There are some themes in this story that some younger people might find offensive. And again might not, but some older people might think that they might offend the younger people anyway. So if you’re a younger person, below the age of majority in your region, please navigate away to another site, or perhaps ask your parents or guardians if you should be looking at this page: it might enlighten them.

So if the above refers to you, you’ve gone now, haven’t you? And I can write what I like?

Good.

Because it’s been a fucking awful year.

I think it’s immoral to kill, but if I ever change my mind, I will pick grey, jaded, inconsequential bureaucrats and pick them off one by one. But I suppose I won’t change my mind and they’ll carry on their shocking low-key bullying for the rest of my life. Still, I’ve learned a few things – the hard way – and I’ll be more wary and defensive next time.

You see, it’s been a very vulnerable time for me. We lived in a council house, and my sister had moved away to university leaving just my mom and me at home, and that was no problem. It was nice to have a spare room for when Elaine visited – when she could drag herself away from her exciting metropolitan student life – and we stored a bit of junk in there since she was hardly ever home. So when mom dropped dead with a brain haemorrhage last winter it was completely unexpected. She was only 40 and no one had suspected that she’d had a tumour. Her headaches were sudden and unexplained for two months and then – pouf – she was gone.

Elaine came back for a month to stay over the Christmas holidays, and we had both agreed that she should continue her education and I should get a job. I turned 16 at the beginning of January, knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on schoolwork, especially moving up to A-level, and I thought Elaine’s suggestion that a job for a few months would help me, giving me something to do apart from just mourn, made sense – keep busy and think about college later. My aunt Claire, who I had rarely seen up to this point, was going to visit regularly to keep an eye on me, I had my best friends from school not far away and Mr and Mrs Juniper, our next door neighbours, were willing to be a gentle support, but promising to give me enough space too.

I found work with a small agency in late January, shortly after Elaine had gone back down south. They did cleaning and kitchen jobs and placed me cleaning in a hotel for a month. When that finished they quickly got me another doing after hours cleaning in an office. It wasn’t good money but I could just about pay the rent and bills, and it kept a rhythm going in my life as I worked through my emotions. I got a few state benefits too to help with rent and tax. I had just settled into that second job when the letter arrived from the council bureaucrats saying that since I was now alone in a three-bedroomed house, I would have to be moved to appropriate accommodation for a single person. I can hardly remember anything that happened that month except that I was going to lose the family home because of some decision in an office somewhere. I walked around as if my head was wrapped in six inches of cotton wool, and nothing really got through to me.

I know now there might have been things I could have done, but I was too naïve, too emotionally battered, already too downtrodden by circumstances to have any fight left in me. The plan had been to gently grieve while doing some simple repetitive work, but the stress that this emergent circumstance placed me under was simply too much.

A month later I suppose I surfaced: my memory of events, at any rate, continues; that lost month I suppose I outwardly plodded on somehow, but inwardly I must have been deeply depressed and perhaps verging on psychotic: anyway, it’s all gone. Next I remember, I was in a bedsit. I suppose that by not responding in some required way to bureaucratic letters and by not having the concentration or knowledge to handle the situation, or even to ask the right people for help, I had been displaced from the house, and not rehoused in council housing, but in “emergency list” housing, which consisted of private landlords who had supposedly been vetted.

What I had been able to carry of my mother’s effects were stacked in boxes in one corner; what must have been carryable in a couple of taxi journeys, I suppose. I know I would have found it hard to throw anything away which was surely why there was far more in my new flat than I really should have kept. I had almost everything that my sister had left at home in another corner, and it must have taken, presumably, another couple of taxi journeys, leaving my tiny savings pile with scarcely enough to survive on. Among all the other things I’d had trouble coping with, I had failed to tell Elaine of the move, and found that when it had gone through and I came to myself again, I couldn’t find her address or phone number among all the boxes. I had also lost Aunt Claire’s number. So those first memories after losing it all were of the end of a period where I think I cried for days, when I was alone in the flat. I began to realise how cut off I’d become, but even in that vulnerable state, I didn’t blame myself, I knew I was not in any state of mind to be organised. I blamed the council and their mindless heartless paper-pushers; but apart from going and kicking the Portland stone walls of the municipal buildings, I could see no way of doing anything about it.

On Sunday, because I had had to work that Saturday, I went to see Mr and Mrs Juniper, but they weren’t in. I sat on the step for hours, but eventually returned to my bedsit. The following week the same happened.

Soon after the move, the benefits agency had suspended payments, which had been helping on the rent and council tax, because of my change in circumstances and I’d had to fill in five 40-page application forms and then wait for my claims to start again, including my housing benefit and council tax support. This period finally broke the bank with me, and I knew I would be short on the bills until the benefits started paying again. Still working extra hours when I could get them had a welcome numbing effect, leaving me with no energy except to collapse into the bed when I got back to the bedsit. The following week, I managed to visit Mr and Mrs Juniper’s house on the Saturday, but when again they were not in, I became despondent. I tried again six weeks later, and when I missed them again, I gave up.

I knew my aunt would be concerned, and Elaine would probably be frantic with worry. I thought of catching a train to see if I could find her at the university, but there simply wasn’t the money. It didn’t occur to me to ring instead and see if they could locate her; absurd, I know, but it didn’t cross my fumbling mind.

I was probably in my fourth job now for the agency, cleaning again. This job was for a large hotel and they had insisted on a uniform and an ID badge. My name badge just said “Chris”. The uniform consisted of shapeless black nylon trousers and shirt and a green tabard, which fastened with Velcro. The trousers had an elasticated waist and no fly, which I found sort of embarrassing inside my own head, if you know what I mean. No-one else seemed to notice at all, but it seemed to me they weren’t really men’s trousers, though when I asked the agency about wearing different trousers, they just said the uniform was compulsory.

Despite not really liking it at first, it did save a lot of wear and tear on my own clothes, and lot of laundry too, since the hotel we were working in laundered the uniforms for us. This added up quite quickly to a distinct benefit financially, so I grew to appreciate it. I was still awaiting the expected state benefits to come through and every penny, quite literally, was counting.

I was at work one Friday, late in my shift, having been doing this cleaning job for over a month, when I was called to the hotel front desk.

“It’s a call for you, Chris,” said Natalie, who was starting on night reception for the evening.
“For me? Oh, um, thanks.” I spoke into the receiver: “Hello?”
“Hi Chris, Claudia here from Service Placements.”
“Oh, hello Claudia.”
“Look, there’s a little bad news. The hotel won’t be renewing the contract for us at the end of the month, they have filled their vacancies now; but there’s nothing else available next week.”
“Oh…”
“Best thing is if you keep calling us, as long as you’re available for work, then we’ll have you back in work as soon as we can. I know you’re keen.”
“Um, yeah, yes, very keen, Claudia.”
“Good then,” she said cheerfully, “talk to you soon. Could you ask Mary to come to the phone?”
“Oh, okay, thanks Claudia.”

I left the receiver on the desk, unsure how Claudia had managed to make the news, which was disastrous for me, sound so upbeat towards the end. But my voice had been becoming softer and weaker and more apologetic as recent events bore down on me and my self-esteem and sense of personal power had ebbed to almost nothing, so the control of the tone of the conversation had been all hers.

A little later, just as I was getting ready to go, Kelly, our supervisor, asked me if I was okay. I told her the news, and she admitted she’d already known.

“I can’t afford not to have any work, Kelly.”
“Oh a youngster like you will find something in no time.”
“But I can’t afford even a week off, really.”
“Look, tell you what,” she said with a slightly conspiratorial tone, “I know a couple of hotels that might be hiring. Give me your number and I’ll call you if there’s a job.”

Her beaming smile fell when I explained that I hadn’t got a phone, couldn’t afford one. She frowned and seemed to realise how despondent I really was.

“Can you call me? Next Tuesday, would be best.”
“Well, I could drop in, it’s probably easier.”
“Okay,” she said looking at me slightly sidelong, “do that then, at 4.30.”
“Thanks ever so, Kelly,” I said, and even managed a smile.

The week after, on Monday, I went to the dole office to sign on. They gave me an appointment date and told me to fill in a form and come back on Wednesday. I had never signed on for full benefits before, but I knew enough to know that I would be on very little money indeed. I had saved a small amount from the last few weeks’ working and carefully spent it before being told I would be laid off. It had been enough to buy a completely essential pair of comfortable shoes, styled like trainers actually, but unbranded and in a one-colour leather-like fabric, that were comfortable and simple to work in. After that I only had a few pounds in spare cash, and had had to stitch up one of my pairs of trousers. I had planned on some new clothes, which though essential, were something I had to look forward to and was about to start saving for. With the news that the work was drying up and still no decision on the benefits I’d been waiting for, I began to panic. Too late I began to realise that now I’d signed on they might have to reprocess all my claims. I suppose I suffered what they call a panic attack, the sort of thing that happens to people when they’re stressed beyond their limits and I suppose I should have gone to the doctor. But I didn’t know that.

The weekend had been hell, sitting in a room staring at all the reminders of my mom and my sister, with nothing else to do for hours on end. I did trawl the agencies, and I could see the looks that the air-headed air-hostess look-alikes in several of them gave me: “Scruffy little thing, not good enough for us.” I didn’t strike an imposing figure at the best of times. But I couldn’t afford new clothes or a haircut and I knew I was starting to look pretty shaggy. Shaggy enough or unlucky enough that six agencies told me there was nothing, leaving me confused as to how they could run their businesses if there really was so little work around.

On Tuesday I turned up at the hotel at 4.15 desperately hoping, and there was no sign of Kelly. Jason was on reception and was not nearly as friendly as Natalie. I hung around the front for a while, then went round the back. After seeing no-one I went back round the front. Suddenly, Kelly rushed out.

“Where have you been? I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I asked Ja…”
“Listen, there’s a vacancy for a cleaner at the Sherlington on Station Street. They were going to advertise and I told them about you, said you were keen and a really good worker. They’ll be expecting you tomorrow at 2, can you make it?”
“Uh…” I thought about my signing on interview, but decided this was more important, “Yes.” I said.
“Good.” She leaned back and looked me over. “You’d better tie your hair back and try to look a bit smarter – just for the interview. The Sherlington’s smart and they have a uniform too, so once you’re in it’s easier. You poor thing, I know you can’t afford anything.”
“Thank you so much, Kelly…”
“Look, Chris, I could maybe lend you something to wear if you don’t have anything … if you like?”
I gave her a look that was probably of mild consternation and confusion. “I, I think I’ll be okay, thanks, Kelly.”
“I hope so, they’re definitely looking for someone, and I think you’ve got first refusal. Chin up – be confident!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, thanks Kelly, I’m so grateful.”

She watched me as I walked away. Thinking back, guessing, I suppose she felt sorry for me and wasn’t sure I could pull off the interview with my low self-esteem. I wasn’t sure either, but I intended to try every trick in the book.

At home, I looked in my pitted mirror, after washing my hair. I had no hairdryer, though my hair was long enough by now to need it, dampening my back and shoulders as it dried. Nor had I anything to hold it back with. I had a few pounds, not enough for a haircut but surely enough to follow Kelly’s suggestion and get something to tie it back with: I would just have to spend some money tomorrow. I looked at my clothes. The clean chinos were not so clean: I mean, they had several freshly cleaned stains on them, ones that wouldn’t wash out. Jeans were usually considered unacceptable for interviews, as were shorts. My black trousers were the ones I’d had to stitch last week, but my skills are poor and I had had no matching thread. I would have to wear what I was wearing now, but they were definitely starting to look crumpled after all the walking around I’d done the last couple of days. Wearing clothes for more than two days was simply a matter of necessity for me, but it showed. I had several tee shirts, in similar condition to the trousers; and my best shirt which used to be my school shirt and which still fit perfectly well, had an ink stain on the breast pocket which I suspect my mom could have removed, but my attempts had failed. I had no jacket apart from my old school blazer, which wouldn’t give the right impression. A feeling of ennui started to come over me. There was no point, I was starting to feel, in going to the interview.

I managed to snap myself out of that thought, though the feeling lingered. I tried to think, but the bedsit was not conducive to that. So I went for a walk. Two hours later I came home puzzling over what it might have been that Kelly might have lent me for the interview. I should have accepted. She might have some perfectly unisex trousers or jackets. My gaze fell on the boxes of my sister’s clothes. I mooched through and after about ten minutes found a white shirt.

I held it up and looked at it. It was a slightly different shape to my own, but it was simple white cotton, and looked fine. Looking through the rest of that box, I realised these were Elaine’s old school things, and I looked no further and turned to the other boxes. Half an hour later the shirt was all I’d found that I could use. I turned and looked at my mom’s boxes. Two hours later, after having a good hard cry because of looking through my mom’s things, I sat on my bed. I’d found a pair of black slacks. Trying them on, they were just a little long. While they didn’t drag on the ground, the smart front crease crumpled at my instep. But they would have to do. I tried on Elaine’s shirt with it, and it fitted fine, sort of. The mirror was too small to see myself in it properly, but I realised that the shirt was too short to tuck in, though it covered the trousers’ hipster waistband; so it would have to stay untucked. The trousers zipped and, like the shirt, buttoned, on the wrong side, but otherwise they seemed fine. My hair was still shaggy, I would drop into the chemist’s on the way to the interview and ask for an elastic or something, and it was the best I could do, I just hoped it would be smart enough.

The chemist shop was a small place, but it still had a bewildering array of hair accessories though none seemed to be what I wanted.

“Excuse me,” I said sheepishly, “I need something simple, to hold my hair back for an interview.”
“Let’s see dear,” said the smiling retailer, moving from behind the counter and towards a display.
“This would look very smart on you,” she assured me, holding up some sort of curved toothed device that reminded me of a dinosaur’s lower jaw.
“Er, no thanks,” I felt myself frown at her, “just an elastic is all I need.”
“Oh, I see, well, we have…” she paused. “We have several scrunchies, but I can’t see any elastics.”
I didn’t like the sound of “scrunchies” and was wondering whether I should go to the stationers for simple elastic bands, though I’m sure Elaine swore that that did terrible damage to her hair: I never understood why they would, but I could remember her insisting they had to be “hair elastics”, when she used them.

“Oh here we are, my dear,” the lady said, pulling me from my reverie, and held out a piece of cardboard. I took it and saw that around it were wrapped two pieces of black and gold covered elastic with small pink and gold plastic butterflies attached.
“I’m going to, to an interview,” I said, emphasising the last word.
She frowned, “Well, I suppose they’re a bit playful. I think the most conservative thing would be a black scrunchie, and maybe secure it with some hairpins,” she said.

I frowned again, but time was running out, and when she held up the black scrunchie, it did look fairly low-key.

“Um, okay, I’d better have that,” I said.

She handed it to me, and I looked at it with consternation and yet determination, as I handed over a fiver. I safely stashed my meagre change in my sister’s bumbag, something I had had to raid from one of Elaine’s boxes that morning when it had dawned on me that mom’s trousers had no pockets. All the money I had in the world now was in there, and it came to much less than £5.
I was about to turn and leave when the shop lady said: “Here, let me help you with it, so you can look your best.”
I halted my turn, realising that that was a more than helpful offer.

“Oh, thank you,” I said, handing her the scrunchie.

I might have refused if I had realised how rough she would be. She produced a spiky plastic hair brush, brushed out my hair, parted it, brushed it some more, gathered it, pulled the scrunchie over it, tight on my head, and then produced from heavens knows where at least six hairpins – “on the house” – and finally she said: “There.”

There was a full-length mirror in the shop, partially obscured by encroaching racks of products on either side. I had a look at the narrowed reflection and was really not sure what to think. I hadn’t looked like this before. The fit of the slacks was different to my own trousers, and there was something about how the blouse looked, even with my school tie at the collar, it looked somehow soft and the sleeves were oddly taut. My hair pulled back did look much neater, but quite severe.

“A fringe would look a little softer,” the lady suggested.

I looked at her, and at my mirrored self, back at her and then at my watch. For a moment I felt a great weight of indecision, but another look at my watch and I threw the thought away and realised I’d better hurry.

“Well, thank you.”
“Good luck, dear.”
“Um, thanks.”

The trainers weren’t the ideal look, though in leathery fabric they were at least smart casual, but I was very grateful for their springy lightness as I walked the two miles to the Sherlington Hotel. It was a semi-posh hotel gone slightly to seed, but quite large, and still prominent because of its proximity to the station. I stood outside for a few minutes to cool down, but with my hair off my face, that happened more quickly than usual.

I entered the foyer, which was predominantly a maroon colour where it wasn’t dark polished wood. Glass doors on either side gave onto corridors and a large staircaise swirled in an anticlockwise curve along the wall to my right up to the first floor. I approached the desk on the left where a lit up sign on the front of the dark wood seemed to say: “Snerlington Hote”. I tried not to show my amazement that they hadn’t mended the sign, one of the first things one saw on entering.

“Can I help you?” said a smart looking young woman, in a rather broad local accent.
“I, I’ve come about a job.” I said, and then felt I should add: “My friend Kelly said she had spoken to someone here.”
“Kelly? Oh, the two o’clock appointment with Mrs Jennings. What’s your name?”
“Chris Tertullian.”
“Good. If you’ll follow me Mister Tullian.”

People often got my name wrong, it was no surprise. They had such trouble with the surname that I never ever used my full Christian name which would have added two more syllables, though some would say even my surname was a very Christian name.

We walked through the corridor to the right of the entrance, which turned sharply left after the glass door and curved, following the wall the staircase was set into. There were two doors on the right before the one the receptionist took me to. She knocked sharply on the door.
“Mister Tullian for you Mrs Jennings.”
“Ah thank you Julia,” came a smooth voice from inside the room.

Julia stepped aside, and gestured for me to enter, which I did, gingerly and nervously moving into the room. I heard the door gently click behind me as I quickly took in the faded glory of the office.

“Miss Tertullian, nice to meet you,” she said, and her clipped pronunciation made it sound quite clear that she had said “Miss”. I felt my stomach flip and felt even more nervous.
“Ah…” I started.
“Please, let me tell you what we are looking for and how we do things here, then I will hear any questions.” Quite firm. Then she said, not really meaning it: “Is that alright?”
“Yes. Yes, Mrs Jennings.” I said, trying all my politeness tricks in one sentence.
“Good. Miss Harvey told me all about you, and she said you were very reliable, very punctual and hard working. I like those qualities and expect them of all my staff, but expected though they may be, those who show those qualities are treated well and valued.
“The positions we have at the moment are for a room attendant and a washer-upper in the kitchen. Kelly told me you had been cleaning for her, and so I suspect the room attendant is the most suited position, unless you would prefer to try the kitchen work?”
“Oh, room attendant would be fine, Mrs Jennings. I haven’t worked in a kitchen before.”
“Quite, that would require training prior to your starting. So room attendant it is.”
Her mouth smiled before going on: “Guests leave their rooms by 9 am, and by then you will have organised your trolley. Cleaners go in teams of two down a corridor; you will go with one of the other girls and in each room where the guest is staying longer, change the sheets, make the bed, hoover, clean the en-suite, wipe down the mirrors and that’s it. If he guest is not staying longer, then check for anything left behind, strip the bed, clean the ensuite and the mirrors and give the room a thorough clean. If a guest has not left their room by 9 am, check back again at the end of the shift. If they are still there at that time, then we must presume they are happy to not have their cleaning done that day.”
She smiled again. “Sound simple enough?”
“Ah, yes, I think so.”
“Good. We pay at the minimum wage, uniform provided, except for the shoes. It’s six hours a day to start, but prove yourself invaluable and there may be more work. I will know you’re a good worker if I have to remember to ask how you’re getting on.” She caught my eye. “I hope your progress will not need to be brought to my attention.”
“No, no, Mrs Jennings.” I gulped inwardly. The woman frightened me, partly because she was as stern as my French teacher from last year, from whom I learned almost nothing except how to be silent, and partly because I needed this job so badly.
“Jolly good. If there are no questions, then, take yourself back to Julia and she will give you a uniform and have you start training.” A quick smile, and she was looking at her correspondence again, discouraging any questions.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs Jennings,” and I quietly left the room.

I had thought her unutterably rude, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I was certainly on the verge of beggardom. I would simply have to keep my head down and work. Part of me was elated, in spite of her manner, and in spite of everyone getting my name wrong: there was no competition, they just gave me the job, simple as that.

Of course, I was under no illusions. I had to prove myself, and I was also slightly shocked at there being only 6 hours work a day. I would be forced to do weekends if possible, and I needed to be the best room attendant they had ever had to be sure of more hours. But it was better than dole, and with the benefits top-up I hoped I should still be entitled to, helping with rent and council tax – when the paperwork is one day finally processed – I should be able to manage … just.

Julia did not give me a uniform, but took me to meet Mrs Miller who was ruddy-faced and somewhat harried, but had a gentle manner under the stressed aura she exuded.

“Chris is short for Christine, is it?” she asked as she led me into the working part of the hotel.
“Christopher, actually,” I said.

She looked at me sharply, frowned slightly and then cracked into a wide smile, and gave me a nudge as we walked along the first floor corridor.

“We’ll get on well, you and I,” she beamed.

My confusion as to what exactly she thought of me and how she had taken that first exchange was dissipated with the array of things on view when she showed me the store room. Her arm swept in several arcs: “cleaning materials; cloths and scrubbers; brushes; hoover attachments, but be sure to let me know if a machine is missing anything; through that door linens and curtains and here…” she leaned into the linen room, “a tape measure.”

She quickly ran it around my waist as I leaned slightly back from her encroaching torso.

“I don’t know why they can’t make things the size they say on the label, but it’s always best to measure, ‘cause I know what these uniforms will really fit.”

She also measured my chest and my hips.

“How old are you?” she frowned.
“Sixteen.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps you’ll get fed a bit better than you’re used to, now you’ve a job here.”

I didn’t know what to make of this, but she was gone in a second into the linen cupboard and pulled out three items.

“Could you lift your trouser leg for me?” she said.
“Eh?” I said, but caught her eye and complied by flashing an ankle.
“Thought so. Here, have these too”, and she took a long thin rectangular packet and plopped it on top then handed me the folded and cellophane wrapped bundles. “This way!” And she rushed out.

I looked at the dark blue rectangular package, which sat beside something white and cellophane wrapped, on top of something larger and white and cellophane wrapped, on top of something pale green and also wrapped. The top package had a matrix printed in the back with small letters and numbers that I couldn’t read as I walked, but I had a bad feeling about it.

“In here, this should be private enough,” and she swept a door open.
“I’ll be back in five minutes, Chris. Put the uniform on, all you’ve got there, and wait outside for me.”

“Um Mrs Miller, I’m not sure…” I stated, looking at the pile I was holding.
“Chris, everyone doing the rooms wears the same uniform. If you don’t like it you know where the door is.” Yet she somehow managed to add a conciliatory smile on the end of saying this. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just part of the job. I can assure you, you’ll forget what you’re wearing half way through the first room; it’s hard work and you’ll be glad you’re not wearing your own clothes.
I looked at her, and with a big smile she turned and was gone.

I looked around. Mirrors lined one wall, with a table-like shelf part the way along it, and then three sinks. Reflected in the mirror behind me were some cubicles. I put the things on the shelf, picked up the packet that had worried me, and as I read the front I felt the blood rush to my face, and my heart beat in my ears. “Ladies’ tights, medium, taupe,” it said.

I looked towards the door, took a step after Mrs Miller, and then froze. She had not sounded like she would accept an argument. If I gave her an argument then surely Mrs Jennings would hear about it. Mrs Jennings had definitely called me “Miss”. “O Hell!” I thought, maybe Julie had too, they all thought I was a girl. So Mrs Miller must have thought I was joking when I’d said my name was Christopher, which was a conclusion I had been trying not to come to.

I turned to the mirror, frowning. I did look androgynous I knew there had been something odd about the look I’d seen in the chemist shop’s mirror. It was so long since I’d tried to look smart, so long since I’d had a haircut I would have felt strange seeing myself under any circumstance. Even so, I didn’t see a girl, just a boy, a young man, well nearly… in soft cut slacks, a girls blouse and hair tied back. A sudden feeling of rage came over me, and I was almost about to rip the clothes off, when I was swamped by just as sudden a feeling of ennui as I realised that if I did that then the dreaded uniform would be all I had left to wear home.

I looked at it again.
“But I need this job,” some part of my mind said through clenched teeth. I felt my eyes fill with tears. “When they find out they’ll laugh me out of here, and all the hotels in town will know me.” The cogs in my mind turned for what must have been seconds but felt much longer. I realised that they had got my name from Kelly, and it dawned on me that Kelly might have thought I was a girl too… must have, if she had passed my name on and they had me down as Miss. My head slumped. I realised if they all thought I was a girl anyway, it made no difference if I wore the uniform.

And then, coming like a cool breeze, I remembered I didn’t even know what the uniform was! It was probably a tabard and slacks like it was working for Kelly. I shook my head and laughed at myself and quickly undid the white package.

Not a tabard. A white knee-length full apron in starched polycotton. I opened the green package and my heart sank; really, I felt it splash as it hit my stomach. It was a green dress with white piping, collar and cuffs on short sleeves. I felt the tears return, but shook my head and thought: “If they’re making fun of me then let them have their laugh.”

I was feeling almost as low as I ever had. Everything had been going wrong for me. Why this seemed to be so bad, in the scheme of things, I was not sure any more. If I’d had more confidence, if less of the stuffing had been knocked out of me in the previous months I would probably have explained or walked out. But it was some sort of act of psychological self-harm, a kind of self-esteem suicide that made me decide to put on the damned uniform, let them have their laugh, and then sack me.

I went into a cubicle, unclipped the bumbag; undid the top button and unzipped the trousers, slipped them off; unbuttoned the blouse, hung them both on the hook on the door, and then held the dress up. It zipped at the back, to the waist, so I unzipped it and then stepped in, I got the zip part the way up the back but couldn’t be bothered to fight it further. I grabbed the trousers and shirt, took them out of the cubicle to the shelf and folded them.

Suddenly, making me jump, Mrs Miller burst back in.

“How are we doing then? Good grief, what took so long? Here, let me zip you up. You’ll need the apron on next.”
She grabbed it and quickly pulled the neck loop over my head, I had turned towards her, but she pulled my shoulder to turn me so that I had my back to her again. She finished zipping me up, then she tied the belt of the apron. She turned me again, picked up the small white packet that I hadn’t looked at and peeled it out. She then opened a small pack of hair grips which had been inside it, took my pony tail, twisted it up into a bun, pinned it, and then unfolded the white thing out to reveal what looked like a nurse’s cap, made from some sort of plasticized paper. A couple more hairpins and it was in place.

“Are you alright?” she said, shook her head with a slight frown, and then took a step back.
“Lose the socks. Put those tights on and meet me outside in two minutes,” she said sternly, but still with a twinkle in her eye. She swirled off towards the door with her usual haste and as the door slowly closed I heard her speak in the corridor.
“Alison, Christine is almost ready. Will you show her the ropes this afternoon…” and the door clunked shut.

I picked up the pack of tights. “She really thinks I’m a girl,” I thought. “How did this happen?”

The socks came off easily, but the tights were strange things. I realised from the things I’d heard my mom and sis say about ladders that they were fragile, so with care I managed to avoid snagging them while stepping into them, although my left hand middle finger had a slight burr on the nail, which I found I had to be careful about. Once they were up my calves it was easy enough to pull them up. I slipped my shoes back on, which felt different through the nylon. I stood up holding my socks, and felt so exposed. Did girls feel exposed like this in a dress? I didn’t like it.

I was walking across to deposit my socks on top of my folded clothes when once again with a thunk, Mrs Miller burst in.

“Better, Chrissie, but let’s be quicker about it in the future. Quick, get your things. Alison is going to get you going, show you how things are done, and then will watch you have a go. This is Christine, Alison, she’s the new chambermaid and we’ve heard great things about her from Kel; you know Kel, don’t you?”

Alison nodded and smiled, “Oh yes, I used to work over at Bat Towers with Kel,” and she giggled.

I managed to smile at “Bat Towers”, which was a fair description of the gothic Victorian pile that Kelly’s hotel was.

“Okay, Chrissie, let’s quickly put your street clothes in the storage room, I’ll have a locker key for you later, but they will be safe until then, I assure you. It’s only you and Alison on this floor.”

So I deposited my mom’s and sister’s clothes, how could I have been so stupid as to wear them...? And yet would I have been offered the job otherwise? Kelly seemed to have made assumptions all along that I hadn’t been aware of. I turned to follow Alison, who was dressed identically to me apart from her shoes, which where black court shoes with a one-inch block heel and her yellow badge saying “Alison” and in small letters “room attendant”.

Two hours later I was exhausted. Alison had been quick and thorough showing me the first two rooms, then had left me alone in the third. She came back when I was half finished, wearing a wry smile.

“You’ll need to speed up, but you’re doing well,” she said as she surveyed the room and went in to inspect the bathroom. “Good, you’ve done in there nicely.”
“I wanted to get it over with,” I said, more for the sake of conversation than information.
“Yes, I tend to do that too. And then it feels better handling the sheets after washing your hands.”

The fourth room I managed to do more quickly without missing anything, and seemed to be passing muster. I realised when I finished it that Alison had done four in the time I had done two. She told me that was the main corridor and that there were eight more rooms in the west wing on this floor. We would do one side of the corridor each and I should try to keep pace with her as much as I could. But first we were to have a break.

So after two hours of work I realised that while I had been very conscious of what I was wearing for the first room or two when being shown the ropes, when I started my first room alone I had lost myself to concentration and this had helped me forget. It’s not that anything was complicated about the job, but there were details and nothing was to be forgotten. There were protocols as to how and where fresh towels should be left, as to how the bed sheets should be folded, as to how much scourer should be used so as to not damage surfaces or leave streaks. Lots of small things. And it was quite physical carrying and moving bedding.

So it was that we headed back towards the ground floor for our break, I became conscious again that I was wearing ladies’ tights and a green dress and a maid’s cap. I felt my cheeks flush, embarrassed to be seen this way, though the only person who seemed to realise there was any reason to look askance was myself.

We stopped by a coffee machine. I realised that we were in an open area at the bottom of the corridor where Mrs Jenkins’ office was. Alison sat on a seedy old settee, and I put my coffee on the coffee table and perched on the edge of an equally decrepit armchair. I was nervous about sitting in it, because Alison had sat very decorously and now I was conscious again I was wearing this awful dress I realised I would have to try to at least not look indecorous. If Alison were to see up the skirt of the dress it could potentially reveal far too much information, apart from being embarrassingly gauche. I hadn’t meant to think this way, but somehow when I realised that Mrs Miller really thought I was a girl, I had fallen into trying to keep the job, into playing along as if I were a girl.

I felt myself begin to get tense again. I had actually enjoyed the nitty gritty of working hard, forgetting everything except the task at hand, and I had been getting on well with Alison. The tension increased suddenly with the next question.

“So tell me about yourself,” she said, smiling.

I stared at her before realising I must have had a terrified look and quickly
looked away.

“There’s nothing to tell, really,” I said evasively, and looked up to catch her looking concerned. “I lost my mom earlier in the year, so I left school and have been doing cleaning work.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” she said. “Do you have any other family?”
“Yes. Well, yes, but I’ve lost touch with my sister. I had to move suddenly.”
“Oh, no! How did that happen?”
“Just that we were in a council house, and with my sis away at uni, the council said I had to move.”
“But surely your sister knew?”
“Um… well, I, I was just not very well organised. It all happened so fast. I lost her number.”

She was silent. I looked up, fearing that she was scorning such carelessness, but all I saw was concern. Care. And no-one had really cared, no-one had really shared my grief – certainly not the council – and I almost started crying.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her number again,” I forced a smile.
She shook her head. “That must be all so awful for you. But you’re here now, and you’ve got friends – alright?”
I had to look her in the eye: she seemed to mean it. I blinked back the tears that were forming and nodded, and tried to smile.

In the next hour and a half we did the remaining eight rooms. We hoovered the corridors, then we bundled all the dirty laundry into a sort of four-wheeled barrow and took it via the lift down to the basement. There we loaded large washing machines and then began to iron and fold sheets that had already been laundered. When we had a pile, we loaded these back into the barrow and took the lift back up, and with Alison pulling and me pushing, we returned to the linen cupboard.
Inside, on top of my sister’s and mom’s clothes, was an envelope, and in a big curly hand it said: Christine Tertullian. I looked at Alison who glanced at me and smiled as she started to unload the barrow. I helped her until we had everything on the shelves, and then she urged me to open it.
Inside was a plastic key fob numbered “5” with a locker key attached, a plastic rectangular badge with a safety pin connected. On the other side from the pin the badge said “Christine, Room Attendant”. I gulped inwardly staring the badge, but Alison stepped in.

“Here, let me.” And she pinned it onto the apron to the left side of my chest, just below the neck straps. “There, now you’re official – oh, almost,” she said eyeing the last item in the envelope which I now held in my hand.

On thin paper, which was a similar pale green to the dress I wore, was a form with lots of boxes and columns and some lines of script. It had “Christine Tertullian” filled in after the printed “name” and underneath the address was left blank. I saw that “Mr and Mrs” had been crossed off before my name, and “Miss” was left as the title. There were two boxes for male or female and I heard my blood coursing in my ears as I saw the tick in the box that said “female”.
I had expected to be laughed at, or sacked. I had resigned myself to ridicule, but now I felt deeply mired in a situation I couldn’t easily extricate myself from.

“Actually, I’m male,” I imagined myself saying, and although I didn’t say it, I glanced down past the bottom of the form in my hands at my nylon covered ankle, poking out from under the green dress and white apron. What would Alison possibly think, if I did say it? Or her superiors in the hotel – our superiors. Perhaps they would just laugh as Mrs Miller had when I said my name was Christopher.

“All you have to do is pop your address and phone number in and sign it,” said Alison, cutting through my confusion.

I looked at the form. It was a contract, a job here in my hand; a steady, if paltry, income. I looked at Alison uncertainly. She clearly had no idea why I was hesitating, but I didn’t know what to do. Yet I had to sign it. I had no choice: it was an income, my survival at stake. But it was like signing my manhood away, and so early, before I had really understood anything about it.

I shook my head, and inwardly scolded myself for such melodramatic catastrophising. My manhood was a fact, so was my poverty. This contract had no effect on the former in any real sense except that of bureacracy, but it seriously affected the latter.

“I don’t know my NI number, I said, suddenly worried it would all come out in the wash and I would be horridly and publicly embarrassed.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Alison said dismissively, “I never know mine either.”

So I emasculated myself in bureaucratic terms with a Bic Cristal, signing to confirm all that the form said. And then I filled in my address. And she took the form from me, folded it and said: “Come on – bring your things.”

Again we went down stairs, and I was carrying the clothes I had worn to get here. Alison led me back to the room we’d had coffee in. There was a door with the international cutout of a stick person in a dress that meant “ladies”, and she led me in. I almost baulked at the threshold but realised I couldn’t show any hesitation now, I was in too deep. Inside was a row of cubicles on the left and some sinks and mirrors on the right, and I realised that I had already been in a ladies’ loo upstairs, where Mrs Miller had had me change. In this one there were also some seats and some tissues and moisturiser dispensers and, along the far wall a bank of tall lockers.

“Tomorrow you can come straight in here and change, and then I’ll meet you outside for a quick coffee, if I don’t see you in here. You’ll do a couple of more days shadowing me, and then we might get different shifts or whatever, but you’ll be thoroughly confident by then.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, more to fill the space than because I wanted to speak.
“So well done. First day over!” Alison beamed and I couldn’t help but smile back, despite the churning worries in my head.

“Before you go, Christine,” I heard Mrs Miller’s voice as I had entered the corridor to reception.
I turned, “Yes?” I forced a smile, but was perturbed that I hadn’t even hesitated when turning in answer to my new name.
“I couldn’t help but notice when I zipped you up earlier that you weren’t wearing a lot underneath. Look, I’ve printed off a copy of the dress code. It’s much simpler, of course, because of the uniform, but please make sure you have the right colour tights and the right shoes, and…” and she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “bra and makeup too please.”
She gave me her beaming motherly smile as I felt my jaw slowly drop. “Just have a read of it. It’s quite simple, the rules are the same for everyone: Mrs Jennings is a stickler for fairness. See you in the morning.”

I walked away stunned. I hadn’t got a bra. How could they dare to tell me what underwear to wear? I felt violated and I felt powerless. I would just have to throw the job in. It was too much, all far too much, however innocent their mistake, however impossible my financial situation. This was intolerable.

As I released the door of my bedsit behind me so it could swing back to shut, it stopped mid-swing with a clunk. I turned to see the enraged face of my landlord.

“I need to…” he shouted, and stopped himself, looking confused. “Who..? Is your boyfriend in?”
“Who?” I said, confused.
“The boy I rent this room to.”
I blinked. “I rent this room from you, Mr Gunn.”
He leaned back and scrutinised me. “Bloody hell, girl, you dressed butch when you moved in.”

I felt heat rush to my face, and yet again heard the pumping in my ears. I had never had this gender confusion before, but these borrowed clothes seemed to have tipped a balance I didn’t know was there to be tipped.
He gave me a hard stare, “I suppose you’d hardly dress pretty to move a lot of boxes,” and he looked down at a piece of paper. Then he looked up.
“I was going to give you notice,” he said simply. “Do you have anywhere to go to?”

I felt myself crumpling. Everything that happened lately seemed to be a disaster. “No,” I said as I tried to stop tears welling into my eyes.
“Oh no, look, don’t cry. I wouldn’t put a girl on the streets – but look, the rent is late again. I can’t have this, really.” The burly gruff man ended his sentence gently.

“I, I’ve just started a new job today,” I could hear a whine in my voice. It wasn’t just that everything was so bleak, it was the twist of the knife that people were nicer to me when they thought I was a girl. “I’ll catch up. It’s just I got laid off last week.”

“Okay,” he said looking at me with an odd mixture of sternness and indulgence, “best if you tell me if you’re in difficulty, okay? I have a few other properties and maybe I could find you some work now and then. Next time there’s a problem, you tell me and we’ll work something out between us,” and, to my surprise, he winked at me. “So, at the end of this week how much can you give me?”

“Um, an… maybe, yeah… is an extra £20 alright. Until I’ve caught up?”
“Okay, see that you do that then, love.”
He closed the door.

I walked to my corroded mirror and after a quick look, I literally kicked myself. I nearly did it again, but it hurt too much. I flopped on the bed. The shirt’s odd cut and the softness of the trousers had looked a bit androgynous to say the least, but I realised that my hair was still up in the bun that Mrs Miller had put it in, and it did look feminine. Alison had unzipped me, and undone the maid’s cap, before I scooted into a cubicle, saying how I was really shy. She’d seemed bemused as she simply stripped off. I had been embarrassed and surprised at her so casual in her underwear in front of me, and had forgotten all about my hair.

In my left hand, rolled up, I still held the printout that Mrs Miller had given me. I lay for at least half an hour staring at the ceiling before rolling onto my side and looking at it.

In cases of dispute the final decision rests with the line manager.

I felt sick.

Somehow the world was conspiring against me. I had innocently done all I could to secure work and to work hard and somehow I had been misconstrued. I don’t know how or where it started. It was probably some sort of ageism. I was young, still growing, or I would be if my diet were better, and had been forced into, first, an ambiguous uniform, then ambiguous smart clothes for the interview, and if the die had not already be set at that point, the assumptions were made anew and a less ambiguous uniform imposed.

Restating events did nothing to clear my mind. I had wrestled with myself on the way home as to whether I would return to work tomorrow. If I went back to sign on I would have to invent a reason for missing my appointment today as I surely couldn’t tell the dole people I had walked away from a job. Would they see my disliking wearing a female uniform as reason enough? Perhaps they would… or perhaps not as I had no experience of officials being reasonable, and that would mean no benefit money for weeks. And benefit money alone wasn’t enough anyway.
But Mr Gunn had made sure that I was not just over a barrel, but that I felt nailed to it. Exhausted, I wept myself to sleep.

Several hours later I woke up. The sleep had helped. Helped me recover my emotions, or helped me to resign to my lot, or helped me to completely crumple under the pressure; I don’t know which. I picked the dress code up from the bed. Mrs Miller had been quite firm: a bra. The code also said light makeup. I felt sick again. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t know how to.
I got up and began to rummage my sister’s boxes again, the school uniform boxes. She had packed things away from that time, and had meant to pass them on to a charity shop, but it had never seemed urgent. So somewhere there would be the bras she wore when she was developing. She was about my height only slightly slimmer, but in the last few years she had filled out in places where I never would. A bra from her school days would be more appropriate to my shape.
As I rummaged I realised I would have to pad it, so all the more reason to find a small one, an older one before she had filled out. At first I felt guilty looking through her underwear, but then I became a little angry with myself as it came to me that I had nothing to feel guilty about; I was a victim here, a victim of someone or something.

Eventually I found a few bras. I was going to try them by stretching them around me over the shirt, but realised that was stupid, just denial. I was going to have to wear it anyway. So I took off the shirt and tried on the first one. It must have taken ten minutes to get on. I twisted and stretched and tried to imagine what my fingers were doing. Eventually I got the right hooks in the right eyes, but my shoulders were aching and I felt somehow outsmarted by a garment. I slumped on the bed feeling ridiculous in the bra. After a minute I walked to the mirror: it looked wrong. I picked another one up and studied it. There were two hooks and three sets of two eyes at the back, and the shoulder straps were both adjustable. I looked again in the mirror and thought that my shoulders were the problem. They must be bigger than my sister’s must have been when she wore this bra. The nausea returned as I thought about what I was doing, but I could see no choice. I slipped the straps off my arms and half turning the bra I loosened each strap in turn. It suddenly dawned on me that it would have been easier to hook the bra up by turning it like this and felt outsmarted all over again by this garment.
When I slipped my arms back in, the chest band was able to go lower and it looked better. I unhooked the back, which was much easier than doing it up had been, but then I tried to hook it again without unlooping my arms. This time I was quicker, having a clear idea in my head of what I was trying to do with my fingers. Hooked in the middle set of eyes, it seemed to hang better on me. I cast around in my head for something to pad them with, but had no idea of what to use.

In my hunt through my mom’s things yesterday, I had come across some makeup. I stood for a few moments, and finally realised I had to try. I took out the box it was in and opened a lipstick. It was a pale pink colour. I looked in the mirror, looked at the lipstick and said “Sorry mom”, and then smeared some on my lips. I had never really thought about my lips. With pink smeared on them they looked strange. I still had my hair in a bun, and now my lips were pink. I didn’t know how to judge if I’d done it well or not.
I looked at the rest of the makeup and saw some mascara. I opened it and was bemused by the aggressive looking black helical applicator brush. I tried to brush some on my lashes and didn’t do very well. I tried another stroke and somehow got it on my cheek as well, and on the third stroke I nearly put my eye out. I dropped the wand and groaned, lunging for the sink and dousing my eye liberally, and wiping with loo roll.
I went back to the mirror and for the first time that day I laughed at the clockwork-orange cum drag queen look I’d managed. And that little cheer gave me the gumption to want to try again. I picked up the wand and carefully wiped it clean with and then put it back into its tube. Suddenly I remembered my sister’s books and wondered if she had any on makeup. I quickly hunted and found two boxes of books and magazines. My spirits dropped as I realised she must have taken most of her books with her to uni, and had left only pulp novels, teen magazines and some women’s mags.

I was about to become despondent and worried about what Mrs Miller would say, when I saw “Summer eyeshadow styles” as a heading on the cover of one of the mags. I thumbed through to the article and cheered up for a second, realising it was perfect, all about how to achieve a “naked” make-up look for the summer … of two years ago, as it turned out. And then I felt a nauseous sinking feeling again as I realised what I had cheered up about.

I felt like a condemned prisoner, cheering up because the death sentence had been postponed, but still a prisoner, and still inevitably sentenced. I had had too much of an emotional rollercoaster. I left the magazine open, but groaned to myself and went back to the bed.

When I woke up next, the alam was ringing and my clock said 6.00 am. My mind groggily tried to make sense of it. I was supposed to be at the Sherlington at 8.30, to get the trollies ready for a 9.00 am start. It would take at least half an hour to walk there. Over two hours to get ready and get there, plenty of time. I rolled over and realised I was still wearing the bra. I sat up and realised I was still wearing the now very crumpled trousers.
“Shit.”

One of the luxuries of living alone had been allowing myself a less refined vocabulary. My feelings about life nowadays seemed more succinctly expressed by expletive monosyllables, so I resorted to them frequently while alone.

I considered going to work looking crumpled, since I was only going to change anyway. Or I could wear my jeans and a teeshirt. But I remembered the dress code and didn’t know if it applied to arriving as well as the work uniform. Alison had looked quite smart in a casual way when she was leaving yesterday.

So I dragged myself out of bed, and looked at my choice of trousers: crumpled, badly stitched, stained or jeans? Once more I hunted through my mom’s boxes, fairly confident my sister had no smart black trousers she’d seen fit to leave behind. I found a pair after hunting through layers of clothes for five minutes, first coming across two black garments which when unfolded turned out to be skirts. The strides were a dark navy, not black, and there was an embroidered pattern in a lighter blue around the hem and down the sides; it was a subtle pattern but it was there.

I slipped into them and was puzzled that they were so long. My mom had been a little shorter than me, and although I’d heard women usually have longer legs, I’d never noticed that much of a difference between our leg lengths. Then it dawned on me that she was often a little taller than me when we went out as she would wear heels. And I remembered the dress code: I was supposed to wear heels too. The queasy feeling I’d been having regularly yesterday returned. There was a box of shoes somewhere. But no, I wouldn’t try them.

I looked at the magazine article, and spent several minutes puzzling over it. I saw that the mascara wand was meant to be used parallel to the curve of the eyelids, which made sense, I realised. Pale colours on the eyelids were recommended, especially for blondes – that’s me. Lip gloss was more subtle than lipstick for a natural look. I didn’t know what a lip gloss was, but conveniently the article finished on the following page with pictures of product recommendations. I mooched through my mom’s makeup box but found nothing that looked like the lip glosses. I did find a liquid lipstick though, that had a sponge applicator and a very neutral sort of pink colour. So having set these aside, I ambled into the bathroom and began my ablutions. I looked for evidence that I needed to shave, but couldn’t see any. I did feel a little stubble, invisible though it was, so I figured that that justified using a razor. Five minutes later my face was as smooth as a girl’s, which was the idea, but was nevertheless yet another straw straining the back of my crushed self esteem.

I returned to the makeup and tried the eyeshadow. It seemed the easiest thing I’d tried so far, just a light dusting of colour applied with a fingertip certainly made a difference. Then with great trepidation, but orienting the wand more correctly, I brushed upwards under my lashes as the mags seemed to suggest and was surprised to get remarkably little on my face, and to watch my lashes change from almost invisible to become dark and long. I carefully smeared the sticky smoky pink lip colour onto my lips and after wiping where I had gone over the edges of my lips in a couple of places, I thought I’d done not too bad a job. I deliberately didn’t stand back and look at the overall effect.

I pulled the hairpins out of my hair, and then removed the scrunchie, feeling a relaxation in a tension I didn’t realise my scalp was feeling. I pulled out a comb and ran it through my hair. Again the hair fell, lank. I determined to go back to the chemists and buy that dinosaur jawbone. I seemed to remember my sister using something similar and not taking long over using it, which would be better than lots of hairpins in places I couldn’t see. Why did women fasten everything behind themselves? I wondered. Not that one could do much else with hair.

I had a quick mooch through my sister’s things looking for a hairbrush, which I suspected would do a better job than a comb. My mom had suggested I use a brush on several occasions if I wasn’t going to cut my hair. In the neglect of the last few months my hair was much longer, and I knew there would be logic in what she had said. To my surprise I found two foam rubber shapes, like small ovals with a flat end, in a plastic bag in a box of my sister’s. They were in with hair clips and Alice bands, garters and short socks. I suddenly realised they could be used for padding a bra, and eventually it dawned on me they were shoulder pads. I slipped them into the bra and stood and looked in the mirror, but my eyes didn’t rest first on the bra.

The nausea swept through me again. I wasn’t a willing participant in this, my own emasculation: it horrified me and embarrassed me, yet I felt I had no choice. It was all the more humiliating that I was doing it myself, but I felt completely compelled by circumstance. I was humiliated before my own inner critical eye, while the world seemed to look on oblivious and unjudgementally.

I had avoided looking at my face earlier, but now, with my hair down and makeup on, with the bra and the embroidered slacks, all I saw was girl. I suddenly felt cold. I looked away from the mirror dejectedly, but looked back to check, as had been my intention, the bra. It looked perfect, a small but feminine bosom of a not very well developed girl. My stomach turned again. I would be eating no breakfast this morning.

I looked back to the box I had found the shoulder pads in. There was a dinosaur-jaw. I looked at it. It had a spring that closed it, and when one pressed on two decoratively moulded ends it opened like scissors. I pulled my hair back again into a pony tail, and I twisted it so I could keep hold of it with one hand, then I let the device pin into my hair near the scalp. For a second it held, then something came loose and it all hung awkwardly off the back of my head. I tried again and this felt better but uneven. On my third attempt I made sure the teeth were tight to my scalp, and I squeezed them shut, assisting the spring in its action, and this seemed to work. I turned sideways and my hair looked perfectly womanly.

I looked down. Every sense of achievement in this process was marked by a cold hollowness of self-destruction.

But hey, chin-up, at least I had a job and that meant that there was a future in which things could change for the better.

Hopefully.

I slipped my black trainers on and saw how the heel trod on the trousers. I saw they would be frayed to bits before I reached work. With yet another sinking feeling, I searched for the box of shoes.

The shoes that were certainly my mom’s were tight and sometimes too small to get my foot into. My sister’s were, to my surprise not such a bad fit. Some pairs were too tight in width, though the length seemed okay, some were a different cut or just softer fabrics. I found a pair of court style shoes in dark blue that had quite a short toebox and hardly any vamp, so that much of the foot was open. This seemed to stop the pinching that more closed shoes caused to the top of my foot. I had never tried to wear heels, but as I stood, I saw that the trousers no longer scraped the floor. I tried a step and realised my whole balance was uneven. I had no trouble standing, but I found my heel was meeting the floor too soon when I took a step. I walked around for a bit and slowly discovered that by walking almost as if on tiptoe the shoes seemed to meet the floor properly.

I looked in the mirror and with the extra height I noticed that a bulge in the trousers – a bulge where it could be dangerous to my ongoing employment under the circumstances – showed above the bottom of the mirror. They zipped at the back, these ones, and were very close cut. I was at a loss for a moment, and then remembered some panty girdles my mom had. I inwardly apologised again to her for considering using such intimate apparel, but I suppose I had, in a way, inherited them; they were mine now and I had the right, if not the desire, to wear them. I fished a black pair out. I slipped out of the shoes and the trousers, pulled off my boyish underpants and I pulled on the panty girdle. It gave the desired smooth line, softly crushing my masculine bulges into submission, uncomfortably, but not painfully emasculating me further.

I pulled the slacks back on, and slipped back into the heels, without socks, because I’d left the tights at work, and it all looked shockingly feminine. I looked at the clock, and saw it was seven forty five. Not quite in a hurry yet. I could perhaps afford a cup of tea and a sandwich on the way? No, I decided I could not. Not just the money either, although eating out was a complete waste, but also I would ruin my makeup. With that thought, I realised it would have to happen at some point, and that I would need to at least reapply the lipstick. This meant I would need to take it with me, and a mirror too. And a hairbrush maybe? And the keys to the bedsit and my street key. And just as yesterday, these slacks had no pocket. I pulled back the curtains and turned off my light. It was cold looking and miserable this morning, despite being summer. I would need a coat too. Over the winter I’d worn my tatty old denim bomber jacket and a scarf, but didn’t feel that ripped rocker style would cut it with my new – though adhered to under sufferance – economically important image. My sister only had a couple of coats and she had taken them with her. I had only one of my own and one of the pockets was ripped; not something to wear to work while I was still trying so hard to set the right… well, a professional impression.

I hadn’t brought any of my mom’s coats. I’d carried all I could of her stuff, but some things seemed so bulky and so superfluous, and relatively lacking in sentimental value. Coats and bags were among the things I’d not prioritised. I did find a shoulder bag of my sister’s that was unfashionable enough for her to have left behind. It was black imitation leather, with hemp-like black panels where it could expand. It fastened with a toggle, and was big enough for my needs and much better than the bumbag with the additional items I needed. I still needed a coat and wondered about my school blazer, or my sister’s, which was among her school things, since I was worried now that anything masculine might look incongruous. I mooched some more, realising I was going to have to make sense of all these boxes, under the circumstances, since I may have an ongoing need. I was surprised to find a thin gabardine mack in navy blue together with my sister’s uniforms: a school overcoat. My school hadn’t had such a thing. I tried it on and found it was tight across the shoulders. Not so tight I couldn’t wear it, but tight enough to feel awkward and when I looked in the mirror it looked wrong. I folded it back into the box. I would just have to be cold. I had a small folding umbrella of my own, and that was small enough to fit into the shoulder bag with only the handle sticking out. I had become accustomed to moving around in the heels now, so I decided it was time to leave. I would get there early, change before Alison arrived and have a coffee while I waited.

The shoes I had chosen weren’t just the best fit, they were a blue that was almost black and they had a heel that was only about two inches high. When I say only, it was enough to feel very strange, but in the shoe box there were some very high looking heels, some I was glad didn’t fit, but some that would. I had sorted the shoes into two piles, those that fit and those that didn’t, and I had hardly looked, I had just slipped my foot in and assigned a pile. There were two that had fit that were higher than these ones that I had chosen. One pair were strappy sandals, another were dark blue and smart. There had been a couple of pairs of very flat shoes that had fit, and there had been these. Most of the others were either too small, or pinched too much, though I suspected a few would stretch a little with wearing.

I hoped, of course, I would find a better job, a more appropriate job, a man’s job, before I needed to explore further.

This hope was reinforced by the disturbing clopping of my shoes as I walked to work. They were about an inch across at the tread part of the heel, and were quite stable. I had actually tried, that morning, to stand up in one shoe with a narrow heel and nearly twisted my ankle, so I realised that wider heels required less ankle strength to keep them straight. The two inch heel preserved the hem of the trousers from scraping on the ground and strangely, though it was only two inches, I felt much taller walking in them. I found I walked differently too: somehow I was more aware of my thighs, and they seemed to be more forward in my stride. It was an odd feeling, hard to describe, and yet becoming natural after the first 500 yards, since by then I was actually settling into a stride and entering a main road. My mind became occupied with worries that people would look at me and laugh, but no-one did. The only mockery I felt was from the constant clopping of the heels, which followed me and echoed off the walls of buildings.

I arrived at the Sherlington 15 minutes early, and realised that I had had to walk more slowly in these shoes. I slipped into the ladies, unlocked my locker and went into a cubicle. I slipped off my shoes, then the trousers and sat to slip on the tights. Then I took off the shirt and stepped into the dress. I tried a little harder today and managed to get the zip all the way up. I hung the apron over my head, slipped back into the shoes and then unlocked the door. Stepping out of the cubicle with my clothes, I walked to the mirror and folded them on the surface there. Then I tied the apron behind my back and looked in the mirror. I stared at myself for a moment. I could hardly believe that it could be so easy to look like a girl. It had never been an issue before, but then I suppose that until recently what I looked like had always been contextualised by shorter hair and boy’s clothes. But “clothes don’t make the man”, do they?

I walked my folded clothes over to my locker and put them in. I looked in my handbag, and decided I didn’t need anything and locked it in with the clothes, dropping the key into the pocket of the apron. I walked back to the surface by the mirror and picked up my maid’s cap and the hairpins which I had left clipped to it. As I was considering how to do it, Alison entered.

“Morning!” she said cheerfully.
“Morning, Alison,” I replied.

She looked at me holding the cap, then walked over and turned it around in my hands.

“That way round. They didn’t have them at Bat Towers, did they? Here, let me show you. On your head like this, then a hairgrip here, and here… and one here… and one here. That won’t move now.” And she smiled.
I looked in the mirror and didn’t smile. “Thanks very much, Alison,” I said, but didn’t feel at all thankful. It was certainly the icing on the cake, utterly finishing the look of a maid.

I suddenly became aware that the movements behind me that I’d been only vaguely aware of as I contemplated my image were those which resulted in Alison now standing there, reflected in the mirror wearing just a bra and panties again. I was slightly shocked, and though I thought she looked very nice, I looked away embarrassed, horrified, indeed, at the situation and the implications if they ever realised I was not a girl.

Then the door opened again and Mrs Jennings walked in.
“Morning girls,” she said imperiously.
“Morning, Mrs Jennings,” said Alison, looking a little embarrassed but who then, to my surprise, dipped a little curtsey, in spite of her state of undress.

Mrs Jennings turned to look at me. I tried to smile. She started to frown a little.

“Ah, I don’t think Christine has been told she should curtsey, Mrs Jennings.”

My head turned involuntarily quickly to look at Alison, who nodded at me and gestured with her hand. I looked back at Mrs Jennings who was looking at me expectantly, but then deigned to speak.

“I see. Well, as one of the directors, it is customary that my uniformed staff curtsey when we meet. The same goes for the other directors, but you won’t often see them, and the same goes for any VIPs who might happen to visit, you know, councillors, MPs, that sort of thing.” She paused, “You do know how to curtsey, don’t you?”

“Um… I think so, Mrs Jennings, I murmured,” unable to believe this archaic habit.
“Show me then,” she smiled.

I blinked, feeling shaky and nervous, and then I bobbed down, bending my knees while taking my weight on my left leg and letting my right leg go behind the other for the thigh to hang more vertically, half like a genuflexion, in an imitation of the move I’d so rarely seen girls do. I’d been too stunned at the time to observe Alison’s technique. My effort was probably a clumsy movement, but seemed to satisfy her. A brief smile flicked across her face and she walked into one of the cubicles.

Alison mouthed at me silently: “Sorry, meant to tell you,” and tipped her head in a contrite way as if to ask for forgiveness. I flashed her a brief smile of absolution, as I heard a stream of managerial urine from behind the locked cubicle door. I turned to lean on the shelf in front of the mirror, and stared into my stunned and disturbed eyes. I felt shaky. It seemed that every twist and turn of events required me to make one more act of self-immolation. If I threw it in, if I walked out, I’d have to walk out in heels, and then I’d have to face my landlord who now thought I was a girl too and if I disabused him of the notion I was quite sure I would be homeless by evening. If I didn’t, I now had to keep up the act on two fronts: I couldn’t afford to walk out. I felt like slumping into a heap on the floor, then I saw Alison step up beside me in her uniform.

She quickly tied her apron and said quietly: “Here, watch me.” And she half turned so I could see her position her cap on her head and then insert the hairpins.

And I knew I needed to pay attention to this awful thing that I would need to do to myself, unless I decided to simply give up and let my life crash completely.

With a loud metallic crack the latch was pulled back on Mrs Jenning’s cubicle and she walked out, washed her hands while studying her face and then glancing at myself and Alison she said: “Chop, chop girls, work to do.”

Alison dipped another slight curtsey and I found myself doing the same, complying easily from sheer nervousness, I think. We followed her out and she strode off down the corridor to her office.

“Time for a quick coffee,” said Alison. “Want one?”
“Oh, yes, please,” I said, quietly.
Alison craned her neck and saw Mrs Jennings had gone, and then whispered: “She’s a bit of a dragon, but very fair minded. Don’t worry, she likes you.”
I frowned and asked: “How can you tell?”
“She likes anyone who words hard,” Alison said with a wry smile, and then with more earnestness: “really, she does.”
“But… I mean… we have to curtsey?”
“Mmm, well, just to her really. Oh, and there was another time, when some charity event was held here there were some local dignitaries.”
“It’s just… so, it’s…” I stammered.
“I know, it’s a bit Victorian. Like the maid caps, I guess, and the building. Wait till you get a prize.”
“A prize?”
“Yeah, every now and then the old dragon awards prizes. It’s sort of random, but sometimes individuals, sometimes a whole team, she just gives us things,” she looked at me to gauge my reaction. “Nice things,” she said reassuringly.
“Oh, so, um, I guess then it’s okay to curtsey,” my sarcasm was instinctive and I couldn’t help it.

Alison looked away and finished making the coffee, not engaging with my bitter tone. Then she turned, handed me a cup of the steaming liquid, and erased the earlier conversation with a smile: “Down this, and then to work.”

At the end of the first week at the Sherlington, I went home with my wages. Mrs Miller had listened when I had explained to her how poor I was and that I had never been paid monthly before. She had spoken to Mrs Jennings, and they had agreed to pay their new chambermaid weekly for the first month. It came to just over £70 for that first week. With rent at £40 a week, plus the extra £20 I had promised Mr Gunn, I only had £10 left for food. After having done the arithmetic, I didn’t feel like eating, but studying the payslip realised that I had been taxed and my NI deductions had also eaten into my earnings. “Surely,” I thought, “I don’t earn enough to pay that much tax?”

When I arrived home I knocked on the ground floor door. Mr Gunn opened it, looking menacing as usual, but he smiled when he saw me.
“Come in, my dear,” he said and I felt myself nervously frown.
“I’ve come to pay the rent,” I said fairly redundantly. He had turned to make room for me to enter, but glanced back with a leering smile that he may not have been able to help, and said “I know, dear”.
I didn’t like him calling me “dear”. I felt a sort of tension run through me each time he said it, but I was painfully aware that he was being more lenient about the rent because he thought I was female.
“Just step inside so I can enter it in your book.”
I stepped past him and he touched the small of my back as I did, and as he closed the door. With the click of the lock I felt a wave of anxiety pass over me. His touch on my back guided me forward, but then released when I began to walk down the corridor to what turned out to be his kitchen, at the end. It was a decent sized room with a six-seater dining table in the middle, a Utility style piece in oak-veneer. He came in, sat and gestured for me to hand him my rent book. I did, and he opened it and glanced up.
“Have a seat, my dear, only take a minute.

He had never invited me in before and I felt edgy about it. He counted the money, smiled when he counted the extra £20 against the arrears, he filled in the rent book and handed it back to me, and I realised he was done.

He smiled, I got up to leave, and then I said: “Mr Gunn, you said you might be able to find me some work in one of your other properties, if I had any trouble?”
He frowned: “But you told me you have a new job?”
“I have, and it covers the rent, as you can see, but it isn’t well paid and I could really use a Saturday job.”
His gaze drifted past me and for a moment he wasn’t really present. Then he caught my eye again and smiled his leery smile and said: “I’ll have to see my dear. There may be something I can offer you but I won’t know until tomorrow. Will you be in tomorrow, say 5pm?”
“Yes, yes I can be in then.”
“Good, I’ll see what I can do.”
Now I smiled: “Thank you Mr Gunn,” and I left his flat and climbed the two floors to my own room with some hope.

After paying Mr Gunn, I put together my remaining change which amounted to 75 pence which together with my £10 I realised it would be another week on cheap sliced white bread and water. At least there was free sugar and coffee at work. I needed more hours, and I didn’t feel I could rely on Mr Gunn’s open-ended offer, and I couldn’t wait until Mrs Jennings perhaps offered it because she noticed my being a reliable hard-worker: I needed a weekend job fast.

So after seeing Mr Gunn, which I followed with a spoon of Bovril in hot water and two slices of bread, I decided I should go out again. The walk home had cured my lack of hunger and the Bovril and bread took then the edge of the hunger away. I would go to the supermarket and look for reduced offers and perhaps a Saturday job.

I had left the blue two-inch heels in my locker at work and worn my jeans over my tights with my trainers after Alison had assured me that I didn’t need to dress smart on arrival. This meant that the shoes would last longer and I didn’t have to be seen in public wearing them. I had worn my repaired trousers on Thursday and the jeans today, and I had reverted to teeshirts. But I had not, in the end, decided I could get away with arriving flat-chested and putting the bra on after arriving, so I was starting to feel accustomed to wearing it. But did not forget to take it off with its padding before heading to the supermarket!

I arrived there with £2 – my carefully considered spending limit – taking my old sports bag from school to carry things home in, and wandered the racks looking for anything reduced to mere pennies, which might be nourishing. Finding nothing in the first shop, I went to the noticeboards and with no job opportunities there I walked round the corner to the other supermarket. There were only two large stores in town and maybe Friday was not the best day but I knew that sometimes there were bargains to be had. In the second shop I found a bag of apples reduced to 30p which were apparently a bit bruised. I grabbed that, paid for it, and went to the noticeboards.

There were two jobs offered on this one, one for babysitting, but no hours were mentioned and I suspected it would be at random times when the parents wanted to go out, not a steady job. Also, they would expect me to have a phone. The other was for a driver for a charity minibus, not a job for a 16 year-old. Neither seemed worth following up, though I wondered whether I should risk the money for a phone call to inquire about the babysitting. In the end, I just went home.

I spent four hours that evening sorting the boxes out. I found another pair of trousers, pink ones with small yellow flowers on, in a thin cotton, among my sister’s things. I tried them on and though they were tight they were wearble and seemed to be made to be tight and stretchy. I didn’t like them, though I kept them on around the bedsit to preserve the pairs I had that I felt I could wear. I arranged the useable clothes into neatly folded piles of skirts (6), dresses (7), shorts (4), shirts or blouses (4), tops (8), bras (5), pantigirdles (3) not including the one I was still wearing, pantycorselets (2), knickers (9), slips (2) and half-slips (2). There were also the shoes I had sorted out earlier, and I came across 6 pairs of unladdered tights, two were black and ribbed, one pair was brand new fishnets still in the packet, and two were patterned and in different colours. There had been two odd and three complete pairs of stockings and five pairs of socks, mostly very short. One if the pairs of tights that had no ladders in my mum’s stuff were taupe, and I realised they could be useful.

I folded the tops and put them in my drawers. I set aside the trousers I was able to use and had been using, so I could wash them, and I folded the skirts which I swore I would never use. I hung up the dresses. They were all mom’s and I treated them as if she was still wearing them. The shorts I put in the same drawer as the tops, all of which might be useful at some point since I simply could not afford to buy clothes, not even second hand at the moment.

After that I felt tired enough to sleep. It was only when I lay down that I realised I still had my dinosaur jaw in my hair. I got up, took it off in front of the mirror where I realised my mascara and eyeshadow were still visible and would have been at the supermarket earlier.

Come the morning I lay there for some time thinking of nothing. I must have dropped off again and when I awoke it was after noon. I got up and realised I’d fallen asleep dressed. The stretch trousers were quite comfortable, but I pulled them off and then peeled off the tights I’d still had on. I put them aside as I’d need to give them a good rinsing before tomorrow. I’d been washing them each night and then hanging them over the bath for the morning. Then I pulled off the pantygirdle which had felt comfortable enough too until I took it off and my poor constrained boy bits suddenly had some freedom and I saw the welts the strong elastic had left around my waist and leg tops. I took off my top too, and then had a bath.

One of the few good things about this bedsit was that bills were included. It was not in good condition and it was small and in need of decoration, but it had its own bathroom, a microwave, kettle and toaster and I didn’t have to pay for using them. Heating was from a radiator and Mr Gunn had assured me it would be turned on in the Autumn.

After my bath I had a breakfast of microwaved porridge. Oats were cheap and I used half milk-half water to save on milk, with a little sugar to bolster the taste. It got me by.
After letting that go down I returned to the bathroom, washed both taupe pairs of tights and the black ones in case I had to use them. I washed the pantygirdles I’d used and the knickers I’d realised after the first day I should wear under them so I could get more than a day’s use from the girdles. I’d taken to using knickers from the pool of my mum’s and sister’s stuff as y-fronts were redundant under a panty girdle and I decided I’d be better keeping them in good condition for when I could escape the strange feminine world I’d fallen into. I also hand washed my trousers and tops and finally I washed all the bras.

I stood back and looked at the undeniably womanly array on the washing line dripping into my bath. I turned on the wall fan heater and went to make a cup of tea and waited for Mr Gunn.

I hadn’t really had my head screwed on when I’d been doing the washing, and I’d washed all my most masculine, if actually many of them were women’s, clothes. After they were dripping in the bath and I was sipping my tea wrapped around the waist with a towel, I realised that I needed to get dressed before Mr Gunn came. I felt so stupid and angry with myself. I opened the wardrobe and looked in. The first thing I saw was one of my mom’s flower-print shirt-dresses that she would wear around the house. Nope. Next thing, after the other dresses behind it, was the gap where my trousers would be when they dried. Shit.
I looked in the newly rearranged drawers – no not that one, they’re all skirts! Then I saw the shorts. There was a pair which were longer, and in a salmon pink with flowers on the back pockets. There were some short red ones in a stiff dressy fabric, that had turned up legs. There were a pair of short short denim ones and then there was the last pair, which were grey and slightly shiny, with a thin pink stripe in the fabric that made them look businesslike. They seemed my best option.

I slipped the shorts on and then looked through the tops that were dry. I found a black teeshirt of my sister’s, all of mine were now wet, and slipped it on. To my dismay it was an inch short of the waistline of the shorts. I tried to pull the shorts up but nearly hurt myself. I walked over to the mirror and the image was definitely on the feminine side of androgynous.
I started to panic, and a voice inside started telling me I was being stupid: that everyone thought I was a girl anyway and I should wear the dress. I couldn’t stop the thought, which was voicing the self doubts that had been my daily companion all week, and it was all the more irritating because my wanting to seem less feminine and more boyish made no sense at all with Mr Gunn as he was, definitely less abrasive and more helpful now he thought I was a girl. But I couldn’t bring myself to not try to look less girly.

I centre-parted my hair and let it hang loosely as I was used to doing before my job. I took off the short teeshirt and looked for another and I found a lilac coloured one which had a vee neckline but was longer. I decided it was marginally less feminine. I went to the mirror again and looked at the image reflected back and the shorts were so tight fitting the showed a noticeable masculine bulge.

I slumped on the bed. After having struggled to appear a little less feminine, I now realised that Mr Gunn would see quite clearly that I was a boy if I dressed like this. He’d probably think I was queer in some way, bet definitely a boy and he would be likely to turf me out on my ear. I didn’t want to find out what his reaction would be, which meant I would now, having struggled to look less feminine, have to try to make myself look more feminine again.

I sat there for some time. I needed one of the pantygirdles, but they were all soaking wet. I eventually got up and went into the bathroom which was steamy from the warmth of the fan heater and the evaporation from the clothes. The trousers nearest the fan were drying well, but still very wet as was my sister’s white shirt, my planned outfit for tomorrow. The pantygirdles were all soaking. I searched for a tight pair of knickers, slipped on a stretch lace pair and pulled the shorts back on. There was still a bulge though not as noticeable. I was mired in shades of grey now, whether the bulge being slightly noticeable was a danger to me or whether I really needed to be quite sure there was no bulge.

That inner voice started up again that I should be done with trying to be a boy, I was a complete failure on that score and should just put on a dress.

Anyone watching would have been very confused. I must have changed about three times and was clearly becoming very agitated, and yet an observer might well have been completely nonplussed as to why.
Finally, I kept the stretch lace knickers on, and chose the longer and slightly baggier shorts in salmon pink, with the flowers. As I appraised the choice in the mirror, and turned to frown at the flowers on my buttocks, I decided it was the best choice, the underwear less constricting than the alternatives (I had remembered the pantycorselets were also an option) and the colour went quite nicely with the lilac top.

Yes, I did think that.

I had another tea.
Five o’clock came and went.
I had completely given up on Mr Gunn when I heard his heavy step on the stairs followed by his knock at 6 o’clock. I opened my door.

“Ah, Miss Tertullian, how are you doing my dear?”
He managed to sound slimy.
I managed to smile: “Fine, how are you?”
“Not bad, not bad. I was able to enquire about some work, as you asked.” His eyes had been scanning me, looking for I don’t know what, but I was glad I had hidden the bulge that was my masculinity. Finally his eyes met mine.
“Have you ever done cleaning work?”
“Ah, yes, that’s what I do now,” I answered.
“Perfect!” He seemed delighted. “One of my tenants has been looking for a maid: someone to clean and hoover and look after the kitchen.” He glanced around the room and looked suddenly doubtful.
“I can do that,” I said quickly, perhaps too quickly, “it’s a busman’s holiday being too neat here, you see,” I said slightly desperately, “and I don’t have a hoover.”
*“Oh, my dear, you should have said. I can lend you mine, and you’ll be able to clean up better here.” He smiled. I felt caught. “How about we do that now, and if I think you can handle it, then I can ask my tenant to interview you?”

“Arm twisted, or what?” I thought at the prospect of even more cleaning, and without pay – yet, what the hell, the room could use a cleaning. “Would it be full time or just a few hours?” I asked wondering how many hours I might be offered.
“Well, you were talking about weekend work…”
“Yes,” I said.
“So Saturday or Sundays, a few hours repairing the ravages of the week was what my tenant was thinking.”
“That sounds good,” I said. “I’ll get started here as soon as you can bring me the hoover.”
He blinked, realising he had also made work for himself. If he saw me as a girl, surely he wasn’t going to ask me to carry it up two flights of stairs? So off he went.

Quarter of an hour later he arrived, sweating and trying not to sound as out of breath as he was although it was, indeed, a good quality vacuum cleaner with some sturdy parts and was heavy.
“There you go,” he said, as if I had requested the machine.
I plugged it in and after fifteen minutes’ work of my own I had done a good job on the carpet after having moved the chairs and my side table to cover all quarters.
“You may as well do the landing while you’re at it,” he said, trying to sound casual, but failing to sound anything but exploitative. But I did as he suggested and when the carpet there looked better than it had since I had moved in, I stopped.
“Well, how did I do?” After doing all those hotel rooms every day this week I felt confident.
“Yes, you seem quite able at it. I’ll ring my tenant and ask him when he’d like to interview you”

I was thrilled.
That’s what desperation can do. Desperate to manage to survive, every little chance to earn some money was something I’d give such a lot for, show willing for, submit to any indignity for, it seems. But I had actually forgotten at that moment that Mr Gunn had used the word “maid”. Something which would have rung alarm bells in my mind in the oh so recent past, instead seemed innocuous against the background of being a chambermaid already.

An hour later Mr Gunn was back at my door.

“He said he can interview you right away,” said my landlord, breathing heavily after his latest climb.
“Wh– what, now?”
“Yes my dear.”
Without thinking, I looked down at myself, wondering about being interviewed while wearing pink shorts.
“Well, yes, perhaps wearing something a little less casual – if you want the job, that is.”
I looked up at him, because Mr Gunn was a big man in height as well as girth.
“How much does it pay?” I asked.
“I think he was talking about £5 an hour or something like that, for maybe two or three hours on a weekend. Something like that.”
The cogs in my mind turned and I realised that £15 a week would mean I could afford decent food, second hand trousers, even new ones in a few weeks.
“Um, so what should I wear?” I asked, to myself really, looking down at my shorts – but he answered anyway: “Heavens, dear, something pretty. I don’t know. What would you normally wear for an interview?”
“I haven’t had many,” I said turning towards my wardrobe.
“How did you get your job then?”
I turned back: “I was recommended, the interview was a bit abrupt, actually. And I signed on with an agency before that. Before that I was at school.”
“Well, wear your school uniform then, that should be smart.”
I looked at him, saw an unhealthy glint in his eye, and realised that grey trousers and a blazer weren’t what he was thinking. “I don’t think…” I started.
“Look, I’m not good with all this girly stuff,” he interrupted, looking away. “I’ll go down and get ready to start the car. If you get changed into something smarter I’ll drive you over. Can you be downstairs in 10 minutes?”
“Ah… I…” I needed the money though, so I said: “If you can give me twenty?”
He frowned, but agreed, and lumbered back down the stairs.

I went into the bathroom and felt my smartest trousers – soaking wet. The ones I’d planned for Monday were also still too wet. I had few choices left. A dress or a skirt would be expected. The grey shorts might be okay.

With a heavy weight inside of me, I pulled out one of the pantycorselets. I stepped out of the shorts and the teeshirt and pulled the restrictive garment on over the lacy knickers. I adjusted the straps and saw that the cups in my mom’s undergarments were bigger than in my sister’s old bras. I had a slightly sickly feeling at this, because though I was more or less aware my mum had been bigger than my sister, what bust size my badly missed mum took really wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to think about, and I hated the way I was finding out.

After a moment’s pause, in which all my doubts surged around my head, somewhere beyond words the decision to continue was made on the basis of financial imperatives. I zipped the front of the corselet and found it was as tight around my waist as the pantygirdles had been. I walked to the wardrobe and chose a top which looked semi-smart. Not a blouse, because they were all wet, but a black top in cotton with inch-wide straps running over the shoulders and a high square neckline. It gathered under the bust where there was a pretend belt and a knot at the back which didn’t come undone. It zipped up at the side where my left arm was. Then I slipped back into the grey striped shorts. I stood in front of the mirror and was a bit shocked. I had thought of the shorts to hang around in my room in with a teeshirt. But thinking of going out in them with a smart top changed what I saw. I looked girlish enough that I knew what others would see and what they would see would be a teenage girl showing an awful lot of leg.

I simply stared for what seemed a long time. What had I come to? The cups of the pantycorselet had deflated when I put it on, but with the gathered bust line and the slight fill they still had, there was a clear impression of youthful development. The shorts fitted much better now with no bulge at all, and my bare legs with only a slight blonde down on them looked sexy as hell.

I sat on the bed. I needed this job. But not like this. But I needed it and had to try. I glanced at the clock. I’d taken maybe ten minutes already. I stood and looked again, quickly unzipped and pulled the shorts off. I realised my idea of using some black tights was stymied because they were soaked, but I checked anyway – yes, the black tights were too wet. So I opened the packet and slipped carefully into the fishnets. I pulled the shorts back on. I’d naively hoped they would de-emphasise my legs and the whole thing would look more like one colour, like trousers. Clearly I’d not been paying enough attention to the way women dressed. When I stepped in front of the mirror somehow my legs looked slimmer and more sensuous; they looked longer and even more sexy.

I was pressed for time and felt there was no other choice. I went to the wardrobe, found a simple dark blue dress and with tears in my eyes took it out. I blinked back the tears, slipped off the shorts but then spotted a knee-length skirt which was a dark colour. I pulled it out and saw that it was almost exactly the same fabric as the shorts. I slipped it on wondering whether, if there were two garments like this, there had been a matching jacket; probably matching trousers too, but my sister hadn’t left them behind.
I fumbled for a minute with the skirt and realised that the slit went to the back, so the zip also zipped at the back. I untucked the top where it had been caught in the waistband and went to look in the mirror. My hair looked a mess but the rest was smart. More feminine but less sexy, uncomfortable, but smart enough to be a help in an interview. After spending a week in a dress, the discomfort was mostly in my head. I quickly brushed my hair into a pony tail as I had become adept at doing, twisted it and used the dinosaur to hold it up in a nice twist. I applied some mascara and a little smoky eyeshadow which I had experimented with on Thursday and then put on some pink lipstick, full colour rather than the insipid colour I’d used for work – might as well, I thought.

I decided to try the strappy sandals. In retrospect something had snapped. I had now, in my spare time and without compulsion, exactly, put on a skirt. There seemed nothing left to resist. I had a job to get, and the fact of it was the prospective employer was employing a girl and right after a week of humdrum life as a girl I had lost any immediate sense that I should fight it.

I heard Mr Gunn yell up the stairs as I closed the strap on my left foot. I stood and wobbled. These were a little higher than my work shoes which I now forgot were high heels when I wore them, but the heels on these shoes were narrower and I though found I could walk in them well enough, I had to stay conscious of them. Suddenly I remembered a bag – house key, hairbrush, pink lipstick, room key. They were all already in the bag apart from the new lipstick, so I popped that in as I grabbed it and stepped out into the hallway. I closed my door and looked down as I planted the half-inch wide heel on the step below the landing. My view of a sexy fishnet enshrouded leg in strappy heels was clear from the knee down. The skirt was just knee length and straight, very much an officy outfit and I realised my sister had probably bought it for the secretarial course she had done in the sixth form holidays. As I took my second step, Mr Gunn yelled up again and this time I could make out his words.

“You said twenty minutes! Are you ready yet?”
I poked my head over the banister and said: “Yes, Mr Gunn, I… I’m ready.”
Despite my small victory in making him carry the hoover, he still made me feel uncomfortable and he had far too much power over me.

I carefully but quite quickly descended, and as I reached the last flight Mr Gunn appeared at the door. He looked up at me and a darkness seemed to lift from his face and the frown was gone. “You’ve been half an hour,” he said. “The engine is running.” And then, as if an afterthought: “You look very smart Miss Tertullian.” He watched every step I took with an intensity which unsettled me.
“Um, thank you. I hope your tenant likes me.”
“I’m sure he will,” he smiled.

Mr Gunn’s car was actually a dusty, rusty old Volvo estate. He opened the door and seemed to realise that my nice smart interview skirt might suffer from contact with his dusty seats and quickly muttered: “Um, hold on a sec I’ll give that a wipe.” He rushed back into the house and I heard the jangle of keys, the click of his door opening and then little but the traffic and birdsong for about 10 seconds, and then he came bustling back into the corridor. Like a small fanfare, the jingle of keys and the slam of a door immediately preceded the glint of sweat as his brown entered the sunlight. On his ruddy face he wore a smile which seemed both smug and slightly playful.

“Can’t have you ruining your smart outfit, can we?” he smiled and flourished a duster and I had to step aside as he bent over the front seat and gave it a quite vigorous dusting. “There you go, my dear,” he smarmed and stood back, but only far enough that I had to squeeze past to get in. Having used Shank’s pony every time I had needed to transport myself since having to resort to more feminine clothes I was caught a little off guard at the sudden constriction of my stride as I tried to step into the car, and the heels gave little traction so I was half bent sideways with one foot in the car and the other starting to crumple sideways when I had to grab onto the back of the seat. Suddenly Gunn’s hands caught me, and I cannot claim it wasn’t a good catch and quite possibly saved me skinning a knee and I completed my manoeuvre with more care, finding I had to turn my knees towards each other to allow the width of stride which allowed me one foot on the pavement and the other on the floor of the car.

I sat and found my skirt had ridden up considerably, and Gunn, instead of hurrying around the other side to drive as I expected as he had been hurrying me, now seemed able to find time to pull out my seatbelt a little and hand it to me. I was in the process of trying to pull my skirt back down towards my knees, but now felt I had to take the offered seatbelt. He stood there solicitously, but when I looked up and gave a polite smile of thanks I found that eye contact was not available as his gaze was occupied by my fishnet covered thighs.

I shuffled and said, “I’m sorry to have held you up so much”, and this moved his glance to my eyes. He quickly glanced back at my legs and then as an expression I couldn’t make out flicked across his face he grunted a little in the affirmative, nodded and moved around the front of the car to the driver’s side.

As he went around I could still feel the aftermath of his left hand which, when I slipped, had caught me under my left upper arm and had balanced me again. But I could also still feel the warmth of his right hand which had lightly caught my right hip. I felt uneasy about this. It hadn’t been my buttock – close, but no, it hadn’t been. Neither had it actually steadied me, but I suppose that had I been slightly more off balance it might have helped. It was quite avuncular and attentive and it wasn’t sexual, but I couldn’t shake off a slight unease that it had been almost suggestive. Perhaps it hadn’t been the touch at all, just the way he looked at me earlier and then as I got into the car, but it contributed to my feeling even more vulnerable than I had become accustomed to of late as we pulled away. My mind churned trying to compute the unfamiliar territory that a simple uninvolved relationship with someone of the erstwhile “other sex” now seemed to involve. A part of my subconscious guiltily questioned how I had, myself, thought about and perhaps unknowingly treated girls in the past while the conscious mind fumbled trying to grasp the enormity of how small everyday things seemed now to have changed shape when cast in the new light of the gender gap reversed.

Interrupting my thoughts, if not my mood, Gunn chirpily launched into conversation: “Mr Pratt, the tenant you’re about to meet, is not very neat, I have to say, but he has always paid his rent punctually and over many years, so I don’t criticise too much. However, when I suggested he needed assistance keeping his place neater he immediately seemed to like the idea. He said he had always worried, however, about pilfering and so had never got to the point of approaching a cleaning service”.

He glanced at me and I gave him my raised eyebrows and a nod to assure him I was an attentive listener. His eyes caught mine, he smiled but as he turned away they slid down furtively into my lap. He quickly picked them back up and put them back on the road and I quickly realised that my lap was the place my handbag should be. I lifted it from the floor of the car in some half-hearted pretence of looking for something as he spoke but I omitted returning it to the footwell after the feigned mooch.

“When I told him about you, explaining you were very honest and hard-working – so I do hope that’s how you see yourself – ” another quick glance at me for confirmation perhaps, or perhaps just for effect, also included a quick but fruitless slide down to my handbag, the eyes then bouncing much more quickly than before back to the road, “and that as you’re my tenant too, should he have any complaints he will know where to find you,” I frowned at that but he was more fixed on the road now, “Mr Pratt seemed to feel safe enough to give you a try.”

“I hope he’s not going to come around calling if I don’t fluff his cushions properly,” I said in a concerned tone.
“Ooh no,” cooed Gunn, “I didn’t mean I’ve told him where you live. But he knows that if there’s a problem he can tell me and I can pass it on to you.”
“Oh, okay,” I said turning to look out of the passenger window in order to hide my frown.
It was starting to appear that getting this job might mean I would have an awful lot more to do with my lecherous landlord when all I wanted was to be alone and to save enough money to escape this ridiculous pickle I was in. Everyone at the Sherlington was either lovely to me or aloof. Most of the time in the job I was alone, with just coffee breaks for breathers with one or two of the other staff, actual girls, who shared my shift being my only social contact. Even that felt too much, when wearing heels and a dress when I thought about it. When I didn’t think about it I was starting to feel indifferent, as if everything were just normal; which meant that when I did think about it I felt that much more disturbed at my acceptance and then embarrassed in retrospect at any social contact. Seeing more of Gunn, who seemed to be taking an unhealthy shine to me, was something I really did not want.

It was a 15 minute drive, far further than the walk to the Sherlington and we had left the area I’d grown up in and passed through a couple of villages where I had known some people when I was at school. It was with some trepidation that we got out in the small area known as Love Bridge, little more than a square, a few shops, a small stand of trees by the stream and, of course, the bridge.

Getting out of the car I let Gunn stand first, hoping to avoid giving him a show, but as I opened my door and disentangled my bag from the seatbelt, he was already there, holding the door open with his left hand and proffering his right for support. In my head I snarled to myself, “How damned chivalrous,” but I said nothing other than glancing sharply at him and then away again, too timid to be forceful.

Keeping my now disentangled bag in my lap with my left hand, I swivelled to the left and panicking slightly as I felt the right side of my skirt ride even higher up my thigh, I decided grabbing his hand might not be so bad an idea. I grasped his palm, he took my wrist and with considerable strength he helped me move smoothly out of the seat. Once standing I quickly let go of his hand, wanting to straighten the right side of my skirt which I was sure was up at my hip by now, but he didn’t release my wrist but, instead guided me past him and closed the door behind me. Then he walked behind me, gently forcing me away from the car and in that move he released my wrist and this allowed his hand to fall in the small of my back, again solicitous, not overtly crossing social taboos and yet making me feel pawed.

If it happened now, at my age as I write this I would have put my foot down firmly and nipped it in the bud. If he wanted to be chivalrous, I would assert, he should join a mediaeval re-enactment society and leave me out of it. But as a psychically scarred and battered teenager living in a constant state of confused embarrassment as my gender was somehow accidentally wrested from me by everyone around, I did not know where to put myself and just felt queasy and confused about whether I was paranoid, whether girls put up with this all the time and he was just being nice, or whether maybe girls like the attention. I was clueless. I didn’t like it one bit, but was scared of drawing attention to myself by any unwomanly behaviour, since exposure seemed to be the one thing that could very quickly make my life materially and emotionally worse than it already was, collapsing the relationships and income I relied on to exist. I lived in fear of being on the streets, which again, looking back, probably would have been a fine solution, more easily solved than where I found myself. There is help for homeless people: not enough help, and it’s not very quick help. Most long-term hopeless people have, I believe, other problems too that got them there. Mine was grief and there would have been support and help, if only I had known it. Fear of falling over that cliff into homelessness kept me to clinging to the constant anxiety and discomfort and embarrassment of accidental womanhood.

With Gunn’s sweaty solicitous palm at the small of my back like a bandit’s revolver we walked from the parking space at the edge of the small square around two sides of the sloping central lawn, maybe 20 by 20 yards. This brought us to crossing the narrow cobbled street in front of the shops. The shops were the ground floor of what would once have been a row of artisan cottages facing the stream which, in spate, probably rose up its banks and up the gentle slope perhaps as far as the cobbles. Now, except in the very rainiest years the partly bricked channel the stream ran through stopped it rising over its banks and the weir just past the bridge had sluices to control the flow, so the former flood area was now a decorative square, and beyond the confines of the square a street of workshops had been built in Victorian times which were now shops and offices, flats and cafes. It was all a little oasis of commerce and leisure in the midst of a boring and otherwise humdrum town.

I felt very self-conscious and was almost shaking with anxiety. Not only was this the first time I had ventured out in public wearing a skirt, only 200 yards over the bridge was the school I had been going to until I dropped out when mum died. Although it was June, and Exam season was winding down, I was still afraid I would meet someone I knew from school. Although I had bussed to school some few miles when mum couldn’t give me a lift, a lot of the pupils were more local and there was a good chance of seeing someone. They would know my face and the skirt would not fool them. I was in the strange state of anticipating being terrified at any moment, but not actually terrified yet: so far I was just paranoid and anxious that people who had never met me might also not be fooled by a skirt and heels. But I guess it was more than that that had kept me on the wrong side of the gender tracks – the longish hair, my underfed build, and also, today, the makeup.

It was a Saturday and the bridge was busy as were some of the nearby streets, but the cobbled street itself was busy at a slower speed, the uneven cobbles encouraging only slow progress from most drivers, though one SUV driver who cared nothing for his suspension or tyres earned some glares from mothers with young children as he tore down the street at all of 30 mph.

We crossed and I found that uneven cobbles were not nice in high heels. Gunn immediately sensed my difficulty and closed in taking my left hand in his and steadying me with his hand on my waist. I would have made it without his help but I had certainly felt much steadier with his stability bracing me. I hated to be grateful to him, but it had actually been helpful and I turned and gave him a tight smile and I leaned slightly away from him as I said “Thanks” to break his hold on my waist. We had crossed directly in front of “Planes and Boats and Trains”, the Love Bridge model shop.

Mr Pratt lived above the small model shop there and it turns out that he was the shop’s manager. Quite a few of the boys from my old school, though rarely the girls, would frequent the model shop from time to time, sometimes buying models, or parts for models, often just buying magazines about boyish things like classic cars or old steam locomotives or military aircraft, as the local newsagents rarely had such publications; and the man in the model shop, Mr Pratt as I now knew his name to be, had seen the niche in the market. I had never gone there, but had heard of the shop by repute, especially as he had expanded his stock of magazines and books to meet the interests of the young men who had found the shop, and he also now stocked, I was told, magazines full of pictures of models stripped right down so readers could see exactly how they were put together. If you get my drift. This knowledge increased my trepidation a little as Mr Gunn took reached past me to open the door of the shop and introduce me to my interviewer.