The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2342 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Stella came in after about ten minutes and I heard the car drive off. Her clothing was slightly askew and her makeup smudged. “Good meal?” I asked.

“Okay,” she shrugged.

“Only okay?” I said as much rhetorically as anything.

“That’s what I said, parrot face.”

“Ooh, get you.” I responded. We have these deep meaningful conversations.

“If you’re going to be silly, I’m going to bed,” Stella moved towards the door.

“I just wondered what the restaurant was like, that’s all.”

“It was okay, nothing special.”

“What did you have?”

“I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Uh, it would be the Italian Inquisition, or Opus Dei.” I corrected her.

“I had pasta, okay?”

“Stella, there’s about five million types of pasta and twice as many toppings, which one did you have?”

“Lasagna with ice cream to finish.”

“No soup then?”

“No.”

“Life is a minestrone...” I started singing, some ancient dirge by 10CC or something.
“What?” gasped Stella.

“Oh it’s an old song my friend Con, used to like.”

“Con?”

“Yeah, Con.”

“As in Conman?”

“What Conman the barbarian?” I retorted, knowing it was wrong.

“Who is Con?”

“She was a girl I met through Siân, in the same class as her.”

“Oh, tell more.”

“Not a lot to tell, we used to go round to her place and I suppose with my long hair, her mother thought I was another girl and we used to listen to music in her bedroom. Her dad had loads of vinyls and we used to sit and listen to them.”

“And do each other’s hair and nails,” chided Stella.

“Occasionally.”

“Honestly, Cathy, you were such a girl.”

“I know, it was the others who didn’t.”

“And her mother never questioned your identity?”

“I was introduced as Charlotte and then that was shortened to Charlie, so it was assumed I was a girl. I didn’t do anything to correct the misapprehension.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t, getting into a girl’s bedroom.”

“What d’you mean, Stella?”

“Nothing,” she blushed and turned, “I’m off to bed.”

“Thae same sort o’ thing happened tae ma Catherine, except we only found oot aboot it efter she’d telt us a’ aboot hersel’.”

“I suspect there are quite a few of us with similar stories to tell, Daddy.”

“Aye, whaur’s Simon?”

“I don’t know, he was waiting for Mitchell to go before he came into the drive, but he went ten minutes ago.” I went out of the back door and looked down the drive, there was no sign of the Mondeo.

I switched the kettle on, I hadn’t intended having more tea but as I was going to wait to see where Simon was, I thought I might as well. Tom sat with me and drank one as well.

He told me more about his daughter. Apparently the first inklings that Cameron wasn’t happy as a boy were when they had some friends round with their daughter who was roughly the same age and the two kids squabbled over whose turn it was to push dolly in the push chair. Daddy and Celia discussed it and asked Cameron the next day if he’d like a doll and apparently without any self consciousness, he said yes. So they got him one. He played with it much more than cars or guns and other boy toys, so from then on they watched the girlish characteristics unfold.

Then when some article appeared in a magazine about someone having a sex change, they found the magazine in his bedroom and when they asked about it he told them he was going to do that, have a sex change. That was when they sought advice and a year later Cameron became Catherine.

I felt such a warmth for this old man and wished my own parents could have had his sensitivity and compassion, but then if they had, who knew where I’d have been now, probably not here. I mooted this point and he smiled telling me that I was where the universe needed me to be. He reminded me that I was special, but no one seems able to tell me why.

We were talking for an hour when Simon came home. He tailed Mitchell, or so he’d thought until the man took him out onto the motorway and led him round in circles for the hour. He was furious, so was I, with him.

“Si, the bloke is supposedly trained to recognise a tail.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So he spotted you and gave you the run around.”

“He lost me on the return to Portsmouth, that bloody Beamer shifts a bit, though if I’d had the Jag, I’d ha’ stayed with him.”

“Except he’d have spotted you even earlier.”

“Maybe.”

I rolled my eyes and Daddy snorted. “You were on at me not to give the game away but haven’t you done the same?”

“It might scare him away if he knows we know.”

“It might also cause him to take some sort of action earlier.”

“Like what?”

“How do I know, Si?”

“I’m going to bed,” he said with a sigh and I knew he’d taken on board what I’d said even though he didn’t like it and might even disagree with.

I followed up to bed a few minutes later. It was after eleven—probably closer to twelve and I was starting to fade. Once in bed, he said, “I messed up, didn’t I?”

“I can think of worse things.”

“What like shooting him?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t imagine you shooting anyone, Si.”

“Nor me, have to get you to do it,” he said and blushed.

“I’m trying to give up such activities, darling.”

“Of course you are,” he said pulling me very close to him.

“I’m not proud of having shot someone, Si. In fact, I wish almost every day that I hadn’t.”

“I can understand that, but if you hadn’t you could be rather dead and so could several of the kids.”

“That’s the only thing which makes it tolerable. How people cope in the armed services, I have no idea, with bullets flying all over the place. Must be awful.”

I waited for a response and got one eventually—a long snort followed by him snoring. One of these days...

I had that dream again where they shoot at us and they drive into the loch and suddenly emerge again to come after me. I shoot them again and this time see body parts go flying and see blood on my hands. I think the symbolism is pretty obvious but at least this time I didn’t wake up screaming, just sweaty and with heart beating nineteen to the dozen. I went for a wee and saw it was after two. Thankfully, I slept after that though morning came too soon, as it tends to these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TriugW72QZY