The New Woman (34 page)

‘Far, far too soon.’ I couldn’t move, because she was still wielding a mascara wand millimetres from my eyes. ‘Maybe the following year.’

‘Your hair’s getting quite long,’ she said, spraying it with water. ‘I think we can do something with it. I had a talk to my stylist last night, and he gave me some tips on—I’d stress that these are his words, not mine—on making guys look like gals. Ultimately, he says, you need a fringe, just to soften your forehead. That’ll make a huge difference.’

I’d never had mousse in my hair before. Actually, I didn’t know such stuff existed. I was fascinated by the way it expanded with a quiet fizz when Judi sprayed it into the palm of her hand. She made me tip my head upside down and blasted it with a hairdryer (‘to give it bounce,’ she explained, as I spluttered), and then dried my hair in layers so it framed my forehead and jaw. I watched the transformation in the mirror, and I wanted to dance.

‘You’re a genius!’ I cried. ‘An artist!’

She put down her hairdryer and regarded my reflection with a half-smile. ‘D’you know what, Lucia? You scrub up pretty well. I think those hormones are having an effect already. It’s hard to put my finger on it . . . D’you think your skin’s softer?’

‘Impossible,’ I scoffed. Secretly, though, I agreed with her. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I did feel different: more serene, somehow. My sex drive was definitely less—I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but it was a fact. And that morning, for the first time, I’d noticed a soreness and sensitivity across my chest.

‘Let’s go out for lunch,’ she said.

My euphoria slid away. ‘I can’t. I’ve never eaten in public. People will read me.’

‘
Read
you? What does that mean?’

‘It means that they’ll see me for what I am.’

‘Well, that’s all right then, because what you are is a friend of mine.’ She picked up a pair of earrings and handed them to me to clip on. ‘
Your
first visit to a cafe as a woman.
My
first visit to a cafe with a transsexual woman. Sounds like fun! Let’s go.’

I lay in bed that night with a cup of tea by my side, wishing Eilish were there to share my triumph. Things were happening! I’d filled my wardrobe with new clothes; I’d been made up, my hair blow-dried. I’d wandered through Spitalfields market dressed in a long, full skirt, and browsed the jewellery stalls, before eating tagliatelle and sharing an excellent bottle of chablis with a girlfriend.

I never thought I’d see the day.

Thirty-five

Kate

This was her first Christmas as the child of a broken home. She had friends who’d been through it when they were small; they talked about shuttling from Mum to Dad and back again, eating two Christmas dinners, opening two lots of presents and generally being carved up like little Christmas turkeys. They always ended up blubbing by the end of the day. Christmas was a nightmare for them.

Kate’s memories couldn’t have been more different. The routine had been the same, year after year. She and Simon got up early and sat on each other’s beds to open their stockings. At ten, the family walked along the lane to church. Afterwards, Kate, Simon and the other village children would play kick the can in the graveyard while their parents were queueing up to shake hands with the vicar.

There was always a crowd at lunch: lots of family, and whichever cat they had at the time scoffing turkey giblets from a bowl on the floor. Normally there’d be a distant cousin or aunt, or some waif or stray with nowhere else to go—like Stella, when she was between husbands. To Kate, as a child, it was all perfect.

So she had no right to grumble about the fact that at the age of twenty-three she finally had a broken-home Christmas. Simon and Carmela had issued a general invitation; general to everyone,
that was, except her dad. Kate was wondering what to do about this when she had a call from her grandmother.

‘Carmela’s so kind to ask me,’ said Meg. ‘I think I should meet this new baby. But what about poor Luke? I hate to think of him alone on Christmas Day.’

That was when Kate made her decision. ‘Granny, don’t worry. Go and be gobbed on by Rosa, who, I must admit, is quite cute. I’ll have lunch with Dad. We’ll sit around and pull sad and lonely crackers, and get quietly stonkered together.’

Meg sounded heartened. ‘Would you do that, dear?’

‘You think I’d rather spend the day with Simon and Wendy, wearing a stupid paper hat?’

Kate was glad she’d made that decision, because her dad perked up when she told him. How the mighty were fallen! A year ago he was Mr Popular and Respectable, hosting a houseful of guests; now he was grateful for one visitor to his bare little basement flat.

‘Don’t you ever look up your London friends?’ she asked him.

‘Well, no. Not often. They tend to ask questions about why I’m living here.’

‘But you’ll have to come out sometime,’ she argued. ‘Won’t you? If you’re really going to . . . what’s the word?’

‘Transition.’

‘Why haven’t you told anyone? Are you having second thoughts?’

There was a pause, and Kate held her breath. Maybe she’d hit the nail on the head. Maybe it hadn’t worked out for him. If he was going to turn back, he’d better get a move on. Mum wouldn’t wait forever.

‘Our human resources manager wants it to happen tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Judi. You might have met her.’

Kate was surprised. ‘You told her?’

‘She got it out of me. She can’t understand why anyone would hesitate to become a woman. We went on a shopping expedition. It was fun.’

Kate snorted, muttering about women who shopped as a pastime.

‘Judi celebrates being female, Kate. It isn’t a crime.’

‘Actually it is a crime, if what she’s celebrating is being vacuous. Women are still not respected, Dad, and why? Because they’ve bought into this giggly fun shopping crap.’

She heard him laughing. Nice sound. ‘Don’t be such a killjoy.’

‘Not all women think shopping is fun. Don’t expect me to go into ecstasies over totes and bright yellow Italian shoes.’

‘Yellow shoes?’ He sounded intrigued. ‘I must hear more! The Italians make bright yellow shoes?’

Kate sighed, and said she’d see him for lunch on Christmas Day.

She’d been feeling sorry for her father, thinking of him as a Nora No-Mates, but when she fronted up on Christmas morning he wasn’t alone after all. She could see two figures in the kitchen as she passed the window. One was her dad; the other was a young woman, sitting at the table. Her head was thrown back and Kate could hear laughter. She also caught a waft of roast chicken, and a blast of Neil Young from the stereo.

The basement door was locked—unusually—but Luke came trotting over to open it, beaming out through the glass. He was in his shirtsleeves, wearing a plastic apron Kate had given him after a trip to Florence. It had a picture of Michelangelo’s David on the front, arranged artfully (or possibly tastelessly) to make the wearer look improbably well hung.

Luke’s eyes were bright as he held out his arms. ‘Happy Christmas, darling girl!’ he cried. ‘Now, come and meet someone.’

As Kate followed him into the kitchen, his visitor unfolded herself from the chair. Beautiful, thought Kate, but not pretty. She wore thigh-length boots, like Puss in Boots, and a red silk scarf around her neck; braided hair cascaded from a high ponytail. Above all, she had terrific posture. Kate had seen women with her kind of looks on the cover of
Vogue
—all cheekbones
and legs—though she suspected that their clothes cost a thousand times more than this woman’s outfit.

‘This is Chloe,’ said Luke. ‘My daughter, Kate.’

Chloe’s reaction was wildly enthusiastic. She held out her hand, then seemed to change her mind, laughed, and grabbed Kate in a bear hug.

‘This is great!’ she cried. ‘You’re the archaeologist, right? You dig stuff up? Lucia’s told me all about you.’

Gender, eh? It was funny; when you were with people like her dad and Chloe, you stopped thinking of it as a binary thing. It confirmed what Kate had long believed: that the world isn’t yin and yang, it isn’t black and white, and it certainly isn’t bloody Venus and Mars; it’s so much more fun than that. Chloe couldn’t hide her male voice, and the silk scarf covered an Adam’s apple, but she
was
female. There was no hint of a chip on her shoulder when it came to education or money or race or gender. They’d broken the conversational ice before Luke had got around to pouring Kate a glass of bubbly. Chloe already had her own, and clinked it against Kate’s, saying, ‘Cheers, m’dear.’

Luke had cooked a chicken (a turkey wouldn’t fit in that silly little oven) and Kate contributed a Tesco’s Christmas pudding. To her immense relief, nobody was wearing a paper hat. It was a blue-sky day outside. As the sun sank lower, they were dazzled by a little square of brightness, shining right on their faces.

‘Do you want me to pull down the blind?’ asked Luke, seeing that Chloe was squinting.

‘No!’ She waved him back into his seat. ‘It feels like a blessing.’

Two glasses down, and they were well away. Kate told the story of Owen, and Baffy, and the stranger in the pub. Chloe sympathised completely.

‘That guy sounds
gorgeous
,’ she cried. ‘You didn’t get a phone number? Oh, that’s tragic. And the poor dog—your ex needs a kick up the backside.’

‘What about you, Chloe?’ Kate leaned her arms on the table. ‘What’s happening in your life?’

Chloe was disarmingly open about herself; said that she was on the waiting list for surgery but God knew when that would happen. She’d be applying for her certificate just as soon as she’d saved enough for the fee. When Kate asked, she explained that this would mean she was legally a woman. Then she mentioned, casually, that she’d been in a car accident the day before.

Luke was fussing about with the oven, a tea towel over one shoulder, but now he whirled around. ‘Chloe! Are you all right? I didn’t even know you had a car.’

‘I don’t! It was a client’s car. One of my regulars. We were on our way to a hotel.’

‘What happened?’ asked Kate.

‘This bicycle courier rode straight across the road, and—oh my God—next moment we’d hit him.’

‘Was he okay?’

‘I thought he was dead. My client was bricking it, you can imagine—I mean, he’s married for one thing, and guess what he does for a job?’

Luke and Kate shook their heads. Chloe paused for effect, looking from one to the other.

‘A bishop?’ suggested Kate. ‘A judge?’

‘Politician?’ added Luke.

Chloe leaned forward, whispering. ‘He’s a policeman. High up. That’s all I can say.’

Her audience made fascinated, scandalised noises.

‘Not another word.’ Chloe zipped up her lips. ‘Take it from me: he’s very senior.’

‘And this man is married?’ asked Luke, who was shaking his head.

‘Hey, Lucia, don’t be too quick to write him off. He’s all right. Anyway, the bloke on the bike had a heck of a wallop and it took a while for him to get up. He just lay there looking like he was dead. People were running up. My client was trying to get his seatbelt off but he was in a state, he was freaking out—“Oh my
God, oh my God, I’ve got to call an ambulance, I’ll be caught with you in my car, this is the end of my career, end of my marriage, end of everything, panic panic panic”—and I pressed the button to release his seatbelt, and said, “Just go and help that poor sod lying in the road, and don’t worry.”’

Kate was hanging on Chloe’s every word. She could see it all: the senior policeman with a transsexual prostitute in his passenger seat, and the lifeless cyclist, and onlookers beginning to gather. Mobile phones, with cameras, would be coming out. Someone would be calling 999. Imagine the headlines! The clock was ticking on that guy’s career.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘I got down low in my seat, oh my God, I was practically sitting on the floor. While everyone was standing around the bloke in the road, I managed to get my door open and crawl away. It wasn’t too easy, but he’d fallen on the driver’s side, so I was hidden by the car. I got around a corner. Then I started running.’

Kate laughed at the idea of Chloe, all six-foot-something of her, crouching behind a car. ‘Anyone see you?’

‘Nope. Got away with it. The cyclist turned out to be okay, just cuts and bruises and hurt pride. My copper’s car had a dent but he just wanted to get away, so they agreed to call it quits. He texted me to say thanks.’

‘He was lucky,’ said Luke. ‘Your policeman. You covered for him. He’s also lucky that you aren’t the type to blackmail.’

Chloe drew her head back, a little offended. ‘You have rules in your job, right? Rules about keeping things under your hat and not talking about your client’s business? Well, so do I. I’m not there to ruin a man’s life.’

‘It’s a dangerous job, though, isn’t it?’ said Kate.

Chloe shrugged. She looked bleak suddenly. Kate cursed her own tactlessness and changed the subject. ‘Christmas pudding,’ she said. ‘Tesco’s own. I shoved a pound coin in, so watch your teeth, Chloe. Dad, got any brandy? Let’s do the flame thing.’