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Merritt Lane McGraw feels he is a girl at a time of Great Depression and World War II. It is a period before the words “crossdresser” and “transgender” were in the vocabulary and a time before sexual assignment surgery was a possibility. This story with historical background tells how this lovely child’s desires bring both shame and joy to himself, his family and his friends

At the end of the previous chapter Bryony was in hospital explaining to her friends in the “Bryony Buddy Corps” about her true gender status, and that she had to see a specialist before she could return home.

We waved them goodbye as Mrs Rose drove off and then returned to the house where Farah and I went back up to my room. Everything had been left neat and tidy.

‘I hope everything goes okay for Bryony at the doctor’s,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to be easy for her having to pretend to be a boy at school and only being a girl at home and the weekends.’

‘So, Bryan, what’s the problem?’ I asked gently.

‘Yeah. You see I gotta pretend to be a boy too, coz I’ve always known I’m a girl trapped in a boy’s body!’

‘There’s a surprise for you tomorrow,’ Auntie Greta told me as soon as I was in the house. ‘Miss Morgan phoned and she wants you to be a friend to a new girl who’s starting school the day after tomorrow. She’s the same age as you, an American and she’s over here for a few years because her parents are working here now. She sounds really nice.’

‘Yes. She’s called Farah Way and she’s from Boston.’

I went into the last vacant cubicle, closed the door, but discovered that the bolt was missing. ‘Bum!’ I thought, ‘Oh well, we’re all girls here,’ and with my thumbs hooked in the waistband, eased my knickers down to my knees before sitting “on the throne”.

I looked down at myself and discovered to my horror that, once again, I had a PENIS!

FOLLOWING THE SOMEWHAT shattering discovery that after my latest sojourn back to 1944 I had returned with a girl’s body, Mummy and Auntie Greta had taken me shopping for girl clothes, and Mummy used her mobile to ’phone Dr MacNeish who said that luckily she had had a cancellation and could see me at five o’clock that afternoon.

I closed the door after waving goodbye to Sue and Judy and returned to the dining room where I had been doing my prep. Mummy had laid a cheerful checked cloth on the table so all I had to do was put out place mats and lay out the cutlery. Auntie G kept the "dining-room cutlery"–as she called it–in one of the drawers of the Welsh dresser, so I went straight to it and opened the drawer, and sure enough, there were knives, forks and spoons for all occasions–many of them strange to me–but I was able to select what I thought was needed and laid up two places.