CHAPTER 2
She sat there stunned for just a few seconds, in hindsight, but as people bustled past us laden with trays and tripod-mounted telescopes it felt like a month.

Long enough to have second thoughts: could I pass it off as a joke, ‘Gotcha!’ called as she sat in shock? No. Fifty-three years of pain had to end, had to finish today.

Who the hell was I fooling? I couldn’t end the age of torment by admitting what I was, for I was still left with my life, my history, and the simple fact that I weighed eighteen stone and was built like the prop I had been for so many years. The skinny student with the terrific legs had drowned in my father’s genes so many decades ago I could hardly remember him. Her. Me.

Karen looked down at the table for a slow count of six, then looked at me with a tear starting to form in her right eye.

“Shit, Rob, who else knows?”

Breathe again. “Nobody. You are the first person I have ever, ever told”

“When did you realise this, mate?”

“When I worked out how to control my bladder, I think.”

“Sod it, Rob, why didn’t you say earlier?”

I clamped down on my own emotions, hard. This was a public place, and a bull-necked, bearded and bald bear of a man was not someone to be seen crying over their hummus and roasted red pepper on malted wholemeal sandwich, or whatever pretentious crap it was.

“How, Karen? How could I? My Dad was not exactly the sort to understand, was he? And my mother? Neil has had enough shit from both of them. There was no way I could cope with any of that…”

She squeezed my hands. “So why now? Why us?”

“Well, actually, it’s ‘you’ at the moment. I have a list of folk I like to think I can trust, but it’s the way things worked out. When I suggested this little meet, I didn’t know who would take me up on it. Just glad it was you”

“Yes, but why now? Why suddenly make waves?”

I gave her a flat look, I could feel the tension leave my face as everything sagged.

“Because I need to do something before I die, love”

“Oh come on, you’re only fifty-----oh. You have been thinking about it, haven’t you?”

“Look at my choices, Kaz. I have two options: stay as I am and continue to die slowly, or take the plunge as a fucking ugly woman in a bad wig, and get so much shit, more than I could probably be able to bear. Shit, that’s the third option, like. Step off the bus”

“No. That’s not what you are thinking, is it? I know you, you’d just go and do it, not talk about it. I’m just, still, surprised you have suddenly come out with this now, so late”

I laughed, and it was almost natural. “I have spent a lot of time on the net, that shouldn’t surprise you, and it made me giggle when I read it, how some of us go through life trying to be the best Real Man we can, and then, it gets late, we see the last train leaving…desperation, love, pure despair. I want to die as myself, and it’s getting to the point where I am losing that option. Can you see that? Here, take the napkin”

She was crying gently then, dabbing at her eyes with my paper serviette.

“It’s just so fucking unfair, love. What have you done to deserve crap like this?”

I sighed. “Just an illness, sort of thing. Not saying I am sick, it’s just like being born with a funny hand, or like James with his…problem. No karmic retribution, none of that crap. Shit happens, it happened to me. Look---I have no idea where I am going, like, but I needed to start facing up to this. Karen…thank you, yeah?”

She sniffed for a second or two. “Do I tell Terry?”

I sat and thought for an age or two. Could I trust him? Sod it.

“As you think fit, love. I will be telling a couple of others, I think, I have some people in mind”

“Rob, not too quick, yeah? Be safe, promise me that?”

I gave her a wry grin, as she continued to squeeze my hands.

“Look, lass, I am still alive, still here, must say something, right? Terry and the lad are just coming back, so I will leave it with you for now. And thanks. I do love you, you know that”

She cocked her head and smiled back. “I know you do, but it would never have worked, would it? I’m not into girls, am I?”

That set me off, and by the time the boys came arrived at the table our tears were of laughter, and Terry was looking puzzled. His wife looked up at him.

“Tell you later, darling. Long story, do it in bed, be better”

“I have a bed, I sleep there”

“Yes, son. We’ll make sure we are back in time, but first Karen and Rob are going to show us the wild birds. Right, Rob?”

“Right, Terry. Now, has everyone got their binoculars? James, I would like you to carry the bird book, you can use the index when we see something. How many types of wild birds have we seen so far?”

“Sixteen, Rob. Thank you for bringing me here”

“Never a problem, James. When do we go camping?”

“You got a tent?”

“I have several, mate”

“How many?”

“Oh, hell, let me think. Six, I think”

“But you can’t sleep in them all at once, so why six?”

“Ah, they are all different, lad, some are heavier, some are really lightweight for my touring. How many pairs of binoculars have we got today?”

“Five”

“And a telescope. They are tools, each one for a slightly different job, like, and you will see what the telescope is for in the tower”

“Tower? Like Mordor?”

“No, mate, just a place to watch birds from. You been watching the films?”

“No. I read. The films, they take my pictures away. I make my own pictures, in here, and they take them away. There are three books”

Every now and again the teenager in front of me would throw me off track. Each time we met, he would take up to half an hour to recognise my presence, and then suddenly I would be his best friend ever. I couldn’t walk up to him, I could never speed up the process; it was all on his own skewed internal clock. What I sometimes forgot was the simple fact that behind all his obsession with counting, his fascination with numbers, his slow, slow opening to me on every meeting, he was ferociously intelligent.

What a shitty hand to be dealt. In all the deepest pits of the depression that had unsurprisingly filled my life, I had relied on people like James to show me that I didn’t have it so bad. The day I had sat on my kitchen floor, naked from the waist down, my best kitchen knife in hand as I looked at the piece of meat that had held me back from life so long, that day I had thought of people like James, looked at my life and decided it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. That had always been the key to survival. The knife went away that day, as the pills had usually done, and I carried on.

It was always the sameness that brought on the despair, though, the idea that life would never change, could never change, that the weight of my masculinity would press down on me even in my grave. So think of James…

There was a small treasury of birds to spot from the Peacock Tower, including some snipe. James was up to a human speed now.

“Sewing machine, that’s my mnemonic, Rob”

“Why, James?”

“Like sewing machines, up and down with their beaks, yeah? Sewing snipe”

“Good one, mate. And the wheatear?”

He actually giggled. “I think they changed the name, so my mnemonic is really their real name and not a code. White arse. Is it a mnemonic if you translate it, Rob?”

Terry was standing behind him with his hand over his mouth, but his shoulders were shaking as he tried to hold the laughter in. I smiled at James.

“Lad, whatever way helps you to remember is good. Just try not to use the word arse in front of girls, OK?”

For some reason, Karen brayed with laughter at that, and I got a sly wink from her.

April the seventeenth. I decided to add it to my birthday list. For good or bad, it was out and running, my secret fox, and I hoped there would be nobody who felt the need to shoot it.

Alive. I was alive.