41. Come up for Air, My Darlings

2020 January 13
Monday

The hall has a large supply of post-surgical support bras — because of course it does — and Trevor keeps pulling at his, trying to reposition it, trying to make himself comfortable, and consistently failing. It’s like a cross between a sports bra and that kind of bra women wear under t-shirts when they don’t want the lines of their underwear to show, and whether it’s the size of his implants — he doesn’t like thinking of them as ‘breasts’, especially not after spending so much time around girls who actually appreciate theirs — or his choice of not-exactly-complementary clothing, he just can’t get the fucking thing to sit right.

Val pulls his hand away and holds it stiffly to his side.

“If you keep fiddling with it,” she says, “it will never settle.”

The worst thing about hanging around with women like Val and, increasingly, Beatrice, is that all the retorts that might be effective on, say, Frankie, are useless: he can’t protest that he never asked for this, or that they can’t know what it’s like, because Beatrice will say something wry and Val will just look at him, and then he’ll feel doubly stupid.

And, honestly, he can’t say that shit to Frankie, either. She’d just laugh at him. Tell him there are far worse mutilated men to be, and that he should consider himself lucky that he got out with his heart still beating and with at least part of his dignity — the bit in the middle, the long bit — intact.

Christ. Trevor needs male friends. People who can be relied upon to react with appropriate horror to the revelation that he was kidnapped and castrated, and not merely ask in a mild, interested voice what flavours of hospital jelly he got to try after.

“I told him he should’ve worn a nice dress,” Frankie says. She’s sitting on the kerbside, a little farther away from Trevor, Val and Beatrice. “He needs to let the girls breathe.”

“Frances,” Val says, “has it really been so long since you last psychologically wounded someone that you need to practise on Trevor?”

Frankie shrugs. “I’m only saying. I’d be sweating buckets in his get-up, and I’m not still technically in a surgery recovery period.”

“I’m fine,” Trevor says.

And he’s not — he’s hot as hell, even in the January chill — but he’d rather wear bulky, oversized gym clothes than ‘let the girls breathe’. He’s already baulking at Mrs Prentice’s belief that he should keep them in for months longer, but unless he has a go himself, he needs someone with surgical expertise to get them out, and it doesn’t do to antagonise your surgeon.

Beatrice’s words. When he complained to her, and when one of the sponsors did so too, on his behalf. Mrs Prentice does not need to work for the hall, and she has by far the least to lose if they get into any kind of stalemate or legal battle, so keeping her happy is high on Beatrice’s priority list. Keeping Trevor happy is, presumably, not.

“Car’s here,” Beatrice says, and sure enough, a blacked-out Range Rover’s gliding easily into the car park. It stops perfectly in front of Beatrice, who nods at the invisible driver and climbs serenely into the passenger seat. Val takes the seat directly behind Beatrice, and Trevor’s about to sit next to her when Frankie barges him out of the way.

“Move, Trev,” she mutters. “I’ll take the middle seat. Penance, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Val says. “A few hours of discomfort more than makes up for your decades of brutality.”

“Knew I could count on you, Valérie.”

When they’re all belted in, the driver confirms with them that their phones, watches and other devices are all switched off — Trevor didn’t even bring one — and then she pulls them out of the car park and gets them underway.

Elle Lambert moves around a lot, rarely spending time in any of the stately homes and magnificent apartments that are in her name, but as of late, she has been eschewing her usual five-star hotels for more utilitarian accommodation, swapping security by obscurity for security by virtue of a shitload of guns.

The strikingly beautiful driver is taking them to a Peckinville facility.

Trevor’s going home.

 

* * *

 

Everything changes so fast. It’s not even halfway through January 2020, and she’s Diana, looking out from a window in her borrowed room at Dorley Hall, dressed for the cold weather in a sweater, jeggings and boots, cradling her chest in her arms and wondering idly if she should borrow or steal a nicer coat from the hall’s seemingly infinite dress-up box; and yet less than four months ago she was Declan, unrepentant and deliberately ignorant.

She frowns and counts backwards on her fingers. Four months? That doesn’t sound right. She smiles as she does so: Monica did her nails in a soft pink last night, and she’s looking forward to showing them off to Chiamaka. Perhaps just as helpfully, Monica also gave her a USB stick to take back home, containing everything Monica could scrape up that might help lend Diana’s life — still so new the finger-paint’s only just not tacky, she reflects with a smile — a little stability: login details for her new bank account; personal details of a handful of the women here, and emergency contact details for the hall as a whole; and a whole strata of folders on voice training, including a link to an app she’s supposed to install on her phone.

New identity documents are coming soon, as are the finer details of her history; she’ll be meeting up with Monica again next week, to work out what she called an NPH. But her new passport and birth certificate are already in the works.

She had to choose a new surname for the bank account and for her ID documents, and they spent almost twenty minutes last night going through alternatives before Monica happened to mention that some girls choose the same name as their sponsors, and Diana immediately asked permission. So she’s Diana Rosamond, sister to Monica Rosamond, from this morning to the end of her life.

Four months ago — is that right? feels like two lifetimes ago — she was Declan Shaw, last son to a retired nurse and her bastard husband. And now she’s Diana Rosamond, younger sister to Monica, with a mother and father who are a (deceased) legal fiction, and an extended family that has unexpectedly embraced her.

Despite everything she’s done.

Everything changes so fast. And now she’s this whole new person, someone for whom she still hasn’t quite established a personality. She liked who she was with Leigh yesterday, with some of the smoother edges of her too-careful persona roughed up, and since she was able to be like that with her, maybe she can bring some of that person with her.

There’s a knock on her door, and she calls out that it’s open without checking who it is. Because it’s going to be Monica, come to drive her home. All the way back to Cherston, to Chia’s. Because she wants Chiamaka to meet her sister.

But first…

“Hey, Lady Di,” Monica says with a smile in her voice. Diana’s still facing away from her, looking out at the world, so the first of Monica that Diana sees is a hand looping around her belly. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Diana says, turning to embrace her. “Listen,” she adds, “before we go…”

“You want to say goodbye?” Monica guesses.

“I do.”

“Well, Steph and Bethany are still up here, so that’s easy enough, but it’s early; if you want to see Leigh, too, we’ll have to drag Tabitha out of bed and, well, rather you than me.” She wrinkles her nose. “She likes her beauty sleep. I mean, I could totally take her, don’t worry about that, but—”

“I was thinking…” Diana says. She’s still weighing this, still wondering if she can take it, but the smile on Monica’s face makes her mind up. She survived Stenordale; she can survive anything. “I was thinking I’d go down to see her.”

“All the way down?”

“Yeah. All the way down.”

 

* * *

 

Christine bumps off Lorna and rebounds into a hug with Vicky and, God, it’s good to see them again. It’s even better to see them away from the hall, because its loving, chaotic embrace has been sort of overpowering lately. She’s been on sabbatical, and she’s still spent way too much time there.

Vicky suggested Café One but Christine wanted to get off campus, so they’re getting an early breakfast at Egg Nation before the four of them split off for lectures and workshops.

“Hey,” Vicky says into Christine’s hair.

“Oh my God,” Christine says, pulling back and dropping onto the worn fake-leather seat of the booth. “I am so hungry! Where’s my egg bitch?”

Lorna points. “Dazzling the poor boy behind the counter.”

Turning, Christine discovers that, yes, Paige is talking sweetly to an adolescent lad who is doing his best to fulfil her order for the table without stumbling over anything in his quest to look at her as much as humanly possible. When, a minute or so later, Paige arrives at the table, it’s with a slight exaggeration to her normal level of hip sway, which causes Christine to have to bury her giggle in her hand.

“You’re mean,” Vicky says.

“I can’t help it,” Paige says, sitting down.

Looking back over at the boy, Christine pretends to assess him properly. “Hmm,” she says. “Not bad. Think we should take him home with us? Vick, how do you think she’d turn out after three years of estrogen therapy?”

Lorna frowns, but Vicky says, “His skin would probably clear up. We’d be doing her a favour.”

“I thought you dragged us here to get away from the horror show you call home,” Lorna says pointedly.

“I’m not assessing him in my professional capacity,” Christine protests. “This would be more of a hobby.”

“It’s important to keep busy,” Paige says, nodding.

 

* * *

 

The thing about thinking ahead and stealing the cafetiere from the second years’ common room is that a) it can be washed in Steph’s ensuite with the washing-up liquid and dish sponge that Steph also stole and b) when it comes time to seek forgiveness rather than permission she can make the quite reasonable point that she’s saved it from Mia’s tender ministrations; when she returns it, it will be as pristine as the day it was manufactured, and there will be no mould, growths or rodents living inside it.

She frowns as she presses down on the plunger, thinking about Mia. Of all of them outside the second year, it’s Bethany who’s gotten closest to her. Which isn’t to say that Bethany knows her well, but she’s validated Steph’s impression of Mia: that she has formed a shell of a person, designed a whole new personality, and she’s growing into it, bit by bit. That the personality she picked is kind of over-the-top, larger-than-life, stereotypical, etc. seems to be part of the plan; the more she relaxes into it, the more she’ll find the natural limits of her comfort with it, and those… spikier edges ought to be smoothed off. Nadine’s frustrated with her pretty much constantly, which seems mostly to come down to an extreme personality clash; sponsors are matched to intake members on either a complementary or oppositional basis — with a few exceptions, like Pippa, who was simply available when Steph showed up and who, Pippa has admitted, had a few issues with the programme she needed to work out — but Steph doesn’t know Nadine well enough to guess what she might have been like before Dorley, and thus what insights she brings to Mia’s so-called rehabilitation.

Laughing at herself, Steph pours coffee into two mugs, both refugees from the main kitchen. Mia’s ‘so-called’ rehabilitation! Steph’s still half-heartedly performing outrage at a programme she’s long-since stopped butting up against. Bit silly, really; for whose benefit, at this point, is she performing? Bethany might have had a rushed actualisation — Maria’s very proud — but the things that wake her up at night are not connected to her new self; they are fears imported from her past, traumas inflicted on her before she was brought here, before she was protected. And while Bethany’s still on a Mia-like path, talking quietly some nights about how she’s still working out who Bethany ought to be, who she wants her to be, and how she can grow to become her, she’s brought with her everything Steph found sweet and endearing about Aaron.

Cut away the bad stuff, and the masculinity falls away with it? It’s not exactly the thesis statement of Dorley Hall — doesn’t apply to, say, Diana, who seems to have been not so much carefully amended as utterly shredded by a man at Stenordale who, Steph was happy to be told, was subsequently brutally murdered for his trouble — but for Bethany, and perhaps Mia, it’s true enough.

She adds whitener — it objectively sucks compared to milk, but she doesn’t yet have the mini-fridge she’s been begging Pippa for — and pauses with the mugs in her hands, looking at Bethany, still lightly snoring, lying sideways on the bed with a forearm protecting her chest. Her hair is splayed around her head, messed up and matted slightly with sweat, and Steph wonders what dreams disturbed her this time.

Aaron again? She whispers his name occasionally, but in a curious manner, as if the dream that is surfacing aloud is not from her/his perspective, but has taken the point of view of an onlooker. One who thinks of Bethany’s former self with considerable contempt.

Steph hopes one day that Bethany can learn to hate who she was a little less. To separate the things she did from the person she was. And maybe that would be counterproductive, maybe it would be detrimental to her progress. And maybe she can’t ever do so, because her disgust for Aaron is part of what drives her development. But Steph still can’t quite bring herself to believe that stripping someone’s identity from them so completely, on the physical level as well as the psychological, is either the only or the best way to help someone trapped by the expectations of masculinity.

She’s pretty sure the sponsors would remind her that she was never a man in the first place, that she by definition cannot understand the allure of a power structure which turns its teeth both outward and inward. She knows Aunt Bea would.

Eh.

Fuck it.

They’re all along for the ride at this point. The orchis aren’t that far off; if it turns out there’s a better way, that’s for future generations who still possess testicles to discover.

She sets down Bethany’s coffee on her bedside table. She picked out the mugs at random from downstairs, and now she’s regretting it, because she’s about to serve Bethany her morning coffee in a mug that declares in scrappy print, NO GODS, NO MISTERS, and has printed underneath something which Steph originally thought was just a graffiti of the anarchy ‘circled-A’ symbol but which turns out to be the head of a penis, crudely drawn and with a line slashed through it. She picks up the mug again, substitutes the other one — which says, slightly more innocently and in bold, sans-serif text, ASMR You Are The Kidnap Victim [12:36], with an appropriate illustration — and kisses Bethany gently on the forehead.

She stirs and mumbles, but doesn’t wake up.

So gentle.

Steph kisses her again, smooths out an errant lock of hair, and retrieves the cup. She’ll make her another when she rises, and in the meantime, she’ll go drink hers somewhere else. Fortunately, it’s early enough that no-one else is likely to be around.

Her theory is proved wrong a moment later, when someone knocks quietly on her door. She rushes to open it, almost spilling her coffee, and finds Diana on the other side, hand still raised.

Steph lifts a finger to her lips and flicks her eyes sideways, and Diana nods.

“Hey,” Steph whispers, hefting her mug, “I just made coffee and I have spare. You want one?”

 

* * *

 

“You want to know the best thing about these eggs?” Christine says, scooping up the last of her breakfast on a fork. “They were made by normal, free-range people. People whose worst secret is that they cheated on their boyfriend or their girlfriend, or they stole a tenner from a friend once, or something. You know what I’d give to have that kind of secret?”

Paige bumps up against her, pulls her into a one-armed hug. “You’d dress worse, though,” she says. “If you were like them, you’d only ever wear shorts and t-shirts.”

“I like shorts and t-shirts.” Christine wriggles her shoulder under Paige’s embrace.

“I hate them.”

“I know.”

“You look like a children’s TV presenter when you wear them.”

“I know.”

“I keep looking for the funny puppet.”

Christine laughs. “You mean Mia? I left her at home.”

“Dress nice, Christine,” Paige says.

“Fine,” Christine says, with exaggerated grumpiness. “All I’m saying is, a little normality would be nice.”

Paige kisses her. “All told, and with my objections to our enforced participation on file, if normality comes with shorts, I think I prefer insanity.”

“How are you doing, Tina?” Vicky asks. “Surely they’re going to let you—” and she lowers her voice, “—graduate soon?”

Christine wants to say that that’s part of her frustration, that innocent words like ‘graduate’ have such overtones of meaning that even someone like Vicky, who’s been free for months and months now, still whispers them like she’s confessing to a murder, but, in all honesty, it’s not, not really. She can’t imagine life without the hall, not even if she bypasses the slightly itchy thought of being that guy again and instead tries to build a life in which she is merely an ordinary girl, trans or cis. And that is the problem: that she has become so used to the structure provided by the hall, so used to being part of the machine, that her fortnight off had to be enforced, and still she’s found herself picking up little bits of work here and there.

She doesn’t want to be a part of the feminising machine when she’s thirty. Let alone forty! So what does a life outside the hall even look like?

“I think they’ve forgotten about me,” she says. “Now that I’m on staff—” Vicky winces when she doesn’t whisper that, but it’s a perfectly normal thing to say, “—I’ve just gotten folded into the workflow, you know? Hell, some of the junior sponsors have started reporting to me.”

“Ew,” Vicky says.

Lorna laughs. “Responsibility! Get out. Get out while you can.”

“That’s sort of the question,” Christine says. “Get out and do what? I haven’t even graduated yet. The other kind of graduated, I mean. The one where you get a qualification and not a mildly psychotic Sisterhood.”

“Be a dropout,” Vicky suggests. “Develop the next killer internet app. Retire on your millions in ten years.”

“That’s a no-hoper. My instincts suck; I thought crypto would die on the vine. Doesn’t speak well of my chances to develop the next big thing. All I know is that it’ll be something equally dumb and wasteful.”

“Maybe you should graduate anyway,” Paige says. “Soon. I’m going to. I’ve got a meeting scheduled with Francesca in early March. I’ll stick around until I’ve finished my degree, but that’s all.”

“I’m still technically on watch for my feminine presentation skills,” Christine says.

“You’re so good at that now!” Vicky exclaims.

Shrugging, Christine’s got to admit that, yeah, she kind of is. Most of her wardrobe’s still borrowed, but she’s decent enough at makeup and, crucially, she doesn’t get scared about going outside in skirts any more. Time was that even her tomboy outfits would have her terrified that every Tom, Dick and Harry would see right through her to the ‘boy’ inside; this morning, she casually threw together an outfit last year’s Christine would have been terrified even to try at home, and didn’t think about it until— Well, until just now. And, she wants to remind Paige, she didn’t pick shorts!

“Thanks,” she says. “It’s kinda nice to just fly under the radar, you know?”

“You already did, darling,” Paige whispers, nuzzling her.

“But I didn’t know it.”

“Hey,” Vicky says, and Christine looks back from Paige, but Vicky’s not talking to her. She’s taken Lorna’s hand and she’s stroking the knuckles.

“I’m fine,” Lorna says quietly, in a voice devoid of her usual animation.

“Lorna?” Christine says.

“Old shit. Don’t worry about it.”

“Try us,” Paige suggests.

“You, especially,” Lorna snaps, “should not worry about it.” She’s stiff, shoulders forward, like a challenge, but she can’t hold it, and she falls back into the booth, Vicky still holding her hand. “Sorry,” she says. “Paige, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Recently,” Paige says, in such a dry voice it extracts a near-smile from Lorna.

“My point exactly. I feel like shit complaining about my crap in front of you. You included, Vick,” she adds, covering Vicky’s hand. “You went through hell to get where you are, I merely went through—”

“A different kind of hell,” Vicky says, interrupting her. “A much, much worse one.”

“Debatable,” Lorna mutters.

Vicky’s not having that, and she gathers Lorna up in her arms, kisses her on the forehead, over and over. Christine reaches over the table and carefully moves the coffee cups and empty plates out of their way.

“We always had each other,” Vicky says. “You were alone. And when you weren’t alone, it was your mum, it was your awful ex-girlfriend. So don’t downplay your shit, okay?” Lorna nods into Vicky’s armpit. “So what’s up?”

“The usual,” Lorna says, shrugging, keeping herself well inside Vicky’s hug. “I love you, Vicky, obviously, and I really like both of you—” she waves her free hand vaguely in Christine’s direction, “—but you’re all so perfect and sometimes I hate you for it.”

Something in Christine, the remnant of the thing who hated his captivity, wants to speak up, but she squashes it, because Lorna’s talked about her past, about her ex-girlfriend who was staggeringly cruel to her, about her mother who was worse, and unlike Christine, Lorna did nothing to deserve any of it.

“Seem to be getting clocked more lately,” Lorna’s saying. “Kids. Other students. A girl shouted at me in the toilets in the Anthill last week. I don’t know what’s different.”

“Maybe nothing’s different about you,” Paige says. “Maybe it’s just the way everything is these days.”

“Maybe. I went on that forum Kathryn Frost posts on—”

“Oh, Lorna, no,” Vicky whispers.

“—and there wasn’t anything new on my page there. Nothing since the protest last year.” Lorna smiles weakly. “I’m deliberately boring. Sorry, Vick,” she adds. “I know I shouldn’t go there.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Anyway,” Lorna says, sitting forward again, “I have my surgery in six weeks. Ish. Maybe that’ll be enough to stop people giving me the look.”

Yeah. Christine’s glad she stomped on her worst instincts. She’s gotten clocked only a couple of times, most notably on her early outing from Dorley to visit Indira’s family, and she still thinks about them. For that to be Lorna’s daily life, for her to experience, over and over, the thing Christine merely fears…

Dorley Hall doesn’t just keep the girls mostly inside until their third year so they don’t expose the programme. When all you want is to blend in, having people repeatedly single you out is beyond traumatic.

And as for that forum, well, there’s a reason Maria’s organising a committee later in the year to look at the NPHs, and especially the trans-origin ones, to see if they need to be adjusted.

The conversation moves on, mostly to a discussion of how Lorna is going to fit her uni work around her operation — Lorna’s resigned to going to lectures with healing bruises and visible swelling, because it’s not like she can put her transness back in the bag while she’s at Saints — but Christine makes only token comments. She’s thinking again about the basement, about the solidarity she found there, about the family she found there — multiple members of whom are at this table — and about Lorna, alone, surrounded only by people who refuse to understand her.

Maybe Christine’ll nip down to the basement in a day or two. Maybe she’ll take a supervising shift. See how everyone is down there. Catch up.

It’s good to stay involved.

 

* * *

 

Once again, it’s difficult not to feel envious of how natural Steph looks. She handed Diana a mug of freshly made and delicious-smelling coffee — in a mug with a joke on that Diana doesn’t really get; another thing to Google when she gets home — and closed the door to her room long enough to throw an oversized shirt on over her sleeping clothes, but now here she is, sitting on one of the couches in the first year common room in just a pair of shorts, a silk-looking strappy top of some kind, and a large red-and-black-checked lumberjack shirt, sipping from a mug of her own and smiling politely at Diana. And it’s something that’s changed in her, for in her own way she’s changed almost as much as Diana has: when Declan knew her, when she was outwardly Stefan, she was awkward and shy. She would look away when people met her eyes. Not always; sometimes she seemed so confident, so self-assured, that Declan wondered if she really was down there for the same reason as the rest of them. In his belligerence, he decided she was grassing on them to the sponsors, and tried to exploit that.

She winces at the memory.

“Thank you for the coffee,” she says in her faltering voice, the thing about her that is still mostly Declan, no matter the words she picks or the sentiments she tries to convey.

Steph grins. “Thank you for the retroactive justification for my stealing the second years’ cafetiere.”

And at that, Diana giggles. It’s difficult to be too sad around Steph, now that they’re past yesterday’s awkwardness. She’s too kind, too much a person who enjoys putting others at ease, and it works on Diana just as much as she saw it working on Aaron, Adam and even Will, long before any of them chose their new names. It’s also clear how much her earlier flashes of confidence — Stefan’s — were a front, a shield; something she became used to holding in front of her true self, to hide it, to protect it. When Stephanie is confident now, she is more comfortable with it, more laid-back.

In that, Diana thinks she can understand her. She does not often contrive to feel natural in her new body, in her new persona, but when she does, it might be the most wonderful thing she’s ever experienced.

Still, she feels overdressed. Not so much because of the warm travelling clothes, but because of her overly large chest. Her breasts feel, compared to Steph’s — which essentially do not exist — too obvious. As if Steph is a woman because of her manner, because of her smile, because of the way she carries herself, and Diana is a woman because light bends around her mammaries.

She makes a mental note: talk to Monica about it.

Thank fuck for Monica, honestly. Not something Declan would ever have thought!

They make small talk for a little while as they drink their coffee. Steph talks about her plans for the day: she and Leigh are going to talk to Adam, and though that probably won’t happen today, the meeting about it sure will. Diana reveals that she’s been thinking about coming back to the hall every weekend, or every other weekend, or something like that, to touch base, and Steph seems genuinely happy about that, something which Diana grasps with both hands until Steph squeals and mentions that she’s spilling her coffee and also can’t, when she’s trapped between two voluminous breasts, actually breathe very well.

Diana doesn’t mention what she talked about with Aunt Bea, that she left her office with a loose conviction that she will, one day, return to this place on a permanent basis, to help others like her, because… Well, too many reasons. Mainly, though, Diana doesn’t yet feel like someone who can claim to be of use to anyone.

Second years are starting to mill sleepily about — the one Diana thinks is called Faye waves to Steph on her way to the bathroom — which is Diana’s cue to get a move on, because she has more to say and do before Monica takes her home. So she stands again, hugs Steph again — from the side this time — and offers to wash her mug.

“I’ll do it,” Steph says, taking it from her and looking sideways at another of the girls who is hovering at the edge of the room. “I’m teaching by example.” The girl rolls her eyes and follows Faye to the bathroom, and Steph looks back at Diana, grinning. “I know,” she says. “I’m not beating the ‘mum friend’ allegations.”

“Maybe not,” Diana says, “but it looks good on you. It, um, it always has. I saw it, you know. Before.” She feels suddenly awkward, and with good reason. The person who looks out from behind Diana’s eyes is the same who looked out from Declan’s, in most respects, but acknowledging this in front of someone she tried very seriously to hurt is more than uncomfortable. “From the day you got here, you’ve been helping people.”

Steph’s turn to feel awkward. She looks away, looks carefully at one of the threadbare couches. “Oh,” she says, “well, um… You know, I just don’t, uh…”

“It’s a wonderful thing. Makes me want to be like you when I grow up.”

Laughing, covering her mouth, Steph briefly meets Diana’s eyes, then looks away again. “Thank you,” she says.

“Oh,” Diana says, “and before I go, I want you to know: I’m called Diana Rosamond now. No more Shaw, same as no more Declan. Clean break.”

Now

 Steph smiles up at her, genuine and delighted. “It suits you,” she says. “It really suits you.”

 

* * *

 

Honestly, Raph might be the smartest one here. Because the thing is, you have to try, don’t you? When a bunch of mad women kidnap you and stash you underground and then a month or so later reveal that, oh, hey, we’re planning to turn you into girls, fighting back is the obvious solution, isn’t it? And you can fight back with actual fighting, like Declan and Will did, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, not when the women in charge are, well, in charge. And Declan’s Diana now, and Will’s Leigh, so an argument could be made that charging in and trying to nut the problem is the worst approach. Ollie tried hurting himself and then tried killing himself, and yet he’s still here and on the same path as the rest of them.

But Declan was a mess, wasn’t he? Always trying to prove himself, always trying to make himself King Shit of whatever hill he found himself on top of. Will? He buried his true self under a mountain of logic and left someone self-satisfied but deeply unhappy in charge. And Ollie, he’s just too fucking stupid to navigate the world without a role model, and his selection criteria are stupider than he is.

Who else have we got? Martin? Drank to cope with the trauma of being a useless failson. Adam’s a mystery, but it’s obvious enough that most of his shit is bundled up with the obscure religion he was raised into, so he was made stupid. Ignorant by design. And there’s Bethany, who was victimised her entire life and made it every woman’s problem.

There’s also Steph, but she doesn’t count. She wanted to be a girl, right? So where better than here? She’s the only other one of them to have made mostly sensible decisions from the start.

Raph, on the other hand, pushed back exactly as much as was wise, didn’t he? Someone wants to make him into a woman? Fuck that; he knows women have it worse, that resisting these lunatics and remaining a man is his best option for an easy ride through life. And he also knows exactly nothing about being a woman, and not just the technical stuff like makeup and periods and that; a woman walks into a boardroom filled with men, right? How is she supposed to navigate that? Raph doesn’t know. It’s supposed to suck, he knows that. What he doesn’t know is how a woman is supposed to turn that around.

So of course he pushed back. He was difficult. He actively resisted assimilation, attaching himself — in a backseat capacity, of course — to anyone who had a plan to resist. That’s the clever thing: you don’t throw the punch, but you talk up the guy who’s going to, so if the punch works out then you reap the benefits, and if it doesn’t, you don’t get punished quite as hard.

All that time in the cells did suck, though. And not just because of Ollie. Powerful motivation to go along with things. He’s always been a chameleon, is the thing. An observer of the status quo. And, sure, okay, he was also kind of attached to being a man, and that was only a little bit because it was and is the most rational choice for one who wants to have a quiet life, who wants to coast, effort-free, into a mediocre existence. But he is a man, isn’t he? It’s only natural to be protective of that. Hell, even Leigh, who spent his whole life wanting to be a woman, was defensive of his manhood.

Yeah. Only natural.

But he’s over that now. Because he didn’t have all the information before. Jane and the rest of them used to be just like him? And now they’re all doing fine? Better, they’re set for life, with stipends and support from some crazy rich lady? And a job here if they want one?

That changes things.

And that’s not all. Because the ones among them who got with the programme early, like Bethany and maybe Martin and, yes, Steph, kind of, they’re the ones doing best. They’ve got the easiest lives: they get bugged less by their sponsors, they get to just chill more and spend less time reading boring books about feminism; Steph and Bethany even get to go upstairs!

That’s the information he needed. First, that making the switch is not just possible, it’s actively beneficial in the long term. Second, that even in the short term, cooperation is just better.

So Raph’s going to cooperate.

And when he made that decision, a little while ago now, it was as if a huge weight had lifted. Not only did he no longer have to care about protecting his future from a gang of mad women, but all the things he did to be a proper man, all the behaviours and habits and shit, he doesn’t need to think about them any more, either.

And, funny thing, but when masculinity no longer matters, when it’s not important, then its fear of ambiguity, its veneration of brute strength and blunt rudeness, its outright rejection of homosexuality and femininity, its need for power and control, all of it starts to seem… childish.

Big man hit rock with sledgehammer. Big man hit woman with fist. Big man. Who fucking cares?

He’d be ashamed that it took him so many months to see this, to realise that his embrace of manhood was just another habit, another way he was supporting the status quo as it had been presented to him all his life and not the natural, normal way of things, but that’d be a bit stupid, really; he always had the impression that the behaviour that was drilled into him was as natural as his chromosomes — hell, that it flowed directly from them — and you don’t drop a belief immediately if it’s one you've been indoctrinated into your whole life. What did he say about the sponsors before? That they think all men are evil or something? Well, maybe men aren’t evil, but they’re also not the only option. That much is obvious now.

So no, he’s not ashamed of how he was before. With one exception: Angelina. The way he tried to control her. Maybe he should look her up when he gets out. Maybe there’s a way he can contribute to supporting her and the kid. That’s his big flub, actually: man got scared that a woman was asserting herself and her rights over him, so he asserted himself right back. Childish.

Hmm. Yeah. He should think about that more. Maybe Jane has some time free this afternoon? He can ask her what the orchi is going to be like while he’s at it.

“Hey,” someone says, “Raph? Are you there?”

He looks up. He’s been staring at this one bowl of Weetabix for fuck only knows how long — except that it’s become a bowl of gross-looking wheaty soup, which is a major clue — and now someone’s after him. A girl, by the sound of it.

He laughs; and just how long will voice be an accurate determiner of gender down here?

It’s Monica trying to get his attention, which is unusual. She hasn’t been down much since Declan was thrown out on his cauliflower ear. Internally shrugging, Raph shoves his unwanted Weetabix aside and stands, joining her at the door to the corridor, which she’s holding open with a foot while she beckons him.

Sometimes he’s glad she doesn’t hang out much; she’s built like a boxer — a lady boxer — and she’s the only one of all the sponsors Raph finds physically intimidating. Oh, Will tried to make a case for his girl, Tabitha, once or twice, but she’s just tall. Monica’s strong.

Shit. Leigh. And she. He should get better at that. It’s basically going to be his future, after all.

He stops a sensible, nonthreatening distance away from Monica and says, “What’s up?”

“You were enjoying your Weetabix that much, you couldn’t hear me?” she says, smirking.

“I was contemplating it.”

“Well, contemplate this: how mentally sturdy are you feeling right now?”

He can feel himself frowning. The question’s caught him off guard. And aren’t they supposed to be off-balance? Isn’t that the whole point of this place? “Uh,” he says, “one to ten? Maybe a six. Seven. Why?”

“Diana wants to see you,” Monica says.

 

* * *

 

Jane’s out in the hallway with Diana, watching the exchange, and she can’t stop herself from grinning when Raph responds to this the exact way no-one but her expected.

“Holy shit!” he exclaims. “Really?”

“Y—yes,” Monica stutters, but she recovers. “She’s waiting out there. Just didn’t want to—”

“I’m fine,” Raph says, flapping a hand. “I’m fine. Send her in!” In his exuberance, he finally notices Jane, hanging back, and he waves at her. “Morning!”

“Morning, Raph,” she says. To Diana, behind her, she says, “Ready?”

“Ready,” Diana says in that soft, rumbling voice of hers. It’s sweet that she’s trying to moderate the way she speaks even without training, though it does make her sound kinda like a boxing announcer took a shift narrating Swan Lake.

But yeah. Of course Raph was going to be excited. He’s been changing rapidly, and no-one else has really seen it. Well, okay, maybe some of the other girls down here have, but after he got out of the cells, after he encountered the new Steph and, shortly after, the new Bethany, he’s been fixing his attitude, and something like genuine curiosity has opened up in him. It surprised Jane at the time — not because she wasn’t expecting it, because she was, just not for another few months at least — but she’s used to it now, and she enjoys watching him befuddle everyone else.

Still, he’s a bit too light-hearted about it all now. She doesn’t want him pushing too far, too fast, and blowing up. But the collapse of basically every other masculine role model in the basement — Declan’s abrupt departure, Ollie’s descent into self-harm, Will’s very sudden realisation that everyone could see what a massive tool he was — has had the effect on Raph that Jane hoped.

He’s a chronic follower. A near-passive sponge for peer pressure. He just… has a bit of lag time, is all. With an understandable attachment to his testicles.

 

* * *

 

Diana remembers Raph — who she has to continually curb the temptation to call Raphael, because the confluence of syllables is just too wonderful — as the kind of guy you don’t really remember. Not tall, not short, and not bulky, either; he was fourth most buff guy in the basement more or less by default, since Steph, Bethany, Adam and Martin were all out of the running. Hair buzzed to his temples; Diana doesn’t even remember the colour. Scratchy stubble of the sort that shows but doesn’t ever amount to anything; even before the Goserelin, Raphael was never going to be a guy who could grow an impressive beard.

Seeing him now, then, is a shock. And not the same shock she had when she first saw Steph again, or even Leigh, because Raph is supposed to be more like her, or more like she used to be: a regular guy caught by Dorley. Monica’s talked about him with her, called him a ‘manipulator’, and so Diana probably ought to brace herself for a barrage of bullshit or whatever, but she finds herself unable to think about much else, because…

Well.

Were Raphael’s eyes always so pretty?

They’re nothing special, really. Brown, like Diana’s. But Raph’s a shade or so darker than her, even after all this time underground, and something about the complementary colours just makes his eyes stand out, makes them seem to shine.

“Holy fucking shit!” Raph says as Monica steps aside and Diana walks through the door into the common room. “Look at you!”

Yeah. Look at her. Look at her all slack-jawed and staring. She tries her best to get something out. “Hi,” she says, and she becomes aware she’s tilting her head at him. It doesn’t help that she’s taller, and has to look down on him. “You, uh… You look different.”

Very articulate, Diana. Declan would be proud.

Except Raph does look different! His hair’s longer, of course, being maybe three inches long, but the main thing is his cheeks. They seem rounder, and they fill out his face in a way that feels like they were always meant to, like Raph was just too bony before. They make his smile sweeter, his eyes crinklier, and— Diana runs out of coherent thoughts. He just looks good.

“Yeah, well,” Raph says, “it’s the injections, innit? And talk about me… Shit, man. You’re all—” He doesn’t finish the sentence, and instead mimes Diana’s most obvious, stand-out feature around his chest. He uses both arms to do so, at their fullest extension.

“Please, Raph,” she says, “not ‘man’. I’m trying to leave all that behind.”

She worries suddenly that he’ll judge her for that, but this Raph is not the one she was expecting. “Oh,” he says, “yeah, sure, sure. I mean, wow.” He looks her up and down. “I mean, Leigh said she saw you yesterday, but she didn’t go into detail… I suppose it would have taken up all of movie night.”

“You have movie nights now?”

“Yeah. You wanna stay? We could do another one. Maybe watch that cheerleader show Bethany’s obsessed with, if we can get her and Steph to come back downstairs.”

“Goodness gracious,” Diana mutters, and then she shakes her head and smiles at Raph. “Shit. Sorry. Trying too hard.”

“‘Goodness gracious’?”

They’re walking slowly across the concrete floor now, and Diana sits at one of the metal tables. Declan sat here. Declan had this view…

“I’m trying not to be Declan,” she says as Raph sits opposite her. “And sometimes I try too hard.”

Shrugging, Raph replies, “Declan would never have said ‘goodness gracious’. Not unless he could do that weird half-singing thing he used to do.” And then he catches Diana’s eye. “Oh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. And I still do that. I always loved how words sound. I was just ashamed of it. You’re not supposed to, as a bloke.”

“Yeah, well,” Raph says, “you know what I realised?” He nods at Monica and Jane. “Around here, blokes don’t win. So you might as well do all the things you always wanted to.”

“Oh? What are you doing?”

Raph looks uncomfortable. “Uh, TBA. I haven’t got that far yet. Still working on it, right? I’m not Steph. I’m not even Bethany. And I’m definitely not you.”

Taking a risk, Diana reaches over and pats Raph on the back of his hand. “Neither was I,” she says. And then she laughs, withdrawing her hand and leaning on it. “Everything changes, doesn’t it?”

“Martin hasn’t,” Raph says. He didn’t react to her touching his hand, and now she’s burning to know: did he control his reaction, or does he just not care? “Well, actually, since you were here, he’s changed, I guess. Like, he’s not all depressing any more. Hmm. Oh! Ollie. He’s still Ollie.” He frowns. “Uh, maybe don’t go see him.”

“Yeah. I heard about what happened.”

“Still wondering if he’s going to wash out, like you did. Him or— Shit, that’s right! You know who hasn’t changed? Adam. I assume. He doesn’t really leave his room.”

“Oh.”

“When he does, he’s usually mumbling. What happens when you wash out, anyway? I think Beth thought you got turned into hamburgers, but clearly you didn’t, so spill.”

“I never got that far,” Diana says. “To the burger stage, I mean. I was kidnapped. Again. But if I’d made it, I got the feeling I’d be working for Peckinville, but in what capacity, I have no idea.”

“Fair, fair,” Raph says, and snorts with amusement. “I don’t know what’s weirder, seeing you all hot like Wonder Woman or hearing you say things like ‘in what capacity’.”

Diana can’t help it. “You really think— Like Wonder Woman?” She’s smiling like an idiot.

Raph, thankfully, smiles back at her, his plump cheeks pinking. “Yeah, I mean… Yeah. The one from the cartoons, not the movies. The better one. Hey.” He leans forward. “Do you like looking like that?”

And there, Diana’s smile collapses. “That’s complicated,” she says. “I’m learning to. I wish I didn’t sound like this, though. I feel conspicuous enough, and then I open my fucking mouth.”

“You make it work,” Raph insists.

“You’re sweet.”

Raph blinks at her, and then smiles more broadly. “Shit, I am, aren’t I? Fuck. Cool.”

Diana takes this opportunity to redirect the conversation. “How are you doing, Raph? Last time we spoke, I was… Well. You know what I was talking about. And then Steph hit me. Which I deserved.”

Raph looks down. Starts playing with the spoon in what looks like it was once a bowl of Weetabix. “Yeah. Shit. Yeah. Not a good memory, that. And I don’t mean your pratfall,” he adds, waving a hand. “Jane replayed the conversation to me. A lot. Made me look her in the eye while I listened to myself laugh. That fucks you up, you know? Because I never really thought about it before. Like, you’re just joking around with the lads, aren’t you? Present company excepted, et cetera. But that’s it, isn’t it? It’s just what you do. Hot girl with big tits walks past, you all holler. Your mate’s talking about the slag he banged last night, you go, ‘Way ayyy,’ and you ask if he did her up the jacksie. And a guy’s joking about… about that, and you laugh. And you don’t even laugh because it’s funny. You laugh because the lads are all laughing. You laugh because it’s what you do. And I never thought about it before then. Not really.” He twirls the spoon around, takes it out, puts it in his mouth, licks it clean of milk. Diana’s torn between thinking about what he said and watching the spoon as slides back out from between his lips. “That’s a lie,” he continues. “O’course I thought about it. I imagine we all did. Because you know it’s wrong, don’t you? You don’t joke about that when a bird might hear you. Like, a bird you know, like your mum or your cousin or a girl you want to pull. You know, but you laugh anyway.”

“Because it’s what you do,” Diana says.

Raph puts the spoon down. “Yeah. Shit.” He shakes his head. “When you think about it, men are bastards, aren’t we? Oh. Present company.”

“No, no,” Diana says, “we are.” She breathes out, long and slow, thinking of two men in particular: the one she’s running from, and the one who broke her. “We really fucking are.”

She must be showing her emotions on her face again, because Raph leans forward. “Diana,” he says, “what happened to you?”

She should hold it together. She shouldn’t speak. But here’s Raph, with his pretty eyes and his genuine concern, and she can see all the little ways the estrogen’s worked on him so far, same as with Steph, and now that she’s met God only knows how many Dorley girls she can see how it’s going to keep working on him, how he’s slowly going to become more like Monica. More like Jane.

Slowly, and not all at once.

“Fuck,” she says quietly. “Sorry, Raphael. Really. But you’re so fucking lucky. I want you to know that. You’re so fucking lucky. You get to be here. You get to take your time about this. You can ask all the difficult fucking questions of yourself that you need to. You— Shit. Sorry. I can’t do this.”

Diana makes to stand, but Raph’s holding her wrist. Not firmly. Just enough to say stay.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Raph says quickly.

Another deep breath. “I think I do,” she says. “You know, I was scared to come back down here? Scared it would bring Declan back. That I’d look around this place and he’d— Stupid. Because I look at this place, I look at you, and I’m just jealous. I wish I’d got my shit together while I was still down here. I wish I was you, Raph. I wish I’d had time. But I had to make a… a hard break. A quick one. And it was really fucking messy.” She laughs without humour. “There’s all these old bits of me all around. Old instincts, old habits, old thoughts. I have to be careful all the time. Jake might have killed Declan, but I have to kill him again, a bit at a time, every day.”

“Jake?”

“He raped me.” Too blunt. But she can’t not be. Not about this. Not if she’s going to talk about it. “More than that. He controlled me. He was one of the military guys, the men the old woman had watching over us. And he couldn’t have Trevor, but he was allowed to have me. Like I was a toy. Shit.” She’s been trying not to cry, but it’s still all so present, so recent, and less and less buried every time she thinks about it. And the injections don’t help. Too many damn emotions, all the time. “Sorry.”

With that, Raph’s out of his chair. He walks up to her, holds out his arms. “I’m not very good at this,” he says, “but if you want…”

Yeah. She wants. She stands into his arms, and they hug. Gingerly, like either of them could break the other. Like neither of them knows precisely what the code is in this situation.

“You could stay,” Raph says as they hug. “If you wanna go slow, you could stay. Get your old room back. Or live upstairs, I guess.”

“I can’t,” she says. “I’ve had a clean break, like I said. And even if there are bits of Declan everywhere, I’m not who I was when I came here. I can’t stay locked up.” She leans away from him and smiles. She must look stupid. Makeup everywhere. “I’m still working out who Diana is. And who she isn’t. And to do that, I need to spend time around people. Lots of people. And I need… I need Chia.”

“Who is—?”

“She took me in. And, um, no-one else knows about her? So—”

“Secret,” Raph says. “Got it.”

“So,” Diana says, sniffing, “I can’t stay. But I will come back.” She smiles again, feeling clearer. Feeling emptier, and freer of Declan than ever. Look directly at the devil and he flees. “Maybe I’ll come back for movie night.”

“Bring something sexy. They won’t let us watch anything too sexy.”

“No promises,” Diana says.

“Take care, Diana,” Raph says.

They embrace once more, and then Diana makes her excuses. She was going to say goodbye to Leigh, too, but she thinks she’ll just leave a message with Tabitha. And she’ll go fix her face and she’ll get a ride home with Monica.

But first she’ll walk slowly and unsteadily out of the basement, away from the boy with the pretty eyes.

 

* * *

 

As a child, Beatrice didn’t travel with her mother. They didn’t have the money for a car, and Bea’s mum was perpetually flipped between working all the hours God sent for barely enough money to put food on the table and, more often, saving every last penny from the dole and going without to make sure Beatrice herself — or her mother’s son, at any rate; a vastly different person — got something to eat. So she doesn’t have a reference for what awkward family outings are like, beyond what she’s seen on the television.

This, she thinks, undoubtedly counts.

She would be driving, if she were allowed, but Elladine’s paranoia has been escalating lately, and Bea would have had to use the GPS to get them to this facility — an unacceptable security risk, apparently; something to do with needing to be online to use it in every car Beatrice has access to — so instead the woman from Elle’s personal retinue drives, with the air of a put-upon father who has only not turned the car around and taken them home because those tickets to Disneyland were expensive. Beatrice sits in the passenger seat, frowning, wondering whether to turn on the radio to break the uncomfortable silence, but ultimately concluding that she is unwilling to risk annoying the driver further by putting any of her theories on how to operate the complicated-looking touchscreen interface to the test.

In the back, Trevor and Valérie glare out of their respective windows, and Frankie sits in the middle, belted only around her lap, grinning at Beatrice whenever she catches her eye in the pull-down vanity mirror, and reminding Bea of nothing so much as a naughty child, struggling against the confines of their booster seat, remaining quiet only until the moment they have judged to be the most optimally irritating at which to ask to stop for a wee.

Valérie hadn’t wanted to come. That’s the crux of it. Her time at Stenordale is over, she said, and she has no wish to revisit it. She made the point, quite reasonably, Bea thought, that Trevor and Frankie had just as much knowledge of Dorothy’s recent movements as she, and that the only information she possessed that they didn’t was related to aspects of upkeep for a manor house that has since burned to ashes. But Elle needs Valérie, and so Beatrice was bound to insist.

And then Valérie wanted to stay at the hall. Again, quite reasonable. And she raised again her objections when their blacked-out Range Rover left the county and started north, taking Valérie far away from what passes these days for her comfort zone. And so Bea was forced to explain that Elle has become concerned that her movements are being watched by elements of Silver River. For now, she prefers to keep her location secret, and surround herself with people she trusts. To which Valérie had said that she had been kept in one place for decades by people allied to Silver River and somehow is still alive, and that Ms Lambert should perhaps toughen the fuck up.

Trevor said something about operational security, and that Elle was clearly making sensible moves, to which Valérie only swore. And then Frankie had come in with, “Don’t shit-talk the money,” and an argument began. An argument which petered out some five minutes later — five minutes which felt to Beatrice like five hours — in a stalemate, with no-one’s grievances adequately addressed.

They’ve been living with this for too long. For Bea, having Valérie back is a miracle, but Valérie herself has been more reserved, more pragmatic. And well she might be, after so many decades of entrapment. They have argued about it more than once, about Val’s inability to settle down, to dedicate herself emotionally to a new life, and the last time Bea broached the subject, Val spat out, “J’attends constamment l’inévitable catastrophe, Béatrice!” and left for the roof, to bum a smoke off of one of the cis girls who habitually lurk there.

Lord only knows what excuse Valérie gave them for her presence. After such an argument, Beatrice was loath to ask.

Mostly it’s been wonderful having her back. But a part of Valérie still resides in the ruins of Stenordale, just as for the longest time, a part of Beatrice was still trapped below the hall. It’s been Bea’s hope that this upcoming debriefing might help Valérie reclaim that part of her, might allow her to purge Dorothy’s hold over her psyche. Might allow her finally to move on from surviving to living.

But Val has been against it. And Beatrice hasn’t wanted to ask the inevitable question, the one which crowds her thoughts whenever they discuss the matter, for fear of enraging her.

Who are you, Valérie Barbier, without your pain?

Fifteen miles of silence later, Valérie speaks again.

“I will speak with her, Béatrice,” she says. “I will tell your Ms Lambert everything she wants to know. I will relive it all. Every grisly moment of it. For if it brings me one inch closer to Dorothy, if it allows me eventually to grip her with my hands and choke the life from her, it will be worth it. So I will talk to her. I will be debriefed. And then, I think, Béatrice, I should like to go home.”

Bea nods. By ‘home’, she doesn’t mean the hall. She can mean only one place.

“I’ll take you,” Bea says. “Whenever you want to go.”

“Immediately, I think.”

“Immediately, then.”

In her head, she’s already running through the logistics of it — they’ll need to get her a passport, for one thing — and they are complex enough that she almost misses Valérie’s smile. It’s gone almost immediately, and she returns to gazing out of her window, but the tension is gone from her.

“You kids are adorable,” Frankie says, and she mimes grasping someone by the throat and shaking them, then sticks her tongue out, lolling her head as if dead.

“Shut up, Frankie,” Valérie says, without looking around.

Frankie nods and sits in silence for a moment. Frowning. Thinking. Planning, possibly, to apologise. Eventually, she crosses her arms and with great ceremony says, “Is it a bad time to ask to pull over somewhere? I need a wee.”

 

* * *

 

Several of the others have come and gone. Martin’s showed up, read his book for a while, been intercepted by Pamela, and vanished back to his room to do whatever it is they do in there when no-one else is around. Remonstrate about his vehicular murder, maybe. Competitive sulking?

Steph and Bethany both showed their faces. Steph pretended like they hadn’t been upstairs in the lap of luxury, and when Raph very clearly didn’t believe her, she gave him two croissants and some butter, which basically made up for it. Leigh was out of his room just long enough to fetch a bowl of cereal and say hi. And Ollie passed by on his way to the shower; they’re greeting each other by name again now, without swearing, which is progress. Progress on Ollie’s part, anyway. He might still be a complete fuckwit, but he’s showing it less.

And Raph’s sat here, chewing on his buttered croissants, drinking from the mug of tea Jane brought him — in a mug decorated with a silhouette of a woman, posing mid-song and holding a small device where she might otherwise be holding a microphone, and captioned, TASER SWIFT. Thinking it through.

Really thinking it through.

Because when he puts aside everything else, when he stops congratulating himself on his own insight and intelligence, and even when he stops returning continually to Angelina, to the letter he got from her, to the shock of recognition he got even back then when he read it, a shock which he had to put away immediately lest it consume him, control him, change him…

Shit. He’s getting off-topic.

The thing is.

Declan’s hot now.

He’s hot.

Declan, the most belligerent of all of them, the stupidest, the one who attacked his own fucking belly with a spoon, was dragged away, subjected to a kind of torture Raph finds it difficult to think about, and returned as Diana. And Diana’s striking, because she’s beautiful, with massive tits and—

And that’s not what actually struck Raph. Which, good thing, because if one of those hit him in the face—

Jesus Christ. Is he actually fucking allergic to thinking about anything seriously? Smartest one here? Raph might actually be the stupidest. Bar Ollie, obviously, because even in the momentary depths of self-criticism, Raph’s never going to put himself that low.

No.

What struck Raph was that Diana’s happy. She’s confident. Oh, sure, her happiness is brittle and her confidence is at least half fake and she’s very clearly haunted by everything that happened to her, but she’s doing it, isn’t she? She’s out there every day, making the best of her bizarre accelerated transition, talking to people in a voice that still sounds like Declan’s while looking like that. And she went back out there to continue doing all that shit.

She’s not just happy and confident. She’s almost inconceivably brave.

Shit.

He admires her.

He really, truly admires her.

Declan Shaw. Imagine that.

No, Diana Rosamond now, isn’t it? That’s what Jane said.

Fuck. Is he going to have to come up with a new name, too? Yeah. Yeah, he’s going to have to, isn’t he? He’s going to be a new person. A new woman. The itchy spots on his chest will eventually become breasts. His face, already subtly different, will continue to change. And he’ll grow his hair out, because he likes girls with long hair. And he’ll wear nice clothes, because he likes girls who dress nice.

And he’ll find Angelina and apologise. She’s a nurse now, apparently. She might not kill him, especially if he shows her his tits first.

Shit. Fucking shit. It’s all real. It’s not a joke, it’s not a hypothetical, and it’s not going to go away. It’s real, and it walked out of here with size WTF breasts and a smile he can’t stop thinking about.

One thing to accept that he cannot change his future. To stop inserting pointless friction into his life. To take the easy road. To make jokes and laugh along with it all. To become something like friends with Jane, because she’s nice and she seems worth it.

Another to know that it’s not going to be easy. To see in Diana the pain this has caused her, the grief. To see her smile anyway, despite how much she still has to do.

She’s out there.

She’s happy.

Or she’s working on it.

“Fucking hell,” he whispers.

This is going to be so much fucking work.

 

* * *

 

Jane’s relaxing on the common room couch by the door, going through the minutes from a recent meeting she had to miss, when Raph suddenly stands up from the metal table he’s been sitting at. He’s whispering something and frowning, and it feels like he’s looking at something only he can see, something which occupies him so much that when Jane locks her tablet, dumps it on the couch and goes over to him, he doesn’t notice her until she taps his elbow.

“Oh,” he says, briefly stiffening. “Hi.”

Huh. He seems guarded. Not like him. Or not like him lately. She’s been waiting for this: the cascade moment, when everything becomes too much, when he can no longer sustain the air of frivolity that replaced his prior self, the one that fought back. The one that hated her.

“Raph?” she says. She keeps it gentle, inquisitive. The last thing she wants is to—

And then he laughs. “Wow,” he says, looking properly at her, grinning broadly. “Shit,” he says, and now he’s looking skyward, as if consulting God, or perhaps Beatrice. “Christ,” he says, looking back to her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was just— Wow. That was a conversation, wasn’t it?”

“With Diana?”

He nods emphatically. “She’s got it all figured out, hasn’t she? Off she goes one day, back she comes the next, with— Hey, was that a wig, do you know? Or did she get hair extensions?”

“Um.” Jane’s caught off guard. “I doubt it was a wig. Grandmother always liked to do things that weren’t easily undone.”

“Grandmother. Huh. Yeah. God. You’ve got to tell me all about that, okay?”

“It’s… Well, it’s pretty fucked up, Raph.”

He takes her arm and starts walking them towards the door to the corridor. And Jane could do a number of things in this situation — the handbook would permit her to zap him with her stun gun, tase him while he’s on the floor and throw him back into the cells just for touching her without permission — but she chooses to go with him. Raph’s thinking, it seems.

“I wanna know,” he says. “I don’t care how fucked up it is. If it happened to Dec, I wanna know. How he became her. And you, too.”

“Grandmother didn’t—”

“Oh. Shit. No.” He takes them down the corridor, back towards the bedrooms. “Sorry. Fuck. I just mean, how did you do it? What made it work for you?”

“‘It’?” she asks. She can guess, but it’s a fairly major rule that you don’t let them get away with implying things; when they’re actualising, they’re supposed to say so.

“This!” he exclaims, placing his thumb on the reader outside his room. “You! The whole girl thing.”

“Where are you going with this, Raph?”

He takes them into his room but he doesn’t shut the door. She does, toeing it closed, preferring privacy — his and hers — but she taps the alert button she carries in her pocket, so the women on duty upstairs will make sure to pay attention to the cameras in here until she taps it again.

“Look.” He drops onto his bed, pulls his legs up under him to sit cross-legged, and leans back on his arms. “Diana proves it, doesn’t she? Becoming a woman is objectively a viable option. Not just the only option, but actually doable. Because if Dec can manage it, then so can I, right? Fuck,” he adds, looking down, “I should tell Ollie. Either he’ll listen to me or he’ll get really upset. Honestly, either’s a win.”

He seems a little manic. Thoughts running away from him. Possibilities suddenly crowding his mind.

Good.

“I mean,” she says, “you’re right. Becoming a woman is a viable option. I did it. Diana’s doing it. So can you.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. But I mean mechanically, what’s next?” He tilts his head, thinking. “What’s the orchi like?”

“Um. Well, it’s— They numb you and they go in with a scalpel and cut out the…” Jane twirls a hand in the air; she always forgets the technical words for these things. “The ball bits,” she finishes.

“Do they leave the sacks?”

“Yes. But they sort of shrivel.”

“Huh. Huh. Weird. Weird. Okay.” He nods to himself a few times. “What about bras?”

“Bras.”

“What about them?”

“What,” Jane says, “like, in general, or…?”

“When do we start wearing them? When did you start wearing them? How do you do that thing where you leave your top on but you take off your bra? I still remember the first time I saw a bird do that; I was well impressed. Like a magic trick. Can you show me?”

“Raph! I’m not showing you my bra!”

“I don’t mean show me on you,” he says. “I mean…” And for the first time since he stood up at the metal table, he slows down. He leans forward and takes her hand; once again, she does not tase him. “I want to know how to put one on.”

She frowns. “You just kind of—”

“No, I mean, I want to know how to put on one well. And take it off again. And how to do the thing with the top. I saw Steph struggling with hers once in the shower room, and I don’t want to be bad at wearing a bra. You get that, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, “I do.” She sits next to him on the bed. “I once practised putting on and taking off a bra for a whole afternoon. Didn’t want to look like an idiot.”

“Right,” he says. “Right. You get me. Show me?”

“Sure, Raph,” Jane says. “I’ll show you how to put on a bra.”

“Show me everything,” Raph says. “Hey, I don’t quite have twenty-twenty; could I get glasses?”

She’s half up from the bed again, and when she looks back at him she sees nothing but innocence on his face.

“You’re not still fixated on being a hot librarian, are you?” she says.

“You don't think that sounds fun? Standing up from behind the desk at the library with a short skirt on, adjusting your glasses with your little finger, pulling a pencil out of your bun and having your hair slowly bounce down around your shoulders? Bending over to stack books, climbing ladders to reach the high shelves. And all the men can do is watch and not touch… Or so they think.”

“Raph? Do you like men?”

There’s a slight crease to his eyebrows as he appears genuinely to consider the question. “Dunno. Never tried.”

 

* * *

 

Monica pulls the Kia into an empty spot on the street Diana’s directed her to. She’s been directing her since they left Almsworth, and Monica’s had to restrain her disbelief that Diana, the woman who grew out of the monster who was Declan, has settled in Cherston-on-Sea, of all places. It’s the kind of town Tabitha calls ‘a tourist trap with a busted mechanism’; a run-down echo of fifties seaside family fun. There’ll be a shop somewhere on the promenade that sells rock candy and postcards of apple-cheeked white families all wearing red-and-white-striped swimwear.

With the car locked up, Diana leads her across the road, to one of a dozen terraced houses, done up smartly and recently repainted. It is, Monica notes, bemused, a bed and breakfast. Has she been staying here? With what money?

“Wait here, please,” Diana says. She’s returned to her clipped, breathy and slightly formal voice, the one she was using when Monica and Frankie first met her to bring her back. Is this where she learned to speak like that?

Monica loiters while Diana pushes open the front door. It’s the kind of front door that just has to make a sad little jingle sound when it opens, and it does, exactly as Monica expects. She controls a little laugh.

What she doesn’t expect is the woman who meets Diana practically at a run, and who would sweep her up in her arms if Diana wasn’t so much taller than her.

“Diana!” she exclaims, hugging her. “It’s good to see you back. Now, I’m sorry, but— Oh! And who is this?”

Diana, extracting herself from the woman’s grip, steps aside. “Chiamaka, this is Monica. She’s—”

“I’m from an agency,” Monica says quickly. “We specialise in these kinds of cases.”

“Well, I’ll be,” the woman named Chiamaka says, grinning broadly. “Well, come on up, then.”

Feeling strangely adolescent, Monica stuffs her hands in her jeans pockets and walks up the steps to where Chiamaka and Diana are waiting for her. Diana, damn her, is grinning like a maniac. Ball’s on the other foot.

Hmm. Pick another pithy phrase, Monica.

“Hi,” she says, presenting herself.

“Monica,” Chiamaka says. “From an agency.”

“Yes.”

“…Called?”

“Oh,” Monica says. “New Beginnings.” One of Elle’s people picked that name years ago, because any given English-speaking country in the world contains at least fifty agencies, organisations, clubs, companies, etc. named some variation on New Beginnings. It is, unless you are stupid enough to be cornered into giving more information, very difficult successfully to Google. “We’re going to make sure Diana’s taken care of.”

“I’m the one who takes care of her, Monica. But I would welcome your help.” She leans forward and whispers, “She’s been through it.”

“I know.”

“Good!” Chiamaka rubs her hands together. “Then you’ll be happy to mind the desk while I’m out, yes?”

“What?” Monica says, trying not to sound as stupid as she feels. It doesn’t help that Diana’s still grinning at her.

“The desk. I was just about to run some errands, since I didn’t expect Diana here back until later. And I’d rather not leave her to mind the place on her own after spending a few days away, so… do you mind?”

Vigorously shaking her head, Monica says, “No, no, I don’t mind.”

“Excellent!” Chiamaka says, and she reaches out for Diana, draws her in for another hug. “I won’t be long, sweetheart. Watch her, now, won’t you?”

“I will, Chia,” Diana says.

And with that, the woman’s gone, shutting the door with its tacky little jingling sound, leaving Diana and Monica alone in the lobby. Diana’s already moving towards the desk, opening a ledger and running her finger down handwritten notes.

“Good,” she says. “No-one’s leaving until later. Would you like a cup of tea, Monica?”

“Um,” Monica says. Diana’s indicating a chair at the desk, one which will place Monica right in the line of fire of any holidaymakers who might come through the front door, holidaymakers who inexplicably haven’t gotten the message about Cherston-on-Sea yet. “Would I?”

“I think you would.”

“Diana?” Monica says, sitting down. “Does— Does she normally just recruit people like this?”

“Yes,” Diana says, “she does.”

And then she’s gone, to the kitchen, presumably, and Monica’s sat there on her own, unaccountably nervous, watching the front door carefully, in case it jingles again.

 

* * *

 

Father used to talk about addicts. About how you could see the mercy of the Lord in their shakes, in their pallid skin, in the darkness of their eyes as they recovered. They’d host them on the farm sometimes, having placed adverts in the local paper. Tough love for your teen.

Adam always hated it when they ran an addiction camp. The temptation to speak with the newcomers was difficult to suppress, and they told him things he didn’t understand, acted as if he ought to be familiar with the world they inhabited. When they were lucid, when they were able to help with the chores, they spoke of the godless life like it was an ordinary thing.

He used to pity them. Used to imagine they turned to the drugs that had such a hold on them because they had a void to fill, that a life without the Voice, without the Lord, was as empty as Father always claimed. And it was an easy thing to believe. See how they moan! See how they beg for release!

Now, as he shakes, as he shudders with hunger and fear and confusion, he wonders if they were allowed onto the farm solely to show Adam and his brothers the peril of straying from the path, of abandoning the Lord, of denying the Voice. He was manipulated, Edy said, his entire life. Handed truths accepted by no-one outside their little church and made to believe them with everything he had. Made to press those beliefs on others.

The point was never to help other people, Edy said. The point was to control him. And everything was part of it.

She knows too much.

She knows everything.

And he knows nothing. Which, suddenly, feels disgusting.

Adam, drenched with sweat, barely able to move without his weak limbs betraying him, but determined nonetheless to leave this damned room, makes it onto his feet.

He needs to talk to her.

He needs to get out of this room.

 

* * *

 

It’s nowhere Trevor’s been before. It’s not Peckinville headquarters, which is relatively grand, and it’s not the barracks where he was last stationed, which was a place that could possibly have provided the dictionary illustration for the word ‘squalid’. The driver dropped them off outside what looks for all the world like an ordinary office park, and as another Peckinville staffer — a man, this time — leads them through a rabbit warren of nondescript buildings and prefab additions, Trevor struggles to spot anything that says, to his somewhat experienced eye, that this is a military facility.

And then, he realises, that’s probably because it isn’t. The Peckinville group of companies is more than just its private military arm; these are probably the offices of a firm that imports laser printers or sells insurance or something.

The staffer takes them finally to a subsidiary building, just three storeys tall, which like the rest of the complex shows no sign of being anything other than what it appears to be. Not until they are two doors deep, and the staffer switches from a swipe card to a combination of thumbprint and code to get through suddenly much heavier doors and down a short flight of stairs, to a secondary check-in area, staffed with the kinds of people Trevor’s been expecting to see all along.

He should have worn a uniform. He feels even more out of place here, in his baggy sportswear, than he does back at the hall.

Is everyone staring at him?

Everyone will definitely be staring.

Except, he realises, no, they aren’t. The woman at the desk is conducting a quiet conversation with Beatrice, and Val and Frankie are standing about awkwardly. No-one’s paying him any attention, except to nod in his direction when Bea confirms his name.

The woman at the desk hands him a visitor lanyard, and another woman, their third escort of the day, takes them to an elevator at the far end of the lobby.

He expects it to take them down, into some kind of basement war room, but instead it takes them up two floors. Makes sense, when he thinks about it: the dead centre of the building. Probably reinforced.

Trevor’s still a little disappointed that there isn’t a basement war room, though. There could have been wall-spanning screens covered in maps.

Out of the elevator, it’s a short walk to a conference room, and there, sitting at the table, waiting for them, is Elle Lambert.

He feels strangely like he ought to salute. Instead he follows their escort inside, takes the seat that is offered him, and accepts a cup of tea from the attendant. He half-expects it to come in a mug with a military-themed joke on it — Don’t ask to see my privates, they’re small and disappointing — and decides he’s been spending way too much time at Dorley Hall.

He sips anyway. It’s terrible, and there, with scalding-hot tea that tastes as if the bag has been used at least once before, he feels comfortable for the first time. They used to live on this stuff.

“Beatrice,” Ms Lambert says. “Welcome.” She’s not smiling, though she’s not unfriendly. “And Ms Barbier, I’m glad you were able to join us.”

Val’s sat down opposite Trevor, and she meets his eyes before she replies. “Let’s just get this over with,” she says.

“Very well.” Ms Lambert’s got a clicker in one hand, and she raises it. Before she does anything, though, she says loudly, “The room, please.”

Every member of staff files out, leaving Ms Lambert, Bea, Trevor, Val and Frankie in the massive conference room, made small and insignificant by its emptiness. With a flourish, Elle taps the clicker, and the lights go out. A screen against the far wall — almost as large as the war-room screens Trevor imagined — lights up. Blank white, for now.

“Elle,” Beatrice says, “what’s going on? I thought we were just here for you to debrief Valérie and the others.”

“That can come later,” Ms Lambert says. She wears a locket on a gold chain around her neck, a tiny thing the size of a thumbnail, and she hasn’t stopped playing with it since they arrived. She rolls it between the fingers and thumb of her free hand. “First, I have news. News I dared not share even over secure channels.”

She taps the clicker again, and an image flicks up on the screen. It’s a drone shot, washed-out in the way photographs taken from high altitude with rugged cameras usually are, and what it shows is initially, to Trevor, unintelligible.

Valérie recognises it immediately. “That is the manor at Stenordale,” she says levelly.

“Yes,” Ms Lambert says. “Excavation of the ruins has been ongoing, and we have largely been able to control the proceedings. Less so than we hoped, but more than we expected. Silver River made a bid, but they are a military organisation only, whereas we are multifaceted.” She ought to sound triumphant at this, but instead she sounds tired. She’s still rolling her little locket in her fingers. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to keep the police entirely at bay, and though we were able to remove much that is… incriminating, there has been a rather unfortunate revelation.”

The clicker again. The image zooms in on the ruins of the central quad, partially excavated. Across from Trevor, Valérie gasps and covers her mouth.

“No…” she whispers.

Finger bones just visible in the dirt. A skull, smashed, probably to make identification more difficult. But a body still, partially exhumed. And another. And another.

“I’m afraid so,” Ms Lambert says. “The ruins of Stenordale Manor are now the site of a murder investigation.”