CHAPTER 10
“So…”

She turned to look at me, naked, absolutely unashamed, a slightly puzzled look on her face.

“You’ve obviously got, or had, a partner, but I can’t see her wearing clothes in size 14 as well as size 22. I know I have the odd binge and diet sort of thing, cycle, yeah, but this is silly. What…ah”

She shut the wardrobe and stepped back to the bed, lifting the duvet and swinging her legs back in.

“Rob, we both have work to go to, so be a good whatever you are and put the kettle on. White, no sugar, ta”

She blew me a kiss, and I did as I was ordered in dazed apprehension, bringing the cups back in five minutes later. She flipped down my side of the cover and nodded me into bed beside her. As I settled down she slipped her arms through mine and laid her head on my shoulder. I was still unable to say anything, wondering which way she might leap.

“Lover…Rob…if I have it right, you are keeping two things from me, so understand something. I didn’t meet up with you at the bird place to get into your knickers, yeah, just for the company, and you are good company. If you have someone you see, then, yeah, it’s a pity, but me, I’m not going to worry too much. My age, I’m happy with whatever, you know, yeah? Just…am I right about the other stuff? You a tranny?”

I had to fight hard, just then, to keep the tears inside, but she felt my trembling, and squeezed my arm again, murmuring into my ear.

“’S no big deal. Rob. I like my clothes, yeah, so if I do, s’pose a bloke would too. Does it get you randy?”

I had to breathe deliberately and slowly to get the answer out without my voice cracking.

“No, it doesn’t. That isn’t what it is”

“No? So what is it, then?”

“I crossdress, yeah, but that’s when I am at work”

“What? I mean, scuse me?”

I turned my head slightly to look aslant at her.

“Work it out, pet”

“Oh! Oh fuck…you poor bugger. And your girlfriend, wife, whatever, she know?”

“No. One of my bigger problems. Don’t want to hurt her, but, it’s like Mam; I can’t really do anything about this till she can’t be hurt. I can’t just come out with it, like a slap in the face”

I have no idea at all why I was suddenly talking so openly to someone I had only just met, but the need was there, suddenly, unstoppably, the need to open up and be seen as myself. Larinda had been right in that sense: we could indeed talk.

“She’s a Valleys girl, lives down in Hampshire, like, looking at going back home when her divorce settlement is finally sorted out. She knows I can’t go with her, so, well, I was thinking, let things die a natural death, you know, distance and all that. Her parents are a bit godsquad, and every now and again she gets the call herself, sort of thing”

“So you…”

She swallowed. “You intend to get…nip and tuck thing?”

I turned to look at her properly, and she raised her head.

“I don’t know, pet. I mean, look at me. How the hell could I ever make it work?”

“Yeah…and what a waste, as well. I like that bit of you”

I tried a joke, just a slight one. “Yeah, well, at my time of life it’s going to stop working in a little while”

She actually licked her lips and then grinned. “I dunno, seems to work OK in the right…hands. Only complaint I have is that I will have to be sitting on a sore fanny all day”

“Well, you shouldn’t have kept waking me up, then!”

“Darling, didn’t know if I would get another go, did I? Did you clean them off it afterwards?”

“Clean what off it?”

“The cobwebs from my fanny, yeah?”

That broke my mood, and I started to laugh, and then yet again it turned to tears. Larinda just held me, muttering odd phrases of comfort till I came back under control.

“So that’s it, then? You either change over or you step under a train, and you think either choice is a shit one?”

I looked at her again, unfairly surprised at her sharpness. She raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I had nothing better to do while he was out scraping his bloody exhaust on the road, so I used to read, yeah? I’m not a thicko”

“No, you are not. I’m sorry”

“So is it blokes you fancy, then?”

I looked away. “I’m actually gay”

“So I was right! You are a…no, hang on, if you are…shit, I’m getting a headache here”

Ten seconds later she spoke again. “You mean you’re a dyke, don’t you, just one that don’t need no strap on willy thing. Well, not yet, yeah? Please? I likes it. A lot, yeah?”

Mood swinging like a metronome arm. “Yeah, well, much more of times like that and I won’t need the surgery. It’ll be worn away”

She slipped her hand down there. “Not yet it ain’t; ooh, quite the reverse, it’s getting bigger!”

“Please…we both have work, aye?”

She looked at me very soberly. “Rob, just talk to me, yeah, just for five minutes. I won’t interrupt. Just tell me how I can help, if you want my help, that is? I’ll have breakfast while you go through it, yeah?”

So I did, from my first realisation, to my experiments at college, and the decision to grow the beard to make it easier to resist the need to be what I was born for, and my father’s illness, my mother’s disability. All through my monologue, Larinda had her breakfast, until I had to stop talking as I began to gasp. When she and I were finished, she came back up.

“Can’t seem to get enough of that, my darling. Sets a girl up for the day, it does. Here’s the deal: we don’t know what you are going to end up doing, yeah, but you do need a mate to give you a bit of oomph. Don’t want to know anything about her ladyship, but you’re good company, and I got sort of used to being in me own space, yeah. Be strange having someone else in there, all wrong sort of thing. If you want, I do what I can to help, you do what you can for me, yeah?”

The grin that came with the last phrase left me in no doubt as to exactly what she meant. She confirmed it with her next comment.

“Just don’t be in too much of a hurry to get it chopped off, otherwise I’ll have to find some other bit to wear out!”

So we drank our tea, and took a shower together, where she tried to raise the dead once more but had to accept my suggestion that she was bloody joking if she expected more, and then we were off to our respective offices. I saw her to the station, and as she found a quiet spot near the ticket barrier for a last snog, I asked her the question.

“You said you didn’t come out to Barnes looking for a shag, but what about yesterday?”

She grinned again. “What do you think? If I hadn’t managed to get you to shag me senseless, I was going to have to do it myself. Had half of Ann Summers lying on my bed ready, just in case. Look, I’m not mad, yeah, I’m not a slut, just, well, you are a nice…woman, Rob Carter, and, well, gotta be honest, I am really curious. Never met someone like you before”

She gave me another level stare. “I’m serious. You been shat on by life, I want to see if I can make it a bit better”

“Thanks, pet. And thanks as well, for, you know, not asking”

“Asking what, darling?”

“The obvious thing, really, give us a twirl, like”

“No, want you out of your clothes, don’t matter what they are, yeah?”

Once again, that Mercurial grin lit up the space around us. She leant in to give me a kiss before leaving, and as she pulled away she whispered “Out of your clothes and in me, yeah?”

And she was gone. I rode slowly off to the LVO to collect that morning’s file, and if possible avoid even smelling MAC, and as I pedalled I tried to make sense of the previous three days. Only three days, but I knew the feelings.

It terrified me: could I actually fall in love in such a short time?