The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2308 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

It was during coffee that Trish launched her attack, I was in the kitchen bringing out the jug of coffee and when I returned she and Hilary were in deep discussion about waves and particles. I threw up my hands—once I’d put down the tray—naturally.

“I’m sorry about this, Hilary,” I said offering her a cup of coffee.

“It’s fine, kids have to learn,” she said and went back to her discussion.

What I perhaps should have said was, ‘She knows already, what she’s doing is learning how much you know.’ I got involved in something Livvie was doing for a school project about global warming. While I was talking to her about things, I had to feed Lizzie and Hilary’s eyes came out on stalks.

“She’s your baby? I thought she was um—Jacquie’s.”

“She’s actually your predecessor’s but her mummy died in tragic circumstances and he’s still ill, so I’m fostering her.”

“If you’re feeding her, you must have been feeding your own baby earlier.”

“I was feeding Cate,” who hearing her name came rushing in and only Simon’s alertness stopped her crashing into a table leg. He snatched her up and hugged then tickled her. She giggled.

“I didn’t think you know...”

“That I could have children?”

She blushed as her response.

“You’ve done your homework.”

“It’s no big deal. There was a girl on my course who started as a boy. You’ve hardly kept a low profile.”

“Why should I?”

“Quite.”

“So why are you surprised?”

“About breast feeding?”

“I shouldn’t have been, should I?”

“Except most boys can’t do it, can they?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead—but now you say it, probably not—though I’d have thought a few of the right hormones and I don’t see why not.”

“Mummy didn’t take any hormones,” offered Trish.

Hilary looked bemused. “She must have, milk doesn’t just flow.”

“It can, and did.”

“Really?” she looked sceptical.

“Really. As you will appreciate none of the children are my biological children.”

“There are lots of adopted and fostered children, someone has to look after them why not you?”

“Exactly. Little Cate here was left to me in a friend’s will.”

“What?”

“It sounds strange but her mother knew she was dying and left a note for me to look after her.”

“How sad.”

“It was dreadful.”

“Mummy an’ me found her,” said Trish and I hoped she wouldn’t say anything else.

“Look, Hilary,” said Julie joining the conversation having sat quietly through it so far toying with her phone, “Mummy is special.”

“I’m beginning to see that.”

“No, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

I groaned inwardly, please don’t say anything about the blue light.

“I haven’t?”

“No, speak to me in a year’s time and you’ll understand.”

“Why can’t you tell me now? I mean I know she’s special, she used to be a boy and now she has a dozen kids, as well as being a beautiful woman with a good job who makes films and is worth loadsa dosh. Have I missed anything?”

“Oh yes, but you’ll find out, just stay close and watch what happens—things happen around Mummy.”

“What sort of things?”

“Just things.”

Hilary looked at me, “Like women giving you their babies?”

“That happened once.” I acknowledged.

“Twice if you include me, Mummy.” Now Livvie was involved.

“Your mother gave you to Cathy?” Hilary was astonished.

“My mum asked Mummy, that’s Mummy Cathy, to look after me for a few days while she went to speak to my dad, only they quarrelled—they always did, and he killed her and then himself. Before he did, he asked Mummy Cathy to look after me, and now I’m adopted, so she really is my Mummy.”

“That’s extraordinary,” observed Hilary, “you gather up needy children and give them a home—amazing.”

“That makes me sound like a children’s charity, I’m not. All of these young people have crossed my path, or their parents did and asked me to care for their children. They’ve all needed a home and a family, we—that is Simon, Tom and Stella, have been able to offer them one. I feel very privileged.”

“You’ve got your own children’s home,” Hilary observed, somewhat erroneously, Jacquie and then Trish put her right.

“This is not a children’s home, Hilary, this is a family and Mummy and Daddy helped me deal with the consequences of being in a children’s home for many years. I owe them my life and my sanity.”

“I was in a children’s home too, I got bullied and pushed down the stairs, Mummy helped me to walk again—she’s the best mummy in the world.”

“When I first knew Cathy, we dated for a while before I knew about her past,” said Simon. In some ways I felt a bit cross all this was rearing its head again, it was ancient history and I didn’t have to justify anything—least of all to a relative stranger.

Simon continued, “When I found out I had quite a shock.”

“What that she used to be a boy?”

“Cathy was never a boy, she just had a plumbing problem.”

“That’s one way of putting it, but couldn’t that just be a bit of delusion to make the truth easier to accept?” No one had asked that for a long time.

“No. You’ve worked with Cathy, didn’t you feel she was a normal woman?”

“Um—yeah, and I knew the truth.”

“The history you mean?” Simon fired back.

“Isn’t it the same?”

“No—I maintain that Cathy was never a boy except in a legal sense—she didn’t have a boy’s puberty, she’s never shaved or had a deep voice, she has a lovely figure—she’s a woman who had the wrong external genitalia, and that was sorted some while ago.”

“Okay,” shrugged Hilary, “It isn’t a problem for me, if it was I wouldn’t have come here, would I?”

“You could have many motives for doing that, including just needing the job.”

“When I applied for the job I researched the place and discovered who the main staff were, papers published, facilities and so on.”

“Of course,” Simon agreed.

“I discovered Cathy was on the staff and while researching her, I found all sorts of things including that’s been involved in rescues and crime fighting as well as having been brought up as a boy. Were the two related, I mean the rescues and things—more boy stuff than girl.”

“No, she got the baby out of the burning car because she’s a woman, a man might not have risked it or even noticed.”

“Most firefighters are men, they go into burning buildings after babies and others.”

“They’re trained for it and usually have specialist equipment, Cathy heard the baby cry and wriggled into the car after the baby. She had to be rescued herself.”

Before Hilary could comment about causing two casualties when one was one too many, I spoke. “It was an impulse, I couldn’t leave a baby to die in a car if I could save it any more than you could. I heard her crying and next thing I was in the car trying to get her out. I released her from the seat but was then overcome by smoke and fumes and a man pulled me out still holding her.”

“So you didn’t need to be female to do it, that’s what I was saying?”

“I was the only one small enough to squeeze through the window.”

“But that’s a size thing not a gender thing.”

“Cathy also risked the publicity because she cared more for a child’s life than her own privacy.” Simon championed me again.

“Wouldn’t most normal people.”

“I don’t know, Hilary, I really don’t know.”

Things went quiet after that. I wasn’t sure if the case had been made by either side and I wasn’t sure what I felt about Hilary, perhaps she felt a similar uncertainty about me.