Annie and her Granny

By Susannah Donim

Steve’s mother runs the secretive Transformations consultancy. This means he has a number of interesting jobs over the years.

Chapter 3 – A Few More Little Jobs for Mother

Transformations has developed some new, even more interesting technology, and of course a test subject is needed.

I didn’t have to endure any more testing after my last day as Jennifer. My mother was satisfied with the quality of the new prosthetics and the 3D printing process that produced them. I had thoroughly enjoyed helping Fred with the software for the photographic processing, and the experience had proved invaluable. In fact, I’ve worked with him through most of my summer holidays ever since (fortunately without having to be a test subject again).

Two years later I did well enough in my A levels to get a place at Cambridge to read Computer Science, and Fred’s patient teaching made my university course easy. So now, at the end of my second year, I had come home as soon as I could get away, expecting to work with him for most of the long vacation. This would count as ‘work experience’ for my degree course.

* * *

Very early on my mother had converted one of the first-floor rooms into a staff common room and instituted the tradition of morning coffee and afternoon tea. She found this was a great way of getting the various specialists to exchange ideas. It seemed to work well.

After finishing unpacking, I made my way downstairs. When I got there, Dolly was just wheeling the trolley in, immaculate as ever in her maroon polyester uniform and apron. She still worked in the kitchens and was a key member of the cleaning staff, although she mostly stuck to vacuuming and dusting now, as she had difficulty bending down low. She was our oldest and longest-serving staff member and was well past normal retirement age. She was medium height with only a slight stoop, but she moved slowly due to her age and considerable girth. Everyone liked her and as far as I knew she had very little else in her life beyond her granddaughter and her work with us. My mother said there would be a job for her here for as long as she wanted one. She had been especially supportive when my father left us, though I could barely remember those dark days.

“Oh hello, dear,” she said when she saw me. “Ingrid didn’t mention she was expecting you today.”

She started unloading side plates and cakes onto the long table against the wall.

“No, I decided to leave early. There was nothing to keep me there after exams. I’m not a rower and I wasn’t going to a May Ball.”

“Oh, what happened to that girl you liked? What was her name?”

“Rachel. It didn’t work out.”

My so-called girlfriend had started seeing a graduate rugby player behind my back. He was solid muscle and about a foot taller than me, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was doing Land Economy or something; one of those strange courses that seem to be reserved for postgraduates on mysterious scholarships, purely to strengthen a sports team for the annual varsity match against Oxford. Not everyone at Cambridge is a genius.

“I never promised we were exclusive, you know,” Rachel had said.

Well I had wanted it to be exclusive, and I thought she did too.

“That’s a shame,” Dolly said. A bright idea seemed to occur to her. “You should meet my granddaughter, Annie. You’ll like her. She’s just started working with your mother. She’s moved in with me until she finds her own place in the area.”

“That would be nice,” I said, with a totally bogus smile. The last thing I needed just at the moment was a blind date arranged by Dolly. I was sure her Annie would feel the same way.

I took a cup of tea and a Chelsea bun and sat down in an armchair with that morning’s Times. A couple of other people I knew wandered in and came over to say hello.

“Hey, stranger!” said Sharon. She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. “How did your exams go?”

“Not too bad. I’m probably OK for a 2:1.”

“That means he’s walked a First,” said Vera through a mouthful of fruit scone, “like last year. But why are you back already? Shouldn’t you be boozing and womanising till the end of term?”

Overhearing that, Dolly caught my eye from over by the tea trolley and tutted sadly. I explained about Rachel.

“Aww, never mind, love,” said Sharon. “There are plenty more fish in the sea. Hey, you should meet Dolly’s granddaughter. She’s working for your Mum now, and she’s lovely.”

At that moment, right on cue, my mother walked in. She was talking animatedly to the prettiest girl I had seen for quite a while. Mum saw me and waved.

“Steven! How lovely!” she said. “I didn’t expect you for a couple of weeks.” A cloud came over her face. “You haven’t been thrown out, have you?”

“Of course, he hasn’t!” said Vera. “He just couldn’t wait to come home and start working for you and Fred again.”

I reassured her and explained about Rachel for the third time in ten minutes. She commiserated.

“So I thought I might as well come home. My tutor waived the residency requirement, saying I could make it up next term. She knew I had a summer job to go to, one which was related to my course.” I grinned. “I didn’t mention that I would be working for my mother, and that the job would have waited.”

At that point the girl she came in with made her way over to us carrying two cups of tea.

“Here you are, Ingrid,” she said, giving one to my mother.

“Thank you, dear. Annie, I’ve told you about my son, Steven, haven’t I? Steven, this is Annie. She’s just joined us. She’ll be working with me on some exciting new projects. Her speciality is stage make-up and facial prosthetics. We’re hoping that you and Fred will sort out the programs for 3D printing…”

“You’re breaking your own rule, Ingrid,” said Fred, who had just come up behind her. “No shop talk at tea break. I’ll tell Steve all about it when he actually starts work.” He turned to me. “How are you, kiddo? Great to see you. You’re looking fit. College life obviously agrees with you. How’s that girl of yours? Rachel, wasn’t it?”

He sensed everyone looking daggers at him.

“What? What did I say?”

Without me noticing, Vera and Sharon had slipped away quietly, and Fred and my mother went over to get some cake and talk to Dolly, so somehow I found myself alone with Annie. We soon found we had a lot in common. She had just finished her degree course in Theatrical Arts at London, and was also waiting for her results. So she was a year ahead of me, but we were the same age because I had taken a gap year and she hadn’t.

Despite the ‘no shop talk’ rule (which everyone but Fred ignored anyway) we soon found ourselves talking about the business. I explained that I had helped write the software for our unique 3D imaging and printing.

“Fred’s the creative genius, of course,” I admitted, “I just helped with the coding, but I’m hoping I can be more useful now.”

“Fred’s great,” she said. “I really like him…” She paused. “If I’m not being too nosey… What is he to you and Ingrid?”

“Well, it’s complicated…” I began.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have intruded.”

“No, no, it’s OK,” I hastened to reassure her. “You should know, if you’re going to work here. There’s quite enough secrecy as it is, and you’re Dolly’s granddaughter, so you’re practically family, aren’t you?” She smiled. “It’s like this. The house and grounds belong to my father. It’s one of those ‘entailed’ estates, passed down strictly through the male line.”

“What – like in Pride and Prejudice? I thought that would be illegal by now.”

“I don’t think so… it’s still exactly like in Jane Austen’s time. So, when my father dies it will all come to me, as the eldest, actually only son. Not that I expect to change anything. The business makes good money, according to my mother, and these old houses are expensive to run. Anyway there’s not much of the original estate left. Most of the land has been sold off to pay taxes and so on. I don’t know if I’ll work here after I graduate, but I’ll keep it just as it is for as long as my mother still wants to run her business from here.”

“But where’s your father?”

“He left us when I was little. I hardly remember him. At first, after he moved out, he would come and visit at weekends, but gradually his visits became less and less frequent until they stopped altogether. As far as I know, he’s still alive – well, he must be or I would have been contacted by the solicitors or whoever when I turned eighteen. I think my mother knows where he is and how to reach him, but she’s kept it from me. I’ve asked her many times but she won’t budge.”

“She’s quite a strong character, your mother,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, you’ve noticed?” I smiled. “When Dad moved out, he took nothing with him, she says, and he gave her exclusive use of the estate, with Power of Attorney and everything.” I took a breath. “Fred was his best friend, and Dad asked him to look after Mum and me. And he did, in every way but one. He’s been a substitute father to me, but he’s gay, so of course…”

She caught her breath. “Oh I didn’t realise…”

“No, he doesn’t advertise, or practise much, as far as I know. He keeps a couple of rooms upstairs for when he’s working late, but he doesn’t actually live here, and he never brings anyone back. So, I have no idea what he gets up to in the evenings and weekends, or holidays.”

“What about the business? How did that start?”

“Mum set it up. She had some experience in disguises, make-up, and so on. Come to think of it, she’s never told me what she did to learn all that. I think being secretive comes naturally to her. It can be quite annoying. Later Fred had the idea of using 3D imaging and printing to make much more convincing prosthetics. We started doing that four years ago.”

No need for her to know the role – roles – I played in getting that going.

“Well, thanks for telling me all that.”

“That’s OK. You’re easy to talk to.”

I swore I was off the fair sex for the summer after Rachel, but…

“If you want to talk some more, I’m free on Saturday night…?”

She was, and we did – that Saturday and every chance we had that summer.

* * *

The following Monday morning I was pleased to have been invited to sit in on the regular weekly meeting of the Transformations senior staff. Annie saved me a place next to her. Fred was there of course. The other attendees included Vera, Sharon and Alice Parr, the only member of staff apart from my mother who used her surname with customers. She maintained that having to call her ‘Miss Parr’ ensured her students treated her with respect. Mind you, I had no idea whether it was her real name, or even whether she was married or not.

My mother used her maiden name, McLaughlin, at work. No client ever knew our family name, ‘Jones’, which she used everywhere else. She strode in at ten o’clock on the dot.

“Morning, everyone,” she called above the chatter.

A respectful silence fell. It was like being back at school and my mother was the headmistress.

“As you all know, we’re very good at body prosthetics,” she began, “and that’s fine for clients who aren’t too concerned about being recognised. So far, the majority of our business has been concerned with helping men disguise themselves and live as women. Often they have no need to change their features – either they don’t care if they’re recognised, or they will be living in an environment where they won’t encounter their family or old friends at all. So giving them a new female physique, plus hair and make-up, is often sufficient.

“But the face is obviously a very important part of any transformation,” my mother continued. “Many clients have features which are too obviously masculine to make convincing women.”

She was looking pointedly in my direction as she said this, presumably because it wasn’t a problem with me, Mr Blanditty Bland.

“The point is that many men have quite acceptably feminine faces. That’s why female-to-male transsexuals rarely need surgery to give them squarer jaws or stronger foreheads. They can get away with having feminine features, whereas transwomen with strong masculine faces have great difficulty living in role. Male-to-females often need surgery to pass. The best surgeons begin with a lower and mid-level facelift, to smooth away masculine, middle-aged jowls and produce more youthful, plumper, feminine cheeks. Next, they do a brow-lift, which also smooths out any masculine groove between the eyebrows. Then they will usually reshape the nose to make it smaller and rounder. Finally, they shorten the distance between the nose and upper lip, lifting the lip and making it fuller. That, by the way, is both the simplest and the most feminising procedure of all.

“If everything works, there will be no need for implants, fillers, or Botox, but the surgery is still painful and expensive. We can mimic most of that with our facial prosthetics. It’s not a permanent solution obviously, but it’s a good first step, enabling a client to live as a convincing female for long enough to be sure that full SRS is what he wants. Also, many of our clients have begun to ask whether we can disguise them so that they are unrecognisable in their new lives. We believe we can address both requirements by providing facial prosthetics which completely change the features.”

She paused. I appreciated this overview of the Transformations services, though presumably her longer-serving staff knew most of it already. But I could tell by the reactions round the room that what she said next was completely new to everybody.

“It should also be possible to make a client look like somebody else, which would be very exciting,” she said, with dramatic understatement.

“To make them look like another person, you mean?” I said. “Someone… real?”

“Yes,” she said, annoyed at being interrupted. “I intend to offer such a service as soon as possible, and that is why I am delighted that Annie has joined us.”

Smiles all round, and a smattering of applause. Everyone had met Annie by now, and her obvious enthusiasm and sunny disposition were already proving popular.

“You all know her qualifications, and as she develops her designs, she will be working closely with all of us. Fred, where are we with the new equipment for capturing details of the head and face? Did you talk to the chap that Daisy mentioned?”

“Yes, that was Josh at MoCap Studios in Bath. We need images of the shape of the head, the contours of the face, and the texture of the skin, in very fine detail. Josh reckoned the best way to capture what we need for 3D printing would be to use the same system they use for motion capture. Each tiny sensor transmits a signal to a receiver on a nearby computer, which can register its position relative to a reference plane to a thousandth of a millimetre. With all of those readings our software could construct a very accurate wireframe 3D image of the model’s head and face.”

Some of his audience looked confused.

“But why do we need motion capture sensors?” asked Vera, voicing all our thoughts. “Our subjects will keep still while we record them, won’t they? We’re not going to start making films, are we?”

Fred hurried to explain.

“MoCap use CGI for rejuvenating or aging an actor’s face, or for turning him into an alien or a monstrous version of himself. In this way, when he smiles, say, all the laugh lines, wrinkles and dimples move on the movie creature’s face precisely as they do on the actor’s real face. We need the same, but for a real-life model, as we can’t correct our errors in post-production. The sensors Josh recommends are a bit more expensive than any alternatives but they’re by far the most accurate. They will send continuous real-time signals to the receiver, so we can see how the disguised version of the face on the computer screen moves and changes as the model’s expression changes. We believe that will give us the information we need to make the necessary prostheses using our usual 3D printing techniques. We can also use the sensors for other purposes, like animating the images for advertising, and so on.”

Not that we actually advertised as such, but we did put out an online newsletter to our regular clients, and encouraged them to forward it to any of their friends and contacts who they thought might be interested.

“What about the software?” I asked.

“The sensor manufacturers bundle data capture software with the product,” Fred said. “We just have to customise the interface to the 3D printer.”

“Which we’ve done before,” I said.

“Indeed. It will be a little different, but much of the basic processing will use the same modules as the torso imaging. They calculate the variances between the client’s head and face and the proposed disguise.” He turned to my mother. “I’m going to ask Steve to work with Annie for the last part. That will be to build the 3D model of the client’s head, and print the prosthetic pieces needed to change the face to the desired new features.”

That would be great! I would be working closely with Annie all summer.

“Do you have any concerns from what you’ve heard, Annie?” my mother asked.

“Only that when it comes to making facial prosthetics to make you look like another real person, there are limits,” she said. “We can make prosthetics to duplicate another person’s features. We can stretch thin layers of imitation skin over wrinkles to hide them and make you look younger – up to a point, anyway – and we can add latex wrinkles to make you look older; but there’s not much you can do if the shapes of the two people’s skulls are too different. Also, you can’t disguise big disparities in their facial architectures; for example, if your eyes are significantly closer together than theirs, or if the distances between the brow and nose, or the nose and mouth, are too different. If you have a small nose we can make it bigger, but not vice versa; or we can elongate a short chin to match someone else with a long one, but we can’t do the reverse. That would all take major surgery.”

My mother was nodding.

“Yes, all good points. There will always be limitations of that nature; I see that. Thank you, Annie.”

“And of course, the MoCap technology can’t always be used for making you look like another person, can it?” I said. Some of the group looked blank. “Well, sometimes we won’t be able to get our target in here to attach our little sensors to them, will we? Sometimes we’ll need to be able to work from photos, or even just a description.”

“Yes, I think we all understand that, Steven,” my mother said, a little tetchily, I thought.

“Perhaps we could hire a police sketch artist, part-time,” I said, not altogether seriously.

“The plan is to gradually build up a database of skull types and facial architectures,” said Fred. “Then when we only have a photograph to work from, we can try superimposing the features on the three or four best fits from the database, until we get as close as we can.”

“But first we have to get as many complete images online as possible,” Mum added. “That means everyone here will be subjected to the process; also any of our clients who are willing to help; and anyone else we can think of, short of pulling people in off the street. We still have to maintain our privacy.”

“You first though, kiddo,” said Fred amiably. “We only have you for a few weeks before you go back to college. Besides, you’re used to being our primary test subject, aren’t you?”

I shushed him as surreptitiously as I could. I’d rather Annie not find out about Milly and Jennifer and how I spent that summer four years ago.

* * *

At our first planning session Annie and I agreed that we would each spend a few days researching. She already knew a lot about theatrical make-up, masks, wigs and so on from her course, but she would investigate further, especially regarding the materials required. Fred would need to know whether the fluid plastic he used in the 3D printer for prosthetics would work for face pieces, or whether he would have to go back to his German supplier for something new.

Meanwhile I would investigate facial recognition techniques, which we agreed would be the basis of the photographic processing. The principles would be the same as for 3D modelling of the torso, except that many more reference points would be needed, each corresponding to one of the little motion capture sensors. The 3D model of the face and skull would then be constructed by ‘joining the dots’ again.

The requirement for more ‘dots’ meant we would need to process much greater volumes of data, faster. The computers would have to be upgraded for that, which Fred was understandably excited about.

My mother also invited Annie and me to sit in on some of her client interviews, so that we could begin to get a feel for what she had to deal with. The most common problem was that most male customers were bigger and broader than women of the same height, but it was hard to get them to accept that they would only make convincing women if they let us pad them out – a lot, in some cases. Sometimes it took all her diplomatic skills to persuade them that they were never going to be Angelina Jolie. The fair ship, HMS Petite, had sailed for most of them long ago. If they wanted to be convincing, Hattie Jacques was more likely to be their future.

I didn’t get to see many of these client interviews in the end. For some reason, most of the clients didn’t mind Annie sitting in with my mother, but they didn’t feel comfortable with a man watching them spill their innermost desires. Mum offered to help me resurrect Milly or Jennifer so I could join in, but I passed.

* * *

Outside work Annie and I were inseparable. We spent our evenings – and nights – together whenever we could. My mother was quite relaxed about Annie pottering around the flat at all hours and in various states of undress. I was a little surprised by this, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. Mum was many things – most of them disagreeable – but she certainly wasn’t a prude. My bedroom door had a lock on it, but we were never disturbed anyway.

Annie gradually took over my second wardrobe and chest of drawers. I moved the clothes I wore least often into what I still thought of as ‘Milly and Jennifer’s Room’. Annie asked me how it came to be known as that. Before I could scrape up an answer that was neither embarrassing nor a lie, my mother said they were lodgers we once had, which I suppose was sort of true. It was another example of her ability to find shades of grey.

Annie rarely invited me back to her grandmother’s house, although Dolly must have known we were sleeping together. In fact, I’m pretty sure she was pleased, and keen to take the credit for matchmaking. She certainly continued to greet us both at tea and coffee breaks with a smile and a laugh.

I was definitely falling in love with Annie, but I didn’t say so. I don’t know if she felt the same way; I didn’t dare ask in my insecurity. Rachel must have hurt me more than I thought. Or maybe I was just being stupidly male.

At work Fred was now delegating more sophisticated tasks to me as my knowledge and confidence grew. I also lightened his load by taking over managing the network, which was always a chore. But progress on the new prosthetic systems was slow. Annie would soon need access to the computer models Fred and I were developing, but we were finding the motion capture sensors a pig to calibrate. The problem was with the reference plane which refused to settle and stabilise if the subject moved. In the end it was easiest to provide a set of clamps to hold the head still. After that we started to make progress.

* * *

One day, mindful that my mother was not the most sensitive parent on the planet (to say the least) Fred asked me how I was doing, personally.

“It’s great to see you and Annie together,” he said kindly. “Are you over that Rachel girl?”

“Rachel who?”

He laughed.

“By the way, Fred,” I began, “how do you feel about this new venture – providing impersonation as well as transformation?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the more I think about it, the less I like it. If it works, a client could impersonate anyone whose photograph he could produce for us to work from. How many legitimate uses could there be for that? I can think of maybe two: the personal security business and the ‘look-alikes’ trade.”

Fred said nothing. I took his silence as encouragement to continue.

“A professional bodyguard could disguise himself as the client and act as a decoy for kidnappers or assassins. I suppose the look-alike business is OK, as long as it’s done for entertainment only, not for deception; but the whole point of the technology is that it should genuinely be good enough to deceive. It will probably be too expensive and laborious for just a party or a prank.”

Fred was nodding.

“Meanwhile the applications of truly convincing impersonation technology for the purposes of fraud – or worse – are too many to count.”

“Have you talked to your mother about this?”

“I tried to, but she wasn’t interested. She just repeated that she never lets her clients reveal their motives for using our services, and what we don’t know can’t hurt us. She’s like an arms manufacturer. She only makes the bombs; she doesn’t drop them on anybody.”

He winced at my metaphor but didn’t argue.

“To be honest, it’s been bothering me too,” he said, “but I’m not sure what to do about it. You know how difficult it is to get your mother to change her mind. She’s just like Margaret Thatcher was – always convinced she’s right.”

Neither of us had anything further to say. Having shared my concerns, I stopped worrying. I would be spending the whole summer with Annie…

* * *

“That’s not too tight, is it?”

Annie was screwing in the clamps which would hold my head still.

“No, it’s fine… owww!”

“Sorry,” she said, unscrewing the left clamp slightly.

She and Fred had spent half an hour sticking little micro-sensors to my skin. They were all over my head, face and neck. I looked like I had the worst case of acne in history.

“Just try moving your head a little,” called Fred from the workstation on the other side of the room.

I did, without success.

“OK,” he continued, “I think we’re all set. The reference plane is fixed and nothing happened when you tried to move. When I say ‘go’, you can begin.”

Annie had found something for me to read which she hoped would exercise all the muscles in my face. As my head movements were now severely restricted, she had rigged up a sort of lectern and put one of my favourite books on it, opening it at an especially good bit.

“Just relax, Steve. Read out loud and try to make all the appropriate expressions to reflect the story,” she said. “Laugh and smile at the funny parts; frown where it’s sad; and so on. We need it to be natural – don’t pull funny faces – but we want you to use all your facial muscles, if possible. Then, when we stick prosthetic pieces on you to make you look like someone else, they’ll fit the contours of your face perfectly and move naturally with all the lines and creases.”

“I get it,” I said, and began reading.

It was an extract from Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad. I tried to react as much as possible to Terry’s fabulous prose. It wasn’t difficult. Granny Weatherwax always made me laugh – and cry. Annie turned the pages for me as if the book was a musical score and I was a concert pianist. After about fifteen minutes my face was starting to ache. If I didn’t have any wrinkles before, I was pretty sure I would now. Eventually Fred told me I could stop.

“Processing the raw data will take about an hour,” he said. “I need a break.”

So we went upstairs to the lounge and sat with cups of coffee and chocolate digestives.

“Fred said you’ve been a test subject before?” Annie asked.

Fred had discreetly picked up a copy of the day’s paper and taken a seat over by the window. He was having a go at the crossword.

“Yes,” I admitted. “My mother says I have a nondescript face. Perfect for experimenting on.”

“That’s a bit unkind!”

“Par for the course for her, but she meant that I should be easy to transform. Most people can’t remember what I look like when I’m me, so how would they see through a disguise?”

“That’s not fair,” she said loyally. “You have a very handsome face.”

“You’re too kind, and may be biased,” I said, hopefully. “The point is, you should be able to make me look like just about anyone, with the right prosthetic additions.”

“Well, up to a point yes, but we still couldn’t make you look like someone with extreme features.”

“Do you and Mum have someone in mind then?”

“Well, yes we do, actually, and it should be easy.”

She looked a little embarrassed. When she told me, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

* * *

The test on my data went well. It was spooky to watch the wireframe, skeletal 3D model of my head slowly revolving on Fred’s monitor.

“That’s the basic frame,” he said. “Now I’ll fill in the flesh.”

He clicked his mouse. The figure stopped revolving and gradually the software filled in the spaces between the lines with curved skin-coloured panels. Fred smoothed any remaining sharp edges.

Annie squealed with delight. “That’s amazing!”

“It is quite impressive, isn’t it?” Fred said. “But I haven’t finished yet.”

The figure was easily recognisable as me, but it was a little… off. I struggled to work out quite why.

“This module fills in the spaces using generic colours and textures,” Fred explained. “Now I’ll download detail from the stored photographs we have of you. The program will then paint over the image with your actual skin colours. It will add all your blemishes too, Spotty!”

Annie laughed. I protested.

“That must be an old photo you’re using,” I said. “My adolescent acne cleared up two years ago!”

Fred had been teasing. He brought up a recent high-resolution photograph, taken the previous September after our summer holiday. He put it side by side with the computer model. Now I saw what had been wrong with the latter. It looked like me all right, but the skin tones were uniform and too pale. He clicked his mouse again. The figure’s skin gradually changed colour to match the photograph. Now it was more tanned, and both skin colour and texture varied realistically, darker on the nose and forehead, paler round the eyes. It also developed my freckles and added the birthmark I had on my upper lip. There was now no discernible difference between the photo and the computer model, which started revolving again.

Annie gasped. We looked at each other. I turned back to the figure. It was incredibly lifelike, in 3D and Ultra HD. Did the back of my head really look like that? I was relieved to see there was no sign of a bald patch yet.

Suddenly and without warning, the figure on the monitor opened its mouth and started reading about Magrat, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg flying to Genua. I nearly jumped out of my skin, even though I knew it was coming. Without flesh, it had looked like me but had been unreal. Now it was fleshed out and animated, and it was like watching a high-resolution 3D movie of myself. Did my voice really sound like that? I knew I was no James Earl Jones, but I hadn’t realised how high-pitched and reedy I sounded.

* * *

Over the next week everyone on the staff went through the same recording process – even Angie, the receptionist, and Dolly, the tea lady. Annie was particularly keen to capture her Granny’s features, because as an older person, she had a fine matrix of wrinkles and loose skin. Annie didn’t put it quite like that in securing the old lady’s cooperation, of course. Anyway Dolly was flattered and delighted to take part in her employer’s important work.

Annie, Fred and I took it in turns to run the sessions. Meanwhile we worked on adapting our processes for making body prosthetics to do the same for the features. Eventually we were ready for the test and, inevitably, I drew the short straw. I sat in Sharon’s make-up chair. She had given me a close shave and was now dressing a suitable wig.

Meanwhile Vera was preparing the face pieces Fred and I had printed. With a fine black marker pen, and using a template produced by our 3D printer, she carefully drew guidelines on my face to help her stick the prosthetic pieces in the right places.

“It was the obvious choice,” Vera said, in response to my grumbling. “Annie says you have nearly identical ‘facial architectures’.”

“I know that,” I sighed, “but you can understand why I’m less than enthusiastic about it.”

“Oh yes,” she sympathised. “I hope she promised you a nice bonus again, like she did when you were Milly and Jennifer.”

That was a point! A bit more money wouldn’t go amiss. I thought back to that summer. It had been four years since I had said goodbye to Milly and Jennifer. I had been just Steve ever since, with no regrets, but that didn’t mean I didn’t think about the two females I had been. The experience hadn’t been all bad. I grinned inwardly at the thought of Alf’s gallant invitation to Jennifer, who he found attractive because I was as fat as his late wife.

Vera was now applying adhesive to the first piece. I returned to the present.

“How long will I be stuck with this lot?”

“The usual – about two weeks, unless we remove it with the solvent first. But Ingrid needs to know how long these prosthetics will last. Feel free to treat them roughly – I mean, with a rigorous make-up regime, not shaving, obviously! You won’t be the only guinea pig, by the way. We think the adhesive will break down more quickly for some people than for others – we all have different amounts of natural oils in our skin – so we need to test it quite widely. I think your mother has invited some of her regular clients to try it out, free of charge.”

“She’ll probably get a queue of guys wanting to be Marilyn Monroe.”

It took her twenty minutes to glue all the prosthetic pieces on. A familiar face was starting to appear over my own. My nose and mouth were in the same places but they were now shaped differently, and my cheekbones seemed to have moved a bit. By the time she’d finished, the prostheses had covered virtually all my face and neck, also concealing my Adam’s apple. It was like wearing a thin, flexible mask, although there were areas where no pieces had been applied and parts of me still showed through. As my own skin was tanned, and the prostheses were paler, my face looked like a patchwork quilt.

“The prosthetics are the right colour of course,” said Vera. “I just need to paint all the areas where your own skin is showing.”

She dabbed away with a paintbrush. When she finished, she signalled to Sharon who had been watching the process, fascinated.

“OK, Shaz, you ready with her wig?”

So I was a her again now, was I? Can’t say I’d missed that.

First, Sharon tucked all my hair under another wig cap, reminding me of the discomfort of wearing a hairpiece all day. Then out came a short brunette wig, already styled in the familiar severe bun. She pulled it down over my head. I felt its Velcro lining gripping the mesh of the cap. She adjusted it carefully and reached for a comb and a brush for a final primping. When she was satisfied, she sprayed my new coiffure all over to hold it in place. Then she set about applying an understated daytime make-up.

“The finishing touch,” said Vera, passing me a pair of ladies’ spectacles. “Plain glass, of course.”

The face in the mirror staring back at me sullenly was all too familiar. Shit! What will Annie say when she sees me? She was out this morning on some errand. I hadn’t seen her since breakfast.

But she’d probably say, “Hello, Ingrid!” because I was now the spitting image of my mother.

There was still work to do, of course. Sharon gave me a manicure, painting my nails an understated pink. My mother was never flamboyant. After that Vera and I went back to her room where she gave me an all-over waxing, which was just as bad as I remembered. Then she stuck breast forms in my mother’s size – 42C – on my chest. Finally I had to wriggle into an abdominal prosthesis to complete my plump, middle-aged figure.

I noted, ironically, that she might not have had much cellulite on her thighs and buttocks four years ago but she certainly did now, and so of course did I. At least I was a hundred pounds lighter than Jennifer had been.

“What are these wrinkly, wobbly grooves around my mid-riff?”

Vera chuckled. “Those are stretch marks, dear.” I must have looked blank. “From childbirth, you ignoramus!”

“Oh, terrific. I must be the only person in history to have stretch marks from giving birth to himself! Look, there’s something really wrong about this, Vera,” I said as she helped me to get dressed. “A man shouldn’t see his mother naked.”

“Try not to think about it. You’re Ingrid now, so you’re only looking at yourself.”

She helped me put on a plain black bra and matching granny panties. “I can’t believe I’m wearing my mother’s underwear,” I said.

“You’re not,” Vera replied. “She made sure you have the same styles and sizes she usually buys, but all your undies are brand new. You saw me taking them out of the packet.”

“Small mercies,” I said.

She handed me a pair of tights. “You remember how to put these on without laddering them?”

I nodded and sat down at her desk chair to do so. Then I slipped my feet into a pair of black ladies’ shoes. They were in my size and had only one-inch heels. My mother usually wore at least two-inch, so these shoes would minimise the height difference between us.

The rest of my outfit was not new. She helped me put on a plain white blouse and a smart grey check suit of my mother’s. The skirt was quite snug around my new hips. When I sat down on the office couch it forced me to keep my knees together.

“Engagement ring, wedding ring, ladies’ watch, bracelet,” said Vera. “All cheap fake copies of your Mum’s, but slightly larger to fit your bigger wrist and fingers.”

I took the proffered jewellery and slipped the pieces onto my newly manicured hands. She fastened a pearl necklace – also fake – around my neck. I supposed I should be glad my mother never used perfume. She reckoned a couple of swipes of underarm deodorant was good enough for anyone.

“You’ll need earrings,” Vera said. “I assume you don’t want your ears pierced?” I shook my head firmly. “Then it’s these, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t find them too uncomfortable.”

She attached a pair of discreet clip-on pearl earrings to my lobes.

At which point the door opened. Fred and Steve came in, with Sharon following behind.

I gaped. Vera snickered.

“Surprise!” the new me said to me.

The new Steve’s voice was much higher than mine. Surely they wouldn’t have…? She wouldn’t have…?

“Annie…?” I stuttered.

She looked concerned when she saw how shocked I was. She turned to Fred, her hands on her hips in a very unmasculine, but very Annie, fashion.

“I told you we should have warned him!” she said crossly. “We could have given the poor boy a heart attack!”

“Yes, sorry, kiddo,” Fred said apologetically. “It just seemed too good an opportunity to miss.”

“I did say there would be other test subjects,” said Vera. “Annie’s been here all morning. It’s been quite a challenge to keep the two of you apart.”

Most of her disguise was superb. She’d obviously tucked her long blonde hair into a tight wig cap. The medium-length mousy brown wig on top of that looked just like my untidy mop. Her facial prosthetics were as perfect a reproduction of my features as mine were of my mother’s. She was wearing one of my bulky winter sweaters, which was a little incongruous for June, and a pair of plain jeans.

“But what happened to your boobs?” I spluttered.

“My breasts are tightly bandaged under my hairy chest piece,” she said, “and it’s quite uncomfortable too.”

“And what about your… you know, down below…?”

“It’s another abdominal prosthetic; only mine is supposed to flatten my bum and broaden my waist,” she said. “It’s very tight as well.”

She twirled to give me a good view. I think her bottom stuck out a little more than mine – that is, Steve’s – did, but I might have been fooling myself. My Ingrid-bottom stuck out a mile, of course (or felt like it did).

“She’s supposed to be straight up and down, like a man,” said Vera, “but the prosthesis can’t completely conceal her feminine behind. Overall she’s quite buff though, isn’t she?”

Indeed she was. In fact, she looked more… muscly than I normally was – am.

“And the prosthesis doesn’t have a… boy bit, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Annie continued blithely. “It’s just padding. I still have to sit down to pee. But let me have a proper look at you.”

Sighing, I stood up and did a similar twirl for everyone. She reached out – up – to feel my cheek.

“That’s amazing!” she said.

“Yes, even if you and the real Ingrid were standing side by side, I’m not sure we’d be able to tell which of you was which,” said Vera.

“Yes, it works because you’re so slim and your Mum is… um, a little…” Sharon began. She trailed off, aware that she was on the verge of being rude about her employer. “Anyway, your figure fits entirely inside hers.”

She looked around nervously. My mother could move very quietly when she wanted to.

Fred was looking at Annie and me, appraising us professionally.

“I think the real clincher is that your faces don’t look like masks,” he said. “Because our prosthetics follow the lines and creases of your faces – that is, Ingrid’s and Steve’s faces – they look completely natural. That’s the problem with even the best masks; they don’t move right and they look false. I think we’ve managed something truly different here.”

“I agree,” said the real Ingrid, from the doorway. “Congratulations to all of you. This is a superb achievement.”

“And quite a sight!” said Fred. “Two Ingrids!” He suddenly realised that my mother might not have taken his remark as a compliment. “I mean, a sight for sore eyes, of course,” he hastened to add.

My mother gave him her patented stony look, which she normally reserved for me.

“Now we must devise some appropriate tests,” she said. “I have some chores to do in town. The two of you can do them now.”

* * *

Annie was three inches shorter than me; that is, than Steve. So in addition to having her breasts tightly bandaged, and the uncomfortable abdominal prosthesis, she was wearing elevator shoes which affected how she walked. These were only two inches, so they didn’t completely close the gap. As I was now wearing high heels, she was still two inches shorter than me.

All in all, her disguise was less successful than mine. She also hadn’t had any ‘boy training’, so with her high voice and her feminine movement and body language, I desperately hoped we wouldn’t meet anyone I knew in town. They would be bound to think I had become a sissy.

“You can pick up a few things from the supermarket, then I need you to go to the bank,” my mother said. We were sitting in her office while she briefed us for our trip. “By the way, Steven, your nail polish and rings look good, but you should wear a pair of ladies’ gloves. The Manager might want to shake hands. Yours aren’t too big for a woman, but they’re probably a little rough. It’s quite normal for a woman to wear gloves when shaking hands with a man she doesn’t know well.”

“I’ll fetch you a large pair from the wardrobe room,” said Vera, and set off.

“Now there are cash and cheques to pay in,” my mother continued, “and some documents to put in our safety deposit box. That will be a good test actually. They know me there, and will only get the box out of their vault for me personally. You’ll have to show my ID and sign a form, so you’ll need to practise my signature.”

“Hold on! Isn’t this fraud?”

“No, actually. We’ve never really discussed it, but you’ve been a signatory for all our accounts since you turned eighteen. Remember all those forms I had you sign? And that goes for the safety deposit too, so it’s all completely legal. If they realise you’re not me, we’ll have to own up obviously, but there can’t be any criminal intent because you are the joint owner of all the assets. I’ll explain to the Manager if it becomes necessary.”

“But I don’t know anyone there. It’ll be a complete giveaway if I don’t recognise people you’re supposed to know.”

“It will be alright. The only member of staff I know personally is the Manager, Mr Nuttall. He says we’re an important account, with the business and the estate, so he always helps me himself when I need to get into our safety deposit box. I’ve arranged an appointment for three o’clock this afternoon.”

* * *

I managed to persuade my mother to let me drive us into town in her old Range Rover. I argued that Annie wasn’t insured to drive my little Toyota Yaris disguised as me, and it would look odd to anyone we knew if I drove it disguised as my mum. Meanwhile I was insured to drive her car but not the company van. She turned over the keys with bad grace.

“Couldn’t you get any higher lifts for your shoes?” I asked Annie on the way to the car. “Everyone who knows us both knows that I’m taller than my mother.”

“I tried four inches but I could hardly even stand in them,” she objected. “It was like trying to learn to walk on stilts. Also anything over two inches is really big and clunky – like clown shoes. Hey, you could have worn flats.”

“These were the lowest heels available in my size from our wardrobe department. It seems our cross-dressing clients don’t want to wear flats.”

“Understandable, I suppose, if they’re desperate for femininity, poor dears.”

“You do realise I’m not a cross-dresser, don’t you?”

“You could have fooled me,” she said, with a twinkle. “Anyway, you’ve done it before, haven’t you? I can tell by the way you move and speak, and your gestures and mannerisms are totally womanly.”

“Well… yes… she’s bribed me to be a ‘test subject’ before,” I admitted.

“Oh, yes! You must tell me all about that!”

“No chance,” I said, opening the car door.

I put my handbag down in the passenger footwell. I had finally begun to see the benefits of a lady’s bag. As a man, whenever I changed my clothes or jacket, I had to transfer all my stuff – keys, wallet, phone, handkerchief, etc – to the new outfit. I would have no such problem as a woman. In fact my smart skirt suit had no pockets anyway. I had nowhere to put anything – hence my need for a handbag – but also there was nothing to spoil my suit’s sleek lines or interrupt my smooth feminine curves…

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to drive in heels?” Annie said as she sat down, interrupting my train of thought.

“I’ll manage… and that’s not a question a twenty-year-old man would ever ask his mother when she’s driving them to the shops.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she conceded. “Don’t forget you have to call me ‘Steve’,” she said.

“‘Steven’, actually. My mother never calls me ‘Steve’.” I sighed. “And you have to call me ‘Mum’.”

She giggled in a way that no twenty-year-old man would ever do.

“This is going to be fun!”

“Oh yeah? Who for?”

I fastened my seat belt, which was perfectly adjusted for me; that is, for Ingrid Jones.

* * *

When we arrived at the shopping centre we were nearly an hour too early for our appointment at the bank, so we decided to do the supermarket run first.

As we went up the escalator from the car park, Annie dropped behind. I looked round. She seemed to be staring at my back… or more precisely, my backside, in my tight grey skirt.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, waving at her to catch up.

“Just enjoying the sight of your bum wiggling its way up the stairs,” she grinned. “Steve has a pert, sexy little bum, but yours is big and round, Mum. Even sexier, in my opinion.”

“You shouldn’t be talking like that,” I scolded. “If you’re Steven, I’m your mother, and that’s quite inappropriate; and if you’re Annie, I’m your employer, Ingrid McLaughlin, and I’ll sack you for impertinence.”

“Spoilsport,” she grinned, but she joined me on my step of the escalator and we linked arms, like a mother and her son.

“And why are you scratching your…” I lowered my voice. “…crotch padding so vigorously?” I asked. “Is it itchy?”

“I’m just trying to get into character. That’s what boys do all the time, isn’t it?”

“No, they don’t! Which boys have you been watching? I don’t do that!”

“Well, you kind of do, actually, when you think no one’s looking.”

“Well, stop it! It’s disgusting.”

She chuckled. “I’m quite enjoying this.” She winced. “If only it didn’t hurt my breasts so much.”

“Welcome to the world of us crash test dummies.”

* * *

With each of us taking half the list, the shopping didn’t take long, even with me taking little steps and clip-clopping around the store in my tight skirt and high heels. The most embarrassing moment was when I had to go to the pharmacy to collect my mother’s HRT prescription. I tried to persuade Annie to do it, but she pointed out that she was Steve, a young man, now. I was the middle-aged lady, and how would I feel if anyone I knew saw me collecting my mother’s very feminine medication? I saw her point.

We were under instructions to watch each other and the shoppers around us, to see if anyone saw through our disguises. I noted that Annie was doing her best to take long strides, swing her arms, and generally act ‘butch’. It looked very false to me, but I suppose I knew what I was looking for. Anyway she didn’t seem to attract any undue attention.

She said much the same of me when we caught up at the till. The check-out girl called me ‘madam’, which caused Annie to giggle to herself. There was a young man standing by the cashier, and he asked if I needed any help getting my groceries to the car. I declined of course, saying I had my son with me and pointing to Annie. The assistant looked at her dubiously, probably not believing that she could carry the heavy bags full of tins and bottles, and he was right. But we kept our purchases in the shopping trolley as far as the car park, Annie wheeling it for me gallantly, if a little inexpertly.

When we had finished unloading the groceries into the car boot, it was time to keep our appointment at the bank. We reported to the enquiries desk and I gave our names, saying we had an appointment with the Manager. I spoke in my highest register, which I hoped would approximate my mother’s rich contralto. I heard Annie gasp; she hadn’t heard my Ingrid voice properly yet.

“Ah yes, Mrs Jones,” said the receptionist, a charming little Indian girl. “If you’d like to follow me…?”

She led the way through a door marked Private into a back room. There was a big conference table with three chairs. Down at the far end were flasks of hot drinks and a plate of biscuits.

“Please help yourselves to refreshments,” said the receptionist. “I’ll let Mr Nuttall know you’re here. I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting long.”

The coffee and cookies were excellent, obviously reserved for their most favoured clients. At the last minute I remembered to sweep my skirt under me as I sat down, to stop it getting wrinkled. Keeping my knees together and denying the world a view of my black lace panties came back to me naturally. Annie chuckled and ostentatiously slumped in her chair with her legs wide apart, to show that she didn’t have to worry about such decorum now that she was a boy.

“Sit up straight, Steven,” I said. “Don’t slouch.”

“Sorry, Mum,” she grinned.

I smiled back. I tried to get into the spirit of our transformations. It didn’t have to be all bad, I supposed. I sipped my coffee, holding my cup up primly in a parody of ‘the Duchess taking tea’. I noticed the red streaks around the lip. I hadn’t seen that around a cup I’d used since being Jennifer, four summers ago.

“Don’t forget to repair your lipstick before we leave, Mum,” said Annie with a smile.

“Thank you, dear,” I said heavily. “But again… not the sort of thing a boy says to his mother. And I hadn’t forgotten. I shall ask to use the Ladies before we leave.”

At that moment the Manager came in, carrying a ring binder. He was exactly as my mother had described him: very tall, about six-two, bald, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Afternoon, Mrs Jones,” the Manager said with a smile. “Lovely to see you again.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Nuttall,” I said.

I put my coffee cup down and stood up. I hoped he wouldn’t remember my mother’s voice too clearly. If I pitched mine as high as I could, we sounded alike to my ears, and we had the same accent, but someone else might detect a difference, especially if they had met my mother frequently.

He didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He thrust out his hand for me to shake. I remembered to keep mine limp. I was glad I was wearing my gloves. Mum had been right; my coarse male hands might have given me away, even with my nail polish and ladies’ rings.

He looked enquiringly at Annie.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ve met my son, Steven, have you?” I said. Well, I knew he hadn’t.

“No, I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said. “Very nice to meet you, Steven. It’s about time Mrs Jones brought you in to see us, given that you’re a signatory to all the accounts and boxes.”

He smiled. They shook hands. I hoped Annie remembered to use a firm masculine grip. At that moment the receptionist came in with two metal containers about the size of laptops, but about twelve inches tall. Nuttall turned and watched the girl putting them down on the table.

“Oh, I don’t think Mrs Jones will want the old box, Sunita,” he said.

She picked it up again.

“It’s all right,” I said, “you can leave it. I don’t think Steven has ever seen what’s in it.” Well I knew he hadn’t. “This will be a good opportunity for him to acquaint himself with its contents.”

“Fair enough. Thank you, Sunita.” The girl smiled and left. “Now, if I could just ask for your IDs – a formality in your case of course, Ingrid, but we must do things by the book, mustn’t we?”

I opened my handbag and rummaged inside for my purse. I took out my mother’s ID and handed it over. I had reluctantly given Annie my wallet and she was fishing in it for my driving licence. Eventually she found it and handed it over. The Manager gave both documents a cursory glance and quickly handed them back.

“Good, good,” he said.

He reached for the first metal box. I noticed that each box had two locks. He took out a key and unfastened the left-hand lock on each of the boxes.

“I won’t ask you if you’ve brought your own keys, Mrs Jones,” he smiled. “I know you’re much too efficient to have forgotten. Now I understand you have some cash and cheques to deposit in your business account?”

“Oh yes,” I said, and reopened my handbag.

I gave him the smaller of two bulky brown envelopes my mother had given me. This one came with stern instructions not to lose it. While the bag was open, I took out a little key ring with two small keys. Nuttall opened the binder and passed me a printed form.

“If you could just fill in the next line and sign it as usual? I’ll go and deposit this lot.”

We shook hands again and he left.

“Your Ingrid voice is really good!” Annie said admiringly.

I thanked her and studied the form the Manager had given me. It had several lines. My mother had completed the first dozen or so on previous visits. Now I just had to fill in my name (INGRID K JONES, Mrs) and the date, and sign it on the next available line. Even if I hadn’t been practising my mother’s signature, there were several previous examples there for me to copy. I wondered if Nuttall realised how insecure that was. But then he had already checked our identities. My mind drifted back to my earlier conversation with Fred and the ‘many applications of impersonation technology for fraud’.

I picked up the key ring to open the boxes.

“Which box are you supposed to put Ingrid’s documents in?” Annie asked.

“I didn’t even know there were two,” I replied.

I unlocked both boxes. Then I took out the second brown envelope and tore it open. Hopefully the contents would make it clear which box they belonged in.

“Should you be doing that?” Annie asked.

“Why not? You heard Mum – I own everything in here just as much as she does. More so, as it all comes to me when my father dies…”

Actually that only applied to the estate, not the business, but I assumed I was her main beneficiary. Maybe Fred owned half? Maybe the mysterious second box contained my mother’s will?

“…probably,” I added.

There were several smaller envelopes inside. I leafed through them. The only writing on each one was a name. Most were just forenames; a few included an initial as well, presumably for the surname to distinguish between two customers with the same first name. I saw Daisy, Maria, and several others. I flipped open the lid of the first box, which was nearly full. There were many similar envelopes, again with just a name on them. The top two were marked Nancy and Rosie. I didn’t see any men’s names.

“I think one of our clients was called Daisy,” I said. “She recommended the MoCap studios guy we got the sensors from.”

I tore open the Daisy envelope; photographs fell out. Annie was horrified, but her curiosity quickly overcame her caution. On top was a picture of a pretty woman in her underwear. She was very obviously pregnant.

“What do you think it means?” Annie asked.

“I think Daisy must be a client – I assume all the others are too.”

“So some of them might be men?”

“I think they might all be men,” I said.

“Surely not Daisy!” she said. “Look at her!”

We skimmed quickly through the other photos in the Daisy envelope. They seemed to be in chronological order, starting with a young man being waxed, then fitted with breast forms. Then there were some pictures of him stepping into a pregnancy prosthesis, which looked like the kind of thing we made using our 3D printing process.

Then he was being made up and his hair dressed to become the woman in the first picture. In the following photos, she grew ever bigger as her pregnancy proceeded. Then suddenly she wasn’t pregnant anymore, just a little dumpy, still needing to lose her baby weight, as it were. That was the last picture. There was a handwritten record at the bottom of the pile with a few notes about the process and the client, none of which were any use in identifying him.

“But why would a man want to disguise himself as a pregnant woman?” Annie asked, baffled.

“No idea – and we have a policy of not asking, remember?” I put the pictures back in the envelope. “A more pertinent question is, why is Mum keeping all these photographs, and in a safety deposit box? I would’ve thought she’d have the originals online somewhere.”

“Security, I suppose,” suggested Annie. “Backup, in case of a data loss.”

“Maybe,” I said.

My mother couldn’t intend to blackmail her clients, could she? I’ve never pretended to understand her – and I wasn’t sure I fully shared her code of ethics (or lack thereof) – but I couldn’t imagine her doing anything quite so downright criminal. Perhaps the business wasn’t the money-spinner I had always imagined it to be. Then another thought struck me.

“I don’t think these photos are a necessary part of the process. We wouldn’t need them for 3D printing of prosthetics. These are a record of everything that was done – including hair and make-up. And I don’t think the clients knew they were being taken!”

“But why? How?”

“Look carefully,” I said. “None of the subjects are looking at the camera, or smiling. They clearly don’t know they’re being photographed. Also, all the pictures are taken from the same position, and the camera angle is downwards.”

She gasped. “You mean there might be hidden cameras in Vera’s and Sharon’s rooms?”

I nodded. I rummaged down to the bottom of the box and found the two envelopes I expected to find: Jennifer and Milly. I took them out and put them in my handbag. Annie raised an eyebrow in enquiry. I didn’t explain. I didn’t particularly want my girlfriend to see pictures of me as a boy, naked, then as a girl, also naked.

I put all the other envelopes back in the safety deposit box they had come from and reached for the second box. Unlike the first, which had been nearly full, this one was nearly empty. I lay all its contents on the table: a birth certificate; a marriage certificate; a passport; some photographs; various examination and degree certificates; some handwritten references from schoolteachers, university tutors and employers; the Last Will and Testament of Richard Steven Jones. All the documents of a life – my father’s life. If he was still alive, how was he managing without these? There was no death certificate, but I didn’t suppose that meant anything. I opened the Will and skimmed it. It was very simple. Everything went to my mother and me, with the usual protections.

Neither of us said anything. Annie realised that what I had found had affected me deeply. She looked concerned.

There was a knock at the door. The Manager came in.

“Sorry to interrupt…” he said.

Then he realised I was upset, but of course he didn’t know why. He apologised, in case it was something he had done. I reassured him that everything was fine.

“There’s absolutely no rush, Mrs Jones, I just wanted to give you your receipt for the cash and cheques.”

I took the slip. I noticed that the total was a little over five thousand pounds.

“Only I have a meeting shortly, so I may not be available when you are ready to leave. Just press the green button on the wall when you’ve finished. There’s no hurry. This room is free now until we close.”

“Thank you, Mr Nuttall,” I managed to say, remembering to use my Ingrid voice.

He turned and made for the door.

“One other thing…?” I said. He paused. “Are you sure that no one else has been in here and accessed these boxes?”

He looked concerned.

“That’s quite impossible, I assure you.” I didn’t say anything. He seemed to think I wanted further reassurance. “Apart from myself and my staff, the only person who has ever even seen those boxes is your good self….” He paused. “Oh, and that other lady you had with you that one time – Mrs Johnson, was it?”

“Er, yes,” I said. “Thank you, Mr Nuttall.”

I couldn’t ask him any more without raising his suspicions. As Ingrid I obviously should know who Mrs Johnson was, and on which occasion she was with me when I came here.

He smiled and left. I began putting my father’s documents back. I turned my keys in the right-hand locks on each box, and went to press the green button. Sunita soon appeared. She completed the locking process for the boxes and dropped them down a chute in the wall which presumably led to the vault. We followed her out.

Outside the bank, Annie turned to me.

“OK, I’ll ask it,” she said. “Who the hell is Mrs Johnson?”

“No idea,” I said. “Come on, let’s get back to the car. I’m dying to get these stupid earrings off.”

* * *

When we got back we unloaded the shopping and gave my mother a report of our mission. She was pleased that no one had caught us out. She quizzed us in detail about our meeting with Mr Nuttall, the Bank Manager. She had been concerned that he would have suspected something.

“Either your performance was exceptional,” she said, “or it’s true what they say – people see what they expect to see.”

“A little of both, I expect,” I said modestly.

“But he was brilliant. He sounded just like you,” Annie said, to my great satisfaction. “And you would have thought he’d been a woman all his life,” she added, which I found considerably less gratifying. She grinned at me.

“By the way,” I said, “they brought us two boxes.”

“Stupid man!” she grunted. “He knows I haven’t looked at the old box for years.”

I didn’t bother mentioning that it was the receptionist’s mistake.

“We put the envelopes you gave us in with the others, but why does the second box have all my father’s documents?”

“Oh, he left them behind when he moved out,” she said. “I put them there for safekeeping when we remodelled the main house for the business. I didn’t want them to be mislaid in all the confusion. You remember what it was like back then.”

I did. The builders were in for six months. They cleared out and renovated the basement for the computers; they fitted out most of the ground and middle floors for offices; and they created four self-contained apartments on the top floors. They also installed a lift. Everything we owned had to be moved several times during the building works. It would have been easy to lose one envelope full of documents. Indeed we never found my primary school workbooks which my mother claimed to have been keeping for sentimental reasons. I wasn’t convinced that was actually her motive, as she was the least sentimental person I knew. She was probably keeping them to show my future wife and embarrass me with my childish efforts at writing and drawing. I hoped we’d lost my baby pictures too, but they showed up eventually.

* * *

Annie went straight to see Vera when we got back to ask for help in removing her ‘Steve’ disguise. My mother tried to object, but Annie said the breast bandages and the chest prosthesis were just too uncomfortable. They agreed the design needed work. Fortunately it seemed we had far fewer female customers who wanted to be male. I had no such excuse of course, so I resigned myself to being my own mother for at least another two weeks.

Still feeling a little tender in her more sensitive parts, Annie decided not to ‘sleep over’ that night and went home to her grandmother’s house straight from work. Mum and Fred were playing Bridge that evening, so the three of us had an early dinner. Fred annoyed us both by chuckling to himself about dining with two Ingrids, and how that might be too much of a good thing.

Strangely I found myself reacting to his childish humour in pretty much the same way as my mother did. I’d heard that all daughters eventually turn into their mothers, but I hadn’t realised it could apply to sons too. By the time the two of them left for the Bridge Club, Fred was looking confused as to which Ingrid he would actually be spending the evening with.

I decided on an early night. I went along to the Girls’ Room; the one that was originally Milly’s, then Jennifer’s, and would now be ‘Ingrid the Second’s’.

My mother had generously covered the bed with ladies’ wear for me: two clean nightdresses, several unopened boxes of new lingerie and tights, and some of her own suits and dresses. She obviously intended I stay in my new role as long as possible. It was reasonable, I suppose. By now we knew that our custom-made breast forms and abdominal prostheses would last indefinitely, and would fall off before they broke up, but the face pieces still needed to be tested to destruction. We couldn’t have a client’s face dropping off at an inopportune moment.

I threw my grey suit jacket on the bed and sat down at the dressing table to take off the rest of my jewellery, the stupid clip-on earrings having been removed as soon as we got home. Then I unzipped and wriggled out of the tight skirt. I hung the suit up in the wardrobe. The blouse buttoned at the back. What was that about? Vera had helped me into it but how was I supposed to get it off? Eventually I managed to undo the cuffs and the top two buttons at the back of my neck, and could then take it off over my head.

Why do women deliberately give themselves such a hard time over their clothes? I knew I could get myself into trouble there. Someone would say ‘we only wear tight dresses, uncomfortable underwear, and high heels because men make us…’

Down to my bra, knickers and tights I stood up and inspected my image in the mirror on the wardrobe door. Even though I looked every one of my mother’s forty-eight years, she was still a handsome woman, and undeniably sexy in just her lingerie, and so of course was I now…

I suddenly became uncomfortable staring at myself in lingerie and stockings. I plumped back down at the dressing table. My mother had thoughtfully provided cosmetics and feminine lotions exactly like the ones she used, so that I could remove my make-up.

I applied cleanser to break down and take off my foundation and blush, and an oil-based product to remove my lipstick. That might not have been necessary, as it wasn’t particularly long-wearing, but it was all part of the test. I was supposed to treat the prosthetic face pieces just as I would my own skin, under the harshest make-up regime a woman would use. In accordance with my instructions, I finished by covering my face with cold cream.

My feminine ablutions completed, I put on a pink nightie and a negligee, and slipped my feet into a pair of fluffy mules. I realised I wasn’t tired and looked around for something to do. I wandered along to the sitting room and switched the television on. By nine o’clock I’d exhausted my interest in that and I still wasn’t sleepy. I made myself a cup of tea.

Then one more idea occurred to me. I took the brown envelopes from my handbag and went down the back stairs to the offices. Everywhere was quiet and dark. I put the lights on. Fred and my mother wouldn’t be back till after eleven, and so what if they found me here anyway?

I looked closely at the photographs of myself as Milly and Jennifer. I sat where I reckoned I must have been when they were taken. That would mean the cameras were… over there.

I got Vera’s chair from her desk and moved it to the corner of the room. Standing up on it and stretching my neck I could just see a small black dot, high up on the wall. You’d never notice it if you weren’t looking for it. I got right up close. Something in the middle of it was reflecting the light. A camera lens? So that was where the pictures in the safety deposit box had come from.