CHAPTER 19
I was a little slow to work the next morning, which was an office day. I stopped at the coffee shop next door and bought a large filter coffee, which they called by some stupid name or other, and along with that a double espresso, which I intended to tip straight into the large white as soon as there was room.

I locked the bike up and juggled the two increasingly hot cardboard beakers up to my room.

Door shut. Folders out from the day before. Start typing. ‘Electronic folders’: I remembered when it was all paper, paper and ballpoint. If things were to be typed, they went to the typing pool, where a bunch of middle-aged women turned a hand-written scribble into proper civil-service speak.

Middle-aged women. I realised I was still on a downer, the mess with Larinda and the hangover conspiring with my depression to render any and all references to femininity profoundly painful. By rights, by simple justice, I should have been one of those middle-aged women myself, but I hadn’t had the young girl bit, never mind the young woman, and suddenly I had an ear-worm: Eleanor Rigby. If I couldn’t have any of those, I could at least get the last bit of the song right. I sat and mused for a while as I typed, sipping the livener from the coffee shop as I slowly woke up.

Fuck it. I logged onto the internet just for a bit, just for a look around, not to do anything…deed poll. Statutory declaration. Name change. Wikipaedia, of course, had the thing in template form, and so with a bit of typing here and some cut and paste there, it was ready to go.

Gillian Marie Carter was what I had eventually settled on. It’s odd; we are given our names before we know what names are, and they seem normal, commonplace to us in most cases. People like me, though, we search for a name that speaks to us, that has our soul buried in it. Some, I know, simply play spelling games. Robert could have become Roberta, or Robina, but the first was too close and the second sounded like a blackcurrant drink for kids. I needed something that made a statement about who and what I had been, and for a moment I smiled, as the initials covered both the governing body of the doctors I hoped would be able to help me, and a car manufacturer that Larinda’s ex would no doubt have adored.. I entered the details, and before my mind could delay me pressed ‘print’.

To my horror, the ‘choose printer’ dialogue box didn’t appear, and I realised that my little attempt to cheer myself up was being printed somewhere in the building, god knew where. Shit. I hurriedly reset the printer, and got it out of the machine in my own room, just as Rachel came in. She held a bundle of paper out to me.

“Bit more careful, yeah, Gillian Marie?”

“Shit, thanks, Rach. I was crapping myself a bit there!”

“Well, came in handy, anyway. Wanted a quick word. Walking the corridors always looks better when you are carrying bits of paper, looks official, like. When do I get to meet this floozy of yours?”

“I don’t know, just now…sort of on hold, like”

“Ah shit, Jill, what did you do?”

I sighed. “Well, you will have noticed I’m a bit less hairy than I was…”

“Bit difficult not to, yeah?”

“Well, Larinda wanted to see me dressed a little while ago, aye? Before I had the trim, like, so I got sort of changed, skirt and that, and we sat and read for a bit together, all very companionable. Then, last week, she says, get dressed proper, so I did, and she came, and we…got friendly, and it freaked her out, I think. I don’t know where we stand, just now. I mean, I like her a lot, but…but I can’t stay like this for the rest of my life”

Rachel sat on the edge of my desk, swinging her foot.

“What do you want from a woman, Jill? Sex? Marriage? Kids? Back rubs?”

I sat for a couple of minutes asking myself the same question.

“It’s hard to put into words, Rach. I mean, I enjoy the sex, but I know that one day I am going to start seeing it as less to do with me and more to do with a bit of meat I never wanted, aye? Larinda…she sort of tried it out with me as, well, ME, and she got very stressed by it. But sex; no, it isn’t really about sex, and kids are out of the loop, like…it’s more, it’s more having someone to share things with, to wake up next to. Like when you see something nice, and you turn, and you say to them ‘Look at that!’ and they are THERE, beside you”

A pause, as images tumbled through my mind.

“Look, that first time, aye, when I got dressed for her, and it’s all hair out of the neckline, and beard, and we just snuggled up and did our thing, aye? That is what I want, and to have someone who wants that with and from me. That’s what I want from another person. No, fuck it, that’s what I want from a woman. Just to be there with me as I should have been, aye?”

“So you don’t want the sex, then?”

“Don’t be daft; course I do. Just, well, not that way so much, like”

She stood and stretched, which was an interesting sight, as she damned well knew.

“See? All I do is wiggle my tits, and you perk up. What are you hoping to do with this new woman? Did you give her my message? She free tonight?””

Sod it. “Hang on…Hello?”

The phone was picked up. “Dixon and Utley”

“Hiya, kid”

“How may I help you?”

“The boss nearby?”

“That is correct”

“Well, Rachel is asking if you fancy a pint tonight”

“I will check his calendar…yes, that date is free at the moment”

“Seven? Home Cottage?”

“That time slot is vacant at present”

“It’s the pub up behind the station in Redhill. Mock tudory thing”

“Do I get corridged?”

“Boss out of the room, then. Aye, as long as that’s what you want, what you want for yourself, aye? Not for my sake”

“I don’t know what I think at the moment, Carter, so let’s just talk, yeah? You eating there?”

“Rachel? We eating there?”

“Yeah, why not. Look, if we go there from work, we get brownie points, and MAC is out of the building first, yeah? Look, better dash; bye, Larinda!”

She was off, and I returned to the phone. “Seven, then, and we’ll eat, aye? You sure, pet?”

There was a very audible sigh down the line. “No, I am not bloody sure at all. I just know that you fit into my life too well to chuck out, but I am fucking confused, yeah? Look, see you later, lover, OK?”

“Yeah, will do. Bye”

I had finished both of the files by lunch, which consisted of a sandwich from the corner shop and another bucket of coffee from across the road, and I spent the afternoon making a series of phone calls trying to tie down traders for the next fortnight’s visits and chase up those I had left various requests for documents with. At three, I knocked on MAC’s door. It had to be done.

“Got a small problem with a trader…”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well, I think it’s gone past the 191 and pay us back stage. It’s a car”

“Well, just assess it”

"Yeah, but it’s the third one in as many years. It’s a Porsche Cayenne this time. Previous two were Beemers. Just wondered if we might be looking at a repeated misdeclaration penalty”

There was a little moment of slippage behind MAC’s eyes as he realised that rather than having a slim possibility of being AC to me, he now had the near certainty of being AFC to a trader, and for once I was actually travelling in the same direction.

“Fifteen percent of the 191 figure do you?”

“It’ll twitch the man’s sphincter, like”

“Then send me the necessary and I’ll run it past the surveyor. Oh, and Carter?”

“Aye?”

“You know I’m off in the next few weeks? I’ve booked a room in the George, there’ll be a buffet and drinks behind the bar, yeah? Pass the word”

Of course I will, but not the way you’d like me to.

The clock ticked round, and MAC had left the building an hour and a half before Rachel stuck her head round the door.

“Offski?”

“Yeah, might as well. Just log off, aye?”

“I’m done”

We left the empty building, the click of her heels echoing off the walls, my bike waiting in the locked parking area for my return the next day on foot. Rachel linked arms with me, and every now and again I felt her hip sway against mine.

“What’s the plan, Jill?”

“I don’t know, Kid, I really don’t. Everything depends on what Larinda feels up to”

“You really like this one, don’t you?”

“Aye, I must admit I do. She ticks an awful lot of my boxes, and I hers, but I don’t know if it’s enough”

I stopped her, just for a moment. “Look, I am not exactly normal, am I? You can’t make someone gay just by pushing a button, and if I, you know, things, then whatever there is between her and me is between two women, aye? Everything changes”

“Yebbut, you’ve always been a woman, that’s what you say”

“Aye, and my knickers have always told another story, and that’s the one she likes listening to. Look, it’s no biggy, if I have to live alone afterwards, then I live alone. Nothing I can’t deal with”

“You are a truly shit liar, Carter. Come on, mine’s a dry white, large glass”

“Why am I buying first?”

“Cause you’ve still got a cock, yeah? Straditional. Now which one’s…ah, she’s waving, I better let go of you. You get to the bar, I’ll take her order”

Five minutes later I had two large glasses of white wine and a pint of Fursty Ferret on the table Larinda had grabbed and Larinda had her hand on my knee.

“Larinda, Rachel; Rachel, Larinda”

They nodded to each other, and Rach took a hefty gulp from her glass.

“Right, Larinda girl, let’s get down to it. What the fuck are we going to do with this stupid tart? Oh, Jill, I brought those papers you printed…”