Leslie went home that Sunday morning with a lightness in his step. After the discussion with the swimming group, he had decided to accept the job offer, even if Corrine did have him by the short and curlies.

At that moment, her offer was the only thing on the table. It was an awful lot better than the alternative of hanging on where he was and hoping that he escaped the next round of headcount reduction. He felt that the odds of that were pretty slim.

He chuckled to himself as he thought that if it didn’t work out, Corrine should be able to find him a new job. The prospects of advancement with his current employment were decidedly bleak. Nine months before, his current job had both interest and opportunities to move onto better things within the company. That all came to a crashing halt with the recent takeover of the company by a Chinese Conglomerate. It was clear that none of the jobs in the UK were safe. All the senior managers had already been replaced by Chinese nationals and it was assumed that they were here just to close down the operation and move the whole shooting match to Guangzhou leaving just a sales office in or around London.

His joy was short-lived because when he arrived home, he found the road up outside his home. There had been a small leak from a water main for several weeks. As he turned the corner, there was a fountain of water and a huge hole in the road.

Three Police Officers were directing traffic and a fourth appeared as if from nowhere to stop Leslie from going into the building where his home was.

“Sorry Sir. We have orders to evacuate the whole street. There is a chance that a gas main will fracture due to the soil around it being washed away by all that water. It has been exposed by the water main burst.”

Leslie sighed.

“Can I at least dash in and get a change of clothes and some money? I only have a couple of quid on me.”

The officer looked at him. Then he smiled.

“Be quick and make sure that you let me know that you are out of the building.”

Leslie dashed into his flat and grabbed a few clothes and some money. He was about to leave when he suddenly stopped. He realised that he’d left something important behind. He dashed back into his bedroom and pulled a small suitcase out from under his bed. He tucked it under his arm and left the flat making sure that the door was double locked behind him.

He found the Police Officer waiting outside for him.

“The Church Hall just down the road is open. We’ll keep you updated but I think it will be tomorrow at the earliest before the road is repaired.”

“Thanks Officer.”

Slightly depressed, Leslie found the Church Hall. Some women were manning a Tea urn and making sandwiches.

“You look as if your life is over?” said one of the women.
For a second Leslie wondered who the woman was talking to. Then he saw three faces looking at him.
He smiled.
“It has… well, it will if the gas main explodes.”

“That’s the same for all of us. Why don’t you have some tea. It will calm your nerves,” said another of the women.
He hesitated for almost a second before smiling back at them.
“Thanks. Milk no sugar please.”

Leslie took the mug of hot liquid and sat down. His mind was a total blank. All the good thoughts that had been going through his mind over breakfast were long gone.

---

Leslie found a chair in the far corner of the hall and began to drink the tea. He wondered about the things he’d left in his flat. Many of those things would have to be disposed of before he took up his new job. That was the worst part. He’d struggled to collect them over the years since… since he and Donna had broken up. Leslie had a strange feeling that this was fate trying to tell him something.

His internal musings were interrupted by someone coming to sit next to him. The perfume told him that it was her.

With a feeling of inevitability, Leslie turned to face her.
“You were a million miles away?” said a smiling Corrine.
“S… Sorry. Corrine? What on earth are you doing here?”

Corrine grinned.
“I was on my way to the shops from my morning run when I heard about the road closure and that the local residents were being evacuated. I came to offer you somewhere to crash tonight.”

“You really don’t have to do that.”
“But I do. You came to my rescue with the wedding. Now I can repay you. Isn’t that fair?”

Leslie turned his head away. He felt trapped but something inside him was saying ‘stop hiding’.

“Thanks for the offer. It looks like the only alternative is the Church Hall so yes, I’ll accept.”

---

Corrie’s home was impressive. Leslie guessed that it was in the 2-3 million price range and impeccably furnished. St Johns Wood is one of the most expensive places in London to live. Everything exuded money but it was far from garish as so many homes are when they are purchased by someone who has zero design and even less in the design of a room. He’d come to expect nothing less from her. She was a perfectionist in her work and it seems her whole life. He felt so small and out of place.

“This is a lovely place.”

“It is. I had hoped that… well someone would have settled down here with me but they decided that a younger model was more attractive.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“All part of the rich tapestry of life I’m afraid. Win some, lose some.”

“True, so very true.”

She smiled at him.

Once Leslie had settled into his room which was about the same size as his whole apartment, he went downstairs where he heard Corrine busy in the kitchen.

“Can I help with something?” he asked as he saw her busy over a pot of something on the stove.

“This is almost ready. You could open that bottle of wine?”

She pointed to a bottle and some glasses that were on the table.
“No problem.”

He was about to go looking for a corkscrew when he saw that it had a screw top. That told him that it wasn’t an expensive vintage but honestly, given the confused state of his mind, it didn't matter in the slightest.

He poured two glasses of wine as she dished up some pasta with what looked like a rich tomato and basil sauce.

“As I said, I was going to the supermarket when I heard about your plight, so there is not much in the larder that isn’t frozen,” she said as she sat down at the table.

“Thanks for that. This looks great.”

They chinked the glasses and to his surprise, the wine was very drinkable. The food wasn’t half bad either.

Leslie insisted on doing the washing up. Corrine suggested doing the drying and putting things away.

While I was cleaning the pot that had contained the sauce she said,
“I know about your other persona.”

Leslie froze stone cold. He gripped the pot handle as if it was going to save his life.
“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come on now Leslie. The female side of your life.”

“How… how did you find out?”

“You should know by now that I am very thorough when looking into the backgrounds of my clients and even more thorough with my potential employees.”

“What do you want from me?”

She smiled.
“Nothing more than you to be yourself and in time, to be my assistant and lover…”

He looked at her in the face.
“Are you serious?”

“When am I not serious? I know that you can do this.”

“And if I can’t? Then what? Out on the streets?”

“No Leslie. I don’t do that sort of thing. You have not lied to me in anything that you have said or done. If you had then you would still be in the Church Hall. I make it a point of being well briefed about all the people I do business with and for those that I employ, that briefing is far more thorough. Not saying something like that is perfectly understandable and acceptable. We all have little secrets, don’t we?”

“What’s yours? From everything I’ve seen, you are as near as perfect a person as I’ve ever seen.”

“My secret is why I told you that I know about your secret. I am attracted to transwomen. I happen to believe, not think that you can be a very good woman and together we can go places. My… my last assistant before Alex, was trans. She worked for me for almost a year and blossomed but… She fancied men more than women. We parted on good terms and I went to their wedding just after the new year. Alex was always temporary and I would have found another temp then you came along.”

His mind was a mess. Here she was offering him a chance to fulfil his dreams and he was having doubts, major doubts.

“Let me give you an offer. Learn the job until Alex leaves then I’ll close the office for a couple of weeks. Then we can see how your other side shapes up. I know that it will be Alicia who returns to work after that time. How about it?”

Once again Corrine had put Leslie on the spot. How she knew about his en-femme name was beyond him, but he had started to get used to how this woman worked. She was full-on or nothing.

“I don’t know.”

She smiled at him again. Her eyes were so alluring.

“Why don’t you take the time while you are here to wipe the slate clean and think about what you want for the future if by some wizardry, every door that you thought was closed to you opened up as you approached?”

“Is that some sort of fantasy game or my every word will be exposed on social media?”

She chuckled.

“Not at all. I often ask my clients that instead of the usual ‘where do you see yourself in five years’ claptrap. How about it? Willing to have a go?”

“Ok…” he replied not altogether sure about where this would go.

“Good. I’ll finish the dishes. There is a pad on the desk by the phone in the hall. Let your imagination run wild for once. Remember… there is only one rule and that is ‘nothing is impossible’. Dare to dream.”

Leslie dried his hands and found the pad and a pen. He sat at the kitchen table while Corrine finished the washing up and cleared away. Then she left him alone to work on the list.

At first, he was just too scared to even think then he said to himself, ‘what the hell’ and began to write. It was just a jumbled list of the things that he had dreamed about over the years.

After a while, it began to make some sense. All sorts of little things were added to the list right down to wanting a handbag just like the one she’d carried to the wedding. He almost put a line through it but decided that if she wanted a wish list then that’s what she’d get.

Leslie looked up at one point and saw Corrine sitting in a chair in the lounge. She was busy with something but what that was, he couldn’t see. He wondered if it was her wish list for him. He put that out of my mind and added a few more items to the list.

After an hour of thinking and writing, Leslie ran out of steam. He pushed the chair back and went to see Corrine. She covered up whatever it was that she was working on as he entered the room.

“How did it go?”

“Probably a load of rubbish but here it is,” he replied as he handed his list to her and sat opposite her.

She read it and judging by her eyes, she did it at least twice. What was remarkable to him was that she showed no emotion while she read his ramblings. That was either the sign of a woman with a stone-cold heart or one who could control her emotions perfectly. He hoped it was the latter.

When she’d finished, she looked up at him and smiled.

“Stay there. I’ll be right back.”

She got up and went out of the room. I heard her going up the stairs. A minute later, she was back clutching that very handbag.

“This is yours. That’s the first item on your list crossed off.”

“But…?”
“Alicia, I have at least thirty or more handbags. This is not an expensive one by any means. Please take it as a sign that I’m with you on this.”

“But why?”

“When you applied to become my assistant, I almost dismissed it right away but for some reason, I thought ‘why not’. Then I began to look into your history. If you had lied on your CV, I would have torn it up and put it in the bin but you didn’t. You didn’t even enhance your experience when most people do almost without thinking that if come back to bite them. Are you with me so far?”

He nodded his head.

“All you did was leave a lot of things out, none of which were game changers until after an extensive search I was led to Alicia’s social media pages. That was an eye opener. I saw the real you or rather the you that you wanted to be. Those thoughts interested me which was why you got the interview.”

She let those words sink in before adding,

“Believe me when I say that going to the wedding with me was not planned. I truly did get the brush off from my partner for the day just before you arrived, but it allowed me to get to know you a lot better. Everything that happened that day is why we are here now. I hope that you have understood me enough by now to know that I plan everything I do very carefully. Since your interview, I have been winging it. You have tossed my life upside down and through the wringer. Believe me, that is not how I normally operate.”

She’d stunned him into silence.

“This list is far more than I’d hoped for and gives us a lot of things to work towards.”

“But Corrine, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to invest so much time and energy into me?”

“It goes back to the reception at the wedding. You treated my parents as if you had known them for years. That is so unusual. Dad remarked on it while you were getting our things from the vicarage. Mum gave me the thumbs up. I got this vision of you by my side as your real self and nothing that has happened since has been able to dislodge that vision from my mind. To have the approval of my parents is a welcome bonus.”

“What they have seen is the current me. What if they don’t like the new one?”

Corrine grinned.
“All they want is for me to be happy regardless of who that person is.”

She leaned forward and showed Leslie what she had been working on.

“This is how I see you.”

What he was looking at was her sketch of … the new him/her of the future. While the features were hers the face was different and far more feminine. She had long hair which had always been his dream.

“Do you like what you see?”

“I do. But…”

Leslie sat there looking at almost exactly who he’d dreamed of becoming but deep down, knew would be impossible without an awful lot of money.

Without thinking, he clutched the drawing to his chest.

“I think I have captured what is on this list perfectly although there is a lot more that needs to be added but we seem to have a good understanding don’t we?”

“We do but what then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens when my work in progress is done and I am complete or as complete as your image of me would allow?”

“Didn’t I say that my vision was for you to be by my side?”

“Yes… but…?”

“That’s where I see you, my partner in life. I wasn’t sure at first, but after the wedding, I knew that you were the one for me. The way you tackled something unknown was impressive. Besides, you have good taste when it came to selecting something to wear for the day. When we walked into the church, I felt very comfortable with you right there beside me. That had never happened before. I was a bit shocked at first but then I watched you during the reception and you just worked the floor without knowing it. I was proud of you for doing that and I’m still proud of you for giving me a chance to be in your life.”

“What about other people? Have you ever done anything like this with others like me?”

His question momentarily stunned her.
“No. No other person like you has ever caught my heart like you did at the wedding. I knew right there and then that I wanted you or, the hidden you to be at my side for life. If that means marrying you then I’d do it tomorrow. That is how serious I am about wanting you in my life.”

Her words shocked him. No one had ever said anything to him that was remotely like that ever before.

Corrine got up and came and sat beside him. Her perfume was as usual alluring.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. It was light at first. Gradually, it got more emotional and he responded and that was it.

---

Leslie woke up with the birds the next morning. Corrine was asleep beside him. It had been quite a night and was certainly a night to remember at least for him.

He slid out of her bed and found the toilet. Corrine came up behind him and kissed his neck.
“Careful. I don’t want to miss the bowl,” he muttered.

She laughed.
“Then let that be the last time you pee standing upå then you won’t miss the bowl.”

They both laughed.

[to be continued]