39. Where He Cannot Follow

 

12. Breath

He controls me
Knees pinning
Belly crushing
Fingers at my throat
With little effort he controls me
For if I move
if I resist
if I scream
if I am too much myself
he will take my breath from me
and I will wake again in darkness

 

2020 January 11
Saturday

Christine’s awake earlier than Paige and, judging by the emptiness of the second-floor kitchen, earlier than everyone else on her floor. Valérie included, which is a surprise; though Paige did say, as she and Christine folded gratefully into bed last night, that she hadn’t seen Val all evening, and that no-one had seen Aunt Bea, either, and that maybe…

No! She rejects the thought. Because no matter what Paige might say, or what Jodie might insinuate, largely with mime, she doesn’t want to think of Aunt Bea that way. She still remembers when Beatrice was a figure of fear for her, an unknowable presence who loomed over her life, controlling every aspect of it via locks, sponsors, and the loving care and attention of Indira, and while Christine’s accepted that this was largely a fiction, created to keep the new girls in line and to give their sponsors an unimpeachable authority figure on whom to blame all the most grating aspects of their training as women, she’s still not ready to imagine her so human, so normal, so sweatily real.

Christine rebels by breaking open locks — and she still takes pride in that, even knowing she fell entirely to Indira’s much more subtle manipulation — not by picturing her boss and the ultimate architect of her womanhood fucking.

Jodie says she’s naive. Surely Christine’s heard the rumours about what Beatrice did before she returned to Dorley? How she made a living without an official existence? Donna says that’s how she met Elle Lambert in the first place, and—

That’s usually the point where Christine walks out of the room or sticks her fingers in her ears. Aunt Bea should be Aunt Bea. And, sure, Valérie reportedly hasn’t been back to her room three nights in a row, but that doesn’t mean anything! Not if Christine has anything to say about it.

So why’s she thinking about it non-stop this morning?

Because she’s up early and alone, that’s why. And she can’t go back to bed because she’s far too antsy to stay still, and then she’d wake Paige, and while that has the potential to be adorable, they were up late last night. She should let her sleep.

She takes to the stairs instead, running two at a time for most of their length, and emerges into a disappointingly empty dining hall. She’s about to move on, maybe to go for a walk into campus and try to find someone to talk to in Café One or the library, when she realises the dining hall’s not actually empty, that one of the armchairs by the fireplace is occupied.

It’s not until she’s closer that she realises it’s occupied by Steph. And a surprisingly nondescript Steph, at that: she’s dressed in the standard basement outfit of joggers, t-shirt and hoodie, and though she’s clearly wearing a bra under it, she’s otherwise androgynous. Not the sort of thing she usually wears on her excursions upstairs unless she’s having electrolysis or something.

Strange.

“Hey!” Christine says, injecting all the energy she can into the greeting, hopping over the back of the sofa nearest the armchair and realising immediately that she’s misjudged the mood. Steph’s sitting there, leaning forward, hands clasped, clearly unready for human contact.

“Hey,” Steph says, raising her head long enough to say the word and dropping it back down.

Yeah. She wants to be left alone. Trouble is, people who want to be left alone rarely benefit from it, in Christine’s experience. “What’s up? And I mean that in a friendly way, not a sponsorly way; I’m on holiday.”

“I heard.”

“Also, I’m not a sponsor.”

“I know.”

“I just do the technical stuff. Steph, what’s wrong?”

Steph takes a disconcertingly long moment to respond, and when she does, she leans back in her arm chair, hugs herself. “Nothing, really. Little things.” Another pause, while she stares into the empty fireplace. “It’s Bethany. I’m worried about her. Ever since Ollie, ever since that night…”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Don’t know. I came up here for a change of scenery. And for the quiet.”

“Well,” Christine says, checking the time, “this is a bad place to be if you want to be alone, and not just because of me.” She holds her phone up, showing Steph the lock screen, with its forest of notifications and alerts. “Shift change soon.”

She nods, morose. She’s still hugging herself, and Christine recognises that exact behaviour: it’s to stop herself from fidgeting, it’s to protect herself, it’s to keep inside everything that threatens to come out. And whether it’s just that she’s worried about Bethany, or there’s other bullshit going on in her life as well, the fact remains that the poor girl has spent the bulk of the last three months in windowless rooms, surrounded by people who have only recently become halfway bearable. She needs to get out. It seemed to do wonders for Ollie.

“Hey, Steph,” Christine says, “you wanna build a fire?”

The question’s unexpected enough that Steph has to force herself to think about it, to interrupt whatever unhelpful shit is going on in that head of hers to consider new information, and when she manages something that is almost a smile, Christine grins back at her, hops up from the sofa and holds out a hand. Steph takes it, and together they head off into the back corridors.

“We’re going outside?” Steph asks as they close in on the conservatory.

“That is where the wood is.”

“But I’m wearing socks.”

Christine’s prepared for that: there’s a supply closet just before the last door, and inside is everything she expects, including several pairs of green wellies. She pulls out a few and squints at the soles.

“What size do you wear?” she asks.

“Oh,” Steph says, shifting uncomfortably in the doorway, “uh, ten. I can get into a nine if I need to, but, uh… Yeah. Ten. Unless you have nine-and-a-half.”

Christine nods and hands her a pair of tens. “We’ve got you covered,” she says, and when Steph takes them, Christine gestures vaguely upstairs. “Most of us have feet that are kind of on the big side.”

Steph doesn’t seem all that mollified, but she slips them on and stamps a couple of times. “Oh. They’re actually loose.”

“You’re probably already shrinking,” Christine says, dumping her Keds on the shelf and pulling on a pair of eights.

“Shrinking?”

“Well, yeah.” Christine stands up. She’s a little taller than Steph, and she decides to emphasise it by standing closer to her, looking down on her just a little. “You’ll lose height on the hormones—”

“I knew that,” Steph interrupts, sagging.

“And you’ll probably drop at least half a shoe size. More, maybe. Nines were tight on me when I came here.” She sticks out a wellie’d foot. “Now I have room in eights.”

Steph boggles at her. “Our feet shrink?”

“Usually, yeah. Might hurt a bit every so often. Like everywhere else.”

“Oh, yeah,” Steph says, arching her back. “I’ve had a bit of that already.”

Christine can’t help smiling, remembering. For a while it had been a new ache and a new pain every day. Something else to make living down in the basement extra-special.

“Come on,” she says, tugging on Steph’s sleeve, “let’s go stock up.”

There’s a wicker basket on wheels in the storeroom, and together they drag it out and into the conservatory. They leave it by the door — “For tactical reasons,” Christine says, when Steph asks — and Christine makes a bit of a show out of opening the door to the outside, spoiled only slightly by the way the door sticks in the frame.

Is she imagining it, or did Steph breathe in extra-deep as soon as she stepped outside?

Neither of them say anything, though, so Christine leads them off the concrete lip and onto a barely gravelled path, perpendicular to the woods and, thankfully, wending nowhere at all near Peckinville’s little installation.

The woodshed is a smallish construction, a higgledy-piggledy mess of stone and long-dried mud cement. Several trees have grown around it, their roots and branches enmeshed into its structure, and without them it would probably have collapsed decades ago; maybe centuries. Christine doesn’t know how old it is, just that it has the otherworldly feel of a building that might, if it did not rupture all sense, credibly claim to predate the woods that surround it and the land that hosts it.

“Spooky,” Steph says.

“Less so when you see the van from the Got Wood? people parked outside. What, you think we chop our own wood?” She shows off her nails to Steph, reflecting that her point would be made better if she were Paige, with her perfect manicure. Or Jodie, or Yasmin, or any of the girls who don’t chew on themselves when they’re anxious.

The out-of-place modern door opens into an interior lined with waterproof material and stacked high with precisely chopped logs, each perfectly sized to fit in those nicely aesthetic cast-iron firewood containers Paige keeps pointing out to her on lifestyle Instagrams. The Hall has a rather less pleasing little cupboard set into the wall, by the fireplace, rarely stocked with wood but filled with firelighters and matches and cleaning fluid and other less fashionable fireplace accessories.

Christine fetches the wheelbarrow from its place, dumps it in the doorway, and beckons Steph to help her. Careful not to get dust or wood chips on their clothes or in their hair, they start loading it.

Eventually, Steph speaks.

“Beth’s been quiet,” she says. “Sad. And it’s not like before, when she… when Aaron was falling apart. It’s new.”

“Did you talk to her about it?”

“I’m afraid to. I’m always scared to, with this kind of thing. Best I can do is drop hints and wait for her to pick them up.” Steph drops her logs into the barrow and steps back. “I know she’s not trans the way I am. I know there’s a whole process to get from where she was to where she needs to be. And I know she’s not there yet. So it scares me every time it seems like she’s stopped making progress. Every time it feels like she’s going backwards instead. Every time she hesitates to put on a bra or doesn’t look at me when I talk, or makes a face when she looks at herself in the mirror, or…” Trailing off, she squats, rests her hands inside her silhouette. Another defensive posture.

“Steph?”

“I’m scared of breaking her, Christine,” Steph says. “Sometimes I feel like if I touch her the wrong way it’ll be like pulling on a thread and she’ll just come apart. And that’s the other thing. I know she’s not trans the way I am, but she knows it, too. And she thinks about it a lot. I know she feels inferior.”

“She’s told you this?”

“Once or twice. Not in quite those words. But sometimes…” Steph leans against the doorway. “Sometimes I think she’s only going forwards because she hates who she used to be so much.”

Christine sets down her last log and walks over to Steph. She squats down next to her, reaches in and takes both her hands. “You could be describing me,” she says softly. “I’m not trans the way you are, either. And you might be surprised at how recently I decided I was trans at all. It’s a weird mental hurdle to get over. Remember,” she continues, when Steph looks like she’s going to protest, “I’m like Bethany; I had to be dragged into this. And there were weeks when I felt like doing nothing but shutting myself away, hiding even from the people I loved — and, yes, even back then, I loved Paige and I loved Dira, even if I didn’t know it yet. Progress isn’t a straight line, Steph. It’s wiggly. It turns back on itself. There are valleys to cross and hills to climb and the map, well, the map sucks.”

Steph smiles weakly. “That’s a Maria line, isn’t it?”

“Broadly,” Christine says. “She’s a smart woman. Has she, uh, been down to see Bethany lately?”

Shaking her head, Steph says, “Edy has. She says Maria’s recovering.”

“She wants her as rested as possible. I think she’s being overprotective; Maria’s bored. I had to go see her earlier in the week, just to get some stuff signed, and she kept me there almost an hour, just chatting.”

“Oh? What kind of stuff?”

“We’re going out tonight. All the second years. And Lorna, and Pippa, and—”

“Oh, yeah,” Steph says, nodding. “Pippa mentioned it. You have to get paperwork signed for that?”

“Normally? No. But none of us has actually graduated, apart from Vicky, and since we’re going out as a group it’s technically a programme activity. To be honest,” Christine adds, hefting the bars of the wheelbarrow and stepping aside so Steph can open the door for her, “we’re in by-the-book mode now.”

Steph slips the latch back on and together they head back towards the hall, the dirty wheelbarrow held between them, so they can share the load. When they arrive at the conservatory, they’ll transfer the firewood to the indoor-safe wicker cart, so no-one will have reason to yell at Christine and Steph for scratching the wooden floors.

“You know,” Christine says, “I have a thought. Why not take Beth up to see Maria? I bet she misses her, and—”

“Shit,” Steph says, stopping short and causing the wheelbarrow to rock. “That’s a great idea, Christine!”

Trying not to be smug, Christine says, “Yes. Yes, it is.”

 

* * *

 

At least she gets to rest today. Bit of a hell week, all things considered.

Work’s been tense. Back at Dorley it had been easy to think of her life up here as not especially real, as some fugue state she’d slipped into, but then Zach texted asking where the hell she was and icily informing that her absence was starting to cause problems, and as much as Melissa doesn’t need a reference to get a job down in Almsworth — the new girls’ network strikes again — the thought of leaving Zach short-handed was unpleasant enough that she dropped everything and jumped on a train back to Manchester.

Back to a remnant of a life she was crazy even to attempt.

So, yeah. Returning to work only to immediately quit wasn’t exactly the kindest thing she could have done, but Zach was gracious enough about it. Considering how much of his goodwill she’s burned through, Melissa’s grateful to have gotten off with just a few harsh words and an awkward atmosphere while she works her notice.

She won’t pretend she hasn’t slipped a bit, though. Her meal replacement shakes are still in the office fridge. And they would be, wouldn’t they? They’re practically immortal, which doesn’t say amazing things about the contents, and fuck her if on her first day back — and every day since — she didn’t just pick one out for lunch instead of eating something.

She has more at home, and as much as Shahida and the girls back at the Hall made sure she ate, now she’s back here, now it’s all laid out for her, now that there’s no food in the flat that hasn’t expired, it’s been impossible not to revert to old habits. She hasn’t yet weighed herself on the worn and unloved scale under the sink, but she looks at it every time she uses the bathroom; it’s only a matter of time. Because when she started boxing up her stuff, she found a blouse she hasn’t worn since she first moved up here, and when she tried it on, the buttons wouldn’t do up. And no amount of facing herself in the mirror and reminding herself that she’s a healthy weight now and recalling Shahida’s appreciative hands on her and Abby’s reserved and questioning kisses can defeat a button that won’t close.

On her first night she threw all her old clothes into boxes and taped them all shut and decided to wear only what she brought with her. The things she bought and borrowed, the things that caress her instead of binding her. She wears her new clothes and she tries to forget. Which is hard to do when one of the girls at work keeps telling her she looks ‘healthier’ now, and Melissa’s been a woman long enough to know what that’s code for. They’ve never gotten along, and the bitch knew exactly where to skewer her: in the rolls and rolls of fat on her—

“Oh, shut up,” Melissa mutters to herself.

Next week will be better. Zach was more like his old self yesterday, and she even got to tell him she’s going to miss him when she’s gone. He started talking about networking; if she’s going to be working at her alma mater, well, the Royal College is a prestigious institution, and maybe she can drop his name a few times. The thought makes her giggle. Zach at Saints? Popping into Dorley to say hi? He’s had some choice things to say about toxic masculinity over the years; maybe she can persuade him to help out. Maybe she can lead him by the hand into the monstrosity that made her and show him the ropes, introduce him around.

“It’s just networking, Zach,” she whispers, laughing again.

There. Much better. Now she can get out of bed and not have to worry so much about the face she’ll see in the mirror.

She sucks her cheeks in all the same. Best not to push it.

In the shower, she pokes at her belly. She complained to Shahida the other week that she was getting pudgy, and Shy made her prove it and then very tactfully did not make fun of Melissa’s nonexistent belly bulge. Melissa can feel it, but if no-one can see it, is it really there?

She soaps it up and doesn’t linger on it. Thinking of Shahida, her hand drops, but before she can indulge herself too much, the memory of their awkward Monday morning presents itself, and she focuses instead on washing and conditioning and shaving and scrubbing.

Two kisses. One from each of them. First from Shy, in her room. Not so unexpected. But the second was out in the corridor, from Abby, their first proper kiss in a long time. And Abby stepped away, eyes wide, smiling, truly happy, and something boiled inside Melissa.

It boils still, it writhes inside her, a creature of passion and guilt and memory and lust, and it wants them both, the woman she grew up with and the woman who saved her. And that’s just Melissa being unfair again, failing to choose, failing for the longest time to recognise that there is a choice even to make.

Zach’s text, then, was convenient. It gave her a pretext to get the hell away and think about things. And Shahida couldn’t follow because her money is far from infinite and she needs to find a job, and Abby has work and her family to think of, and no-one else knew she was going until she’d already run back up the country to Manchester, to her empty flat and her meal-replacement shakes and her mirror that tells her over and over the she needs to weigh herself again and write down the number in the little book under her bed.

And she hasn’t come to a decision yet. She’s been too scared to think about it.

Zach texted, and away she ran, because hurting people with her absence is the thing Melissa is best at.

 

* * *

 

“I still can’t believe our feet shrink.”

“Believe it.”

“I lost a whole size,” someone says.

“I lost almost two,” someone else adds.

“Bitch!”

“Hey! I had bigger feet to start with. More to lose. Look at you; if you’d lost any more, you’d be like a— a— a woman with really small feet.”

“How does that even work, anyway?”

“I don’t know. The tendons tighten, or something? Monica, you’re a biologist; how does it happen?”

“Science.”

“That’s… not helpful.”

“Hormones.”

“Still not helpful.”

“It’s early; leave me alone.”

“Mon, it’s almost eleven.”

“That counts as early on a Saturday.”

“Says you. I just got off shift.”

“Nell, you got off shift five hours ago.”

“Shit, really? What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“Christ.”

“You’re a mess, Nell.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault Bella left her Switch down here. I’m getting really good at Mario.”

Christine meets Steph’s eyes, and they share a smile.

Starting a fire on such a relatively cold morning had the effect of gathering together every sponsor coming off the night shift, every resident out blearily searching for a cup of coffee, a handful of older graduates who’ve recently been roped in to fill out the ranks at the weekends, and even the odd hungover girl returning home in the same clothes she went out in the night before. Paige brought out a few drip coffee makers from storage, and Faye and a handful of other second years set up a cereal station on a nearby table, and everyone’s just hanging out. It reminds Christine of some of the lazy mornings she had earlier in her third year, before everything went crazy, only now she knows everyone’s name, more or less.

It’s good to see Steph smiling into her Weetabix. They kept talking as they got the fire going, conspiring to lift Bethany’s mood, and in the process, Steph started to feel better, too. So now, as long as Bethany is asleep down there — and she is; Christine set her phone to vibrate if Bethany so much as rolls over in bed — Steph can stay up here, and drink her coffee and eat her cereal and speak with her peers.

She does feel the need to check on her every so often, though.

“You’re sure she’s still asleep?” Steph whispers again, leaning close enough to Christine that no-one — save Paige — will overhear.

Christine nods, waking her phone and bringing up the feed. There she is, lying on her back, the covers slowly rising and falling. “Out cold,” Christine says.

“She never sleeps in this long.”

“You sleep together most nights, don’t you?” Paige asks, and Steph nods. “It’s the beds. They’re narrow. Christine and I had the same problem: she likes to spread out and thrash around—”

“—I don’t like to; it just happens—”

“—and so does Bethany.”

“Well,” Christine says, nudging Paige with an elbow, “hopefully she’ll feel better by tonight.”

Steph sighs. “I hope so. I’m just— I’m worried about her.”

Paige, reaching over Christine, puts a hand on Steph’s knee. “I know. This will help her. I’m sure of it.”

Steph half-smiles and leans away, rejoining the larger conversation, which has somehow circled back to feet.

“I still have to buy wide, though,” Nell’s saying. “Sucks to lose two sizes but still have trouble buying cute shoes because you have to find them in an eight wide.”

“It’s crazy that they shrink at all,” Steph says.

“I can’t believe you didn’t know that,” Monica says. She’s sitting on a dining chair in the centre of the loose semi-circle of couches and armchairs, with her back to the fire. She dragged it over when she joined the group, because every other seat was full, and the effect has been to nominate her as the de facto adjudicator of whatever conversation has the most participants, since she’s elevated above everyone else even more than normal. “It’s one of the first things baby transes usually find out.”

“I didn’t.”

“She doesn’t know a lot of the things baby transes know,” Paige points out.

“She doesn’t like to Google things,” Christine says.

“That’s only partly true,” Steph says.

“So,” Monica says, “ask us! I know we drip-feed information down there—” she jerks a thumb basementwards, “—but you’re exempt from that. Unless you think you’re likely to panic about your feet shrinking or your hips rotating, or—”

“My hips are going to rotate?”

One of the other girls giggles as Monica shrugs. “Doesn’t happen to everyone. But, mostly? Yes.”

It’s good to see Monica doing better, too. The news about Declan — and then, in its wake, the continued absence of further news about Declan — shook her, but she’s gradually been getting back to normal. She’s taken more shifts, and she’s teamed up with Pippa to spend time with Ollie in what they’ve come to call the infirmary, so Harmony can take breaks.

“It’s an age thing,” Nell says. “It might not happen for Ollie, since he’s older, but I bet most of your lot’ll start feeling it soon, if you haven’t already.”

“I have been a bit sore,” Steph says.

“There you go.”

“When you say ‘rotate’…”

With Steph in someone else’s hands for a while, Christine allows herself to zone out. She leans against Paige, indulges in her warmth and in the hand that quickly covers hers, and sips her coffee. Her first week ‘off’ — she still has to attend lectures — has gone well, and it’s been incredibly reassuring to see more faces around the hall, more sponsors, more graduates; more people to respond if some emergency presents itself. If, say, a survivor of a third and heretofore unknown clandestine forced feminisation operation shows up, begging for help holding up her cartoonishly large boobs, they won’t be Christine’s problem. Not for another week, at least.

Sure, okay, she inserted herself into Steph’s situation a bit this morning, did a little of what Indira would probably — with a nudge and a wink — call sponsoring, but the girl really does need to have her context kicked occasionally. She spends too much time in the basement, and almost all of it with Bethany, and while Bethany’s lovely in her own way, Steph needs reminding occasionally that most trans women don’t actually glare at their bras as if they are about to leap up and bite them.

She’s come a long way. Easy to remember when Steph didn’t like to use appropriate pronouns or compare herself to other trans women; now, here she is, naturally and easily including herself with only the gentlest of nudges.

Christine smiles to herself. It’s not been so long since she didn’t like to call herself a trans woman at all, and now here she is, seriously considering ticking the box for it on her NPH.

Paige nuzzles her, so Christine leans up to kiss her and folds her awareness back into the hubbub again. The second years are arguing over who among them gets Trevor Darling’s tits when they finally take them out of him, and as Monica tries to tell them that it doesn’t work like that, Mia insists that it’s going to be her that gets them, that she’s going to be magnificent, and that she’s going to be visible from space.

Laughing, Christine snuggles up against Paige even more. Feels like family, being here among so many, though the thought reminds her she ought to check up on her mum, see how she’s doing. She probably won’t ever go see her again — the ruse that carried her through their last meeting is unsustainable — but it’s been healing to know for sure that not everything Christine left behind is forever ruined.

A ringtone disturbs the conversation for a moment, one of the ones they all have on their personal phones that’s set to a special ring — the classic ‘telephone’ ring, rather than a tune — to indicate that a call’s being forwarded from their personal landline extension. Christine sees Monica picking up, and relaxes; it’s almost definitely someone from her (very) part-time job outside Dorley. Not Christine’s concern, especially because the recording will be instantly accessible to whomever is in the security room.

She grins as she realises she doesn’t even know who’s on shift down there right now, and she doesn’t have to care!

She’s rolling over to kiss Paige again when Monica stands up from her dining chair, covers the mic on her phone, and yells, “Everybody shut the fuck up!” Then, in the silence, she says into her phone, “I’m sorry; Diana, was it? Would you please repeat that?”

 

* * *

 

One of these weekends she should probably take a last look around the city. It’s an odd impulse; it’s not like she’ll never have the opportunity to come back. But these last few weeks here are the last Melissa will ever have working for Zach, they’ll be the last in her little apartment; they’ll be the last of this era of her life. When she next comes back to Manchester, whenever that is, she’ll be someone else again.

Hopefully someone a little less neurotic. Someone who eats more.

But she should do it. Walk around the Northern Quarter. Have a coffee in the café atop Afflecks. Have a drink on Canal Street.

Yeah. Go see every place she’s had a failed date with a cis girl. Amazing plan, Melissa.

Still. What better way to draw a line under her old life? One of her old lives, anyway. She’s amassed several: unhappy and confused child; desperate and suicidal teen; subdued but stable(ish) girl-in-progress; Abby’s girlfriend; Abby’s ex. And then Steph happened, and suddenly everything that came before seemed unimportant. Rushing back down to Almsworth, filled with the certainty but that she could finally do some good, that she was finally needed, was extraordinary, even as it was terrifying. And it worked out better than expected; sort of a first, in Melissa’s experience. And Melissa’s so, so proud of Steph.

Except now Melissa’s back here again. In the same old flat. With the same old meal replacement shakes.

She’s getting stuck in circular thinking. Only one way to fix that, and that’s by doing something. Maybe she will do the tour of Manchester. See all the old places. Bum herself out remembering when Veronica said she met another girl at Vanilla, one who’s just fun, who doesn’t seem sad all the time, and—

Yeah, Liss. Let’s get the hell out of here.

She fridges the rest of her shake — she’ll finish it later — and rushes through the process of getting ready. Nothing fancy: she detangles her hair and throws it in a high pony, pulls on a pair of jeggings and a loose sweater, steps into her comfiest pair of long boots, and chucks a favourite dark brown coat over the top, because the condensation’s only just receded from the windows. It’s colder up here in Manchester; she always forgets.

It’s reassuringly familiar. She’s riding the lift down from the fifth floor, checking herself over in its green-tinted mirrors. She’s wishing, as she steps out into the lobby, that she’d brought a hat, but since she’ll undoubtedly end up shopping for clothes, she can just pick one up if her ears get too cold.

It’s like any other Saturday up here in Manchester. Like the whole excursion to Almsworth was just a dream, and this is her real life.

There are two figures visible through the frosted glass of the front double doors, buzzing someone and having no luck, so that’ll be her good deed for the day: letting a couple of people in so they don’t have to wait for their friend outside. She taps her fob against the reader, opens the door, and prepares a smile.

“Liss! We were just buzzing you!” Abby says.

“I know we should have called,” Shahida says, “but we wanted to surprise you, and—”

“Why are you dressed like a pumpkin spice latte girl?”

 

* * *

 

The daylight’s blinding in the breakfast room and the red-and-white-squared tablecloths are starting to blend together and it takes a moment for Diana to realise how unsteady she is on her feet, how every noise and every light and everything she can touch has unified against her in a cacophony of sensation, and as she thinks to herself that she should write down ‘a cacophony of sensation’ somewhere, she almost falls. She’s only saved from braining herself on one of the rickety wooden chairs because Chiamaka’s there, positioning herself under one arm and steadying her.

“Diana?” the reedy voice on the phone says. “Are you there?”

She doesn’t feel like she can answer. That would take everything she is currently using to fail to stand.

Chiamaka takes the phone out of her hand and answers for her. “Whoever this is, please give Diana a moment.” Then she lays it on the table and pulls out a chair. “Diana, sweetheart, please sit down. You are very heavy.”

Yeah. She probably is, isn’t she?

Diana drops into the chair. It wobbles a bit on the uneven floor — or is it because the chair itself is uneven? — and she overcorrects, grabbing Chiamaka’s arm.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Chiamaka says, “you can let me go now.”

“Oh, sorry.” Diana releases her. “I’m— I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Just finish your conversation.”

Numbly nodding, Diana retrieves her phone and says, “Hello. Sorry about that.” She doesn’t use her new voice, because it hurts to use it too much, and she doesn’t want to have a coughing fit on top of everything else. It sounds terrible anyway.

“Decl— Diana, what happened?” Monica asks. Through the speaker, Diana could swear she can almost hear the hush of people, and she wonders where Monica was when she took the call. Doubtless somewhere Declan never visited, unless he was unconscious at the time.

“I got dizzy,” she says. And she remembers the other thing she decided: to be honest with Monica, or as honest as she can be without giving up her location. She doesn’t know how much she can trust her, doesn’t even know if there’s any reason to trust her at all, but everything she knows about the ultimate goals of the Hall came from Frankie and Grandmother and him, and none of them had reason to be honest. Maybe Frankie did. Impossible to know. Anyway, Monica’s got to be the most trustworthy person she knows who is actually in a position to help her with this. “It’s been happening a lot the last few days,” she adds, “when I get worried or stressed.”

“And talking to me… worries you?”

“Yes,” Diana says. Chiamaka, satisfied that Diana is unlikely to fall from her chair, squeezes her shoulder and returns to the reception room, making good on her promise not to eavesdrop.

“I’m sorry, Diana,” Monica says. “If I’d been kinder to you—”

Diana interrupts her before another dizzy spell overtakes her. “Please. I don’t want to talk about then. I just need to know some things.”

“Okay.”

“Is there something I can take that will stop me getting dizzy?”

“You’re… getting dizzy?”

“Not just dizzy. I’m having a lot of problems.”

“What problems, Diana?”

Diana lists every symptom she can think of. As she goes, she hears Monica ferociously shush someone on the other end, someone asking her a question, though she can’t make out what’s asked.

“There’s something you can take, yes,” Monica says, when Diana’s finished. “It’ll alleviate your symptoms and it’ll keep you healthy. And we can get it for you, but you need to come home. You need to come back, Diana.”

And that was it. That was the thing Monica said to her earlier, the thing that nearly put Diana on the floor. Back to Dorley Hall.

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“You need our help, Diana,” Monica says.

The dizziness comes again. Diana leans both elbows on the table and struggles to keep the phone raised to her ear. “I can’t be locked up again, Monica,” she whispers, and she feels his hand around her throat as she does so. He liked to hold her there, keep her in place, the threat of cutting off her air never stated but always implicit. He only had to go through with it once; after a while, even a light touch around her neck was enough.

That was the end of him, though. He should have held her tighter.

“I can’t be locked up again,” she repeats, almost inaudible even to herself. Her breathing slows and shallows, and she stills as much as she can. “I can’t.”

“I will not lock you up, Diana,” Monica says on the other end of the line. She sounds the way she did when she gave Declan one of her ultimatums, all of which he spat back at her.

“I can’t,” is all Diana can say, and then there are hands around her throat. Memories of him, but also of Declan’s defiance, his stupid, idiot defiance.

Moments later, the phone is taken out of her grip, and as she struggles to breathe, Chiamaka speaks for her again.

“Whatever you are saying to Diana is hurting her.” There’s a commotion on the speaker, too far away for Diana to hear. “No. No. You will be quiet! Good. Now, listen. I don’t know who you are, but if you know her, then either you know she’s a very delicate girl, or you ought to. So this is me telling you: lay off. Can you do that for me? Okay. I’m going to give you back to her now, and I’ll give her back her privacy.” She sets the phone on the table and addresses Diana directly. “Whatever you need from her, I’m sure there’s another way to get it.”

“I don’t think so,” Diana says. She’s aware she sounds hoarse and nothing at all like a girl, but Chiamaka doesn’t seem to care. Instead she smiles grimly, nods at the phone on the table, and mouths, Be careful, before walking out again.

A faint voice from the phone is repeating her name, so Diana picks it up.

“Monica,” she says.

“I’m not going to pressure you to come back to the Hall,” Monica says. “I can meet you somewhere, bring you what you need, show you how to use it. We can meet somewhere neutral and open. Where lots of people can see us, so you know I won’t be able to do anything to you. How easy is it for you to get to, say, Chelmsford?”

The relief that floods Diana is hard to contain — she’s not going to be made to go back! she’s not going to be imprisoned again! — until she realises the problem: “I can’t go anywhere. I don’t have any money.”

“Shit, of course, you don’t have an identity,” Monica says. “Okay. I’m thinking.” Diana wonders if she’s tapping the side of her nose, the way she used to. The thought makes her smile. “You obviously have a phone; do you have internet access?”

“Yes.”

“Right. I’m going to text an email address and a link to an app to this number, is that okay?”

“Yes.”

“Download the app to your phone. It’s a payment app, and you don’t need a bank account or anything to use it, just a phone. Set it up and send a cash request to the email address. I will then send you some money. Enough for you to buy a train ticket or a taxi or whatever. Come to Chelmsford and— Do you want to do this today? I imagine you want to do this today, if you’re having dizzy spells.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Maybe get a taxi or an Uber or something if you’re that dizzy. Safer than the train. I’ll make sure to send you enough. Meet me in the café in the John Lewis in Chelmsford. Is that okay, Diana?”

“Y— Yes.”

Monica slows down. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m bombarding you, I know. But I need to know: if I leave for Chelmsford now, will you meet me there? I promise you will be safe, and that you’ll be free to leave on your own at any time.”

Diana hesitates. But in the absence of trust, desperation wins out.

“I’ll be there,” she says.

 

* * *

 

It feels to Christine like the entire dining hall’s been holding its breath as Monica talks to someone she keeps calling Diana but twice she has almost called Declan, and when eventually she hangs up and stands there, drained, her phone clutched tightly in both hands, everyone starts to talk at once.

“Shut up!” she yells, after a few seconds of madness. And then she starts muttering to herself, counting off on her fingers. “I need to call a cab, I need injection supplies, I need— Christine! You need to authorise me for a thousand pounds out of the emergency fund!”

“I need Aunt Bea’s permission to—”

“No, you fucking don’t!” Monica says, leaning down towards her, wielding her height against her. “Authorise the money, Christine, please. I promise no-one’ll yell at you for it.”

One of the other sponsors passes Christine a laptop, and she takes it with a shrug. It’s the work of a few seconds to authorise the transfer to Monica’s sponsorship account. She closes up the computer and as she leans forward to place it on the coffee table, several sponsors nod at her or give her a thumbs up or otherwise validate her; they’ll have her back if Monica fucks up.

“Monica,” Nell asks, “what’s going on?”

“I’m going to Chelmsford,” Monica says. “Nobody tell Aunt Bea until I’ve left. I’ll ask for forgiveness, not permission.”

“Why Chelmsford?”

“Ask me that when I get back!” she yells, sounding manic. And then she’s gone, disappearing into the back rooms; presumably going straight for one of the secure medicine lockers for injection supplies.

There’s silence for a moment, and then Nadine, the most senior sponsor present, stands regally from her armchair at the end of the row, walks up to Christine and hands her back the laptop.

“Please play the recording,” she says.

Everyone assembled seem to huddle closer as Christine hops into the security system and pulls up the records for Monica’s outside line. She hits play on the latest entry.

“Hello?” Monica’s voice says. “Hello? Who is this? I don’t recognise this number.”

“H— Hello,” someone says, their voice a whisper that Christine can’t yet gender.

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Diana,” the voice says. “You knew me as Declan. I need your help.”

The whole room erupts.

 

* * *

 

9. The Shell

Lost myself
Found something else
He reaches for me still
But I have gone where he cannot follow
All that is left
is a life I don’t understand
and a cracked and broken shell
I hope I paint it well

 

* * *

 

Bethany dreams of corridors. Of boys made comically large by fear. Of a summer that never ends, of teachers’ offices that offer no protection, of a bed that could be taken from her at any moment. And in her waking hours, she sees a boy who survived all that and turned it outward, who decided that being hurt was reason enough to hurt others, whose impunity became armour.

She sees him because she makes herself see him. Because a week of nightmares about boys chasing her, catching her, hurting her, forcing her, that’s not why she’s here. That’s not what she did. That’s just… bullshit backstory. And the more she returns to it, the more times she escapes from it upon waking, the more self-serving it feels, the more indulgent.

Steph’s been trying. Bless her, she’s been trying so hard. Distractions and kisses and careful, wary questions. But it hasn’t been enough.

It’s like that other girl, Mia, said: fake it til you make it. Bethany’s been trying to fake it for what feels like forever and yet she knows has been mere weeks, and she’s exhausted and she’s run ragged in her dreams and when she wakes the people who surround her are progressing and she’s constantly dragged back to the endless corridors of the school in summer. Dragged back to where she started.

And the fear of it is that, in her haste to protect her, Steph will be pulled along with her. And that cannot happen.

Fake it til you make it: Bethany the character, the ideal, the goal, is further away than ever. She can’t see her in the mirror any more. Can’t drum up her voice to guide her. The girl who put on cute clothes to taunt Will, the girl who renounced her old identity in front of dozens of people, the girl who allowed Steph to kiss her and touch her and treat her delicately; where did she go?

It’s not even as if Aaron’s come back in her place. She’s tried reaching for him, experimentally, and found nothing.

So who is she?

And how can she even discover that when her world is so reduced? Fuck, even Ollie gets to go outside more than she does! Stupid bastard has an accident shaving his copious wrist hair and gets a week in the fresh air! Oh, she could ask Steph to take her upstairs, and Steph’d jump at it, but then she’d be admitting she’s having difficulties, that she’s not as far along as she hoped to be.

Steph shouldn’t be weighed down by her. She’s better than that.

She’s better than Bethany. In every sense.

 

* * *

 

They take the stairs back up to Melissa’s apartment, partly because Abby drove all the way here and she needs to stretch her legs and partly because the patterns on the stairwell walls — concentric rings of terracotta-brown tile embedded in green — are absolutely beautiful to Shahida, and she wants to follow them all the way up to the fifth floor. As Melissa speaks, Shahida runs her fingers along them, tracing the bumps and imperfections and barely noticing the effort of the climb.

“When did you set off?” Melissa asks, taking refuge in the most banal opening question possible.

“About six,” Abby says, huffing with effort. “Maybe a little before? Stopped for breakfast around ten to let the car juice up.”

“We took one of the electric cars,” Shahida says, still focusing on the tiles. “Abby said she’d never driven one before.”

“Well, I hadn’t. And it’s weird.”

“What did this building used to be, Liss?” Shahida asks.

Melissa stops, leans against the third-floor lobby wall. “What?” she says.

“It’s not a new build. These tiles are old.”

“Oh, um. A warehouse, I think? Or offices attached to a warehouse? I don’t know, actually. It’s pretty old. That’s all I know.”

“Very early twentieth century, at a guess,” Shahida says. She spent a little time in Boston, in America, and she remembers buildings there that looked like this, outside and in. Fascinating; but for the ocean between them, they could have been built by the same people.

“She’s tired,” Abby says, as they resume. “Job searching all week.”

“I did say,” Shahida says. “I posted in our channel.”

“Sorry,” Melissa says, not turning around this time. “I’ve just been trying to get through the week. Zach’s been in a mood with me, and the bitch on the other team is still the bitch on the other team. She didn’t get visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, or anything, though if anyone deserves it, it’s her. ‘This is what your life would be like if you weren’t passive aggressive towards women who are just trying to be nice to you.’ Bitch.”

“You have an office enemy?” Abby says.

“She does like to let me to know when I’ve put on weight.”

“Okay. Now I have an enemy, too.”

“You couldn’t take her, Abby.”

“I bet I could. And about what she said—”

“Here we are,” Melissa interrupts, glancing quickly at Shahida and then looking away when she realises Shahida is examining her up and down just as much as Abby is. “Fifth floor.”

“You’re not overweight, Liss,” Shahida says.

Melissa taps her fob and holds open the door for them.

“She’s right, you know,” Abby says.

Melissa continues to hold open the door.

“You are eating, aren’t you?”

“Can we just keep going, please?” Melissa says. “You can sponsor me when we’re behind closed doors.”

“Right,” Abby says, meeting Shahida’s eyes. “Sorry.”

Shahida frowns meaningfully at her. They shouldn’t press her on this. Goodness knows it never went well when she tried it, back when they were teenagers. But then, Shahida was never her sponsor, was she? And Abby was. It was Abby who woke Melissa every morning, turned those sweet brown eyes on her, and meticulously brought her back from the brink, inch by inch. It was Abby who showed her the world deserved to have her in it.

Damn it. Every time she feels like she’s getting closer to Abby, something like this comes up and reminds her that Abby got to understand Melissa on a level deeper than Shahida’s ever accessed. And she does feel close to Abby! So she shouldn’t be jealous! Abby’s sweet, if a little defensive, and enthusiastic, if sometimes somewhat guarded, and sometimes Shahida feels like she could watch the way Abby speaks with her hands for hours.

But she is jealous. So she just has to deal with that.

She follows Melissa and Abby out of the stairwell and into a beautifully open atrium. The tiled motif continues only as far as the outer wall of the stairwell; beyond that the style is much more modern, with metal and glass guardrails around a central space that extends all the way down to the ground floor and all the way up to a glass-covered roof. It’s a little like Dorley Hall could be, if the central area had been properly cared for and not mostly sealed off save for some skylights that are so grubby they might as well not be there. Shahida wonders if Melissa’s ever noticed the similarity; most of the girls at Dorley don’t even know how the place is put together. Hard to imagine being so incurious about the place you’ve been living for years!

Melissa’s flat is right in the middle, with the front door and the misted windows either side of it facing out into the atrium. As Melissa opens up, Abby catches Shahida’s eye and winks at her, and Shahida, lost for any other response, winks back.

At least she seems to be doing okay.

Inside, Melissa shows them a high-ceilinged apartment, well-maintained but with characterless furniture and almost none of Melissa’s bubbly personality stamped on the place. That Liss has been living here for years seems impossible.

Abby clearly knows her way around: she goes straight for what turns out to be the kitchen and starts clattering about, finding cups and tea bags and putting on the kettle. Shahida excuses herself to the bathroom. Ostensibly to pee; in reality, all she wants is to be alone for a minute, so she doesn’t have to see yet more evidence that Abby knows Melissa, knows the woman she’s been for years, with a depth Shahida can’t hope to match.

She has to concentrate. They’re here for a reason. All she has to do for now is play her part. Abby’ll make the tea and sell Liss on going out for a walk together, all three of them, maybe going shopping, and then, at some point, they’ll find the time to talk about the thing.

The thing that really needs talking about.

 

* * *

 

She loads up the thermoses, the covered plates, the packet of bourbons and the plain mugs, and gives the ancient tea trolley the usual shove to get it moving. Frankie had to laugh when she found the old thing in one of the storage rooms. It still has the busted caster on one side so it still veers to the left unless you compensate by pushing it with your left hip as well as your hands. Frankie doesn’t know exactly how old it is, but she’s pretty sure it predates both Val and Bea’s introduction to the hall.

One time in the early nineties — probably? or late eighties? Christ, she’s getting old — a girl she was having serve herself and one of her more disagreeable colleagues ‘accidentally’ drove the trolley right into Frankie’s leg, and the tremblingly defiant look on the poor thing’s face survived Tilly’s temper tantrum but faded as soon as Frankie stopped being able to keep herself from laughing. She and the girl — still calling herself Jim or John or something else horribly unsuitable — had practically chased Tilly from the room with their disrespect, and the levity lasted a good thirty seconds before the girl asked her, with all sincerity but with no actual hope, to let her go.

“Can’t, love,” Frankie said to her, and she remembers her heart breaking all over again, as it did every time she faced up to the reality of what she was doing. “It’d be my head.”

And the girl, bless her, had said something like, well, we can still have a nice cup of tea, can’t we? Frankie had laughed again, and they’d had tea together, with biscuits. A rare treat.

The girl was gone within six months. Her body could be anywhere by now; not all the bastard toffs buried them on their grounds. Drop someone off in the middle of the North Sea and no-one’s ever going to find their remains. Frankie likes to think it was quick, anyway. And at least the toff in question followed her into the dark. The old bastard had the misfortune to be related to Elle Lambert.

A sharp jolt and the clatter of crockery brings Frankie back; she’s run the trolley into a wall. Stupid old woman.

She wipes her eyes with her sleeves, rights the trolley, and continues on down the corridor. There’s a commotion going on behind her in the dining hall but, crucially, it’s behind her, and probably not something she’ll be welcome in, anyway. Most people here look at her like they just scraped her off the sole of their shoe, and she tries not to indulge that, because it really does make it difficult to get up in the morning.

Val said she should stop dwelling on it all. Least of all on her. Her hatred, Val said, is more usefully directed at the men and women who funded Dorothy, who were her customers.

“They were the architects of the machine, Frances,” Val said. “You were just the grease between its wheels.”

There’s no coming back from who she became. But perhaps, in her survival, she can contribute to the ends of everyone who benefited from her grisly work.

It’s a way to keep going. And in the mean time, there’s tea that needs delivering.

The shitty old trolley is even more unreliable on the gravel out back. It’d be impossible to manoeuvre through the dirt, but thankfully, in deference to the increased foot traffic between the hall and ‘Peckinville Village’, the soldiers put down boards and a mud-covered tarp. As long as Frankie keeps the trolley clear of the edges, where dirt mounds cover the metal pegs that hold it all in place, she has a relatively easy journey.

Jan, Elle’s girl, helps her get the trolley up the ramp and into the infirmary. She’s got her majestic hair tied back today, and she’s wearing fatigues the way the women soldiers here do, but yesterday she was wearing exercise clothes and testily explained to Frankie that she just didn’t want to go inside the hall to do laundry, so presumably the same thing applies today. Frankie leaves her a thermos and one of the sandwich plates, and wheels on through to the tiny ‘ward’, where Doctor Rahman and the Dorley nurse, Rabia Qureshi, are fussing over Trev.

She parks the trolley in the middle and waves to Ollie, who is sat up on his bed, wrists still thoroughly wrapped and leg still chained to the metal, reading something on a tablet. He nods to her, as usual, and as usual Frankie tries not to laugh: Ollie, though he’s still quite big in all directions, is visibly a lot less masculine than he used to be — she’s seen the intake photos — and the brusque gesture is starting to look out of place on him.

Trev, from behind the doctor and the nurse, says, “Hi, Frankie.”

“Alright, Trev,” she says, half-sitting on one of the institutional chairs. “Still got pretty girls pawing at you, then?”

“Yeah,” he says, deadpan, leaning around Rabia to address him. “I’m in heaven.”

“How’s the fatal neck wound?”

He stretches his head to the side to show her: it’s a raw red line that cuts diagonally from just under his ear to his collarbone, varying in intensity. But it’s not bleeding any more, which is a plus.

“The doctor says I’m going to live,” Trev says. “Might be close, though.”

“He’ll live, yes,” Doctor Rahman says, turning to address Frankie, “but unfortunately he will continue to suffer crippling bouts of sarcasm.”

“Want a cuppa, doc?” Frankie says. She’s playing up her accent a bit, but she always feels nervous around educated people. “Nurse?” she adds, as Rabia subjects her to a glare.

“No,” Rabia says sharply. She adds, a moment later, a belated, “Thank you,” and then says to the doctor, “I’m going inside. Call me if you need anything, yeah?”

Doctor Rahman nods, and the three of them watch Rabia leave in silence. “Sorry about that,” the doctor says.

Frankie waves her off. “Wasn’t asking her to be nice to me. Just if she wanted a cup of tea. So!” She shoves positivity into her voice. “How about it?”

Frankie serves all of them, pouring tea and milk into the boringly plain mugs she brought from the kitchen — Ollie’s still, somehow, in the dark about certain aspects of the operation here, so the mug Frankie saw that said, Transvestigate This! (with an illustration of a red-nailed hand giving the finger to the reader) had to remain on the draining rack — and passing out sandwiches. Val’s already made fun of her for doing ‘maid work’ every day this week, but the simple domesticity of it is satisfying, it keeps her busy, and gives her the opportunity to talk to Trev, who otherwise has been keeping himself mostly to himself. The surgeon, Mrs Prentice, dropped by to see him and told him he ought to give it at least three months until he gets his tits taken out, and that he probably should stay on the estradiol until then and, well, it was a blow. Unlike Val, he hasn’t really made any friends here, apart from Tabitha.

Frankie, however, has made a friend. The boy, Ollie, he likes it when she comes round. He doesn’t show it all that much — he’s still got the tediously masculine reticence to let his emotions out — but he said she reminds him of someone he used to know. She told him that might be the first time anyone’s ever said that to her and meant it as a good thing.

He reminds her of someone, too. She told him that on her second day here. Naturally, he asked about him.

“Oh, he’s dead,” she had to say. “Died when he was, what, twenty-four?”

Ollie, visibly startled, asked what happened to him, and she told him the story as she heard it: tough young lad, thought with his fists rather than his head, did odd jobs for whoever could pay, drank most of the money he made; one day he pushed someone too far, and they pushed back.

“They found him in the canal,” she said. “No real external wounds or nothing. Sometimes you take a bad hit and you just don’t get up.”

He was quiet for most of the rest of their time together that day.

She doesn’t get to sit with him today, though, because as she’s biting into her sandwich, Monica, Dina’s sponsor, crashes through the door.

“Shit—” she says, panting and holding her belly. She’s a fit girl, so that puts Frankie’s estimate of how long she’s been running around at easily over ten minutes. “Fuck! Shit.” She points with an unsteady hand. “You! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

Frankie says, “Me?”

“Yeah. The fuck you doing in here?”

“Bringing lunch for the lads.”

Shoulders still heaving, but with her breath returning to her, Monica says, “Get your coat. You’re coming with me.”

“What for?”

Monica looks briefly at Ollie and then back to her. “Can’t say. Not here. Outside. Now, Barton!”

Probably a good idea to go with her; Frankie is here on sufferance, after all. So she packs up her sandwiches, raises an eyebrow at Trev, who nods — he’ll take the trolley back when he goes inside — and snatches a half-empty thermos. All of it goes inside the pockets of the voluminous winter coat she’s been borrowing, and she follows Monica out. They don’t go straight back to the hall via the conservatory, instead taking the route around the side.

Frankie takes care to look straight ahead.

“What’s up?” she asks.

“Declan,” Monica says. “Only she’s calling herself Diana, now, and she—”

“Hah! Like the Avenger. Good choice.”

“Like the— What?”

“Diana Rigg,” Frankie explains.

“Somehow,” Monica says, “I don’t think that’s who she had in mind when she picked it. Anyway, she’s reappeared, and I’m going to meet her, but I’m pretty fucking sure she doesn’t trust me, so I went and asked Valérie who out of the three of you connected best with her, back at Stenordale.”

“And she said me?”

“Yeah.”

Frankie considers it. “She’s probably right.”

“That’s why I need you. United front. Two faces she knows. Makes her less likely to bolt.”

“Makes sense.”

They’re going for the car park. Not unexpected, really, and better than walking through campus, which is not something Frankie wants to try, even with company, lest some arsehole from Silver River’s hanging around. Granted, Val said she asked Beatrice if there’s been any chatter about Frankie, vis a vis Dorothy and her Silver River frenemies wanting her dead, and Beatrice apparently said no, but Frankie’s not going to consider herself safe until she lives to ninety-nine without any more major stab wounds. A car journey’s less of a concern, though. They’d have to be really dedicated to get into a car chase, and she’s under no illusions as to the magnitude of her worth to anyone.

“So,” Frankie says. “Diana. Where’s she been hiding?”

“You’re not surprised about her at all, are you?” Monica says, unlocking a nondescript hatchback and opening the driver side door.

Frankie climbs into the passenger seat and buckles up. “Not really. Never thought Dotty had her.”

“I mean, about her. About Diana being Diana. Staying a woman.”

“Oh.” Frankie shrugs. “Just makes sense. Basic safety, isn’t it? You haven’t seen her, so you don’t know, but she’s really going to have trouble passing as a man. As a— What do you call it? As a cis man, anyway. Picture Trev, but with bigger tits and better at it.”

Monica pulls the car out. “Better at it?”

“Well, yeah. Trev had me’n Val looking after him, and we were always planning to get out, so teaching him the feminine arts wasn’t exactly high on our list. Especially since he was quite upset about it all. Diana, well, she had Jake, and not to be indelicate but he was very clear about what he wanted her to be. And about what he wanted her to let him do to her. So she learned. Quick.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. I was there for some of it. The aftermath, anyway. She spent a while nonverbal. Dealing with it all. Hey, mind if I finish my lunch?”

Monica twitches. “In the car? Sure. Whatever. Go ahead.”

“S’not the only reason I’m not surprised, though,” Frankie says, opening the glove box so she has somewhere to put the plastic cup off the top of the thermos, and pouring out a serving. “Want me to save you some tea? It’s hot.”

“No.”

She unwraps her half-finished ham and mustard sandwich and takes a large bite. “Seen it before,” she says as she chews. “Back in the day. It happened with a lot of them. Put someone through enough trauma and the old personality kind of… breaks down. The new self is tailored to survival. To hear Val tell it, everything you used to believe, all your old habits, even the way you thought about yourself, it all becomes alien. Like remembering stuff that happened to someone else.”

“It was that bad for Valérie? As bad as it sounds like it was for Diana?”

“Worse, maybe. Way back when, they had each other, you know? Almost none of them were going through it alone. It’s how Val and Beatrice got so close. It’s probably how Beatrice got the idea to do whole intakes at once, all of them together. Diana… It was just her.” It’s not hard to remember Diana as she was most of the time: dead-eyed and alone. What’s hard is remembering her any other way. “It was always just her.”

“Valérie said you helped her.”

Frankie shrugs. “Could’ve done a lot more. I knew what she did, is the thing, and I know what you all think of me, but what she did is horrific and I know it. It’s what kept Val away. But that’s the point.” She takes another bite. Chases it with a mouthful of tea. Monica gives her a disgusted look, but it’s easier to think about this stuff when it’s not all she’s concentrating on. “By the end, there wasn’t any Declan left. It’s about becoming a shape that fits. It’s brutal, but there it is.”

Monica nods. Doesn’t say anything for a while. Just drives. Frankie’s more than happy to polish off the rest of her lunch in silence as Monica takes them east out of Almsworth. Familiar suburbs give way to long stretches of open countryside, and Frankie looks away, because they summon images of Val’s unsettling breakdown, the first time she saw the world outside Stenordale Manor.

“Actually,” she says eventually, “I never asked: why’d she get in touch with you? I’d’ve thought she’d be in the wind. I know I would’ve been.”

“She needs hormones.”

“Ah,” Frankie says, nodding. “Biology’s a bitch, innit?”

 

* * *

 

She’s being a fucking child. She knows what Steph would say if she could hear what she was thinking. She’d cradle her in her arms and whisper to her that, yes, she is good enough for her and yes, she is worth the effort. She’d tell her she loves her, and reassure her that everything’s going to be okay.

And that’s why Bethany doesn’t go looking for her. Because, sooner or later, she has to work this shit out for her fucking self.

She’s out of bed now, and she’s moved all the crap off her floor — mostly hoodies and joggers and loose tees; clothing in which to be thoroughly morose — and shoved the chair out of the way, all so she can theatrically throw open the doors on her wardrobe and examine herself in the full-length mirror.

It doesn’t work: a bunch of clothes fall out of the wardrobe and scatter themselves at her feet, ruining her moment. At this minor setback she resists the urge simply to drop back into bed and scream into a pillow, and instead collects it all up, folds the clean things and makes a pile of dirties, and puts everything away where it should be.

Back to the mirror.

In just over a week it’ll be three months since the estradiol injections started. In the beginning, she counted each one, dreading the changes they would bring without exactly being able to articulate why. Aaron feared womanhood, or despised it, or didn’t understand it, or didn’t understand what was so different about it; all of those things. He had a boy’s understanding of half of the human race: stunted, malformed, ignorant and deliberately useless.

Bethany spent a while trying to convince herself to be excited about what’s coming. Another ignorant position, she thinks, as she looks at herself and squeezes the nascent, flowering bud of a breast. There might be some of them — Steph, definitely; Will, probably — who look upon their changing bodies with excitement and anticipation, but Bethany’s body is just her body and nothing more, a tool, a vessel, a—

“Or maybe,” she says, butting her forehead softly into the mirror, “you’ve been fucking depressed, idiot.”

That is the simpler explanation. Anyone’s body becomes nothing but a tool when all they need it to do is keep breathing.

Where’s the girl who put on sexy clothes and danced in front of Will just because it would be funny? She had a bit of a panic attack after, okay, but Bethany’s been slipping in and out of panic attacks all week and she has nothing to show for it; no sexy outfits, no traumatised Williams, and Steph’s eyes, when they’ve alighted on her, have been alight with love and concern, not love and—

It’s like running into a brick wall. Or butting her head against the stupid fucking mirror. To even think the word is to lob a grenade into her thought process, to construct a wall in the path of her train of thought.

Lust.

It hasn’t just been Ollie. He just lit the fuse. Really, she’s been constructing this fear ever since their first kiss. Since Steph first touched her. It’s been building, quietly consuming her thoughts, a tumour at the back of her mind.

And then Ollie.

And she couldn’t ignore it any more.

Boys chasing her through the endless corridors.

Stephanie’s fingers in her hair—

People don’t touch her because they want her. They touch her because they want to humiliate her.

Not Steph. Not Steph. Even from the start, when Bethany was Aaron, when she was a ball of nerves and defensive humour, Steph saw in her something worth touching for her own sake. Not because she was getting anything out it.

In the mirror, the other her, perhaps the real her, she’s crying, she’s red-faced and messy haired and she’s a total disaster and Bethany has the most absurd impulse, one which she follows instantly and without question, because the alternative is to sink back into her bed and be, once again, the person the boys used to hunt.

“I’m sorry,” she says to herself. “I’m so sorry. You’re not him. Not any more. And these?” A hand around her developing breast. “You know what they are. They’re fucking magnificent.”

Christ. That’s a weight off. That’s a weight thrown off, discarded. Useless.

Once she might have berated herself for being stupid enough to be so affected by someone else’s fate, to have been thrown so far back into her own past, to feel upon her skin the hands of her first and worst torturers, just because an idiot like Ollie tried to kill himself. But that’s the flip side of masculine pride, no different from Ollie’s obsession with strength. A true man stands alone; his strength/intellect is all he needs.

So fucking stupid. A whole gender archetype built on a delusion.

She runs a hand through her hair, pulling it up out of her face, trying not to grimace at how greasy it feels, and she takes inventory again, noting every way she differs from Aaron, every way she’s left him behind. And she does love this body, this brand-new and still mostly unknown body, because it’s hers, and it’s what she chooses.

Bethany smiles, wet and disgusting and not free, not yet, but not him, and that’s close enough.

 

* * *

 

“Oh my goodness! I love this!”

“Really? I never took you for a goth, Shy.”

“You never saw me in America. You can dress weirder there and no-one cares. They might shoot you, but they don’t care.”

“You can dress weird here!”

“Sure, yes, here, but when’s the last time you saw a scene kid running around Almsworth, Abs?”

“They don’t have scene kids any more.”

“No?”

“No, Shy, Jesus, that was, like, 2010.”

“Due for a comeback, then. Liss, what do you think of this?”

Shahida’s voice jerks Melissa out of her contemplative state, and she refocuses to find Shahida holding up against her body an ankle-length black tube dress with a wide neckline and lace detailing everywhere. For a moment, Shahida isn’t almost twenty-six; she’s fifteen again, grinning wildly at her, and Melissa would follow her in the memory but she really shouldn’t, so she settles instead for denying her adult self the opportunity to ask but when would you wear it? and instead says, “Buy it.”

Abby boggles at her, and Shahida giggles. “I knew you’d like it,” she says.

“When will you wear it?” Abby asks.

“Dinner at the hall. I’ll make it an occasion. Valérie’s been showing everyone up this week, and—”

“She has?” Melissa says.

“She has! Paige has competition for once. Anyway, I think I could beat her. With this.” Shahida billows out the skirt against her legs.

“You could beat her in audacity, I suppose,” Abby says.

Shahida sticks her tongue out at her.

It’s strange watching them interact this way. When Melissa left, running both back towards her old job and away from two very confusing kisses, they barely knew each other, had spent just hours in each other’s company. Now they seem as close as any two women she could pick from Dorley’s roster, and closer than many. There’s a pull to their closeness; Melissa wants to orbit silently around them, watching them, listening.

She’s no stranger to jealousy. Every hour she spent with Shahida when they were growing up, she was jealous of her. Not that she understood why at the time; not that she could reliably put a name to the feeling. And at the hall, she was jealous of the closeness of others in her intake, drawing strength only from the bond she developed with Abby.

A bond she pushed too far, and then, ultimately, ran from.

Melissa grounds herself. Counts doors — seven just in this section, in the rabbit warren of shops and stalls on this floor of Afflecks — and tables and people. In her brief month or so back at Dorley, with Shahida and Steph and the others, she realised just how little control she’d gained over her emotions, how much leaving for Manchester had been an abdication of responsibility toward her personal development. Up here she’d worked and she’d dated and she’d lived, in her way, but her one close connection had been made against her will, and it was with her boss, anyway; hardly something she can take with her into the outside world. She locked herself away, from Abby, from the hall, from everyone, and effectively paused her life.

And now she knows for sure that she has almost the same dire emotional regulation that she had when Abby took her up the hill to Almsworth Cathedral, and saved her life.

What was the realisation she came to back then? In the basement and after? Never to trust her first reaction to something.

So she ought not be jealous of Abby and Shahida. She should instead be—

Someone raps her lightly on the forehead.

“Hey, Liss,” Shahida says, smiling as Melissa meets her eyes. “You’re doing the thing again.”

Melissa flushes with guilt. “I’m not!”

“You so are,” Abby says. “You’re zoning out.”

“I— You—” Melissa holds up a finger, hoping to buy for herself a reprieve, so she can reboot her stupid fucking brain. “I’m just a bit overwhelmed,” she admits.

Shahida hugs her. Grabs onto her and holds her tight, and Melissa has just enough time to register the thing bouncing off her thigh as being a shopping bag, meaning Shy probably did buy the goth dress in the end, and then Shahida’s releasing her and Abby’s taking over.

“Sorry,” she says as Abby steps away.

Abby pokes her. “We’re not asking for an apology. We’re asking if you’re okay.”

“I wasn’t expecting this. You two. Up here. And it’s wonderful, I mean, it’s amazing, but I’ve been on my own all week and I think I’m still spinning up, you know?” Melissa has more deflections — far more — but they’re interrupted by her stomach, which growls loudly enough that a few other patrons look their way.

“You’re really not eating, are you?” Abby says.

“How technical do you want my answer to get?”

“You’re not eating. I saw those awful shakes in your fridge, Liss.”

“We’re going upstairs,” Shahida decides, “and we’re putting some food in you. They’re advertising ‘everything-free muffins’ at the café here. I want to know what their definition of ‘everything’ is.”

“And I want a muffin,” Abby says.

Shahida brings her flattened palms together. “See? Our goals align.”

 

* * *

 

Bethany looks thin. She hasn’t been eating much lately, pushing away her plates half-finished and skipping most breakfasts, but it’s still a shock to see her this way.

It’s also a shock when the girl who’s been withdrawn and quiet this whole week lets Steph into her room and then without a word shucks off her robe and walks towards her, unclothed and unashamed. Bethany’s been bundling up lately, keeping herself covered, but here she is, naked but for her underwear and a pair of socks, embracing Steph and reaching up for a kiss.

Impossible not to oblige. Steph doesn’t mention that Bethany’s breath sort of smells.

“Sorry about this week,” Bethany says, returning to her feet. “Huge mess up here—” she taps a finger on her temple, “—and I did not deal well with it. I got into a rut. Kind of a cocoon? And I know you asked me about it and I kinda deflected but you didn’t push, and I’m grateful, because I think if you’d pushed it wouldn’t have gone well for me, I would have just started ugly crying all over the place and that would have made me even worse. Which makes no sense, I know, unless you’ve been in my head the last few days. Huge mess. Like I said. And— You’re smiling at me. Why are you smiling at me?”

Steph sweeps her up in a hug. “Because you’re talking again!”

“Well, yeah, I always— Oh. Yeah. I see what you mean.”

“Motormouth,” Steph says, and kisses her again.

“Put me down?”

Steph consents, adding another kiss as she does so. “It’s sort of a shame,” she says, going over and sitting on the edge of Bethany’s bed, which also smells a bit. “I had a whole plan to make you feel better. It was really good. Multiple parts.”

“Tell me!” Bethany says, bouncing.

“We were going to go see Maria, and—”

“Steph!” Bethany rushes over and grasps both of Steph’s hands. “That’s a great plan! We should do it anyway. I’ve been worried about her since that Frankie woman showed up but I haven’t wanted to pester her so I haven’t actually asked how she is, and— Shit, Steph! Do you think she thinks I’ve forgotten about her?”

“No.”

“Good. Good. Because I think that would really break me, you know? I’d backslide all the way. I’d be worse than when I got here. I’d be— Actually, no, I don’t think I’m going to go there.”

“Solid plan.”

“Shit. I need to shower. I haven’t showered in four, five days? I think I smell. Do I smell, Steph?”

“Uh—”

“Sniff me, Steph. Sniff me!”

Extracting both her hands from Bethany’s grip, Steph backs up farther onto the bed. “I don’t need to.”

“Oh, God. Is it that bad? I really need to shower. Can you come with me?”

“Sure. I could do with a shower.”

“Cool. Good. Excellent. I want to borrow some clothes, too. I want to look nice for her, I want to make an effort and— What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You have your phone out.”

“Nothing!”

“Steeeeeeeph!”

“Fine. I’m leaving a message for whoever’s on duty in the security room. I’m asking them to come take your sheets away to wash them, and to turn up the air con in your room.”

“It’s really that bad?”

“I’m suggesting they wear a clothes peg on their nose.”

“God. God. I can’t believe I got so gross. Come on! The quicker we shower the quicker we can—”

“Hey, Bethany, come back. Please? Quickly?”

“What? Why?”

“You, uh, might want to put a robe on before you leave the room.”

“Oh. Right.”

 

* * *

 

Diana’s pen crawls slowly across the lined paper, and once again she looks around. It’s not that she never learned to write quickly, it’s that she never cultivated the skill of doing so legibly — or he didn’t — and so now when she’s writing for keeps and not just making a show of it in class, she writes carefully, with large, rounded letters and long stems.

She keeps perfectly to the lines.

She also crosses an awful lot of it out.

19. Who They See What I Am In Public

She works on it for a while, but she can’t make anything that sounds right. The temptation is to screw up the paper completely, the way she does in the little room atop the B&B, filling the wicker wastebasket and dumping the worst ones under the bed. But there’s something there that’s worth saving, the core of a good idea, and she’s not at home, anyway. Cherston-on-Sea is a long way behind her, and here in the café in John Lewis, even in the most remote corner she can find, she is watched, and there is nowhere she can throw her discarded work that someone will not find it.

There’s no clear line as to when her attempts at diary entries became poems. One day, earlier this week, she found herself ending lines early, building in rhythm and repetition, choosing words for their sound and not just their meaning. Immediately she found herself inadequate, and that led her to Chiamaka’s thesaurus and a world of delightful new sounds. After a while, she started numbering them, giving them titles, making them special. And now, when she writes about her preoccupations, she finds herself pulling them apart and putting them back together in an order she finds pleasing.

Her preoccupation right now is the little girl she met briefly in the entrance to John Lewis. She called Diana ‘very tall and very pretty’, and Diana was pleased enough that she forgot herself, and squatted down to thank the little girl, remembering too late about her voice. The speed with which the girl’s mother led her away will stay with Diana for a while, but so will the expression of awe on the girl’s face as she looked back at the tall, pretty woman.

Was she ever that innocent? She must have been. There has to have been a time that she was, before Declan really existed, before she was taught to be first a boy, then a man, then a monster.

She screws up the paper. Tears it out of the pad and balls it and shoves it in her cheap shoulder bag. Because she’s making excuses for herself again, and she’s not about to start writing them down and exonerating herself. She was made a monster? She participated in that process. The only constant was her. And it wasn’t as if she was just like the other men, as if she was helplessly carried along in a tide of masculine inculturation; other men don’t do what she did.

But she was too stupid, too wilfully ignorant, to understand. Even when it was all taken from her, when she was imprisoned, it wasn’t enough. Only at Stenordale, faced with Valérie’s contempt and Dorothy’s taunting and his appetites did she finally understand.

Other men would not have needed such profound violence to change themselves.

No excuses.

Pen returns quickly to paper, and she has time to write 20. No Excuses before the sound of new customers distracts her. It’s a sound she’s aligned to after her week working for Chiamaka, and she’s been looking up from her pad every time the café door’s creaked open. Seen a procession of ordinary, forgettable people.

This time, though, it’s really her. Monica. The woman whose faith she abused. The woman she still doesn’t really trust.

And—

What?

What’s the old woman from Stenordale doing here?

 

* * *

 

“Jesus,” Tabitha pants, taking one last swing at her punching bag before collapsing into the padded wall and letting herself slide down onto the mat. “Tell me you’re knackered, too.”

It takes him a moment to find the breath to answer, and when he speaks, he still has to draw breath for every word. “I—am—way—more—knackered—than—you!”

“Good. Then I don’t have to kill you.”

He didn’t know a body could need so much air, but he’s been fucking gasping for it. He asked her, midway through today’s session, if the air conditioning system is delivering enough oxygen, and she somehow managed to give him a filthy look without breaking the swing she had in progress.

Hands in the small of his back. Stretch. But he doesn’t get up. Not yet. The mat is his friend. The mat is soft and doesn’t require of him anything that currently seems impossible, like the use of his legs.

“So what’s going on with Declan?” he asks, his breath coming back to him. Tabitha promised an explanation, but only after they got in their daily exercise together. She’s come to rely on it, she said; she needs the endorphins, and it’s more interesting than watching boys sit around in a concrete box.

“She phoned Monica,” Tabitha says, levering herself up off the mat. “Turns out she did escape, like Frankie thought she had. Which means Grandmother’s even more in the wind than we thought, but that’s a problem for another day.”

“‘She’,” he quotes, carefully and without emotion. He’s not surprised Dorothy Marsden’s run off without a trace; from what Tab’s told him over the last few days, the old woman has more lives than a cat. But Declan…? “You mean, after everything that happened up there…?”

Tabitha starts her warm-down, which reminds him he really ought to do his, too, no matter how much he doesn’t want to get back up.

“Some of the girls are calling it a personality break,” Tabitha says, contorting and grunting with effort mid-sentence. “I don’t buy it. I’ve never bought it. In all my time here, I’ve nev-er—” she pulls the word apart, emphasises it, like Declan used to, “—seen someone come out the other side as someone else, someone without continuity. Then again, some of the others are calling it simple survival.”

“What do you think?”

She fixes him with one of her analytical glares. “I’m reserving judgement.”

He nods and returns to stretching his triceps. “All in all,” he says, “I think I’m happy I didn’t wash out.”

“Me too. Then we wouldn’t be able to have this nice conversation.”

It’s painful to get back down on the mat, but he has to, because he has butterfly stretches to do. He doesn’t groan the way he wants to, because Tabitha giggles at him when he makes a big deal of how much dancing around a punching bag makes him ache, and because he’s preoccupied with thoughts of Declan. He knows something of what happened to him up at that manor — not enough to provide anyone else with a play-by-play but more than enough to give him nightmares — and he can’t imagine the Declan he knew surviving it.

“So he phoned Monica,” he says, and then winces; he knows what’s coming.

“She phoned Monica,” Tabitha corrects him, and slaps him lightly with her glove. She’s been very clear on the topic of pronouns, and brushed aside his half-hearted and half-remembered objections by asking him if he thought whether he/him would be appropriate for her. He’d violently rejected the idea.

“She phoned Monica,” he says.

“…And told her she’s having hot flushes,” Tabitha continues. “So she needs—”

“Injections. Got it.” Another stretch. He pushes it a little far, stresses his hamstrings a bit too much, but better that than think about Declan, and what happened to him in that place. Some things are too awful even for awful people. “Wait,” he says, “she’s going by she, right? That means she’s living as a woman.”

“Yes,” Tabitha says warily.

“What’s her name?”

“Leigh—”

“What’s her name, Tab?”

“Diana.”

He unfolds from his pose. Lies back on the mat. Face up. “Shit,” he says.

Tabitha’s down with him a moment later, lying next to him, taking one of his hands and clasping it in hers, bringing it slowly over her belly and holding it there. “Don’t compare yourself to her.”

“Steph, Bethany, sure. Raph making jokes about being a sexy librarian? Okay. But now he— she— Diana is ahead of me? Jesus Christ. I’m supposed to be—”

“Leigh,” Tabitha interrupts. “It’s not a race.”

Leigh. The name represents a truce of a sort. He finds the connotations of all forms of his given name unpleasant. Tabitha wants him to pick a new name; not, she made sure he understood, because he’s on any kind of timetable, but because while she respects his distaste for all forms of William, she can’t go calling him ‘hey, you’. He doesn’t want to, though. Not yet. Not while he’s still like this.

So they pulled his name apart, like Declan— like Diana might. Will is no good, obviously. Liam is another man’s name, and though he doesn’t think he’s ever been called it in his life, he recoils from it just the same. And just the initial, W, is out of the question, because it’s cumbersome and, he feels, a bit silly. Also, there’s the matter of the ex-president of the United States, Tabitha had said. He barely remembers him, he replied. He pronounces it ‘nuke-u-ler’, she said.

Horrified, he swore off it entirely. Not even as a backup.

They kept pulling William apart. Will-i-am. Will-li-yam. And he spotted it, and suggested Lee, and she pointed out that Leigh can be a name for a girl or a boy, and that was that.

It’s good enough for now.

“Maybe you should castrate me tomorrow,” he says, and Tabitha squeezes his hand. “Then I’d be ahead at something.” He shakes his head and mutters, mostly to himself, “Please, God, castrate me.”

“We don’t use that word, Leigh. Except sometimes on mugs.”

He snorts. He saw his first example of the infamous Dorley mugs a couple of days ago, when Tabitha wordlessly handed him his pre-workout drink in a mug that said, You can’t have HOT GIRL SUMMER without UNSUSPECTING BOY WINTER. Bad taste, he told her, and she giggled at him while swigging from hers, which read, When Aunt Bea saw the breadth of her domain, she wept, for there were no more boys to kidnap.

She advised him that the sooner he got used to the institutional sense of humour, the easier a ride he’d have going forward.

“Look,” she says, “when I said it’s not a race, I meant it. No-one’s sitting in the security room comparing you against the others, or the others against you. And especially no-one is ever going to compare you to Diana. There’s a reason we take the approach to rehabilitation we do; who knows how stable she’s going to be long-term after what she’s been through?”

“Yeah,” he says, still unable to control his imagination. “God, when I think about it—”

“Don’t,” Tabitha says. “I’m trying not to.”

“Having any luck with that?”

“I find keeping busy helps.”

“Does it, though?”

She shrugs, letting go of his hand and propping herself up on her elbow. “Not really. Oh, and don’t repeat what we just talked about. I think if I even so much as questioned Diana’s continued sanity in front of Monica she might physically attack me. Do you want to keep sulking, by the way? Because I need a shower and so do you.”

They collect up their stuff, still sore and still stretching every so often, and Leigh watches Tabitha out of the corner of his eye. She’d been neglecting herself before they started doing this together, and now every contented huff of exhaustion she makes brings him a little spark of pleasure. He wants her to be happy. He wants her to be healthy. And he wants her to enjoy spending time with him. He’s aware there’s an element of manipulation here, making Tabitha such an essential part of his life and his future, but it’s ceased to matter as much as it once did.

She’s in his corner. She wants to be like the big sister he never had, and all he has to do is let her.

It feels good not to fight it any more.

 

* * *

 

She’s almost unrecognisable, and considering Frankie last saw her less than two weeks ago, that says something in itself. But what’s different about her isn’t really anything physical, though the bruises have faded and the cuts have healed. And it’s not that she’s dressed and made up reasonably competently, because that’s a given: she’s been living out in the world for about a week, and she’s clearly found someone to help her.

Either that, or she stole that fetching midi dress and those boots and that camel coat.

No, the difference is in the way she carries herself. She stands up as they approach, clearly surprised by Frankie’s presence and maybe a bit intimidated by Monica’s, but she’s ready for them, and for a moment, she’s as confident and proud a woman as any Frankie’s met at Dorley Hall.

Then the girl looks away, looks down at the table, and there’s the wound.

She closes a lined writing pad and fiddles with her pen as Monica quietly greets her and starts shucking off her bag and coat, hanging them on the back of one of the chairs on the other side of the table from Diana. Frankie dumps her coat, too, taking the same side as Monica so as to give Diana space, but she doesn’t sit down.

“Drinks?” she says with a jolly tone. “Sandwiches?” She quickly looks over at the menu board. “Honey crumpets?”

“Tea,” Monica says, without looking at her. She’s sitting down, and has yet to take her eyes off Diana.

“I’d like another tea,” Diana says in a soft voice. Frankie doesn’t wince for her, but she wants to: navigating the world looking the way she does but sounding the way she does has got to have been a challenge. At least that’s something the girls can help with, if she’ll let them. “And, um, I’d like a honey crumpet, too.”

“Gotcha, love,” Frankie says. A smile bites at her lips, and she turns away before her expression betrays her. This isn’t the brash Declan she’s read about in the files Dotty purloined, and nor is it the submissive and terrified Dina, who emerged at Stenordale because Declan wasn’t up to the task. This is someone else.

This is like being there when Val first actualised, or Beatrice. Christ, she feels privileged to see it.

And then, now, profoundly sick at herself, for feeling that way. Too much akin to old Dotty’s sick satisfaction when one of the more stubborn boys finally broke.

“Get it together, Frances,” she mutters to herself. The man ahead of her in the queue glances back at her; she ignores him. Prick. She ought to franchise the hall and set up a basement for bald, red-faced men in their fifties who look at her funny in posh department stores. She wouldn’t make women out of them; she’d just let off a spot of steam.

She gets a plate of honey crumpets for the table, in case Monica wants one, too, and declines the server’s offer to take it over for her. When she gets back with the tray, the tea and the crumpets, Monica and Diana are staring at each other in silence, so Frankie does her best to disrupt it by being extra noisy as she sets everything out.

“Thank you,” Diana says.

Up close, Frankie realises as she sits down, you can see the joins. The gaps where Diana’s new life doesn’t fit together properly. She had some laser while she was being worked on, Frankie’s pretty sure, but now she’s shaving again, and she hasn’t quite covered the dark hair on her upper lip as thoroughly as she’s hidden it everywhere else. And the dress should be far longer on her and the arms on her coat expose more of her wrists than she thinks Diana can possibly be comfortable with. The boots, probably the only thing she’s wearing that she bought for herself, are the cheap kind that’s basically a fake-leather tube sewn onto a pair of flats. It’s testament to the work Dotty’s people did that Diana’s appearance has held up as well as it has, considering the rush, her limited time on hormones, and Diana’s lack of expertise.

The girl’s in dire need of a few hours in Dorley’s closets, access to Dorley’s hair removal people, and — obviously — a voice coach.

So they need to persuade her to come back so they can give it all to her, don’t they?

“How’ve you been, Diana?” Frankie says, since the ice remains unbroken.

“I’ve been, um, working.” There’s that quiet voice again. Up close, when she can drop it almost to a whisper, it nearly works. Probably how she got by. That and those humongous tits.

“Listen, I’m sorry we didn’t grab you when we ran, but—”

“I didn’t even hear the gunfire,” she says. “You couldn’t have come for me. It was too far, and there was— there was him. I understand. And Valérie, she hates me.”

“She does not.”

Diana looks fiercely into Frankie’s eyes. “She’s right to.”

“Declan—” Monica says, and then stops herself, covers her mouth with her hands, but it’s too late, because the name’s like a slap, and Diana recoils. “Sorry,” Monica whispers.

“I was stupid,” Diana says. “And I did something awful. I was stupid on purpose. I celebrated my stupidity.” Her lip curls in contempt, but it shakes, too, and Diana obviously feels it, because she bites her upper lip awkwardly, tries to control it.

“You weren’t stupid, Diana.”

“Nah, she was,” Frankie says, “weren’t you? I knew guys like you were, back when I was young. See them around, still. Told Ollie he’s a bit like it, too, and he is. Sometimes it ends bad for them, or for someone around them. Mostly they’re fine. Stupid white men in this country can do pretty well. Even when they do awful things.”

Diana’s nodding, a small frown pinching her eyebrows, and Frankie’s impressed: Declan, by all accounts, would have been belligerent by now, and as for Dina, most things seemed to go in one of her ears and come right out the other.

“The others,” Diana says, “Valérie and Trevor, are they okay?”

“Yeah,” Frankie says.

“They’re staying with us,” Monica says. “At the hall. Above ground.”

Diana nods and puts down her tea. She tears one of the crumpets into quarters and chews in silence for a little while. Her eyes flicker from Frankie to Monica and back.

“You called me sweetheart,” she says suddenly to Frankie, and then she smiles, does a sweet little laugh — Christ, she’s going to be a heartbreaker when she gets her shit together — and adds, “Sorry. The connection makes sense in my head, I promise. But you called me sweetheart.”

“You did?” Monica asks.

Frankie shrugs. “I s’pose.”

“It was before that stupid dinner,” Diana says, still talking quietly but with an added intensity, as if she has to get the words out, as if this is more than just conversational for her. Makes sense; this is probably the first time she’s talked about any of this stuff. “Not the one with the Americans. That was awful.”

“Yeah,” Frankie says. “Hated them.”

“They were rude to Valérie.”

“They were.” Not hard to notice that Diana pronounces Val’s name basically perfectly, even if she has to slow down slightly to do so. Better at it than Frankie.

“And they were horrible about Trevor. Talking about him like they owned him.”

“That’s who these people are, love,” Frankie says. “That’s what the people with the money are always like.”

Diana whispers, “I hated how they looked at me, too,” and she looks down again to do so.

Frankie reaches over the table, takes Diana’s hand. “You’re allowed to hate them for that,” she says.

“No. Not important. Not compared to Trevor and Valérie.”

Monica’s about to say something, but Frankie nudges her into silence. Diana has more to say; she just needs time to find it.

“Under the table,” Diana says eventually, almost inaudibly. “He had his hand on me.”

“Jake?”

Diana shudders. “Yes. J— Jake.”

Frankie’s still got Diana’s hand held, so she squeezes it and she says, “What happened to him? The reports say he’s dead.”

The reply is viper-fast. “I killed him.”

“Attagirl.”

Letting go of Diana’s hand and leaning back, Frankie smiles at her, signalling as hard as she can that she doesn’t have to talk about the difficult things any more. She hopes Monica gets the message, and she seems to, because she redirects the conversation.

Unfortunately, she picks a direction for it that is uncomfortable for Frankie.

“You said Frankie here called you a sweetheart. And I’m… intrigued.”

“Oh,” Diana says, covering her mouth to laugh lightly, “yeah. She did my makeup. Took care of me. Before the other dinner. You know—” she turns back to Frankie, “—the one with the other couple. And I know you think you didn’t do much, but you gave me what you said you would: time without Dorothy and without J— without him. And I never thanked you.”

Frankie’s turn to look away. The girl’s so damn earnest. Makes her want to throw it all back in her face, claim she was only doing it to get herself a bit of peace and quiet, or something. But it would have been a lie, and everyone at the table would know it as a lie.

Or they probably would, anyway. Always a chance Diana’d believe her. And why would she risk hurting this sweet new girl’s feelings? Forget what she did, who she used to be; she’s obviously already reckoning with that, and if there’s more to come, harder truths to face, then she can do so when she’s ready, when she won’t be undone by it, returned to the state she was in at the manor. For now, what matters is Diana, not Frankie’s bullshit or any idea of redemption.

Redemption’s a pointless concept, anyway. You keep moving forward. You keep working. There’s no scale balancing out the good you do against the bad. Hurts that can heal, do; hurts that can’t, kill. All that’s left is to try not to hurt people again.

“You’re welcome, Diana,” she says. She doesn’t add on anything self-pitying, like how she could have done more. It’d be as useless as pressing Diana on her past right now.

Monica leans forward, both her arms out on the table. Frankie, to make sure she doesn’t feel the urge to interrupt what looks like a prepared speech, grabs one of the honey crumpets while it’s still warm and gets to work on it.

“Diana,” Monica says, “I want you to consider coming back to the hall with us. Not to stay, not to live there, not if you don’t want to.”

“Can’t go back down there,” Diana whispers, sounding suddenly reduced, more like Frankie remembers. She supports her head for a moment, as if she’s dizzy. “Can’t go back in a cage.”

“We wouldn’t. I told you that on the phone and I’m serious. And if you insist on leaving today, on going back wherever you came from, I’ll give you the bag—” she tilts her head at the rucksack she laid against the wall, “—and you can go. It’s got everything you need for three months. But Diana, you need more than just medication, you need help. And that’s what we’re here for. That’s everything we do. If you agree to come, we’ll get you a room on the first or second floor, with the other free girls, and you’ll be able to come and go as you wish.”

“I like where I am.”

“Then visit. Please. We— I want to help you.”

“Maybe tell her how you can help her,” Frankie suggests.

“Voice training,” Monica says. “I can teach you to speak like me. Or— Or someone else can, if you’re not comfortable around me.” Oh, that was difficult for her to say, wasn’t it? Frankie knew Monica’d gotten attached to Diana — or to the idea of her — since she washed out, but this is more intense than she thought. “We can help you with clothes and money and we can get you an identity. A real identity. Diana can be you. Forever. If that’s what you want.”

That got Diana’s attention. She’s stopped fiddling with the remains of her crumpet and she’s staring, rapt and intense, right at Monica. The rest of the café might as well not exist.

“I want that,” Diana says. “How does it work?”

“Can’t really talk about that here,” Monica says, and Frankie rolls her eyes. Operational security. They’ve been skirting it this whole time, really, and if the café weren’t mostly empty and their corner deserted apart from them, Frankie would have shut things down already. Monica would have, too, probably, assuming her head’s still in the game. They’re fucked if someone’s got one of those laser microphones, the ones Dotty couldn’t persuade Silver River to shell out for, but there’s little reason to worry about that. They’re two attractive young women and an old bat having crumpets in a John Lewis café; the only people inclined to spy on them who might also have access to that kind of equipment already know who they are.

“But you can do it?”

“They did it for me,” Monica says, and she’s watching Diana’s face carefully, checking to see if she understands the implications behind that statement. “And for Tabitha, Pippa, Maria… All of us. You’ll have a passport. I might even be able to persuade Aunt Bea—” and Diana jumps a little at the name, “—to put you on a stipend.”

“A stipend?”

“Money,” Frankie says. “Free money for keeping your mouth shut.”

“For rent,” Monica says. “And food, clothes; whatever. And the other thing, Diana, and this is really important…” She switches to a whisper, and Diana and Frankie both lean in to hear it. “You need to be debriefed. Dorothy Marsden is still out there somewhere, as are her American partners and their security company. We need to know everything you know, and you need to know how to protect yourself from them.”

Eyes wide, Diana asks, “You think Dorothy would come back for me?”

“Di,” Frankie says, “the thing you have to understand about Dotty is, she holds grudges. She’s inconstant in her affections and sometimes she’s not too picky about where the grudge is actually aimed, but she’s persistent. She could have retired when she lost the hall. Could have lived the rest of her days in peace and quiet, but the cantankerous old bitch couldn’t leave well alone, could she? Only plus side is she saved Val’s life,” she adds, mostly to herself. It’s not a pleasant thought. “She would’ve died in that place if Dorothy hadn’t shown up. Anyway. Point is, no, it wouldn’t be sensible to come after you. But she might. And her lot—” she nods sideways at Monica, “—have the resources to protect you. S’why I’m staying with them.”

Diana’s nodding. Frowning again. Thinking. “I’ll come,” she says after a while. “But just for a few days. Then I have to go home.”

“That’s enough, Diana,” Monica says. “That’s more than enough.”

 

* * *

 

Tabitha’s added his thumbprint to the locks that take him from their workout room down to the lower basement, and while it’s only one-way access and he definitely can’t roam the way Steph does — and the way Bethany seems to by proxy, though she hasn’t been taking much advantage of it recently — the relative freedom is still quite thrilling. Which he might have thought was sad, once, but he knows better now. Tab said she might have given him full two-way access, at least up to the exercise room, so he doesn’t need to call on her if he needs to get away from some of the more irritating people downstairs, but she knew Maria would veto it, so she didn’t ask.

And that’s fine. He’s someone who needs limits on his freedom. For the moment, at least.

She called him the name again, over and over, and it’s enough for him to think about it again. He repeats it under his breath as he unlocks every door between him and his bedroom, being careful to move his lips as little as possible so Raph, who is sitting at the lunch table with Martin and their sponsors, playing cards, and who is positioned to see him through the window as he walks by, doesn’t think he’s gone insane.

Leigh.

He still doesn’t think it’ll be the name he walks out of here with. Tab insists that she’ll get him over all his bullshit eventually, that there will come a day when he can look at himself in a mirror, dressed and made up, and call himself by an unambiguously feminine name without needing to cringe, needing to tear the mirror off its hinges, needing to hurt himself or, preferably, someone else, but—

He thumps his hand against the wall as he rounds the corner to the bedroom corridor. Doesn’t need to be thinking about that shit. And that’s not avoidant behaviour; or maybe it is, but Tabitha’s signed off on it. He’s not Steph and he’s not Bethany. He needs tangible, physical progress before he can actualise — Tab’s word — and there’s no use pretending otherwise.

She’s promised to get them a pair of matching mugs when he’s finally ready for it, and when he told her that would delay his actualisation by at least another month, she laughed and hugged him.

“Leigh,” he says to himself, briefly in the safety of his bedroom.

“Leigh,” he says, as he fetches a robe from a hook inside the wardrobe door and his shower kit from the bottom drawer.

“Leigh,” he says, his foot catching on the chains he stuffed back under the bed weeks ago and hasn’t felt the need to get out since.

“Fuck it,” he says, as he opens the door again and heads down the corridor to the bathroom. “Why not?”

There’s noise coming from the shower room — obviously there is; Leigh never gets to shower in peace — and he listens in for a moment, just to confirm who it is.

“No! I’m telling you, no gendery feelings in my life. And I watched a lot of those cartoons, you know, the ones with Bugs Bunny, where he dresses up like a girl and catfishes the shotgun guy? Those weren’t the only ones I watched, Steph, I know what it sounds like I said, but that’s not what I meant, so stop making that face at me. Stop it! You can’t retroactively diagnose me with girl. Did I fancy Bugs when he was all sexy? Yeah, obviously, but literally everyone did, right? A rabbit in a sundress with a big floppy hat on? Who doesn’t feel oddly drawn to that? But did I want to be him? Maybe kinda-sorta, but only to get out of the house.”

“I never fancied Girl Bugs.”

“You did! You did, Steph. Everyone did. Girl Bugs is universal. Anyway, what I’m saying is, I had ample exposure growing up to all the stuff that’s supposed to crack eggs, and nothing. Nada. Zip. Not until I came here. And then I didn’t crack, because I wasn’t an egg, but I was sort of thrown at the wall. And yes, I know, Pippa has egg theories about me, but you can tell her— Oh, hey. Come in, lurker.”

He must have strayed too close. Oh well; not like he has anything to fear from Steph and Bethany, aside, perhaps, from being talked to death.

“Hi,” he says, rounding the corner fully and hanging up his robe.

“Hey, Will,” Steph says, and he knows he doesn’t control his reaction as completely as he ought, and he knows she saw. “How’s Tabby?” she continues, obviously deciding — to Leigh’s relief — not to draw attention to it.

“Still fitter than I am,” he says, dropping his exercise gear onto the wooden changing rack.

He doesn’t exactly like getting naked around these two, but better Steph and Bethany than basically anyone else. And at least it’s just them now; no more supervision when they wash. He’s absolutely certain both of them are examining him as he picks a shower at the other side of the annexe, but he’s doing the same to them, so fair’s fair, and they’re all about the same, really. Leigh’s not as slim as them, but he had more mass to lose to begin with, and he’s actively trying to retain some of it, in certain areas. But all three of them are budding in the chest, and there’s a slight curve to Steph’s back in particular that Leigh’s sure he’ll see replicated in his, when he gets back to his room and checks. All of them changing, bit by bit.

Would have horrified him once. Still does a little, but he’s learned enough to know the difference between a rational fear and a habitual one.

“Be fair,” Bethany says, “Tabby’s fitter than most people.” And she sticks out her tongue and lolls it, pretending to drool.

“Physically fit, you— Ugh. Fuck.” He rolls his eyes as Bethany grins at him. He’s got to stop chasing her bait. Somehow he thought becoming a girl might have mellowed her; instead, it seems to have made her… Well, okay, not worse, because Aaron wouldn’t have stopped at calling Tab fit, and William would have had to suppress the urge to go and slap some sense into him, but Bethany has a confidence Aaron lacked, even if it seems to come and go.

And unlike William, Leigh doesn’t hit people.

“Hey,” Steph says, “uh… Hey.” Yeah; she definitely spotted his discomfort around his old name. “We’re not going to be around tonight. And not that you’ll need us, or anything, but if you do, just send me a message, okay?”

There she goes again. If the sponsors want to be everyone’s older sister, Stephanie wants to be everyone’s mother. Worse, she’s not actually that bad at it.

“Yeah,” he says, with his back half-turned, “but unless it’s an Adam thing, I probably won’t.”

She’s closer now, and he can see her hand twitch, like she wants to touch his shoulder or something. But she keeps her distance, and smiles at him instead.

“You want me to ask Edy about him?” she says.

He mostly tries not to think about Adam. Which means there’s a hole in his mind in Adam’s exact size and shape.

“Would you?” he says.

“Of course.” Now she reaches out for him, but it’s just a tap on his upper arm, and then she’s stepping away again, slipping into her robe.

Bethany, waiting for her in the entrance, is already robed up, and just before the two of them leave, she blows him a kiss. Thinking quickly, Leigh smirks at her and blows her a kiss back, and the irritated noise she makes will probably keep him happy for hours.

 

* * *

 

Harmony’s going to be here soon. He should thank her. He’s going to thank her. Not something he expected to be doing. Not something he’s sure he should be doing at all. But he had it all wrong. What’s going on here. What’s being done. He was wrong.

Mostly wrong, anyway.

What she’s doing to him? He still doesn’t want it. He’ll still push back against it, even if it’s pointless. Because what man wouldn’t?

Funny, though. Tries to kill himself, tries to hurt the bitch who’s hurting him, trapping him, and everyone suddenly gets real. Old woman he’s never even seen before shows up out of nowhere. Saves his life. Then this doctor. There’ve even been soldiers. Women in fatigues. Dropping in to see the doctor every so often. A couple of them said hi.

And there’s Trev. Guy trapped inside a girl. You’ve got to laugh. Nice guy. Told him soldier stories. He’s hiding something, but so’s everyone.

And they’re all so fucking nice to him.

Harmony cried over him two nights in a row. In this hospital bed. Or infirmary bed. That’s what they call it, right? But she cried over him. And thanked him for surviving. And apologised for what she did. Said she was going to keep doing it, still. But she was different. She was cruel before. Felt good pushing back against someone like that. Felt good cutting into himself, every slice a weapon.

Now? She’s a girl who cried over him. And when he thinks of trying to hurt her again, he can’t summon up the old glee.

It’s got to feel righteous or it’s bullshit.

The old woman, though. She said that was a trap. She said anything can feel righteous if you think you need it enough. She said look at what you think you need. She said do you actually need it? Or do you just want it?

Made him think of Sonia again.

Talk to me, she always said. Tell me what you’re feeling. Never knew how.

Something else the old woman said, this time with Trev backing her up. You already know how to talk about your feelings, she said. Think about when you get drunk. Think about when your barriers are down. You were talking about your feelings when you attacked Sonia’s new boyfriend, she said. When you attacked her.

No-one in that pub was in doubt about what you felt, is what she said.

And then she made him tell her what it felt like to know that.

Fucking awful, he said.

You want to know how to never do that again? she said, and he nodded, and she pointed at Harmony. Do what she says.

The things he needs. The things he wants. The things he feels.

Thinking about it makes his head ache.

It’s a start, Harmony said, and she held his hand, and she talked about how their hands aren’t all that different, how she’s always had hands that are kind of big, and he was confused at first, didn’t know why she would even say that, until she went off to talk to the doctor for a minute and the old woman whispered to him, she’s telling you a secret. She’s giving you something than can hurt her. She’s trusting you not to use it.

So when she came back, he told her a secret, too. About the last time he saw Gran. In the home. He held her hand, too. But she couldn’t hold back. Couldn’t make a fist. Fingers already curled. Stuck. So he put his hand in hers. And she told him.

Leave, she told him. Leave home. As soon as you can.

He did. With Sonia. But that was years later. And he fucked it up.

She’s coming back soon. Harmony. And he’s going to thank her. It’s another secret. Something he needs. Not just wants. She could guess it, probably. But he wants her to know it. So he’s going to thank her. For showing him the sun again.

 

* * *

 

She started shaking a little when it came time to get dressed, but it was her who insisted she wanted to borrow some clothes; logically it has to be her who puts them on.

Bethany’s not even sure where all this shit’s coming from. She doesn’t know why her hands tremble when she holds up the bra with the padding in the cups, or when Steph hands her the leggings to cover her hairy legs, but the only way out is through, right? Fake it til you make it, something something. And if, in the process of faking it, you identify what it is that makes you so afraid, well, maybe that’s part of the point of it.

Steph thinks it’s just because she isn’t used to it yet. She’s pointed out before — gently and without pushing, in her very Steph kind of way — that Bethany got used to the name and the pronouns and everything else pretty quickly. And if she’s honest with herself, pulling up the calf-length skirt and slipping on the top feels a lot like putting on the tux she wore at Christmas.

Two options, then: either she’s weird about this because clothing is artifice and she’s above it (unlikely), or she’s weird about this because clothing is making an effort, is saying something about herself to anyone who can see her. And being read that way, being understood, is still intimidating.

Or a secret third thing. Who the fuck knows?

Arms loop around her waist and, in the mirror, Steph’s head rests on her shoulder.

“You look good,” she says.

“Is it too late to become a nun?”

Steph kisses her on the cheek. “You’ll have to ask Maria.”

Frowning, Bethany says, “Wouldn’t it be Edy who’s in charge of nunnery transfers?”

“Hmm. Point.”

Fake it til you make it. Again and again and again. No-one ever said you’d make it quickly.

So at least you can fake it well.

Bethany forces a smile onto her face, and twirls around in Steph’s arms, kisses her full on the mouth, messy and wet, until Steph has to push her away, giggling.

“Oh my God,” Steph bursts out, landing butt-first on the bed and bouncing, “you’re so gross! I just did my makeup!”

“You can do it again in a minute,” Bethany says, advancing on her. “I’m much more important.”

This she doesn’t have to fake.

 

* * *

 

“Come on, people!” Christine shouts, loud enough for her voice to carry the length of the third-year corridor and through every closed door. “Move it, move it, move it!” She claps her hands in time with her words.

“Front and centre!” Paige adds, matching her volume and reaching around her to clap her hands in unison. Paige’s perfume temporarily overwhelms Christine, and for a moment she wants to sack off the whole night and go right back to bed, but she needs to be out of the building and dancing her arse off and she needs to be setting off soon.

“All right!” Yasmin says, emerging from Julia’s room with her hands placed comically over her ears. “No need to yell!”

“Yeah,” Jodie says, appearing from the kitchen, “what’s the rush?”

“The rush,” Paige says before Christine can, “is that Ollie’s being moved back to the basement soon and Monica’s gone to see a semi-possibly-maybe-reformed Declan and she’s going to try and drag him back here and someone—” she slaps Christine on both shoulders, “—doesn’t want to be here when the action happens.”

“Ah,” Yasmin says, nodding. “She’ll get jobs.”

“She’ll volunteer for jobs,” Julia says, following Yasmin out of her room. “She can’t help herself.”

“It’s true,” Christine says, shrugging.

“Well, we’re all here, aren’t we?” Julia looks from face to face and makes shooing gestures. “So let’s go!”

“Where’s Vicky?” Jodie asks, as they thunder down the middle stairwell.

“Meeting us there,” Christine says. She starts counting off on her fingers. “Pippa and Donna are meeting us downstairs. Vicky and Lorna are probably already in Almsworth by now. Dira had to cancel, in case anything does go down tonight.”

“I don’t know how anyone can work here,” Julia says as they breach the doors to the dining hall in one energetic huddle. “Imagine having to drop everything because some dumb boy— Oh!” She stops, and then waves to someone on the far side of the room. “Hey, Lisa!” she shouts.

Lisa, similarly dressed up, bounces on her toes and waves back. “Hi!”

“I invited her,” Yasmin says quietly to Christine. “They were close for a while, and then they weren’t. It was a whole thing.”

“I remember,” Christine murmurs. Julia and Lisa are hugging in the middle of the room.

“Well, they’ve been talking again. And it just seemed like time. Is— Is that okay?”

Christine feels like she ought to perform a cartoon double take. “Of course it’s okay! I’m not the boss of this night out, Yas.”

“And yet who organised it all?” Paige whispers in her ear.

“Shush.”

It takes them just a few minutes to absorb Pippa, Donna and Lisa, during which time a nicely dressed Steph and Bethany slip through the dining hall, almost managing to make it to the stairwell before Yasmin intercepts and hugs Bethany, but thankfully the two basement girls have somewhere to be, too, and the rest of them are underway before anything disastrous happens that Christine will have to fix.

It’s good to have time off, but as Paige has pointed out to her many, many times, sometimes you need to actively curate it.

 

* * *

 

Bethany bumps up against her as they take the stairs, waiting, Steph’s sure, until they are almost but not completely out of sight of the girls in the dining hall to express physical affection. Steph hears someone faintly whooping in the background, and then they’re on their own.

“Thanks for this,” Bethany says quietly, speaking for the first time at the first-floor landing. “I wanted to ask about leaving the basement, but…”

“You were feeling weird about it?”

“So weird.”

Steph nods and bumps her back, and they climb a few more steps.

“Nice to see Yasmin again,” Bethany says.

“Yeah. She’s lovely.”

“I mean, yes, sure, that.” She’s slightly ahead on the stairs, but Steph’s certain from the tone of her voice that she’s smiling that I’m-about-to-say-something-terrible smile of hers. “But that’s not the important thing. She’s hot, Steph, and, ahem, an underrated but extremely important aspect of the rehabilitative programme is to expose the subjects to an endless—” A giggle breaks through the academic tone she’s trying to strike, but she contains herself and restores her pomposity. “Apologies. Exposing the subjects to an endless parade of unbelievably attractive women, and informing them under laboratory conditions that if they behave themselves and eat all their Weetabix and pretend to laugh very hard at the mugs that they will one day get to hang out with women like this, and it’ll be no big deal, and they’ll go clubbing with them and shower with them and maybe there’ll be a moment where they and the aforementioned hot women are, for example, both bending down to retrieve the same pencil. And oh yeah, sorry, you’re going to have to be a woman in order for this to happen, but that doesn’t matter because did you see how hot your friends are going to be?”

“I’m not sure that’s how the sponsors see it.”

“I think it’s how Raph sees it.”

“True,” Steph says. “He has been more receptive to Jane ever since he saw her and Amy together.”

“You see? Thank you!” Bethany claps her hands together. “I’m writing a paper on it.”

“Peer review might be tricky.”

Snorting, Bethany says, “Peer reviewers don’t read long paragraphs. If there’s nothing incriminating in the abstract I bet I could get it in one of the smaller journals.”

An unpleasant image suddenly lodges itself in Steph’s mind, and she immediately unsticks it. “You think I’ll be as pretty as her, don’t you?” she says, pausing in her ascent. “As Yasmin?”

Hands immediately find her and drag her into a tight and only slightly precarious embrace. “Steph,” Bethany whispers, “of course you will. You’re going to be beautiful.” She kisses her gently. “You’ll be the ginger temptress of Dorley Hall.”

Steph giggles. “You should say that kind of stuff a lot more,” she says, and rubs her cheek against Bethany’s.

“I mean, it’s just facts,” Bethany says, pulling away from her and starting up the stairs again. She keeps a hand in Steph’s and tugs her along with her. “You’ve seen the other third years, right? This place doesn’t miss.”

They reach the landing on the third floor with the two exits, and Steph jabs her thumb into the reader for the Dorley side. It’s much more discreet than the readers on second and first, and she wonders for a moment if it’s because it’s of a higher quality, or if they only had so much money and they decided to put the senior staff behind the best locks.

It rejects her.

“Oh,” she says.

“Problem?”

“Maybe?”

She touches the reader again, but nothing happens. Frowning, she inspects it, as if she might suddenly have gained the technical skills to diagnose a faulty biometric reader by sight alone, and then a speaker embedded somewhere in the ceiling pipes up.

“Sorry, Steph.” Edy’s voice. “Try it again.”

It works this time, and the door opens into the L-shaped corridor she remembers: the senior sponsors’ flats. The door to Maria’s swings open as they approach, revealing Edy, smiling and waiting for them.

“Sorry,” she says. “Normally, no-one has access except us. How are you both doing? You okay? There’s nothing… happening, is there? Nothing I should know about?”

“Nothing,” Bethany says quickly.

“We just wanted to see Maria,” Steph says.

Bethany nods vigorously.

Edy says, “Oh, well, she’s quite—”

“Let them in, Edith!” Maria yells from somewhere inside.

Edy steps aside. “I’ve been overruled,” she mutters, waving them through and closing the door behind them.

Maria’s flat is exactly as Steph remembers, down to Maria herself. Steph tries not to wince; she last came up here before she embraced her true self, and Maria’s lying in the same bed, for the same reason. She’s been recovering from what Will did for a long time.

Like she can read Steph’s mind, Maria says, “I’m fine, Steph. I’ve been given the week off, is all.” The tone in which she says ‘given’ implies something rather different, something more coercive, but when Edy approaches the bed, Maria receives her with a loving arm and a quick kiss on the cheek. “I would have preferred not to spend the entire week in bed, but darling Edith here got Fatima and Mrs Prentice to educate me on the importance of rest and, well, when the next crisis occurs, I’d prefer it if my response wasn’t immediately to almost faint. Makes me a bit useless.”

“I’m just glad someone caught you,” Bethany says, gingerly walking to her bedside. Maria immediately holds out her free hand, and Bethany takes it. She sits in a chair on the other side of the bed, still holding Maria’s hand and showing no intention of letting go, so rather than force Maria to remain oddly spreadeagled, Edy stands and inclines her head towards Steph.

“Let’s make the tea, yes?” she says quietly, as Maria and Bethany start to talk between themselves.

Edy leads Steph through the living room and under the arch into the kitchen, and fills the kettle from a filter jug while Steph looks for mugs. She has the uncanny feeling of being on the other end of the conversation she had in the woodshed with Christine; of being in a small area with someone who needs to talk.

“How’s she doing?” she asks.

Edy shakes her head, and in a moment of frustration sets the kettle into its cradle a bit too hard. Then she laughs at herself and touches Steph quickly on the hand. “She’s okay,” she says, “but she’s impossible to get to rest. I tried to call a moratorium on all work activities, but she wouldn’t have it, and I tried to get Aunt Bea’s backing but she told me, in no uncertain terms, that Maria would go completely mad with nothing to do.” She smiles weakly. “And she was right, of course. So I keep it to a minimum. How does Bethany take hers, again?”

“With milk. She says that before Dorley, she used to take it with five sugars, but being underground for so long has forced her to appreciate bland, bitter things.”

Edy drops a tea bag into a mug with a cartoon image of Freddie Mercury on it, alongside the slogan, WE WILL FROCK YOU. “She gets the supermarket own-brand tea, then.”

Steph gets the white and gold mug with halo motifs and the filigreed text, The Divine (Forced) Feminine. Unsportingly, Edy picks plain mugs for herself and Maria, and together they wait for the kettle to boil.

“How are you doing?” Steph asks.

Edy blinks at her. “How am I doing?” she quotes, in the incredulous tones of someone who momentarily can’t believe that someone else is concerned for her. Then she leans against the cabinet, transfers her weight to it, and says, “I’m tired, Stephanie. I’m worried all the time, and some of it’s the same thing’s everyone else is worried about, so that’s not so bad. You know: Diana, Frankie, Dorothy, Silver River; the whole rogues gallery of people of either unknown loyalty or who are actively hostile. But I’m worried about Adam. And I know,” she adds, touching Steph’s hand again, “you’re about to say you can help, and that’s lovely of you, but you’ve spent the whole week taking care of Bethany. I’ve been around enough to see that. I’m not adding to your workload. You shouldn’t even have a workload!”

Steph smiles. “Let me earn my keep, Edy. I do still remember all that stuff Aunt Bea said to me.”

“Hey,” Edy says sternly, “she walked all that back.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. It is useful to have me around. Or—” and Steph frowns, remembering conversations she’s had with Pippa and some of the other sponsors, “—it’s been catalytic, anyway. I still wonder sometimes if Will wouldn’t have attacked Maria if I hadn’t been here, stirring things up.”

“Oh, don’t you dare. Unpredictable things happen every year. What happened with Will happened because we got careless, just like Ollie happened because we were run ragged. We’re working to fix both those things, but, Steph, they’re our problems. Not yours.”

“Let me help with Adam.”

Edy looks at her for a moment, frowning, chewing her lower lip. “You were raised religious, weren’t you?”

“Not cult religious, but yes. C of E. Church every Sunday and I wasn’t allowed to swear.”

“Okay,” Edy says. “Okay. When Maria’s back to work, next week some time, you and me, we’ll have a meeting. And I’ll tell you everything you need to know. About Adam and about me.” At Steph’s confused expression, she explains, “Adam and I are linked, Steph. Really linked.” She sighs; Steph’s not getting it. “Officially, he’s my second cousin. But I’m pretty sure he’s my half-brother.”

The world swims around Steph for a second. “Your brother?” she whispers.

“’Fraid so,” Edy replies. “That’s what it was like up there.” While Steph’s still stuck to the spot, reconsidering and recontextualising everything she knows and everything she’s guessed about Adam’s childhood, Edy pours hot water into mugs, squidges tea bags, and adds milk. She nudges Steph when she’s done, unlocking her. “Come on,” she says. “Tea time.”

“Yeah,” Steph says, still dazed. “Tea time.”

 

* * *

 

He’s got an escort out of the infirmary. They haven’t cuffed him, though. Ollie could run. The women soldiers might have guns and they might have tasers, but the woods are thick. He might make it.

Yeah, and then what? Out there, he ruined everything. Here, even down there, he might not. Harmony says he won’t. The old lady says he won’t. Even Trev says he won’t.

That’s it. That’s the thing. Trev. Guy trapped inside a girl. And the pain is obvious. Just talking to the guy. He looks away all the time. He folds his arms. Hides his chest. Second day here, he got one of the soldiers to bring him an electric razor. Kind of like the one Ollie used. Trev buzzed his head with it. Military number two. Soldier girls wolf-whistled. He asked to be introduced to any hot boy soldiers they know.

Point is. Trev. He hates his body. Hates that he looks so much like a woman.

Ollie can’t imagine caring so much. Only ever been important because of other people. Because of what it got him. Dad. Mum. Sonia. He ruined it all. Ended up here.

He fought with Raph about it. Seems stupid now.

Everyone else here. They’ve all been right. He’s always been wrong.

So he follows Harmony. And the soldier women follow him. And he returns to the hall.

There’s another reason to go, too.

Harmony’s going to tell him everything, she said.

 

* * *

 

Goodness bloody gracious bloody shit! That was so embarrassing! Helpful, too, for definite, but Shahida’s body still feels hot from it, even after traipsing all the way back to Melissa’s place in the January wind.

They got something to eat at the café in Afflecks. Near the top, with a nice view, and a perfect little table by the window with just enough flat for the three of them, their everything-free muffins and their drinks. And they talked, in the shy and awkwardly flirtatious way they’ve been talking all day, all of them aware they’re talking around themselves when they should be talking about themselves, none of them quite able to push through and broach the topic.

And then this girl, this scene-looking girl, almost an anachronism with how early 2010s she looked, but she made it work and she was, well, hot, she came over, all long black hair and silver bangles and impudent smile, and she looked right at Shahida and asked if she was doing anything later, and Shahida bloody well panicked! As if this day hasn’t been confusing enough! This week! Worse, Abby caught Shahida’s eye and mouthed you were right about the comeback at her, and Shahida was far too lost to even begin to decipher that.

Melissa rescued her. Took her hand. Told the sexy scene girl that, sorry, she’s taken. And the scene girl graciously moved on — right onto Abby!

And bloody Abby was far smoother than Shahida was. She didn’t lock up and stare into the woman’s eyes like she was a pair of oncoming headlights and Abby was an injured fawn, oh no, she took Melissa’s other hand and smoothly said she was taken, too! And Melissa backed her up, and the girl shrugged and told the three of them they were all very lucky, and said she had to try, and when she returned to her friends on the other side of the café, Abby released Melissa’s hand and told her that, yeah, this was what they need to talk to her about. The two of them, and her.

Shahida hasn’t said more than five words since, because Abby’s stupid smile and the way she took Melissa’s hand have been burning in her brain, and she’s been trying to get along with her all day, all week, and she’s been doing really well even though it’s been so confusing, even though they both know there’s two of them and only one Melissa and ugh!

She excused herself and went to hang out in the living room while Melissa and Abby got changed, and she doesn’t want to know what they’re doing in the bedroom, and if they’re kissing then— then— then she bloody well hopes they are, because that would be just perfect, wouldn’t it?

Is this how they resolve it? Shahida goes for a sulk in the living room and Abby and Melissa talk it out in the bedroom like adults? That would not have been her bet as to how it would go, but she’s only been getting more and more het up in Abby’s presence, and whether it’s the jealousy, or it’s the way Abby keeps looking at her—

Oh, bloody hell.

Shahida’s been rhythmically tapping her hands against her thighs since she got here, and now she stops, shakes them out, shakes them hard, lets go of the tension and allows in a little of the euphoria of released energy, because she’s been so stupid and she can’t believe how simple it all could have been. On loop in her head are all the times today and this week that Abby’s shared a look or a laugh with her, or touched her in some way, or otherwise displayed nothing but comfort in her presence.

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot!

She shakes the last of the energy out of her hands. The action coincides with Abby appearing, pushing aside the living room door quietly and padding through, her shoes discarded, her adorable Snoopy socks on show.

“Liss is just taking a shower,” Abby says, jerking a thumb backwards. “Would you like a drink, or…?” And she trails off, because Shahida’s just standing there like a weirdo.

At least she’s finally a self-aware weirdo.

Well.

No time like the present.

“Abigail,” Shahida says. “I want to try something. Because I’ve been going mad all day. All week. And it’s like something just popped in my head and now if I don’t try it, it feels like everything else is going to go pop, too. You can say no or push me away at any time, okay? And I won’t be weird about it. But I have to try this. And I have to try it now. Before I see Liss again. Before you see Liss again. I have to know.”

Abby, entranced, nods, and Shahida walks slowly towards her, loops a hand around her waist, and leans down, hesitating, giving her the chance to refuse her. Abby doesn’t take it, and instead inclines her head. Invites her.

Shahida kisses her. Pushes her back until they both bounce gently against the wall. Lifts her a little with the arm around her waist. Indulges in her heat, in her life, in her.

And Abby kisses her back.

There never was any reason to be jealous. Shahida is just very, very stupid.

After an age, after everything in her life has changed for the better, Shahida leans away, warm again and unable to control her smile. Abby leans up and kisses her quickly, closed lips to closed lips.

“What about Liss?” Abby asks. “You going to give her the speech, too?”

Shahida shakes her head. “She’s heard it already.”

 

* * *

 

It’s like six degrees out, and Bethany ought to be cold, and she supposes, physically, she kind of is, but metaphysically, she’s toasty as hell, because the light wind whistling through the window in Steph’s first-floor room has a taste to it. It has a smell! She’s been breathing the air-conditioned breeze in the basement for so long, she’d almost forgotten what real fresh air is like.

Besides, if it’s cold in here, it means she can wrap herself and Steph in blankets and not overheat, and she needs that. After this week, after delving deep into memories she’s been doing her best for years to suppress, she fucking needs that. A bit of animal comfort, a bit of shared warmth; a bit of love.

And she is loved, and not just by Steph. Talking to Maria again was the perfect reminder, and it also — as Maria wryly pointed out — served as a barometer for how far Bethany’s come: the last time Maria was out of her life, the boy Aaron wanted her back mainly because Indira kept threatening to feed him through a tube.

All right, that’s not entirely accurate; being a bit too ungenerous towards Aaron, there. Little fucker’s earned it, though.

Still. Maria’s okay. They’re just being cautious. And she’s thinking of moving on from her academic work, too; the time she’s had off sick recently has given her the opportunity to reassess it, and she’s realised, she said, that in her adult life she’s never been so happy to be alive. She doesn’t need to fill empty hours any more.

Bethany cried a little in her arms while Maria gently stroked her hair, and everything was fine. And then Edy got rid of her, promised to have Maria back on duty by Tuesday, and very firmly closed the door after them both.

She stretches out on the bed. God, she loves this thing. The beds in the basement are barely wide enough for two, whereas you could fit three in this one, easily, and five if you packed them in like sardines (or basement dwellers). And the pillows up here are fluffier, the duvets more enveloping, and even the mattresses seem firmer and more springy.

Maybe when Maria comes back on duty, she can sweet-talk her into giving her the same access Steph has. Or close to it, anyway. She’d ask if they could both move out, move into Steph’s room up here permanently, but she’s pretty sure they’d have to say no. Steph’s spoken a few times about the peer-pressure nature of transition for most people at Dorley, and it probably won’t work if your peers have moved on while you’re still refusing to wear a bra. So she’ll stay downstairs for the sake of the others — she guesses — but she definitely wants at least a little more control over her own movements.

As if to underline the point, that’s when Steph comes back, buzzing the lock and entering the room backwards, holding a tray of Pop Tarts and Pot Noodles.

“A feast,” she says, putting down the tray on the table in front of the TV.

“Why are you covered in lipstick kisses?” Bethany asks, reaching a finger towards Steph’s almost entirely red cheek.

“The second years ambushed me. They thought it would be funny.”

Sitting down next to her, Steph leans in so Bethany can clean her cheek with a tissue, a task she punctuates with occasional kisses and mild scolding, and which segues naturally into them sliding down off the bed and onto cushions by the table, where they eat their Pot Noodles and Pop Tarts.

Later, as the night closes in and Bethany feels tired for the first time in a week — tired, not exhausted or depressed or simply unable to leave her bed; just tired — she is almost carried into the little ensuite and propped in front of the sink, there to wash her face and clean her teeth. Steph rubs moisturiser on when Bethany doesn’t quite have the coordination to do it herself, and then takes her to bed.

To that clean, huge, firm, wonderful bed.

Bethany rolls over and wraps her arms around her girlfriend, thinks to herself that before she falls entirely asleep, she should lean in and kiss Steph on the back of the neck. But she never makes it, and she dreams about everything but the corridors at her old school.

 

* * *

 

“Chia, it’s okay. I’m going to a place where people can help me. Yes, I trust them. But I’ll be back. If that’s okay? If you want me? Okay. Okay! I’ll be back. And I might be able to start paying rent. I’ll be back in a few days. I’ll call every night. Yes, at seven, right before— Of course! No. I’d never interrupt it.”

Impossible for Monica not to watch Diana as she speaks. How is this the same person? Declan was dull like a blunt object, like a much-used weapon, but Diana has a flow to her, an expressiveness. It’s almost hypnotic.

“Night, Chia,” she says into her cheap, plasticky phone. “Sorry for waking you. I just wanted to— Okay! Sorry for apologising. Goodnight.” The call ends, and she fusses with her phone for a moment before slipping it back into her bag — the woman who was once Declan has a bloody handbag! — and smiling. “That’s the woman who took me in. She’s very, um… She’s nice.”

“She sounds it.”

The texture of the ride smooths out, an indicator that Frankie’s pulled them off the rough-asphalted main road and onto the university’s network. Not long now to Dorley.

“Are you ready for this?” she asks.

Diana emphatically shakes her head. “No. But I’ve got no choice, I think.”

“I won’t let you down.”

“If she does, Di,” Frankie says from the front seat, “I think Trev still has a gun.”

“Frankie!” Monica exclaims.

“I won’t need it,” Diana says. “But I’m looking forward to seeing him again. He was nice to me. Valérie… I’m not so sure about her. She might not want to see me, I think.”

“Val’ll be happy to see you again,” Frankie says, pulling the car into its spot and killing the engine. “And she’ll want the story about how you killed Jake. All the gory details. She loves it when you get graphic.”

It’s a short walk from the car to the hall, and Monica spends much of it returning to her mental rehearsal of how she’s going to introduce Diana to the others. At least it’s something that can mostly wait until morning; they spent long enough in the café that they decided to wait out the rush hour traffic, which combined with westbound roadworks meant that the dashboard clock hit ten just before the turn-off for Almsworth. Monica called ahead, and there’s going to be a room up ready for her on the second floor, around the corner from the third years. A bit bare, probably, but better than nothing and the best her grudgingly cooperative co-sponsors could arrange on short notice. It’s also best for her to have the opportunity to control who she sees: she’ll have her own bathroom, the second-floor kitchen is reasonably stocked, and for the most part the only sponsors who visit the floor are there for the third years.

Diana, her new boots clicking softly on the concrete path, slows as they approach. She looks up at the bulk of Dorley Hall and takes a deep, slow breath.

“There’s one more thing,” she says, not looking away from the hall. “It doesn’t have to be tonight, but if you can arrange it, I want to see Steph.” She swallows and rolls her shoulders, stretching out the kinks from the journey.

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Monica says, and frowns, remembering their history. Declan, as he was, attacking Steph and Bethany in the shower annexe. Steph punching him out and setting in motion Declan’s washing out. Warily, she adds, “What do you want to see her for?”

“I need to apologise,” Diana says, and without looking back, she starts to stride towards the entrance, leaving Monica and Frankie in her wake.

 

* * *

 

1. I Am Diana

I am Diana
It’s a choice
and a privilege
and a challenge I always seem to fail
But I am Diana
And it’s not a choice
cause the alternative
is to be
is to be
is to be
him

[found by Chiamaka under Diana’s bed, torn into pieces]