She sat on the steps just upstream of the bridge. Two hours now, as the Ouse roiled and surged round the old stone and debris span in the eddies. Soon, perhaps, the flood markers in the pub downstream would need another notch, and the gardens to her right would be submerged. Winter rains, winter floods, who gave a shit, really? All part of a world she had tried to engage with, that had spurned every attempt she had made to join. The light was fading slowly on a miserably grey and washed out February afternoon, and as it went, so would she. There was only so much strength given to a person, she thought, and when that was gone, so were they.

Give it a little longer and the tourists would have pissed off from their rounds of the walls, the working-day traffic would have eased, and she would be able to slip away, slip in, unseen. She checked her handbag for the twentieth time and they were still there, the Valium pills she had managed to filch from her mother during that last abortive attempt at reconciliation.

“You know you can come home any time, Darren?”

“It’s not Darren. Mum, it’s Susie”

“I know what I christened my child, so don’t you dare tell me otherwise!”

“A fucking statutory declaration makes it otherwise!”

“Don’t you swear at me, I am your mother!”

And so on, and on, as it always had gone. She looked at the blister packs and counted them. Get enough of a buzz on to make it easy, get into the water before it got too effective. Let the shit and the cold do the rest. She wondered, just for a moment, why she had chosen such a popular spot, but that was it, the place was popular because it was lovely, and if she had to die, and oh yes indeed she had to, then it would be in a place she wanted to be worth a last sight.

Dying. Your life flashing across your mind’s eye as it happened, no, she didn’t need that. She had every moment etched into her soul like a scar, every cutting word, every instant of rejection, and especially Carol’s words the evening before.

“And why should I stay? Fuck me, if I wanted a fucking man I’d have gone for a real one, and you aren’t anything like, yeah? But I don’t want cock, never have, and why I ended up with such a dick, I don’t know. You need to get your fucking head round this: you are not a woman, you never have been, you never fucking will be, and why I ever took up with you, God alone fucking knows, so FUCK OFF AND DIE, GOT THAT?”

It was almost funny, in hindsight. Carol had fancied her because she was so obviously butch, and everything had gone well, and it was, for once, As Things Should Be, right up to the point where things could not be missed and…

The job. So she was ’a valued member of the team’, yeah, right. Right up to the point where a customer asked outright why her hands were so big. Then, all of a sudden, she was no longer ‘customer-facing’. It never ended. The hormones had worked some magic, but the list was too long, and they wanted to send her to London, to Hammersmith, and how the hell was she to finance regular trips like that? The train fares alone would leave her unable to eat in York, never mind a sandwich in bloody London. No, the Ouse was there, and the light was finally going. She popped out a pill.

There was a splash upstream, and a low cry, almost a gasp, and she started up. It was too early in the year for the fish that would leap in the Summer she had no intention of enduring. What the hell was it? She stuffed the pills back into her handbag and staggered to her feet, her backside numb from sitting so long on the cold concrete. There were lights in one of the boathouses nearby, but sod them. She ticked off upstream in her best shoes; live tranny, die young, leave a bloody ugly corpse.

He was just out from the bank, arms straight up, clinging to a branch, in suit and tie, and were those bloody medals the water was rippling over? Shit, what was he thinking, had he slipped? She tore off her good shoes and felt the mud ooze through the material of her tights as she edged down the bank. No steps here, nothing so fucking easy, the story of her life in one snapshot.

His face was just visible in the fading light, and he looked terrified. She eased herself down the bank, struggling to keep her footing. Shit, he must be in his seventies at least, what was he doing?

The answer came to her immediately. The same thing as her, of course, and probably for reasons that were superficially different but, in the end, exactly the bloody same. A shitty world, the end of strength.

“Give me your hand”

She had found a bush to cling to that seemed a little stronger than most, as he hung from a branch of a stunted tree, the water up to the second button of the clean white shirt he was wearing.

“Give me your fucking hand, you sod!”

All of a sudden he let go with his right hand and took hers, and the jerk took away her footing, and for an eternity she was hanging in the water with him, until her feet found the slope of the submerged embankment and she fought her way upright once more, the cold of the water slicing into her like a spray of razor blades. Three points of contact…she scrambled for height, and slowly, slowly, she dragged him out as she did herself. The wind flayed her, and she could hardly feel her feet, so what it must be like for him, she didn’t want to know.

He stank, that was her first thought, stank of alcohol, stank of gin, actually. He was in a grey suit, as far as she could tell given the failing light, and yes, that was a row of medals on his chest.

“You are fucking pissed, you bastard! Why are you out by the river in poxy February if you can’t walk straight?”

There was something in his expression that cut her more than the wind, and it was shame. “Shit, sorry, you…”

That was when her mouth ran away from her, like a wilful puppy. “Look, if, right, if you were, you know, doing…fuck, so was I. There’s only so much crap anyone can take, and my life…”

She stopped, embarrassed, and the old man looked hard at her, the shivering starting to take over his whole body.

“What fucking life? I just wish…I just wish I had the guts to do it properly. Bugger, I’m cold!”

“There’s lights in the boat club. Come on, you old bastard, I am freezing”

There were lights, and there were men working on a boat, and they had warm clothes to wrap them in, and a telephone, and she was soon with Gerald, for that was his name, in an ambulance rushing them on blues and twos to the hospital, which was, rather fortunately, not too far past the Minster. They were both in thermal blankets, and the crew were kind enough to leave them in peace.

“Why, Gerald?”

“You wouldn’t understand, lass”

“Susie. Try me”

He stared at her, really stared. “And what was your name?”

Oh, fuck, she thought, and sighed. “Darren, but that’s not who I am, not who I was supposed to be, so if it causes you any problems I can get out here and you can piss off on your own, OK?”

He looked away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way, aye?”

“OK…Gerald. As I said, try me”

That was an education. He told her a story, about things she thought she knew, about death and sacrifice…

“We got off OK, aye, none of the horrors the other blokes had, and we got off the beach after just a bit of hate, and that was fine, but then it started, and it was weeks and weeks, lass, and each day a mate went, sometimes more, and you kids….sorry, but please God you never have to be somewhere like that. And…and we had a dinner today, a regimental thing, so I got the gongs out, and I sat with the young’uns, and I thought, why am I here, and not Bill, and Ted, and Wilf, and all the other poor bastards I put in a hole outside that fucking airfield, the boys I heard burning, and I knew it was because I was a coward, and I sat there while they sang my praises, and I thought of the real heroes and felt these on my jacket…and I felt so bloody worthless, aye? Then, I got in the water, and it was so bloody cold, and I was so scared, and that’s me, isn’t it? Too scared to get killed, too cowardly to sort it out”

The eyes were watery and faded, but the fear still lived there, the doubt, the guilt. How could someone who had done such things feel such emotions?

“Bollocks. You might not know what you did but if you hadn’t…fuck, I wouldn’t be here, would I? Dear old Adolf didn’t have a soft spot for perverts, did he?”

There was a moment, just then, when something seemed to pass between them, and she saw, finally, the eyes of the man who had fought from Ouistreham to Flensburg, and carried the guilt of his survival untreated, unsupported, for so many decades.

“Lass…Susie…look, can we make a deal?”

“Eh?”

“Look, this might sound a bit daft…we used to do a thing called piling, stacking our rifles, aye? Trick is, it needs three, two fall over. Here’s my offer, aye? You and me, we lean on each other”

“You said two fall over”

“They do, but I have mates in Normandy. They’ve been there fifty years. More than enough for a bit of mutual support, aye?

“What are you asking…offering, Gerald?”

“Ah bugger it, lass, I am far too old for that, so don’t worry. Just a simple thing: we agree to keep an eye on each other, stop us doing owt daft when the days are short and the ghosts are calling”

“You offer that to me? A tranny, a pervert?”

One eyebrow rose. “No, to the young lady who just saved my life. Now, what do you think the food will be like at this hospital? Just for the future, it’s white, two sugars, OK?”

The last notes faded as the bugler lowered his instrument, and the coffin was lowered into the stark slot in the ground. Her husband held her close, a tissue ready for the tears that had fallen in waves as each surge of emotion had followed the brutal stages of Gerald’s funeral. She ran her hands over the rows of medals that covered her right breast. Memories…

A February evening, and a meeting in the cold and dark. Two lives saved.