This is a short story I wrote last year for a competition that was part of an LGTBQ Festival. It got an Honorable Mention. Marianne.

Where there’s a Will……

It has been said that when someone dies, everybody grieves. This is not always the case, as the richer that person was, the greedier some people get. Of course, we would all say that this would never happen in our own family but it is a good job that we are not around to see the fireworks.

The fireworks in my family happened after my Grandmother Jessie died. Jessie Gilmore was my grandmother on my mothers’ side. I had been close to her when I was young but had been sent off to a boarding school to try to ‘man up’. I really had no love for the boarding school but it was not my call. My mother, Janet, married my father too young but they persevered after I had been born, even though my mother could not have any more children. My father, Albert Kennedy, was happy to have a son to carry on the family line but neither of them were true parent material and my early life found me in the arms of a succession of nannies.

When I had turned five I was farmed out to my Grandmother Jessie for most holidays while my parents took in the sights of various European cities, mainly from the inside of expensive restaurants. Grandmother was a wonderful person and, I think, loved me more than my mother did. We had good times, even though I was some seventy years her junior. She was very spritely and we went to see fairs, zoos and places of interest together. In the evening we would play board games and she was extremely competitive, making sure that I had to be at my best if I wanted to beat her.

Every time I left her to go back to school she was saddened to see me go and always gave me a little gift as I left. The last few years were the odd ones as she had given me a bracelet and the gift was always a charm that she had bought at the place we had visited that had given us most enjoyment. I always added the latest charm but did not wear the bracelet at school because I was already being ribbed unmercifully.

You may ask why I was being ribbed at school. Perhaps it was because I was on the short side and had what my Grandmother called an angelic face. It could also be that I was a swat and was always near the top of my class which upset the more Neanderthal types. Maybe it was my name that did it. I had been christened James Kennedy and all the bullies quickly dubbed me Jackie after a certain first lady. It was a good job that I had never let on that my middle name was Courtney or else the brown stuff would have hit the fan and I would have been left wearing it. My Grandmother was the only person who used it and I was often spoken to as ‘young lady’ when we were out together.

When I turned eleven I had high enough marks to go to a really good school but my parents decided that I would attend one that took boarders without even looking at the academic records. Luckily, it was pretty good and I managed to get enough attention from my teachers to make me work hard. Once again I spent the summer holidays with my Grandmother but my parents had decided that I would be enrolled in all of the shorter holiday courses and camps that the school provided so that I could just stay in place. I sometimes wondered if they really were my parents and not a pair of aliens who had taken their place.

I was getting towards fifteen when the summer break that changed my life came around. When I arrived at the station, my grandmother was there with a younger woman who introduced herself as Wilma. She looked very nice and I warmed to her straight away. In the car to my summer home my grandmother explained that Wilma would be staying with us to help in a little experiment. I knew that I was being unusually quiet on the ride and, when we had settled into comfortable chairs, my grandmother looked at me and asked me what was on my mind.

I plucked up all my courage and told her that I had been the subject of a lot of bullying during the past few months. The fact that I had not yet reached puberty had given my schoolmates a reason to up the ante on their treatment of me. I had been subjected to ridicule in the showers after PE, had my locker daubed with homophobic graffiti, and the final straw was when I had been held down while the biggest of them forced me to suck his cock. The problem for me was that I discovered that I did not find it all that gross, just embarrassing that so many were there to witness it. I did get to taste a drip of pre-cum before he looked down at me and I winked at him. He quickly pulled away saying that enough was enough. I think that he realised that if he had actually enjoyed it he would be painted with the brush that he was using on me. After relating this I just sat there and cried my eyes out.

My grandmother sat and watched while Wilma comforted me, finally saying that this was it, I would not be going back there again. However, the first thing that happened was that I was taken to see a doctor and examined totally. The initial finding was that I had not had puberty because neither of my testicles had descended and when the blood results came back it showed that I was very low in the testosterone levels. I was not shocked to find out that I was halfway to being a girl and, over the next few weeks, Wilma showed me what the experiment was all about, it was about making me happy with myself and discovering that while an angelic face is a problem for a young boy, it was an advantage on a young girl.

Every day I was subjected to something new. They did not rush things and I was not dressed up and taken out for lunch on the first day, no, they took it slowly with an introduction to various items of clothing and a little make-up to start each day, which I wore all day while taking part in another thing my grandmother had planned.

I had no idea of what my parents did to fund the high life they enjoyed and my grandmother started out telling me about the import/export company that she and my grandfather had started. It now had warehouses in about twenty different countries and had a turn-over in the millions. My mother had been given a twenty percent share of the business and my father had been elected onto the board with their marriage. He was now the CEO but spent much of his time enjoying the position rather than working at it. I discovered that he had employed his three brothers and his sister in positions of some responsibility, with a salary to match, in order to spread his largess around. I had never met any of my uncles or aunt and was shocked to discover that they existed.

I became immersed in learning about the company and how it operated and, the more I learned, the more I grew up. I found that I was heir, no – was now becoming heiress – to a rather large fortune. It certainly made me look at my own life and future with more focus. As the summer wore on I became more Courtney than James and, one day, my grandmother said I should wear a good dress as we were going to visit a school that she said would take me on in the new term. When we got to Saint Monica’s Finishing School I found out that it was a girl’s only establishment and that I would be enrolled as Miss Courtney Gilmore should they accept me.

Wilma had packed a bag for me and I was left at the school to take their entry exams to see if I measured up to the high standards that any young lady they looked at needed to pass. Over the next week I was subjected to close examination on my attitude and deportment as well as a number of written examinations. I noticed that each one started with basic questions that any student should know and got progressively more advanced. Miss Jackson, my examiner, told me that this was to see what level of learning I had so that they could craft a course that suited me. The last couple of days were weird, as they were practical examinations in things that would be described as ‘domestic duties’. Luckily, among my myriad of nannies, were some that thought that I should be shown how to be independent (I am sure that they had sussed out my parents almost immediately they met) and I had been shown how to sew and knit, as well as cook in the family kitchen at home where I was sure we had been the only ones to use some of the utensils.

As such, I made the skirt that was required, knitted the baby outfit and baked a couple of cakes which were set out on the table when my grandmother came to fetch me. Miss Jackson shuffled papers while I poured the tea and we chatted a little before she came to the point. She told my grandmother that I was an exceptional student who would be welcome to start at the school. Not only that, but that I was very gifted and would be put into a special stream that would take me into tertiary studies a year early. My grandmother looked at me when she told Miss Jackson that I would be studying for an MBA as I would be looking after a big business soon.

Just how soon that was could not have been known as both my parents were killed in a terrorist bomb blast in Indonesia just after I had started at my new school. They had been eating in a popular café when the bomb went off. My mother had died instantly and my father lasted a few more days. I was now an orphan but it was not much of a change as I had been one most of my life.

My grandmother was given custody until I turned eighteen and I welcomed that part of the event. We had the double funeral on a cold winters’ day and I stood alongside my grandmother as the coffins were lowered into the ground. I did cry (the hormones now taking effect) but it was not so much for them as they had really been strangers. No, it was because it now came home to me that I was almost totally alone in the world and was facing it as a new person. I was very happy being the person I was becoming, part of an encompassing group of girls at school with no taunts or bullying. In fact I was becoming somewhat popular already.

I had another shock when my grandmother took me to the office of my parents’ lawyer for the will reading. My uncles and aunt were there, thinking that they were about to be showered with riches. They totally ignored me as we sat in front of the lawyers’ desk. He started with my mothers’ will, as she had died first. Of course, the usual bit about leaving it all to my father was made null and void with him not living the proscribed thirty days so the fall-back clauses were to be acted on. She left a few specific bequests and then her share in the company to me, John Courtney Gilmore-Kennedy, as well as her possessions. That meant her jewellery and a fair chunk of cash. That was the first time that I found out that I had a hyphenated name, good job the bullies had never found that one out or else I would have been almost killed at my previous school.

Then we got onto my fathers’ will. His also had the leaving of everything to her nullified as she had predeceased him. He left me the family home but his siblings were left the rest of their properties around the world. I knew that they had a couple of apartments they used on their travels and thought that the relatives would fare pretty well out of this. However, there were six apartments and houses that they had leased and the two that they owned needed to be sold up to pay for the outstanding debts. In fact, in the end, my father owed more than he owned. I realised that they had made their plans on the premise that my mother would inherit the rest of the company when my grandmother died.

My relatives were incandescent! They expected riches beyond compare and ended up with nothing. Of course, they wanted to contest the wills but the lawyer reminded them that they were only related to my mother by marriage and would not stand a chance of getting anywhere with her will. He then told them that if they were ready to contest my fathers’ will he would be only too happy to take their money. They stormed out with comments about the ‘little fag’ getting everything. I was sure that my father would be rolling in his grave if he had any idea of the ruckus his death would cause.

Without my father in the company to support them and shield them from scrutiny, my relatives had to actually work for their salary, something my grandmother would report to me with glee. I was living with her full-time now and just staying at Saint Monica’s during the week. She had set me up with my own self-contained rooms with an office area where I could study. I did my high
school exams early and qualified easily to move to the MBA course. Most of this I could do off-campus through an arrangement with Saint Monica’s but there were some times when I did have to attend lectures elsewhere.

When I turned eighteen my grandmothers’ lawyer arranged for my name to be changed to Jaclyn Courtney Gilmore and was able to get my sex changed to F after I had some work done on my breasts. He also informed me that I was the beneficiary of my grandfathers’ gift of thirty percent of the company which was held in trust for me until I turned twenty-one. He told me that my grandmother had the other thirty percent while the twenty percent left over was in a trust fund which paid out the employees bonuses each year. Effectively I held the controlling interest of the family company. Not bad for a ‘little fag’!

I graduated on the month I turned twenty-one and was saddened that my grandmother was not able to attend the ceremony herself, being currently bed-ridden. I organised a photographer to record the event so I could show her on her TV later. As soon as I was able, I convened the company board and they elected me chairperson as I had fifty percent in my own name. I used my studies to put some modern thinking into place and we started to improve our bottom line, which, in turn, improved the employee bonuses.

Now I had the time, I made sure that I had all the surgery needed to make me almost fully female and spared no expense on getting it done well. It was a few months after this I met a very nice chap who ended up proposing to me. I made sure he knew that I could not bear children and he said that it didn’t matter to him as he had been an adoptee himself. Luckily, my grandmother, now over ninety, was able to attend our wedding in a wheelchair and smiled a lot during the ceremony. For something old I wore my charm bracelet, now heavy with charms, and for something borrowed I had some of my mothers’ jewellery on.

Unfortunately, my grandmother, my saviour and rock of my life, died a couple of months after. She left me everything after some other bequests. I transferred twenty percent of the company into the employees’ trust fund, gave my husband nine percent but held on to fifty-one percent myself. There were fireworks, all right, but not the sort I alluded to at the beginning of this story. No, these fireworks were for the New Year and the sparkles reflected off the charm bracelet I now always wore as I waved to friends; while I stood on the balcony of our waterfront home with my husbands’ arm around my waist. Oh! We did adopt a couple of children and I made absolutely certain that we had watertight wills.

Marianne G © 2020