Previously…

Walking out into the sunshine, I went down the path that led to the beach. Overlooking the sea was a garden seat, a favourite spot of mine. Sitting there, looking out to the sea, was Daddy. He must have finished his conference call. I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He jumped and then turned to me.

'Oh hi Sophie, I was miles away.'

'I can see that,' I replied, sitting next to him and grabbing hold of his hand.

'So, how are you feeling?' he asked.

'Better thanks; the bike ride took it out of me, but I'm glad I went, it sort of relaxes me.'

We sat there in silence for a few moments. He seemed to have something on his mind and I wondered what it was that was distracting him so much.

'Are you worried about something, Daddy?' I asked.

'What, oh nothing. Its just...erm, look Sophie, I have something to tell you.'

He looked distracted and sort of far away and then he turned to me, took a deep breath and said, 'it’s like this...'

And now the story continues…

‘Somehow the papers have got hold of the news about you.’

Suddenly feeling a bit faint, I sat down on the bench beside him, too shocked to speak.

‘Blimey!’

I didn’t even feel the need to tell Hannah to shut up.

‘We don’t know who leaked this...’

‘Dr Sawyer?’ I hissed.

‘She swears not. Anyway, we have already had to fence some questions. I have spoken to our lawyers and restraining orders will be winging their way to various media organisations as soon as possible. You are a minor and there are strict guidelines as to what can and cannot be published. I have interests in many of the media organisations and I will use that interest to protect you. ’

‘I feel sick,’ I said, ‘I will be ridiculed and laughed at. No-one will want to know me.’

He hugged me as I sobbed. It wasn’t fair!

‘It’ll be okay Sis,’ said Hannah, trying to comfort me.

‘What about school,’ I sniffed, ‘they won’t want to know me. I didn’t have that many friends there and the ones I did have will turn their backs on me.’

‘You forget that you went to a boy’s school and I assume that you won’t want to go back there, even if you wanted to?’

I perked up a bit; every cloud and all that...

‘That’s right, but where will I go to school?’

‘We’ll find somewhere that is accepting to your situation.’

‘I could have home schooling.’ I said hopefully, thinking of all the bike rides and lying in until mid-morning if I wanted and Brenda’s cooking and...

‘That’s not a good idea Sophie; you need to be with other kids of your own age and schooling you at home wouldn’t get the interaction that you need. Look, I’m sure that there are schools out there that are accepting and that’s what we’ll look for, both of us; we are in this together remember.’

‘Aawww.’

In my mind I hissed, ‘quiet Hannah, I’m trying to think.’

‘What about Facebook, Twitter and other social media, not forgetting foreign news services?’

‘Once again, my people are looking into that, but anything appearing on any of the social media outlets in this country will be deleted. I do have some influence, you know.’

He smiled. It helped having him as a father. I wondered how much influence that he actually had though. Well there was no point in worrying about it though – not until I had to.

‘So, what happens now?’

‘The news about you will get out eventually, no matter what we do to suppress it, so the best thing to do is to release the news on our terms.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘We will, when we are ready, issue a statement and perhaps give an interview with a sympathetic newspaper about you and how your sex was mistakenly called as male at birth and that in fact that you are genetically a girl. We’ll get the medical people to come out with something that would be an acceptable reason for these rather dramatic changes that have occurred to your body and then you get on with your life. We’ll do that sooner rather than later, as the last thing we want is for idle speculation, gossip and falsehood to be broadcast.’

Later on that day my father and I decided to have a go on the quad bikes – well he wanted to do it and I went along with the idea. I hadn't fancied it, but it made him happy and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Hannah, being a wimp of the first order decided that she didn't like it and went off somewhere, leaving me to concentrate on not crashing as we bowled along the hard wet sand of the beach at a barely legal speed.

I enjoyed careering along at high speed, avoiding rocks and other hazards; it was quite exhilarating in fact. I was so pleased, as it was obvious that I would still have things in common with Daddy even though I was now a girl. I had wondered whether he would want to do stuff with me and it was nice that we had at least this and a few other interests. For example, he liked going out on a bike too, so that would be another thing that we had in common.

That night, in bed, Hannah and I talked about what had been happening. The conversation was internal as I was still worried that we might have bugs in our rooms, although we had been assured that that wasn't the case.

‘It would be awful if news of my miraculous almost overnight change to a girl got out in public,’

’Daddy will make sure that we are well protected. Anyway, as soon as he puts out a statement that you were assigned the wrong sex at birth, things should quieten down a bit. You will still be under the microscope, but it won’t be so bad.’

‘We mustn't slip up regarding you being still alive inside my head, they would put us in a mental home and throw away the key,’

’Daddy wouldn’t let that happen to us, you know that.’

We carried on like this well into the night. Eventually we fell asleep and woke up late. This was unusual for us as we generally got up very early. Hannah persuaded me to go for a swim before breakfast and I reluctantly let her take over as she did her back stroke and front crawl thing while I sort of zoned out a bit. Being in water still sort of freaked me out, especially since I experienced changing into a girl. My body was now far more buoyant than when I was in boy mode and it all felt rather strange and disconcerting. All those extra body bits including the buoyancy chambers that were my breasts, all made me feel very different in the water.

Eventually, Hannah had had enough of pretending to be a fish and we got out of the pool. After drying off, I put on my trackies, not very flattering but comfortable, and we made our way into the kitchen and went over to the toaster and popped a few slices of homemade bread in the slots.

Brenda was in the kitchen, over in the corner doing cookery things and the baking smells coming out of the oven should have carried a government health warning. I would have to make sure that I was around when it all came out of the oven. It was all a matter of timing...

‘Oh hello Sophie, I didn’t see you there; nice swim, dear?’ she asked as she pounded some dough into submission.

‘Not bad,’ I replied, my mouth now half full of toast.

‘Funny, you never really liked swimming like your sister…sorry, I shouldn't have said that.’

‘Why not, it's true? In some ways I still think of her as being with me. I think that she's looking over me as we speak!’

’That’s true… in a way!’

‘Do you think so dear? You look so much alike, it's uncanny. There's something about you now that you are a girl; you seem to be almost two people in one…that's silly talk. I'm sorry I spoke that way.’

’Should we tell her? You know that she's into mystical stuff, séances and stuff like that and she does that thing with that Ouija board that’s downright creepy.’

Brenda was almost like a grandmother figure to us. She had been with the family since well before we had been born and I knew that Mummy and Daddy trusted her and I suppose we all loved her as a member of the family.

‘We’ll talk about it later; it's a big step, telling anyone, but maybe she is the one to tell, I hate all this secrecy.’

All the while, Brenda continued to do her cooking thing, unaware as to what we were saying. She did stop for a few moments and looked at me with a puzzled look on her face and then she just shook her head and then continued on.

‘Sophie, I’m a bit tired, taking over this body when swimming. It seems to take it out of me. I’m going to have a rest or whatever happens when I’m out of it.’

‘Okay, have a nice whatever.’

I experienced once again, that strange empty feeling when she went off like that. It was something that I didn’t like, but it was a small price to pay for having her back with me.

I wanted to see Daddy, as I never saw enough of him and it was nice to have him home, even under those strange circumstances, but I noticed that he was busy in his office sorting out the fallout of the media problems caused by the leak about my condition. With a brief wave, I left him to it and went upstairs and into my bedroom and then, for lack of anything better to do, lay on the bed. Looking up at the ceiling, I once again went over what had happened to me and how my world had been turned upside down.

It was obvious that life was getting weirder and weirder for me. Over a short period of time I had turned into a girl, found my sister living inside my head and then, some scumbag had told a sleazy newspaper about me and what had happened to my body. I suppose it was naïve to think that my secret would stay a secret for ever, but I would have liked some time to get used to all that was happening to me before the whole world was told about it.

Was I happy that I was now a girl? Yes I was, now that I was getting more used to the idea. The only objections that I had were that my changes had happened very fast and that I was scared that I might have some sort of cancer. The latter fear had been dispelled as I was now considered to be a normal (normal!) Healthy girl.

Was I pleased that Hannah was with me? Yes, of course. I no longer felt alone and although our being together like this was strange in the extreme, I still liked it and I knew that I would never be lonely again as long as she stayed. My only fears were that she might be snatched away or that this was only temporary; but thinking like that got me nowhere and I had to assume that she would always be with me.

All this heavy thinking was giving me a headache and I was soon bored with it, so I had a shower, as I could still smell the chlorine from my swim. I took the opportunity to wash my hair and then use some nice conditioner on it. The hair products were the ones that my mother had used and the smell of my hair afterwards, always reminded me of her and made me ache to see her.

After the shower, I felt much cleaner and fresher. After putting on my bra and panties, I walked into Hannah’s room and over to her wardrobe. I found a nice lemon sundress that I liked and I slipped it on. There was pair of white strappy sandals that went with the dress, and so I sat on Hannah’s bed and put them on.

I wondered whether I should call Hannah and wake her up or whatever she did in zone-out mode, but she had sounded tired and I wondered why she felt that way when, in fact, it was my body she was using and not hers; we'll it was hers now, but you know what I mean!

Going back into my bedroom, I went into the bathroom and brushed out my hair, then put on minimal war paint as I wasn’t exactly in clubbing mood (I wish!) and after a good look in the mirror, declared myself fit to face the outside world. By outside world, I mean the rest of the household. There was no way I was going anywhere where I could be seen by the jackals of the press...

‘Not bad, although the lippy is a bit wonky.’

‘Oh, you’re back then?’ I replied.

‘So it seems. What been happening?’

‘Not a lot; I did raid your closet for this dress though.’

‘I thought that I recognised it. We need to sort through everything and get rid of the dross.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why not, some of the clothes in there are old fashioned, out of date and too small for us. Anyway, we need to go mega-shopping when we get a chance; oh and to the salon for intensive hair treatment.’

‘I know, my spilt ends have spit ends.’ I sighed, ‘so much to do and so little time. But we are not moving from the house until it’s safe to do so.’

I heard an internal sigh.

‘You’re no fun, mind you, not going out means no bike rides, so every cloud has a thingie, whatsit.’

‘Silver lining.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘We could have a go on the static bike...’

I heard a groan and I had a bit of a giggle.

Not much happened for next day or two, or if it had, Daddy wasn’t telling me. I did go on the bike, but I had to use the swimming pool as penance. Hannah was getting much better at controlling things and I found that I could somehow back away and let her get on with it. It felt a bit like a dream state where I closed my eyes and thought peaceful Zen like things, while she swam with disgusting vigour and got water up our nose and in our ears.

It was on the second evening that we decided to talk to Brenda about what had been happening; it had taken that long to decide. Both of us were feeling the strain of everything. Luckily, nothing had appeared in the papers or other media and for that we were grateful. I knew Daddy was now about ready to give out a press release and get someone to interview me in a sympathetic light, but I was still waiting for that to happen.

That left revealing all to Brenda. We both felt that she would be supportive and not go all funny about what had happened.

Well, that’s what we hoped, anyway.

It helped that Brenda believed in the spiritual world, something that I thought was downright weird until all this bizarre stuff started happening. You might wonder why we didn’t tell my father about this before Brenda. He had going through a lot since Mummy and Hannah died and now that my (or our) little troubles had started, we didn’t think that it was fair to speak about it at that time. Brenda was the next best thing to a mother that we now had and we loved her. We hoped that that love was enough for her not to turn against us and scorn us. Let’s face it, even we couldn’t believe what had happened and we really hoped that she would, in spite of everything.

From my bedroom, I took a deep breath and rang her.

‘Auntie Brenda.’

‘Oh Sophie you haven’t called me that in a while.’

‘I know; look, are you busy?’

‘Just reading a novel; I can’t get my head around it, too many suspects. I think that the butler did it but...’

‘Auntie, can you come up to my room, I want to tell you something.’

‘You sound a bit worried dear; are you all right? Do you want me to fetch your father?’

‘No, I just want to talk to you for a bit.’

‘Alright dear, I’ll be along in a jiffy.’

I put the phone down.

‘Well, let’s hope that she’s not going to throw a wobbly about this,’ said Hannah.

‘You are the confident one Hannah; you seem as scared as me.’

‘Well I am. Supposing, just supposing that we are carted off to some funny farm and they shoot us full of drugs and somehow they extract me or something. I could just disappear.’

‘I won’t let them do that.’

‘How would you know? They could drug you up to the eyeballs and give you a lollypoptomy or something.’

‘You mean lobotomy.’

‘That’s what I said,’

‘No you didn’t; you said...’

There was a knock in the door.

I gulped.

‘Here goes nothing.’

‘Keep quiet Hannah, this is going to be difficult enough without you chipping in every few seconds.’

‘Sorriiie.’

Ignoring her sulks, I went over to the door and opened it.

Brenda was standing there.

‘Well, can I come in?’

‘Sorry Auntie,’ I replied as I stood aside.

We both sat down, me on the bed and her on the armchair. Thankfully Hannah stayed quiet.

‘So honey, what is it that you need to talk about. Are you feeling unwell?’

‘No, well not really.’ I replied, fiddling with my friendship bracelet on my lap.’Look Auntie, what I’m going to tell to is going to sound strange and fantastic but I need to tell someone and Daddy is so worried about things. I thought that I could tell you and then maybe you can help me decided what to do.’

‘You’re not in trouble, drugs or anything?’

‘Auntie, I would never do that. Look, can I just tell you what has happened?’

‘Alright dear; I’m all ears.’

I took a deep breath and just told her.

‘I know that this is going to sound fantastic, but you have to believe me that what I am going to tell you is absolutely true. You know that Hannah and are close?’

‘Were close...sorry, I won’t interrupt again.’

‘Erm, well for years Hannah and I had necklaces, friendship ones, one half hers and the other half mine.’

‘I remember, I have seen you wear it sometimes and your mother and father...sorry, I’m interrupting again. Do go on.’

‘After the plane crash, her half of the necklace returned to me in perfect condition, not a scratch or mark on it. Well...’

I told her everything; how my necklace was strangely warm to touch and what happened when it was fused with Hannah’s. I told her about my body changing and the fact that Hannah was living inside my head and how I didn’t believe it at first and then what Hannah did to prove to me that she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

To me it sounded mad, and I wondered what she thought. There was no expression on her face and I wondered if she ever played poker, as I just couldn’t read her thoughts.

Eventually I finished my strange, fantastic tale and I just looked down on my lap with my hands nervously playing idly with the joined necklace. I didn’t want to see the scorn and disbelief on her face...

‘Can I have the necklace for a moment?’

Looking up, I could still read nothing from her face. I handed the necklace over and she looked closely at it, turning it over, closing her eyes for a moment and then handing it back to me.

‘You have never been a liar Sophie and I don’t believe that you are lying now. I can sense something...I have for some while now. What that something was, I couldn’t quantify. But my feelings about all this are giving me mixed signals, if that makes sense. You know that have the sight; although it’s not as strong as it was when I was younger. Your father never believed in it, but there is a material man for you; lovely, but lacking in the kind of imagination needed to take a leap of faith and believe in something that isn’t solid and visible. Anyway, forgive me, but I need to make sure that you are not just imagining Hannah’s presence and this isn’t just some sort of wish fulfilment.

‘Okay, what proof do you need?’

‘Is Hannah with you now?’

‘You bet!’

I smiled and just nodded.

‘Is she able to take over your body?’

‘Sometimes; its hard work, but she does it when she wants to swim and I don’t. I sort of take a back seat and let her get on with it when that happens.’

‘Can she speak through you; I mean can she talk using your vocal cords?’

‘I don’t know as we’ve never tried that. We normally just speak in our head.’

‘Our?’

‘Yes, we share my body, so it’s ours not mine.’

She seemed a bit speechless for a moment and then with effort she pulled herself together.

‘If you can, let her speak.’

‘Over to you Hannah.’ I said as I just pulled back a bit somehow and let her do the talking. And it worked, just like some sort of switch. Before I knew it, she started speaking and the weird thing about it was that it felt natural and normal!

‘Hello Auntie,’ she said.

‘Is that really you Hannah?’

‘In the flesh, well not in the flesh, well I suppose I am...sort of.’

Auntie smiled at that Hannahism.

‘Okay Hannah, I am going to ask you some questions that I know Sophie doesn’t know the answer to. Can you remember when George was at school and you’re sent home after breaking a leg on the ski slopes?’

‘Yea, that hurt, my leg bone was sticking out and I fainted and...’

‘Yes dear, never mind that. Your leg was in plaster and I wrote something on it. Can you remember what that was?’

‘I think so...oh yes, you said, ‘I hope that I enjoyed the trip.’ That was quite witty for an old...sorry, elderly, I mean mature woman.’

Auntie laughed and then got serious.

‘While you were away at school, some time before the air crash, you emailed me to get birthday presents for your mother, father and George, can you remember what you wanted me to get for George?’

Hannah giggled.

‘Yes, that’s easy; I wasn’t going to see them before their birthdays so it was easier to ask you to get the pressies. George’s a was a book about swimming!

Auntie laughed for some reason but I couldn’t see what was funny.

‘I still have that book, I thought that George might have been upset to be given it and then I forgot all about it; although Sophie might need it now, more than ever. Turning to your parents, I always thought that it was strange that they both had the same birthday; obviously a happy coincidence. Anyway, what presents did you ask me to get for them a few months before you, erm died?’

‘Oh, Auntie, I’m not dead, I’m sure that you realise that by now. Though how I got to be here after such a long time being- erm, not alive, I don’t know. Anyway, their presents were friendship necklaces, just like the ones Sophie and I had. So I wanted to give Daddy one and Mummy the other. They were apart so often, I thought that it might remind them of each other, just like the ones that George, as she was and I had...’

‘Yes, as your mother was going to be away on her birthday, on business, I gave one to her and on your father’s birthday, he had the other one.’

‘Oh yes, I remember now, they both thanked me and said that they would wear them always...’

Her voice trailed off as I think that we all realised at the same moment that something strange was going on here!

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To Be Continued..?

Please leave comments and kudos...thanks!

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I apologise for the length of time between chapters. Real life can be a pain sometimes!