrolling though his head. As we pushed the bikes along the platform he murmured “You dry now?”

I laughed quietly. “Butt, wrong end of stick! I am losing weight, not recovering from being an alcy. Ginny would kill me if she knew I was round a pub”

“Perhaps I don’t fancy her, then if she keeps a man away from his ale! Cruel and unnatural, as the yanks would say”

“Cruel and unusual, I think”

“Na, marra, unnatural, women keeping men away from beer is far from unusual”

I liked this man, his openness and sense of humour, and I had to keep reminding myself of what I was to him rather than react as I felt I wanted him to be. Ginny’s voice muttered away in the back of my mind. Be careful.

“Well, the pubs in town are a mix. There’s a couple of half decent ones, including a Wetherspoon’s place, on the old High Street, but there are also a lot of tart bars and cattle markets.”

“All fanny pelmets and tart fuel?”

“Exactly. Good tapas bar up the road, though”

“Ye gods, lad, you spend too much time with women! What’s wrong with a good curry?”

“Oil and fat and rice, Den. Do not tempt me, please. This is hard enough work as it is!”

“How much weight have you lost so far, Adam?”

I sighed. “Best part of three stone, butt, and it would go back on just as quick”

“Well, I shall have a pint or three for you, then. And a curry”

We were at the station entrance, and he gave me a quick hand shake before we went our opposite ways, leaving me more confused than ever.

I didn’t see him till we were back at work, after Ginny had moved back in. The nightmares had been gentle with me, and she noticed the first night. In the morning, she started to badger me gently.

“You’re past the tipping point now, aren’t you? Life is for living, and all that”

“Guilty as charged, girl” I smiled. “Realised on the ride. There’s just too much out there for me to just throw it away.”

“And what are you going to do, Annie?”

That name pulled at me. “What do you mean?”

Ginny leant forward. “I don’t want to tread on Sally’s toes, so I have given her a ring and she’s on her way round. I have questions I want an answer to, but I don’t want to fuck you up by asking them. You crossed that point, I need to know where I have to be next for you. The thing about being alive, mate, is that life brings changes. I want an idea of what they might be.”

She got up to answer the door, and Sally came into the living room.

“Bit unorthodox, isn’t it, coming round like this?”

“Ah, I am flexible, Annie, and funnily enough I do actually care what happens to my patients. So speak. Dennis.”

Fuck me, I was blushing. Sally nodded.

“Sexier than Elvis? OK, that’s that one answered. You don’t mind Ginny being here? No? OK.”

She turned to Ginny. “You know how I take it, wench”

Ginny bobbed. “Yes’m” and scurried off to the kitchen giggling. Sal turned back to me.

“We have been working together for a while now, Annie, and I think we are quite clear on where we stand. Here’s the short version. GID. It comes with various names these days, that seem to change as fashion goes and comes, but I know what I mean. GID and PTSD. The more we have spoken together, the more see that the first is at least partly to blame for the second. We each have a reservoir of courage, a breaking point, and if you already have the first to fight against, the second gets a head start.

“So, I am at a crux here, Annie. You are, absolutely and clearly, what people call a transsexual. Thanks Ginny, we are just getting to the meat, good timing”

She sipped the tea Ginny had given her.

“Annie, you have a decision to make here. I will not attempt to influence you, merely spell out your options, OK?”

I had a suspicion as to where she was heading.

“The complication, now, is what caused Ginny to call me over. Your sexuality. The reason I am concerned is because it is the sort of complication that gets girls like you killed. I do not want another death, Melanie was almost more than I could take, and she was gay. You are not, as far as we can see. We need to sort out your options”

I looked down at my knees, past what had been a belly to die for, past where the unwanted deformity lay in my trousers. “What options could someone like me possibly have, beyond the one I am living and the one I nearly chose?”

Ginny, who had kept quiet up till then, reached out and took my hands in hers.

“Transition, love. Become yourself”

That set me laughing, and the laughter turned to tears, and as I wiped my face with the tissue Ginny handed me I looked at the other two women.

‘Other two women’. Oh fuck.

“Ladies, how the fucking hell do you expect me to pass muster as a fucking woman? I am a copper and was a rugby player, for fuck’s sake. I could never, ever be a woman”

Sally cocked her head slightly to the left.

“Firstly, you ARE a woman, I have just told you that. What you do about it is up to you. Secondly, you are young enough to adapt quite well, and thirdly you work in an area with some quite spectacular protection in place for people like you. Do you think Steph found it easy?”

Bloody hell….