I was rehearsing the words in my mind as I walked in. Supermarkets were so different now to what they had been when I was younger, so many more things to buy, so many more to dream of. I had been through the big Asda store with the lies, and now it was time for Tesco. Pretty…there were dresses and tops, skirts and shoes, boots and bags, and unless I could gather the courage I would walk out lacking them all.

Gathering what courage I did have, I approached one of the older sales assistants, a woman with cheekbones that made her look just a little like Felicity Kendal.

“Excuse me, but I need a little help. My wife, she’s sent me out on an errand, and I know absolutely nothing about this stuff”

She laughed. “So what is she after? It can only be undies if you are that embarrassed!”

If only…”No, she’s out of hospital, recovering at home after an op. What she is after is a long skirt, and what she calls a tunic top, something she can pull on which won’t press on the wound”

“Ah…do you have other shopping to get?”

“Yeah, some groceries, I’m doing her toad in the hole tonight”

“Ooh, I love that. Comfort food, yeah?”

I smiled back, as my panic eased. I could do this. “Yeah, touch of the nursery sort of thing. I come back and look for you?”

“Yes, by the desk over there. Ask for Jackie. Give me twenty minutes or so and I will sort her out. What size?”

“Sixteen, she says”

Sixteen, according to your website’s size chart. Please let it fit.

I did the rounds of the grocery shelves, picking up the moderate amount of food I was using to ‘justify’ the trip, and pushed my trolley back up the ramp, my cleats clicking like high heels on the metal surface. Jackie was as good as her word, holding up a long flouncy skirt in a dark blue paisley material, and a half-sleeved dark blue blouse.

“Easy care material, and the skirt is elasticated, so she can wear it high if she needs to”

She indicated a ‘waistline’ just beneath her breasts and I nodded. “Makes sense to me”

The girl at the checkout had only one question.

“Want the ‘angers?”

“No, she’s got a wardrobe full”

Everything went onto the bike, and I set off for home, riding just that little bit faster than normal. Once the panniers were off, and the bike in the shed, I was straight into my bedroom.

No. New clothes. Pretty clothes. Shower.

I realised as I stood under the hot water that I was running out of lies for the local shops. I had talked my way through the leg-waxing as a cyclist, at the first waxing place, and then, twenty miles away, I had become a swimmer, and that had dealt with my back and chest, and as a blonde I was lucky with my beard, but even so I would be pushing it to keep the same stories going at too many shops. Yeah, I’ve served him, wife’s had her appendix out.

No hysterectomy, wasn’t it?

Kidney, he told me…

It was so simple, really. Getting the first purchases gave me an idea of each shop’s sizing; then the internet came into its own. As it had for my breasts. The water ran down and dripped off my little girls, running down my smooth legs to my burgundy toe nails, and en route dripping off the end of that thing that ruined my life. Now, now I could make a start at buying some stuff off the websites. Such a pity about shoes, I would just have to hope they fitted. I couldn’t exactly walk into the shops and try them on, could I?

No. not a hope in hell of that one. The main thing about my forthcoming trip was that I would be cycling, and that meant cycle shoes, and despite all the ‘women specific’ hoopla the shops put out, a pair of cleated shoes was a pair of cleated shoes.

The sports bra went on, bought over the internet, and then the knickers. What the hell was ‘bridesmaid’s’ supposed to mean? A specific knicker for carrying the train of a wedding dress, or a particular cut allowing for flamboyant and gymnastic moves to catch the flying bouquet? Never mind; they felt nice, and they fitted after a bit of fiddling, and that was all I wanted. Three days to go.

The skirt was a delight for something so cheap, floating around my legs and flicking out with each step. It was definitely going to be a favourite in my wardrobe, and I was pleased with how small it could pack down. My camping kit was ready, my wardrobe was nearly there, and the tickets were on the corner table ready to be used. All I had to do was get through the passport hurdle and I would finally have the chance to spend a little time as myself.

I slept that night wrapped around George my bear, dreaming of days in the sun.

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Dover is a hole. There, that’s said. I dragged Happy, my Surly LHT, through the none-too-easily swinging doors and set off for the docks, the roads getting busier with each turn of the pedals. I was feeling particularly vulnerable as the lorries squeezed past, but there was a sort of cycle link to the police post at the dock, and a pedestrian crossing that allowed me to push over to the terminal building and a particularly vile cup of coffee before I started the job of preparing the bike.

I suppose I should introduce myself. Alexandra, Alexander, Sandy Carstairs. I am twenty five, or I was at the time of this tale, five foot eight, skinny, shoulder length blonde hair and a 36B just then, though I was hoping for better things to come. And no, I am not confused. Nor am I magically intersexed, or holding a magic coin, or about to be visited by some strange and perverse extraterrestrial being. I am just me, a body at an angle to a mind. Thanks, God.

There was a chill breeze coming off the harbour, which allowed me the excuse of wearing a fleece top over my girls, who were getting perky in the wind. I dropped all the luggage off and rotated the handlebars ninety degrees, as required by the Bike Express, and settled down in a sheltered and sunny corner to await the coach. Another pair turned up, a leathery old married couple on a tandem, and I half-watched as they began their own ritual of preparation. I had an idea erupt in my face as I watched them.

“Excuse me, are you waiting for the bike bus?”

“Aye, we’re off to Orange”

“Could you just watch my stuff for five minutes? I had a coffee, and…”

The woman laughed. “And you need the ladies’! Aye, we’ll keep an eye on it for you, if you can do us the favour of grabbing some teas”

She held out a fiver, and I smiled and waved it away as I took the steps into the other toilet, the one I knew should be mine as of right. Not an eyebrow raised, no screams of outrage. Amazing what unzipping my jacket had produced.

I returned with a cardboard carrier and three plastic cups to Ron and Sheila, as they introduced themselves, and we sat by our bikes as coach after coach sped by, until there was suddenly a double-decked blue and pink beast with trailer before us, and a pair of chatty Teessiders loaded and locked everything, and we were off, or at least as far as the waiting lanes, where we, well, waited. Then back on the bus, onto the Pride of Dover, off the bus yet again, and the mad rush to secure a seat in the café. Ron and Sheila grabbed a seat next to me, and before I knew it I was surrounded by three other leathery old couples. Sheila was persistent.

“Where are you off to, Sandy?”

“I am going to ride down from Perpignan to the edge of the hills, then come round the coast and up the Rhone to where you lot are starting. You?”

“We are all going a bit further, down to Barcelona in the end and flying home. Trains are a bit funny wi’ tandems. You not feel a bit lonely, going off on your tod, like? A bit unsafe?”

I smiled, pleased at how simply it seemed that I was being accepted as a girl. Whether it was their age, or whether they were just being oddly polite, I didn’t want to know. I would simply enjoy it while it lasted. The ship shuddered as it began to haul itself free of its berth, and I was off on my Big Adventure. I was beginning to realise one thing as I listened to the nattering around me: if I passed so simply and easily for a normal girl, why had I sweated so much blood in buying clothes under false pretences when I could so easily have walked into the shop with my girls out and tried the bloody stuff on first? Sod’s law; I always did have a problem with doing myself down.

I did the Toblerone-buying ritual, adding in a bottle of red for the night on the bus, finishing my random wander around things I didn’t need or want…make-up. They had a small, self-contained, utterly girly compact whatchamacallit with a variety of shades, and….a lipstick, and then, and, and…as long as I didn’t eat for a few days I should have enough money, but events had sort of ambushed me. It was all stuff I could never, ever have bought at home, but I was on a roll, and the final touch was a smaller watch from a cheap waterproof range. I was going to have to be careful, I was starting to build a momentum that might make it very hard to come back down to my old life. Even that thought was a sneaky one, with the implication that ‘old’ meant ‘former and not to be revisited’.

Cap Blanc Nez was off our starboard beam, and soon the announcement came to rejoin our coach. I wedged my little bundle of femininity into my backpack and, clutching an oddly triangular truncheon of peculiar chocolate and two (I succumbed) bottles of wine, I climbed the steps to the upper deck where I found myself once more on my own in a double seat, and laid out my overnight supplies of sleepmask, neck pillow, ear plugs, George and corkscrew. The bottles were, of course, screw caps.

That was the start of a confusing ride across a French countryside filled with oddities, such as a dry ski slope on an old coalmine spoil heap, and motorway service stations with truly perverse architecture. We hit the Périphérique, with a number of warning announcements, and as darkness was falling I caught just a glimpse of the Tower through a wall of high-rise blocks. One last comfort stop as we chatted and shared our alcohol, and then I settled into my reclining seat with my apparatus and tried to sleep. It was fitful, my face sweating beneath the eye covering mask, but apart from odd glimpses of nocturnal French towns I managed to get some sleep in the end, waking to a blaze of early morning sunshine as curtains were opened onto the Midi. We had stopped at Orange in the small hours, so Ron, Sheila and the rest of the leather crew were gone. I felt very alone at that, losing my first friends as a girl, and so quickly.

There were a number of stops to drop off other cyclists, and I used one of those to visit a toilet rather more roomy than the coffin set into the bus stairwell. That was where I did my first experimentation with mascara and lipstick, and I was pleased beyond words. They were just chemicals, stains I applied to my face, but they said so much more, said it to the world around me as well as my inner self.

We continued down the Autoroute, past a huge lagoon, and the hostess came up to have a chat with me at about ten AM.

“Miss, you are going to be the last one on board at Perpignan. Now, we can drop you off at the tolls, as your ticket says, but if you wanted to have a couple of days around here, we’ll be heading to a campsite on the beach after that, and you’d be welcome to ride with us. Not a bad site, and you could get some sleep”

“That would be lovely, thank you!”

And that was the first change in my plans. It was an interesting site, the usual French holiday-camp arrangement, with pools and a tunnel to the beach, but they had a spot of dirt for the riff-raff, where my little tent went up in less than three minutes, and the mat and the bag looked just so comfortable…

It was four in the afternoon. The beach was calling, and I was up for its summons. Control pants on. Long-line bikini-sort-of-shorts over them, string top on, and I took my girls out to meet their public under a slather of SPF three million or whatever the number was, and after a quick check on beard growth. After all, Spain was just down the coast, and many of the women there seemed to have better beard growth than me, and as a blonde I could cope.

Once past the rather grubby salt grass and endless car-parking strip, the beach proper was clean, with reasonably coarse sand dipping into a very clear sea. I spread my towel, threw off my sarong and sandals and made my way gingerly into the water. I don’t know about normal women, but for men there is a moment when those parts contact the cold water. It catches the attention of the swimmer; but I had forgotten that I had a foot in both camps, and when my nipples hit the sea I squealed.

Nothing for it but to dive in and get the shock over with. I pulled my swimming pool goggles over my eyes and plunged, and it was suddenly a delight, the sun slashing down through the ripples and fish of various sizes dancing away from me. My breasts ceased their slight tug at my chest as they rode the water’s support, and I kicked and splashed in delight. This was what I had come for. I decided there and then to spend two nights at the camp site, soak up the sun and see if I could get a girl’s tan lines. My mind leapt ahead: this was France; did I dare---no tan lines at all? From boy to girl deciding whether to go topless, in one day. It was too far for me.

I ended up dozing for an hour or so, the sun warm on my back, till I made my way back for a shower and a pizza at the bar, plus a little too much wine. The pattern of my holiday was set: ride, camp, swim, drink wine. Could life get better?

Two days later I set off on the tour proper, after a couple of day rides down to the edge of the mountains and long moments of peace watching the flamingos. My first stop was on an island, with a campsite tucked behind a windsurfing beach, and for the next one, at Narbonne, I decided on a room rather than canvas. Wind, heat, drunken Dutch holidaymakers at four AM, I needed a break.

It was a rough ride up through the middle of a lagoon on a gravel causeway, but it was at least a bit more sheltered from the sodding headwinds I had had over the previous two days. I popped out onto some rather well-made cycle paths near Gruissan, my water starting to run low, and I tossed a coin to decide which way to head: scruffy beach town or scruffy cathedral town?

The coin fell into a dog turd. I went for the beach, leaving the coin.

It ended up being a moderately long ride up a cycle path by a busy road, past a string of camp sites. Just as I was beginning to wonder how far it actually was to any real hotels, my rear mech stopped working. The cable had snapped, and with all the worry I had had in packing two wardrobes for the trip, I had neglected to bring any spare cables. Shit. Fortunately, the road was absolutely flat, so I rode it as a single-speed, looking out for either a cheap hotel or any sort of bike shop. After all, this was France, home of the Tour. Surely, every little corner hid a mechanic in a brown overall with a gauloise stuck to his bottom lip?

I spotted him in the distance, bent over, and as I came nearer the shimmer cleared enough to let me see a dark-haired man crouched beside a Cannondale touring bicycle. I slowed a little, and called out.

“á‡a va?”

“Non, c’est le pneu, c’est absolument foutu”

I rewound that. “T’as crevé?”

He laughed. “You obviously do not speak French that well, so I will excuse the rudeness. Yes, I have a puncture, and being a fool I have gone for a ride without the necessaries”

He looked at the bags loading my Surly and smiled. Something that I wished could be bottled and sold. Oh dear me, yes.

“You have a kit?”

He was wonderfully efficient, the wheel off and tube out in no time at all, and I watched as he ran his fingers around both sides of the tyre till he found a thorn.

“We have no water here to look for the hole”

He grinned at me. Oh dear once more.

“Watch and learn, my little English friend”

“Sandy”

“[Unpronouncable buzzy sound]”

“What?”

“Grzegorz. My family were Polonaise, Polish. Call me Greg”

He stuck out his tongue, and began running the partly-inflated tube past it.

“Ah!” He chalked the spot. “You try”

I held it up to my own tongue, and felt the little jet of air from the hole. “Clever!”

Patched, reinstalled, inflated, he knew what he was doing.

“Where are you going to, Sandy?”

“Orange, and then home”

“Not today, though.”

“No, now I am looking for a cheap but clean hotel, yeah? And a bike shop”

I showed him the broken cable, and once more got the smile.

“I can help with both”

Riding single speed is an art, but thankfully I still had my freewheel. The flat terrain helped, and after a few standing pedal strokes I was able to settle back into my saddle. We entered a typical French seaside town, all bars and restaurants with pavement extensions, and a shop window with the perfect summer dress calling my name, and in a small square was a collection of horrible four-wheeled pedally things around a wooden shed. Greg went in, there was some rapid-fire Foreign, and another fit-looking man came out holding a cable. Bish, bosh, two Euros later, and I had gears once more. The mechanic pointed at the Surly.

“Eenglis bike, non? Ze brake, she is on wrong side”

“Oui, il est un velo anglais, je suis un anglais”

Greg laughed. “You have just told him you are a man!”

Shit. “Where is there a reasonable hotel, Greg? I need a night in a proper bed away from drunks”

“L’Escale should do, end of the town by the bus stops. And later?”

“Pardon?”

He looked a little awkward, suddenly, which was sweet. “Where are you eating tonight? It would be nice to share some more conversation, perhaps not involving bicycle repair. Perhaps we could…?”

He was not only sweet, he was shy, I realised, and on top of that he had a backside that was positively edible. Did I just think that? I would have to be careful.

“That would be nice. Where do you suggest?”

“I have no idea, I am from Gravelines. We could see what looks like a good carte”

“How did you know which hotel to suggest, then?”

There was a slight flush. “Because it is where I am staying…”

Oh, you sneaky sod! “OK, but I have to do a little shopping here first, then book in, if they have a room.”

“Then I shall take a coffee while I guard the bicycles for you”

I couldn’t argue with that, and made a bee-line for the dress shop. What I had seen was in the window, a cotton print in orange and white that seemed as if it would hang to just above my knee, a fitted bodice and spaghetti straps. Of course, there was no way I could wear a sports bra with it, so once I was in the door, I used my broken French to explain, and they brought out a tape measure and some practised eyes, and I emerged forty euros lighter.

So, the ‘man’ who resorted to lies and multiple shops at home now walks into a shop as a woman and gets fitted for a bra. What was it? Was I just more comfortable abroad, or did I look better to others than I did to myself? Had the staff at the UK supermarkets actually thought I was really a woman in drag? Whatever it was, it felt wonderful. I stuffed my purchases into an outside pannier pocket, and then made my way with Greg to the hotel he had suggested, where they not only had a room but a garage in which to lock our bikes. Once unloaded, I did what I had to and then pulled on my swimming rig. Downstairs, over the road, across the beach and splash. I would never tire of that. I lay on the sand for a while afterwards, letting the sun dry my skin, then wrapped my sarong around me and headed back to my room for a shower.

Once out, I indulged in my new dress, and a new undergarment, and then spent a frustrating time trying to get my face painted in a way that made me look…

What did I want to look like? Shaggable? I couldn’t, I wasn’t equipped. Desirable? Oh god yes, but what I wanted him to desire wasn’t there. I realised I was walking a tightrope over a crocodile pit. Calm down, Alexand..ra. Stop wishing things that might not be there.

No perfume. I had no smellies at all. Shit. Neutral armpit roll on---shit! Ten minutes later I came back out of the bathroom somewhat smoother. There was a knock at the door just as I finished, my pits a little sore, and there stood Greg, and at that very moment I decided that if I wasn’t straight beforehand, he had just converted me. A slightly wrinkled and short-sleeved pale blue shirt over lightweight chinos, deck shoes, and blue eyes above a little forest of chest hair…once more, oh god yes.

So, there I was, having known a man less than four hours, and wanting to do STUFF that I couldn’t specify. Please, let him be a non-smoker.

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I woke the next morning in my own hotel bed, a little fuzzy from the previous night’s wine. We had ambled down to the street with all the cafes on, finding one that offered a reasonably cheap crustacean Armageddon for two, preceded by that red fish soup with all the red mayonnaise stuff, grated cheese and crispy bread. And a litre jug of pink wine.

Greg was a gent, his eyes staying mostly above my tits after the first few minutes, and we talked about bikes and drivers, the experience of riding in France compared to Britain, his journey (from Barcelona to the northern French coast and home) compared to mine, and food. Oddly, there are huge chunks of the conversation I simply do not remember; it was the buzz of being out as I wanted to be, recognised for what I was, and those blue eyes.

What was more important in my memory loss was the most vital thing of all. We had simply talked with each other. Not at, nor over, just with. There had been moments when one of us was hopping up and down with an “I know that feeling!” story, moments when we were finishing sentences in unison, laughter, that smile. I do know that we finished up in the middle of a karaoke evening, but fortunately I was excused on the grounds of being irretrievably foreign.

We walked back to the hotel with my arm in his, little bits of sand grating in my sandals. Sand in my sandals…I was laughing at stupid things, and he saw me to my room, kissed my hand and left me with no pressures beyond the tug of his smile and the weight of his gaze.

I gave my face the once over that morning, a little run over it with the razor to clear any downy hairs I might have missed, and then on with some shorts and a T-shirt (and a new bra) and down to breakfast. Greg was already there, and to my amusement and gratification, Madame had placed him at a table for two. I was a little hesitant about it, though. I had somehow been catapulted into more girliness than I had ever dared risk, and I couldn’t be sure it was the right thing. Circumstances were conspiring to pull me along, and Greg’s presence left no time to think. Was this right? Was it really what I wanted?

I answered myself quickly enough; I would be back in England in two weeks, and I would never have to see him again. As long as I was careful, it would work.

Coffee, bread, jam; not the world’s greatest feed for us serious athletes. I knew that before the morning was out, some patisserie would be calling my name, begging me to consume it. Greg was talking, though, and I had missed half of it in my reveries.

“Mmmfhh?”

“What is your itinerary, Sandy?”

“My what?”

“Where are you going, how long?”

“Oh, just along the coast to the Camargue and then up the river to Avignon and Orange. I get picked up by a bus there. You?”

“I will have a slow ride along the coast too, enjoy the sun, and then North up the Rhone, and then across the Bourgogne and Champagne to home”

“A long way”

“But it matches you for a while, non?”

It was now official, I passed far better than I had realised. I was being chatted up.

“What luggage are you carrying, Greg? You know I am camping?”

“I am the same, Sandy. And I know you are not riding as far for the day as I will be in the campagne, but this part of the ride I am as a tourist, a bum of the beach”

Definitely….”So, when do you leave here?”

“Tomorrow, there is a little bridge to the North, and then I will go to Agde by the little roads”

“Cap d’Agde?”

“No, I am not married”

What the hell? I was asking about nudism, and he was talking about wives? He obviously read my puzzlement, and smiled.

“Ah, you are talking about the naked people! No, the place is also famous for l’échangisme”

“Eh?”

“How do you say it….swapping wives? I have no wife, and I only take off my clothing for special people”

“Oh–who might they be?”

With a look of total innocence: “The doctor, of course”

And of course we had to spend that day together, as he took me up a mountain he called The Clape to a blue pool I would never have spotted, and then for a sandwich by the beach, and I had my costume, and a bottle of sun cream, and his hands were gentle as he rubbed it into my back, and…

I realised one important fact, and that was I had to curb my wine intake. If I got drunk, if I got foolish, I might get very badly hurt. That evening, over pizzas, I drank coke rather than the pink wine Greg loved. I passed it off as preparation for the following day, but I don’t think he was fooled.

I got a hug before bedtime, and slipped away quickly.

Breakfast was cordial again, and as I had loaded everything ready for departure I was sat in shorts and a London Pride top, my gloves and shades at hand and my hair tied back with a pink scrunchy I had found in a beachfront tat shop. Greg was in a very similar rig, though his shirt was from some TdF team or other. We ate, settled up and loaded, heading North from the hotel through the ribbon development of the resort and past a lagoon he assured me was called Cow Piss.

And a nudist camp. What is it with these Frogs?

“Mostly Germans…” was Greg’s apologetic explanation

I have to admit the next few days were a delight, as I had company I had never expected, and the miles of easy terrain became long conversations rather than long, lonely rides. I had come out to be myself, hiding in solitude for my safety, and instead I was being accepted in every way I had dreamt of. We worked our way through ancient Greek colonies and industrial fishing ports, eating fresh fish and delightful oysters, and one night after a long day’s ride through the Camargue, from a walled city past white horses and flamingos, I gave in to my inner drunkard as we ate at the camp site restaurant, and the walk back arm in arm became hand in hand, and then arms and waists, and my goodnight became a very serious business as he looked down at me with the tips of our noses touching.

He reached out to stroke my cheek, and that was when his hand stopped dead. There was never much of it, but enough to feel. He pulled back from me.

“We must talk, chá¨re”

In a swoop his lips met mine, and then he was gone.

Stubble. I spent the night sleeping fitfully, grateful he hadn’t just punched me, and in the grey pre-dawn light I was off on the road to Arles before he woke. Fuck, I had known it was too good to continue, and yet…

Somewhere, surely, there are men who see past deformities like mine?

The headwind across the endless marshy wastes was soul-destroying, and coupled with the heat it was seriously damaging the distance I could ride. Small birds were flying in circles, repeating one note over and over again, and it was how I felt. The wind was the brick wall I had to bang my fantasising head against.

No breakfast, and when the bonk hit I was lucky, at a tavern a few miles before the town. A gallon of water, it seemed, and a sizeable saucisson sandwich and apple tart hit the spot, and as the sugar did its work I started the grind once more, back in my solitary groove. The edge of the town was not far, and soon I was making my way through a maze of narrow one way streets. The hotel jumped out at me, an ancient stone building called the Cloister, or something French that looked like it, and they had a room on the ground floor which the bike would fit into, and I was too tired to care about the price. I grabbed some sandwiches from a nearby supermarket, locked my door, and sat and cried as I worked my way through the two bottles of wine that had somehow attached themselves to my food.

I almost missed the breakfast, grateful there was no full English fat-fest awaiting me, as I am sure I would have hurled at the smell. I wore my new dress, and set off after a long morning nap to see something of the city that held so much of the soul of Vincent van Gogh.

Scruffy, earthy, beautifully French, I could see why he had loved it. I walked off my hangover in the maze around the Roman arena, picking up a couple of new dresses and a pair of strappy heels. Bugger it, if I was being taken as a girl, then I would be a GIRL. I had so much wasted time to make up for, and the process started right here and now. I resolved, though, that I would be sober that night, and have a go at some hills for the rest of my trip. There was an Alpilline road I wanted to have a go at, and as I was back to being a single girl…

I spent a while in my room cleaning my face. The tears were a surprise, in one way, but I should have expected them, in all reality. The contrast between the furtive shopping of home and the simple and open purchases here, the sun warm on the slope of my breasts, was one thing, but it was Greg that kept coming back to my thoughts. He knew. All of that lovely warm tingle of being desired as myself, desired as Sandy-the-girl, it all evaporated as soon as he felt the stubble on my cheek. Fuck it, I was going to ride myself into the ground in the morning.

Breakfast with no hangover, but my eyes were still red as I ate my bread and jam, and sipped my chocolate. I loaded up Happy and set out through the crowded streets until I was on the long, level road towards Les Baux. For some reason I wasn’t making good progress, and then I spotted how a stream beside the road was dropping in little steps, and my perceptions swang a couple or ten degrees of slope. I was riding uphill, and the up became more and more up as the hill bit, until I was grinding my way up a line of parked cars with sweat dripping off the end of my cap’s visor.

Ladies merely glow, they said, but I wasn’t a fucking lady, and this bastard hill was pissing me off, and it was burning hot, somewhere over 100 Fahrenheit, and I missed Greg, and why had I come this way? I reached a turning left, then a car park, and I stopped for a breather and a look, and oh dear god what a view.

I looked with thinly-veiled contempt, as is traditional, at a group of Germans on one of those supported tours, where your luggage is carried for you, you just ride your hired bike up to where your little legs get tired, then climb into the bus. If I was going to be a girl, it would be as a queen bitch, I seemed to have decided. I left them behind, as I climbed much more easily into a baroque world of limestone spires, shot through and through with holes, until I reached a col, just as a racing snake of a French cyclist caught me up. He asked me, I assumed, where I was going to, and where from.

“Avec ces bagages-ci? Chapeau, mam’selle!”

And he was off, down the twisting descent to St Remy and my lunch stop. I felt almost ten feet tall again, complimented by a real cyclist. They filled my bottles with iced water before I rode on, and it was a shitty road, with a crap bridge where I had to ride on the footpath, before I finally reached Avignon.

Rue de something-or-other Agricole, a pleasant hotel with a courtyard to secure the bike, and a pub down the road that did English cider. Exactly the sort of crap I avoided like the plague at home, but it was something I needed just then, as I started to crumble in the face of foreignness, language and the loss of Greg. I realised then that in my rush to escape him, I was left with five days in which to cover less than thirty miles, the distance from Avignon to Orange. I spoke to the landlord, who was almost fluent in English, for ideas.

“You say you adore to swim in the sea, non? Why not go there?”

“Too far to ride, n’est-ce pas?”

“There are trains, ma fille”

“Yeah, but the bike causes problems!

“Leave it here, then. I have the room, you take what you need, non? A pretty dress, a maillot de bain, bikini, or---perhaps just the bottom, non?”

So, I ended up in Nice, and I could carry on and on, about shitty little dogs, and pebble beaches, and the wonderful sea, but all that I had each night were the tears that followed my acceptance that all of my life was a complete and utter waste. I moved from place to place in France, or I sat in my flat at home dressed to the nines, and it was all the same. I was running from place to place, and my body was slowly leaving me no choice but to stop moving. Terminally.

I thought of Greg, as I looked at the cliffs near the old port. I sat on the toilet, looking at my cock, and wondering whether I would bleed to the death I needed quicker by cutting the ugly thing off or by slashing a wrist, and each time realising that the balls I had never wanted were still insufficient to allow me to finish things as I had to. I watched the stupidly fashionable women of that odd seaside town and wanted to kill every last one of them.

I didn’t, though. I rode the train back, and collected my bike from the friendly hotelier, who kissed my hand as I left.

“The love is hard, ma fille. Do not let the bad love end the good life. I will look for you in the future, non?”

I look back at what I have written here, and I notice how the speed changes. With him, I dwell on the moments together. Having lost him, I rush to get home. What more could I do? Home, hide my new clothes, put on my man-suit and start hiding again. A future of no future. I rode through the vineyards on tiny roads that ran parallel to both the huge river and the busy autoroute, smelling the herbs and hearing the same odd little bird zitting as it flew in circles, going nowhere, just like me. Once again, time was compressing, and I was losing my rudder as the stream took me. Another hotel, in another French town, another restaurant for my evening meal..

“Excuse me, Miss? Do you speak English?”

“Er, I am English”

“Oh, hi! I’m Brandon, this is my wife Tiffany! We’re from LA!”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Bleached, both of them, tanned and fit and fiftyish. What the fuck did they want?

“Just, hey, we can’t read this menu, and we were wondering…”

Ah! I may not speak that much French, but I can read a menu, and after nearly three weeks I had learnt every permutation of the dessert menu in particular. It turned into a superb evening, especially when it emerged that the waitress was the wife of the owner, who was also the chef, and when I got lost on one dish, he came out to talk to us about it, in a mix of my bad French, and his atrocious English, but we got there, and my new friends were funny, and clever, and as I stood doing my face with Tiffany, she just asked who he was, and then she had to help me do it again, and somehow I just gushed. Wine, loneliness, whatever, she got the whole bloody story, and instead of killing the freak she held me as I wept, and then we sat as a threesome and my reality was ignored as she treated me as no more than a girlfriend.

“No more” I was caught at a real crossroads just then. Like the time with Greg, I was being shown what could have been, what fucking should have been if the world held any sort of justice, but there I was, a girl with a cock, and all I wanted at that moment, even as I laughed and flirted with Brandon, was to step outside it all and let the pain drain from my wrists.

The next morning, I did the tourist round of the Roman remains, and then pushed my loaded bike out to the toll booths to await the bus home and the closure of Alexandra’s life. It was odd, how easily I anticipated things. The Californian couple had helped, but not the way they thought. Alexandra had no future, and all I needed to arrange once home was a suitable exit.

I had two hours before the bus was due, so I stripped down to shorts and bra for the last bit of French sunbathing I would ever have. I had just entered that dream zone, where all you want appears in bite sized fantasies across the inside of your eyelids, when there was a cold splash on my naked back, followed by a firm pressure as the sun cream was rubbed in.

“You will burn without this” said Greg. He massaged my back as I shivered to his touch.

“You told me when your bus went back to England, Sandy, and when you attempted the escape, what could a man do but follow after?”

I lay beneath his firm and gentle hands, and then I felt him kiss my neck.

“I know what you are, but I also know who you are. I also know who I think I do not wish to lose, yes?”

I murmured through my folded arms, “But I am not a girl, Greg”

“Si, Sandy, si”

I thought back to O-level French. Si. Meaning ‘On the contrary, yes’

I rolled over and those eyes were there, blue as calving glaciers, and he was smiling.

“A girl, yes, who rides a bicycle, who knows about the wind against, and the joy of a good tent, and who is all of a woman where it is important? Am I perhaps ignorant of the English medicine, but is there not a way to make you happy?”

Oh god yes, and it did not involve medicine, but his presence.

He kissed me, properly this time.

He still does.