The New Woman (19 page)

Jim and I managed to commandeer a shady spot on the edge of the quad. I sat at an octagonal picnic bench. He leaned down to use the drinking fountain.

‘
Workshopping
,’ I grumbled. ‘Who uses that word as a verb?’

‘Donald does.’ Jim splashed water on his face, then ducked to put his whole head under the stream. It darkened his fair hair. He sat down, dripping, on the other side of the table. ‘Has your new grandchild arrived yet?’

‘Not due for a couple of months.’ I’d picked up one of the big pens and was doodling as we talked. ‘Kate’s back from Israel. Broken up with the boyfriend.’

‘Great news! And how’s Luke?’

‘Shush. We’re meant to be thinking about this wretched child’s ear, or we won’t get a gold star.’

It took us about two minutes to address the scenario. We scribbled all over the paper in different colours to make it look as though we’d really tapped our energies. Then we got talking about Jim’s younger son, who was teaching in Ghana. It was pleasant to sit chatting in the dappled shade. It stopped me from thinking about Luke, and the road that had dropped off a cliff.

Jim had to nip into town during the lunch break. I fled to my room—a small space in a prefabricated block; not salubrious—and made a start on organising my resources for the coming term.

The afternoon’s session with Donald was more of the same. It finished at four, and was followed by a mass exodus to the car park. By now, I felt weary and low.

‘Well,’ said Jim, as we reached my car. ‘When I arrived this morning I had no idea what we were expecting to achieve today. And I still have no idea.’

‘Team building?’

‘It was certainly that. I’ve never seen such concord. We’re all absolutely as one in thinking that was a lot of old cobblers.’

I smiled half-heartedly.

‘You in a hurry?’ asked Jim. ‘Got time for a drink? It’ll be heaven on earth right now, at one of those riverside tables at The Lock. There’s a white wine spritzer waiting for you in a tall, chilled glass . . . Can’t you see the beads of condensation?’

‘That sounds wonderful. But not today.’

‘Sure you’re all right?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

He smiled easily, raised his hand, and walked across to his car. I heard the electronic beep as it unlocked. Before getting in, he paused, looking back at me.

‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘when you’re not all right.’

Twenty

Luke

After weeks of heatwave, there was a hosepipe ban. The parks were full of sunbathers. Mirages shimmered above the roads, and the pavements were melting like toffee.

Each morning I put on my Luke mask and took the tube to Bannermans. To the young solicitors there, I was one of the old guard—staid and probably starchy. Each day I battled the urge to phone Eilish just for the selfish comfort of talking to her. And every evening, with the street door locked behind me, I freed Lucia from her hiding place. She was growing in confidence, step by step.

I’d found comfortable shoes and underwear on a specialist website. I’d also given in to temptation and bought a very good wig—just for now, just to know how it felt. It was a rich mid-brown with bronze strands. For the first time in my life I had the sensation of hair curling over my shoulders. I revelled in it. I used to pray for long hair when I was a child. I’d pull a jersey back over my head and leave it half off so that it hung down my back. Prancing about and pouting into the mirror, I’d pretend it was flowing locks. I felt like that child again as I ran a brush through my long hair, and stepped into my feminine shoes. My hair. My shoes.

I’d done nothing permanent yet. No hormones, no hair removal. After all my years of waiting, Brotherton had told me
I must wait a little longer before doing anything irreversible. He wanted to see me again. He also insisted on referring me to the Baytrees in-house counsellor, Usha Sharma.

‘I’m getting on,’ I protested. ‘Lots of your clients are young. They haven’t spent half a century thinking about this. They haven’t had children yet, so losing their fertility is a big thing. They’ve got years to dither. I haven’t.’

He was unmoved. ‘Be that as it may, you won’t begin HRT for at least three months. Possibly more. These are my professional rules—international rules—and, believe me, it’s a lot quicker than you’d be moving on the Charing Cross route.’

I knew what he was referring to. Charing Cross was the NHS gender identity clinic. It had had mixed reviews.

‘You don’t need to go full-time before you begin HRT,’ he added, ‘but you do have to understand how it feels to present yourself as female in public.’

‘I’ve already done that!’

‘Been shopping? On public transport? Bought a drink in a pub? There’s living as a woman in your head, and there’s doing the real thing. Any transgender woman will tell you there’s a mighty difference. You may find it isn’t what you want, after all. You may want to give your marriage another chance.’

That shut me up, because I thought about Eilish all the time. Often I dreamed I was making love to her—as a man, as a woman, did it matter? The passion and closeness of those dreams would stay with me long after I woke. They were a filter that coloured the day, and they tormented me. If I became Lucia, one thing was certain: I’d never so much as kiss Eilish again.

So I stepped into limbo. I saw an endocrinologist and had blood taken; I met Usha Sharma, who was about my age and on the patronising side. She wanted me to explore my goals, she said, and to do that I’d need to peel away the layers with which I’d covered my true self. I didn’t like the sound of this at all, but week after week I jumped through her hoops. She was right about the layers. When you’ve got a secret as dangerous as mine, you bury
it deep. You lie to everyone, including yourself. I was a pass-the-parcel. Each time I thought I’d torn off the last scrap of wrapping paper, I discovered there was more.

We made a list of the positive and negative aspects of transition—no surprises there; I’d been weighing them up for years. We talked about how I felt as a father, a son, a brother, as a human being: a fraud in every role. Of course, Usha broached the subject of my sexuality. What about desires? Fantasies? This was uncomfortable, but not as titillating as you might expect. Like plenty of trans women, I’d only ever felt attracted to women.

‘I can’t see that ever changing,’ I said.

‘It might change,’ Usha warned. ‘If you begin HRT, you may well find you lose libido.’

‘I know that. Could be a relief.’

‘Your preferences may alter. How would you react if you began to feel an attraction to men?’

‘I’d be astonished,’ I said. ‘Look, Usha, I married Eilish when I was a young man. Since then I’ve rarely even flirted with anyone else, male or female. Sex for me is about expressing my love for her. That’s the vital thing, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s priceless! Thirty years . . . more than half a lifetime. All that shared history, all that understanding, all that life. That’s treasure we’ve built up, Eilish and I. It’s rare to get that with another human being. It can never, ever be replaced.’

I felt my hands shaking, and clasped them together. Eilish was my soul mate. Losing our sexual relationship was far less dreadful than the enormity of losing her as a companion through life.

‘They think I’m selfish,’ I said.

‘Who does?’

‘Eilish, Simon . . . everyone will think it. I wish there were some other way out of this. I wish I could stay with her, be a normal man.’

‘Could you do that?’

I shook my head. Lucia couldn’t be amputated. I’d tried that. She wasn’t just a part of me; she
was
me. Outside in the street a car horn sounded.

‘What does the future look like?’ asked Usha. ‘I mean, if you transition?’

‘Lonely. Terrifying. Wonderful.’

There was another furious blast of honking, followed by shouts. I looked out of the window. A delivery van had stopped in the road while its driver unloaded crates. He was holding up the traffic, which was what all the drama was about. The driver was a cool customer. He just carried on doing his job, whistling. How nice, I thought. How liberating, not to care what people think.

‘Turning back would be the most selfish thing I could do,’ I said.

‘Because . . . ?’

‘Because pretending to be Luke is over for me. In a week, or a month, this whole thing would begin again. I know the cycle.’

‘You’re afraid you’d end up back here?’

‘No. I can’t put Eilish through a break-up again, that really would be unforgivable. This time it would have to end in my suicide.’

Usha didn’t comment. I think she understood that I was stating a simple truth.

‘That appointment with the noose was in my diary,’ I said. ‘I was ready, to the last detail. When you’ve planned your own end, when you’ve been so close to it . . . you find you can face other unthinkable things. There was one other choice. Just one. So I made that choice, and here I am.’

Usha murmured something. I heard her chair creak, and knew my hour was up. The delivery man raised his middle finger at one of the yelling drivers before swinging into his van. I watched him hurtle away.

‘I can’t go back,’ I said. ‘Can I?’

I didn’t return to the office after my meeting with Usha. Back at the flat I locked the front door, removed the Luke costume, and—with that guilty, luxurious feeling of relief—let Lucia out of hiding.

I’d decided to tackle the supermarket today. It was the most intimidating sortie yet, which was probably why I found myself procrastinating. I fired up my laptop and sat working at the kitchen table—contentedly, with the soft fabric of my skirt falling around my legs.

I was immersed in work for several hours. One of the trainees had made a mistake and was stressing about it. In the end, I phoned him and disentangled the problem. Then there was a query about a prospective client—a Greek oligarch. According to the risk management unit, he wasn’t squeaky clean. Well, I thought, which of us is? I wondered how they’d describe me, if they saw me doing Bannermans work in a dress.

Finally, I got around to reading my private emails. There was one from Wendy:

My dear brother,

I’ve spoken to my minister. He’s a wonderful man, and we prayed together for you. He is absolutely clear: this is not NATURE, it is NURTURE. You can be cured, but first you MUST fight this, as you would any other temptation!!! He suggests counselling, which our church can provide. Please, please come and talk to him.

I sighed.
Facepalm
, as Kate would say.

Talking of Kate, there was a message from her too. This was far more welcome. It was chatty, as all her communications had been since I left. She never mentioned what I was doing; I had a feeling she was hoping the problem would just disappear. She wrote that she was leaving Smith’s Barn the following week. Mathis and John had offered her a room in their flat in Swiss Cottage. The place was affordable, but it was the size of your
average cat-litter tray, she said, so could she nip over and leave some of her gear with me?

Of course
, I replied.
Any time. It would be lovely to see you.

I scanned the rest of my emails. Nothing urgent. Nothing from Simon. Pity.

Right, I thought as I shut down the laptop. Never mind the Greek oligarch; never mind Wendy’s wonderful minister! It’s time to go.

I slipped into a linen jacket, found my handbag, and checked my make-up in the mirror.

‘Ready?’ I asked Lucia.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said.

Twenty-one

Simon

It was the hottest day of a sweltering week. Nico seemed to be coming down with something, and had fallen asleep on the sofa. He was due to start school in a few days; hard to imagine their baby as a schoolboy.

Carmela was organising a birthday card for her grandmother. She sat barefoot at the writing desk they’d inherited from Grandad Livingstone. She wore a cotton maternity dress and a pair of reading glasses, and her hair was coiled at the nape of her neck. The combination of the glasses and put-up hair was slightly prim and rather sexy, like a librarian in a porn film—though the effect was rather ruined by the baby bump.

‘Which is best for
Abuelita
?’ she asked, holding up two cards. ‘This one with the lake, or this one with the flowers?’

Simon shrugged and said they both looked fine. He was trying to phone his mother, but was in that extreme state of tiredness when the world seems monochrome. He’d been on call for the past three days, and seemingly every cat, dog and cockatoo in South London had decided to have some kind of medical emergency. His working day had begun at two o’clock that morning: a much-loved family moggy with breathing problems, followed by a red setter with a tricky labour. He’d finished the morning’s
surgery at lunchtime, and now—thank God—he had forty-eight hours off. His eyes drooped as he listened to the rhythmic lullaby of the ringing tone. His brain began to shut down.