The coloured lights were flashing and the bomp; bomp of the music was entering my very soul. Pinball Wizard reverberated around the confined area of the discothá¨que and Roger Daltrey’s incredibly loud vocals was making my head spin.

I was at a disco.

The coloured lights were flashing and the bomp; bomp of the music was entering my very soul. Pinball Wizard reverberated around the confined area of the discothá¨que and Roger Daltrey’s incredibly loud vocals was making my head spin.

In the dim lights I could see boys and girls dancing and gyrating around me. My head dropped and hair cascaded onto my face as I danced with my friends to that fantastic music. I glanced at my white mini skirt speckled with my sweat and the pink satin top; I felt so with it as this was me…young, free and alive!

If it was possible, the music got louder and the lights grew brighter. We danced crazily, sweat was running down the small of my back and I was as close to heaven as I could be. My heartbeat coincided with the beat of the music and I was more happy than I had ever been before. There was no past or future, this was now and I was living it!

I could just about see Tracy through the smoke, dancing with a boy over to my left. She had a cigarette in her mouth and the ash was cascading gently to the floor like snow as she tried to talk, laugh and take a drag all at the same time. She was wearing a short yellow skirt and top and she glowed in the spotlights like some sort of mini sun.

Rachel came up to me and started shouting in my ear. Her hair was a mess and she looked as hot as I felt. I couldn’t hear her. She mouth said something but I didn’t have a clue what she was saying.

She kept nudging me and then in the distance I heard her…

‘Wake up, Steph, you’re having a nightmare.’

My eyes snapped open and then closed hastily as the bright lights of the dorm drew me back from my lovely dreams to the cold hard reality which was now.

‘Aarrrhhhh.’ I said, wittily.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Phnnnn.’

‘Pardon?’

I cracked one eye open and saw a concerned Tracy looking t me.

I swallowed and tried to bring myself back to the present.

‘I’m OK,’ I croaked,

‘That’s good; I was getting a bit worried there. You were singing something off key and it sounded as if you were in pain.’

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, I could see that everyone had left and only Rachel was there. She was wearing a school uniform and I winced at the sight of her.

I know that I was no fashion expert, but to my somewhat limited eye, what she wore was beyond the pale. She was wearing a green pinafore dress that went down nearly to her ankles, a white round, soft collard blouse, with a big red ribbon instead of a tie. White long socks and shiny black shoes completed the outfit and I could say with certainty that she would not be winning any prizes for fashion. It might have looked OK in a nunnery, but this was the start of seventies for heavens sake!

‘Yuk.’ I said, once I had got my head around it.

She looked down and sort of grimaced.

‘I know what you mean. That’s not the end of it. The hat we have to wear is hideous and to top it all, there is a sort of cape we have to wear outside; a bit like a nurses cape but in the same sick colour as the dress. You’re lucky, you aren’t going to school yet, but if you do, you will have to wear this rubbish. I have to go to breakfast now. Will you be OK?’

‘Mmm.’ I said, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to dress like that any time soon.

Rachel left with a slight smile and a little wave and I found myself alone for the first time since I had arrived at the orphanage, come home.

I looked around for Teddy, but couldn’t find him!

Then I sat up and looked under the bed and there he was. How he got there, I wasn’t sure but he probably got chucked out when I was in the throes of my dream.

I reached down and grabbed him.

‘Sorry, Teddy.’ I said giving him a reassuring cuddle and then slipping him under the covers with me, I don’t know why I bothered because, as usual, his expression didn’t change and he just seemed to be above everything. Anyway, I was getting too old for teddies, so I just ignored him…a bit.

As I lay there, I reflected on my dream. It was weird that I dreamt as a girl and not a boy. I put it down to the fact that I was dressed as a girl and I was supposed to act like one…a subconscus thing I think they called it.

Thinking about things, it didn’t seem too bad, my life at the moment, I mean. I was in a place where people liked me and cared for me. I had made several friends…all right only one knew that I had more down below than I should have had, but still, it gave me a warm gooey feeling in my tummy to realise that I actually belonged somewhere, even if it was just for a short while.

I could hear the sound of laughter and doors banging from downstairs and I realised that the girls were going to school.

I quickly got up and wondered over to the window, shivering slightly in my bare feet and thin nightie.

I could see through the net curtains an old bus and everyone was getting on board. I grinned slightly as I saw the hats they had to wear and in those ridiculous capes they all looked like mini nurses; it was like something out of the fifties. Then I stopped grinning as I realised that if things were not worked out for me soon, I would be wearing the same. The thoughts of Australia now had a strange attraction to me for some funny reason.

I shivered again and decided to wash and get dressed. I needed to anyway as I had to see Sally and have my first girl lesson.

I put on my dressing gown and went into the bathroom. As it was quiet, I decided to have a bath. I turned the taps on and soon the water was filling the bath up. There was a bottle of pink gooey stuff on a shelf and on the side it said that it was bubble bath. On a whim, I put some in the water. The smell that wafted up was a bit perfumey but the soapy stuff smelt nice and it was soon bubbling up and making the water disappear under the suds.

I took off my dressing gown and nightie, turned off the taps and then, with a sigh, I got into the bath.

The water covered my body as I sank beneath the waves.

Bubbles went up my nose and I sneezed a bit, still, it was nice to relax for a while…

‘Stephanie!’

I jerked awake, realising in an instant that I had fallen asleep.

‘Er..hello?’

‘Are you in the bath.’

It was Sheila.

‘Yes…I won’t be long.’

‘That’s OK; I have to pop out to the shops. I’ll be about an hour. You can be ready by then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good girl; see you later.’

‘Bye.’

Eventually the water got a bit cold and the suds had mysteriously disappeared so I heaved myself up, pulled the plug out of the hole, grabbed a towel and dried myself off.

Once I was dry, I put on my dressing gown a picked up my somewhat stinky and sweaty nightie and went back into the dorm.

I wasn’t sure what to wear, not being a real girl, I had no sense of style and I just picked up the first thing to hand. A pale lilac dress caught my eye and I took it out of the wardrobe and put it on the bed. Opening the chest of drawers, I picked out the least frilly white panties and after taking off my dressing gown, slipped them up my thin, spindly legs. I then picked up the dress and put it over my head, then sort of wiggled into it.

After smoothing the dress down, I put on some white ankle socks and a pare of plimsolls that I found in the bottom of the wardrobe.

To finish, I dragged a brush through my hair and sort of teased it into what I thought was a girlie style.

I had just finished when I heard a sort of moaning sound behind me.

I turned around and I saw Sheila standing there with a look of horror on her face. She looked like she had just come out from a horror flick at the cinema and she hadn’t quite got over Vincent Price being nasty.

‘Oh…my…God!’

‘What?’

Her face was pale and she was trembling slightly. Was she ill?

‘You.’

‘Sorry?’

‘What are you wearing?’

‘Erm, clothes?’

She shuddered.

‘I can see that I have a lot of work to do. Strip off.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I said strip off. We are going shopping. You are in desperate need of girl shopping before its too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Yes, you need to look and be a girl as much as possible. Looking like that is a dead giveaway that you are not what you seem. Matron has told me that there is an informal governors inspection before tea tonight and if we don’t do something fast, we will be up to our necks in doo doo.’

‘Doo doo?’

‘I don’t need to paint a picture do I? I see that I do. You are a boy pretending to be a girl. Only a few people know about this. This home has close ties with the school and is partly funded by it. That’s why the girls go to the school in those yuckie uniformsl we are tied into it. You Stephanie, will probably have to go to that school. As usual, the council has cocked things up and not looked further than the end of its collective nose. If you are going to that school, we have to convince the head mistress…who by the way is more straight laced than the Mother Superior in The Sound Of Music… that you truly are as much of a girl as possible and that it is only as an accident of faith that you have been put into this position. If we don’t get this right, you will be taken away from here and the home, the council and everyone involved in this hare brained scheme will suffer. Now are you ready to change into something half decent so we can go shopping and make you into a little princess?’

I looked down at myself and realised that I should have been a tad more careful in what I put on. I didn’t want to leave this place and if that meant doing things that went against the grain, then so be it.

I just nodded and did as I was told. Who said truth was stranger than fiction?

To be continued...

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