CHAPTER 23
The next month or so passed slowly, and I never seemed to be left on my own. We were either working the markets, collecting stock from wholesalers or sitting in the warm, usually as I ploughed through my schoolbooks. The more I studied, the more I wanted to do more. Carol turned out to have a deep knowledge of geography, which was a surprise, while Peter added his little insights to my history lessons.

Lorraine spent a lot of time mirroring me, as she worked through a series of medical texts, a notebook beside her. I brought her a cuppa one day, and started to read over her shoulder, which left me lost in double-quick time.

“Reading up on what to do with you, love. Or perhaps better said as do FOR you. So much to get my head around, if we start the magic drugs. We need to be sure it’s right for you, but there’s a lot to do, and some of it is bloody impossible”

Something must have shown in my face, because se reached out and pulled me to her, one arm around my waist.

“I know, Debbie. I know what you’ve said, and I can see how it works for you. Never been a boy, have you?”

I shook my head, not trusting my mouth for the right words, and she squeezed me once more.

“I watch you, love, not just around here, but with Gandalf’s two. They can both see the girl. So can… So can Carol. She asked about you last week”

“And?”

“She was straight to the point, love”

Lorraine turned in her chair, so that she could part her legs and draw me to her with both arms.

“She asked when you had stopped pretending at being a boy, Debbie”

Once again, my face must have betrayed me, for she shook her head, continuing to fill the space my loss of words left empty.

“I was open with her, love. Not about times and places, OK? But she wanted to know what she could do to help”

Something in her tone opened my mouth.

“She can get the drugs I need?”

“No, love. I have them. Been doing that for a while now, and Phil has got the others. He has, um, contacts. It’s other stuff, stuff you need to understand. There’s more than one side to this, and it’s done my head in studying it. So this is how it works, and please just listen. You make hormones in your body, and at your age that steps up several notches. If you’re a boy, they make you more like a man, and for girls, well, you know what happens there”

She paused for a few seconds, then resumed in a much softer tone.

“I think you’ve found out far more than most kids know about things like that, love, but not a conversation for right now. What we have to do is give you some stuff that stops you becoming any more of a man, and then some other stuff that lets the girl grow. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? There’s just one problem, and that’s checking it works properly, which would usually mean blood tests. This can wreck your liver, among other risks, love”

Once again, she paused, then smiled.

“Carol read you like a book, girl. She said some stuff about your soul, and karma, all that stuff she believes, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that she has a friend in the haematology lab, the bloods place, in the hospital, and Peter’s little business is going to help there”

Once again, she read my face rather than my words, and grinned, far more naturally.

“Agriculture, love. Peter has an indoor garden somewhere we don’t talk about, and his crop is rather popular. That is all you need to know. Anyway, this is going to mean needles every so often, but I know how brave you are. Haven’t met anyone with more courage. I just need you to think very carefully about this, be absolutely sure it’s what you want”

“I am sure!”

“No, love. Not right now. You go away, and you think about it for at least three days, and then we talk. Okay?”

I just nodded, and she handed me a couple of sheets of paper covered in her handwriting.

“Summary of stuff is on here, love. You read this, then you make up your mind properly, informed consent, yeah? I want to be sure this is for you, and not just to please us. Once you’ve given the answer, I’ll bring Carol over, and we’ll see what she thinks. Now, what are we doing for tea tonight?”

The three days passed too slowly, but they ended, and I found myself sitting in the kitchen as Carol measured various parts of me before producing a syringe and a sealable bag, together with a small bottle and some cotton wool.

“Lorraine and I have talked, Debbie. You know that. I have also looked at you, especially your aura, and there is no boy there at all. Do you wish us to help you grow in body as well as in spirit? It can be nobody’s choice but your own, but remember that dharma, right action, right thought, brings rewards through karma, and so the cycle continues. Sore you ready for this?”

Once more, the words weren’t there, so I simply offered her my arm. The pain was minimal, the quantity taken was surprisingly small, but Lorraine’s smile was anxious.

“We need to establish what they call a base line, love. Find out what your natural levels are like before we start to alter them. That will stop bleeding in a few minutes, and then you can help get tea ready. Carol’s brought curried stuff over”

No real drama, no fuss, but my real life was suddenly a lot closer to me than it had ever been before. The curried stuff was nice, if a little hot in some dishes, Ken’s smile when he returned from the wholesaler’s was warm, and after two days, the only evidence on my arm was a small bruise. Such a tiny sign of so huge a thing.

It was at the end of January that we started the real process, with a couple of injections, which did hurt, and a fortnight later, Carol took more blood. When I look back at those events, I find myself giggling. Two qualified nurses bypassed all official medical channels, treated a minor in a way that would be considered profoundly unethical, bribed a technician with rather illegal homegrown, ahem, herbal substances, and based their actions on the word of a very young child and a rather odd version of Buddhism.

Things were rather different in the days before the internet and computerisation—there were gaps in the world where people could live. I was able to move across from one path to another without needing a ticket, nor for it to be checked by some nebulous authority, and my life was at last heading where I needed it to go.

February was on us at last, and that meant the travelling year wasn’t far ahead. Ken spent long hours doing things to the van and trailer, which involved running the engine and checking what it sounded like at various speeds, or ‘revs’, as he called it.

“Hop in, duck. Need your help with this bit!”

He helped me into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open as I settled myself.

“Seat slides forward and back, duck. Always set it so you can reach the pedals easily. You don’t need to see over the bonnet for this. Now… Three pedals, and while I always call that one the throttle, it helps if you say ‘accelerator’, because that one’s the brake, and this is the clutch. ABC, duck. Easy to remember it that way. Now, this is the gear lever. Used to drive a Scammell in the army, and that was double-declutch and… Ignore me. Rambling on, I am!”

“Led Zep song, isn’t it? All Lord of the Rings stuff?”

“Ramble On, yeah, it is. ‘It was in the darkest depths of Mordor… Gollum and the Evil One…”

He was almost singing for a minute, than shook his head, with another sunburst of a grin.

“Getting you properly clued up, duck! One of these days we’ll see if there’s a gig on, proper big name one. Bit less mud than a rally. Now, this is how you start her up…”

We (I helped) had the van in fine form in short order, which is when I discovered what an MOT is, conducted in a garage on an industrial estate out by a place called Four Ashes. We may have been living to one side of convention, but as Ken explained, it is a lot easier to slide past the straight world if you have ticked a few of their little boxes. The van passed easily, and we ate dinner at a local drivers’ café. I found myself looking around, trying to match faces with the various commercial vehicles outside.

“Debbie!”

“Uh? Sorry. Dreaming a bit”

“What do you think about this as a job? We aren’t going to be able to get you through a lot of exams, duck, unless we arrange sitting them as an itinerant, and that means you need to look at something you can do”

“I’ll be travelling, though!”

Suddenly, Ken looked much older than he had seemed to me thus far.

“Ah, duck, it’s not the way it used to be, and it’s getting worse. More and more rules, more and more fences. There’s places we could always pull off, even up in Scotland, where there’s now fences. They say they’re for deer, but that’s bollocks. They’re for people like us. By the time you get old enough, they will have taken away all the edges we live on. It’s the way straights are, duck, wanting everything packaged, pasteurised, bloody beige, like their lives.

“That’s why I’m looking around here. Last of the gypsies, truckers. Not the same thing, duck, not even close, but it’s how they see themselves. It might give you a bit of space in your life as well, when you’re older, when you need to be alone…”

He trailed off, eyes fixed somewhere a long way away, before snapping back into focus.

“Anyway, soon be Spring. Time to think of better stuff. We’ll get you sorted on the van, and then I’ll have some help when I need it. Be better than riding the trailer through a pool of mud!”