“Good morning Jacqui, it’s Jo, can I come in to see see, there is something that we need to discuss.” I made the phone call first thing in the morning before she got involved in other things and before I had a chance to change my mind about telling her that I was thinking about leaving.

“Hi Jo, I’ve got a few meetings and things to sort out this morning, but I’m free later, what time suits you?”

“Are you free for lunch, my treat, it might be better to meet outside of the office?”

“That’s fine, pick me up at the office about 12:30.”

I was out on site for most of the morning and went home to change from my dusty working jeans and cotton top into a clean outfit , a light summer skirt and blouse, refreshing my makeup and tidying up my hair before picking up Jacqui and heading for a delightful old thatched-roof country pub just outside of town. We sat at a corner table looking out over the landscaped gardens, and ordered our drinks and meals.”

“Ok Jo, what is this about, you have got me intrigued?”

“Do you remember that you told me one time that sooner or later I would be offered more opportunities and that you could see me leaving? Well, I have received an offer which I am thinking about, but haven’t made up my mind yet, wanting to see how you would react first.”

“I knew that it would happen sometime but this is earlier than I had expected. Tell me about it.”

I told her about the discussions with Charles Mathieson of the National Trust and the proposals for me to feature is a series of documentaries about their properties and the follow up programmes by Anglia East.

“Sounds brilliant, and I can understand why you are tempted, but you don’t sound too certain about whether to take it up, what is the problem?”

“Two main problems, one personal and the other professional. On the personal side It will be a lot higher public profile which would leave me a lot more exposed to someone investigating my background and exposing me for who I really am. There is already someone effectively blackmailing me and my sister, Josie, they already know that I am not who I pretend to be, although as yet they have not discovered a link to Joey. If this gets out it will be embarrassing, not just for me but for you and the county too.”

“Look, you are now legally Joanne Louise, registered and employed as a female, and as far as I am concerned, that is who you really are. Fair enough, the council might get hit by a few lurid headlines in the gutter press, but it’s not something that can’t be managed and could even be turned to our advantage, waving the flag for our diversity and equality credentials.”

“My other big doubt is that although the prospects of an exciting life as a media personality sounds inviting, I’m not sure if it is really me. Life is already complicated enough with all the attention I get in response to my vlogs and TV programmes, and this would take it to another level. I might be the ‘flavour of the month’ at the moment, but media work like that can be very transitory. When I started working with you, I told you that it was my dream job, what interested me, and what I had been educated and trained for, and that is still there at the back of my mind. I wouldn’t like to think that in two or three years time when my bubble bursts, that I am out on a limb and no longer have a career to look forward to in the heritage field. Meantime I would be leaving you in the lurch after all the opportunities you have given me, but I have some ideas how to get around that.”

“When you started only a few short months ago, you were hesitant and shy about getting involved with fronting the vlogs, but you have grown into the role and come across just as professional, if not more so, than a lot of the established media presenters. Fame and celebrity is what you make of it. Many people seem to get too full of themselves, and think that they are better and deserve more than everybody else. Others use their celebrity status for good, fund-raising for charities campaigning for whatever interests them, but keep their feet firmly on the ground, not letting their heads go up into the clouds. If you keep the friends you already have, and not leave them for the celebrity crowd, they will keep you sane.

You’re right, in the media world if you fly high sooner or later you will fall back to earth with a bump. However there are so many travel and heritage programmes on TV now, hosted by actors, comedians and presenters that enable them to sustain a successful interesting career at a reasonable level without becoming unapproachable superstars. However if you ever decided to give all that up, I guarantee that there would be numerous organisations such as the county museums, National Trust, English Heritage, and special-interest travel companies that would be delighted to take on someone like you. You said that you have some ideas as to how to cover your taking up the offer, I am more interested in that, tell me more about what you are suggesting.”

“Josie is due to have her baby soon, but she has said that once things have settled down she would like to work rather than be a full-time stay-at-home mum. You’ve already seen that she has done a good job of standing in for me when I have been away in France and she gets on well with the people on site. She would love to take over from me, and with the help of Emma and Jane, who are featuring more and more in the vlogs it would be almost a seamless handover. If I accept the offer it will be a few months while the researchers and scriptwriters do their things before I would need to commit a lot of time to the filming schedule, and in the meantime I would be happy I could oversee what they do to make sure that the format remains the same. That may not be what you want to do, you might think that this is an opportunity for a change in approach but it would be an easy transition not having to train up someone totally new to the project. Have a think about it and discuss it with your bosses, no need for an urgent answer, I’m going nowhere for a while yet.”

“I’ll be sorry to see you go, you have shaken things up a lot, for the better. How about your personal situation, if you are going to extend your time as Joanne, you really need to think about your future life. Are you going to commit to being Joanne, take the plunge, and see about starting to transition, at least on hormone treatment to feminise you even more, although you are pretty believable as you are now?”

“You’re right, I have arranged to see a counsellor and medical staff to start hormone therapy, the way my life is going, I don’t think Joey will be coming back anytime and the higher my profile the more I need to be as near to 100% female as possible. It’s not something that I had intended to do when all this started, but over the last few months this is who I have become, Joanne Louise, it’s the life I am now living, and to be honest I am totally comfortable with it and it is now almost natural for me.”

“Whatever you think best Jo, you will always have my support and friendship. Anyway I must be getting back to the museum I have preparations to organise for meetings. After that I will see what I can do about replacing you, if that is what you decide to do.”

Rather than getting changed to go back to site, I just followed Jacqui back to the museum and completed my daily vlog.

“Hi Jo, we haven’t really seen you for ages and had a chance to talk. It’s Laura’s birthday today and a few of us are going for a drink after work, why not join us.” Michelle greeted me as I walked through reception.

“Sounds good to me, the guys on site often go down to the pub at the end of the day, but I am not really part of their social set, they look on me as a bit of an outsider looking on while they do all the hard work. Are you going anywhere special or am I alright dressed like this?”

“You’ll be fine as you are, you are probably better dressed than most of us, it’s just down at The Woodman’s Arms. There will be about a half-dozen of us, but Jim and Bob usually get fed up of our girly chatter quite quickly and won’t stay very long.”

“Ok, see you later, and thanks for asking, I’m looking forward to it.”

It was good to socialise with the girls and catch up on the office gossip again, being onsite so often I was a bit out of the loop of what had been happening to them all. I was bombarded with questions about my the recent discoveries at Ostia and my work at theTV station and it was difficult to keep my offer of a change of career from them, but I didn’t want it to turn into a ‘Jo’ event, it was Laura’s birthday and she deserved to be the centre of attention. Whilst I was totally happy in their company it reminded me that I had been neglecting all my friends that had helped me become settled into my life as Jo.

After a while I noticed that Darren had come in and was having a pint at the bar with Jim and Bob, he caught my eye and gave me a smile and a friendly wave. As the girls got up later to leave for home he came over and joined me, giving me a hug and a peck on the cheek, much to the surprise and envy of the other girls who gave me knowing glances as they left for home.

“Hi Jo, it’s about time we got together again, if you’d like that. There’s a race meeting next Sunday at Fakenham. Even if you are not that mad about horse racing it is an exciting and enjoyable day out, do you fancy it?”

“I’d love to, I was just thinking when I was chatting with the girls that I had been neglecting everyone recently, I have been a bit tied up with life’s problems, I need to get out more. However, there is something that I need to talk to you about first, let’s go out into the beer garden and find a more private spot.” I had decided that I needed to tell him about myself before we got in too deeply.

“Ok Jo, this sounds serious, you are not going to give me the brush-off, are you, you are not seeing someone else?”

Taking a deep breath. I opened up to him.

“Darren, far from it, I really like you and would love to see more of you, but I am going to tell you something about me that may change your opinion of me, and you may want to give me the brush-off. To put it bluntly, I am transgender, I was, in fact still I am, physically male, under all this finery I am not who I appear to be. I will understand if you get up and walk away in disgust betrayal and anger, but please, please, please, do not spread it about. I am trying to be fair with you and do not want to lead you on.”

He went silent for a while, his eyes wandering up and down me, boring into my soul, before replying.

“Jo, I have only ever known you as an attractive, charming, intelligent, and funny girl, and despite what you have just said that is the way that I will always see you. I have no intention of walking away, either now or in the future. As regards keeping its secret, my best friend who I stuck with through all the years from meeting them at primary school has recently transitioned and I understand how difficult it must have been for you to tell me. Although Lorna has fully transitioned she still has a preference for relationships with other girls, but we still remain close friends. There must be something about me that attracts me to people like you and her. Tell me everything.”

I gave him the full story about how it had all started and just steamrollered until, I got to where I was now, beginning the process to become female.

“You are totally different to Lorna, she knew from an early age that inside she was really a girl, but kept it all bottled up until she got older, however you just seem to have had an overnight revelation. Are you sure that it is what you want to do, and that it is not just a convenient path for you to make a successful career. Are you like Lorna, still preferring women, that is if you ever did, or do you think that you will follow the traditional life of a genetic woman and live your life in a female/male relationship.”

“If you had asked me a few months ago, even a few weeks ago, I would have said that I could only see a committed relationship with another female, even after transition, but listening to the girls tonight talking about their husbands and partners, some of it quite lurid and revealing, and remembering I felt with the kisses last time I was out with you I realised that I was relating to them and their emotions. My brain is still in a bit of a muddle, I have a long way to go, but I am definitely heading in the direction of wanting a conventional relationship with a man, and just become like most other women.”

“Ok, thanks for being honest with me, it must have been worrying for you as to how I would react, and considering my feelings. Let’s just continue as we are for the moment and see where it takes us. How about next Sunday’s meeting, are you up for it?”

As we stood up to leave after chatting for a while longer, I instinctively gave him a hug and a kiss which he just accepted as he would have done from any other girl, and I knew that he accepted and was comfortable with what I had told him.

When I got home I was eager to tell Josie about my meeting with Jacqui, and my talk with Darren, but she was quite excited and faster than me, and blurted out “Your reporter friend Sally phoned earlier, she said she needs to talk to Jack about something that she has discovered and will be here in about an hour. What was it you were going to say?”

“Let’s leave it for the moment and get the place tidied and ready for Sally.”

Sally soon arrived, looking quite pleased with herself, and we all sat with a glass of wine eagerly waiting to hear what she had found out.

“Ok Jack, I hope that what I am about to say will not upset you too much, but please hear me out. I think I might have opened a can of worms about your fathers business deals. Until just before you started school your father was a junior partner in a firm of chartered accountants looking after the accounts and tax affairs of a few small engineering companies. He and your mother lived a relatively modest life, can you remember much of what was going on at that time?”

“Not a lot, at that age all I was interested in was my toys, my books and my friends. I do remember that our house was small, with no garden, I and my friends used to use a nearby field next to some factories as our playground. Then, all of a sudden we moved to a much bigger place in it’s own grounds, a long way away, and not long after, maybe a two or three years later, we moved again to where Dad and Mum now live.”

“So that would have been about 1994 and 1997 right?”

“Sounds about right but I’m not definite.”

“As far as you were aware, and it’s a strange question, when you moved were there changes to your lifestyle.”

“I had aways wanted a bike and that first Christmas that was the big surprise present for me, along with more other things than I normally got, it was a shame that I had lost all my old friends, they would have been so jealous of me. In the old house the meals were home-cooked, fresh and wholesome, but when we moved they all seemed to get a lot fancier and exotic, and Mum and Dad seemed to go out a lot more leaving me with child-minders.”

“The reason I am interested in those dates is that they were the first times that your father appeared in the register of directors of any companies, as Company Secretary, responsible for the finances of those businesses. Two of those companies subsequently went Into receivership, owing large debts to their suppliers and causing many of their customers to lose any deposits or advance payments. At the same time there was a sudden upsurge in your families finances. As the businesses were only small family owned and managed companies there were no major investigations into what happened and how the companies got into their situations. It just seemed that they had been badly managed and had overstretched themselves.

I have had a friend, Calvin, who is a forensic accountant who owes me a few favours, look over those company accounts and he can’t understand why there was not a more intensive investigation. Money seemed to be shuffled around between various accounts and ‘consultancy payments' made to shell companies, registered offshore via a tangled web of ownership arrangements. It is difficult to prove, as offshore tax havens thrive on confidentiality and discretion, but there are links from your father to those accounts. It appears that he was milking the finances of those companies until he had built up a substantial nest egg, and then when their finances were shaky he pulled the plug on them in the annual accounts submission to Companies House ( The Government agency for the registration and recording of annual accounts submissions for commercial businesses).”

“You say that you can’t prove this, are you sure?”

“He is pretty definite that if investigated properly it will all come out in the wash, but that is not all.

It seems that he then changed his tactics, using his offshore funds and a holding company he bought into companies, gradually took control of them and then used their assets as collateral to buy other struggling companies rather than lead a company to bankruptcy after draining its finances. There seems to be a whole chain of money shuffling between several companies so that at the times of their annual reports they appeared to be in much better shape than they actually were. Over the years this has continued and he has built up a business empire of many companies which are all interdependent with a tangled web of loans and financial arrangements between them. However the whole business structure is quite fragile and if one business fails the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.”

“That all sounds very unethical and underhand, but is any of it actually illegal?”Jack pushed her to see how much leverage it would give them.

“Not really, although Companies House could give them a really hard time over false accounting. However it would ruin his financial credibility, reputation, and his standing in the community. In addition a lot of his personal finances and the house ownership are closely linked to his businesses and if the companies failed, he and your Mum would be in dire straits, and probably bankrupt and homeless.”

“Have you anything to back up these allegations that I can wave in front of him. If I just threatened to expose him on heresay he would just deny it all, cover his tracks, and shuffle money around offshore so that it could not be reclaimed?”

“All the company accounts are public records, and if the police fraud squads got involved they can easily request bank account details and pull it all together, financially it would ruin him and, by association, your mother as well. If you want to hit him with a record of it all Calvin can provide a short summary of it with a bit of background, but if you want a more detailed analysis there will be a significant fee charged for that. However, as I said before, a lot of his dealings are highly suspect and the police or financial authorities would most likely take on the detailed work to investigate and prove it all, if we reported it to them. Don’t forget, I am a journalist, not an investigator or accountant, and, this could be a major story in the local papers, and with Jo’s contacts at the TV station it could open up the floodgates for more information from the previous owners he squeezed out of the businesses they had built up.”

“Let me have think about it, I just want them to back off, I don’t want to see them ruined, unless it is the only solution.”

“That’s up to you Jack, let me know what you want to do. I’m still investigating your family history, I’ve opened ancestry search accounts in your name, sent off your DNA sample and am still waiting results and feedback, which should be soon. I’ll let you know if it turns up anything useful.We’ll meet again in about a week, by them I should have more information on your family background. ”

When Sally had left, Jack went off to another room to have a think about what Sally had said, leaving me to tell Josie about the events of my day. She quickly took in the prospects for her possible employment at Ostia, and was eagerly looking forward to taking over from me but was more interested in my discussions with Darren.

“Everyone you have told seems to have just accepted you as Jo. It’s an easy thing for them to do, you are just so natural as a girl, not just in your looks, but in the way you conduct yourself and deal with people, to be honest it is sometimes easy to forget your previous life as Joey.

Darren seems to be a nice lad, but don’t push him too quickly or you will frighten him off. From what you say, it doesn’t seem to have put him off you at all, and he was quite keen to see you again at the races on Sunday. Actually that seems as if it might be quite fun, do you fancy a foursome with Jack and me, it might help to smooth any ripples in the waters of your relationship.”

As it was ‘Ladies day’ at the races, it gave Josie and me a chance to dress up in our finery, cocktail dresses ‘fascinator’ hats and heels, although the heels were not really appropriate for walking on the turf in the spectators paddocks, a difficult choice many women have to make. We all really enjoyed ourselves, with a delightful meal in the main restaurant before the races started. A couple of small bets on the early races produced a bit of a return for us, mainly by luck rather than any knowledge of the form, which all went on the big race of the meeting, the last of the day.

As we felt the shuddering of the thundering hooves on the ground as the horses galloped up the final straight, we became more excited when two of our horses were neck to neck as they crossed the finishing line ahead of the rest of the field, giving us enough of a return to pay for our day out together with celebratory hugs and kisses all round.

Mainly because Josie and Jack were with us there was no mention of my situation and my relationship with Darren, as far as all of us, and anyone else near us, were concerned we were just two young couples enjoying each others’ company.

Josie was beginning to feel the effect of her pregnancy and was feeling tired, so her and Jack headed off home, leaving Darren and me to stop for a final drink before driving me home.

As we stood at the door, I was unsure whether my coming out to Jack would change how he would react, but he left me in no doubt when he held in a tight clinch and gave me a quite passionate goodnight kiss. “Goodnight Joanne, let’s get together again soon, I’ve really enjoyed my time with you today.”

I went straight to my room, changed, cleaned my face and went to bed, quickly falling asleep, dreaming about that passionate kiss.

To be continued.