Closure

Matthew Manstead had always lived a happy life, Olivia and Damien his parents were not wealthy, but the family had a comfortable existence. Olivia was a nursing sister at a local hospital and Damien after years as a bricklayer was a foreman for a large local house building company. Matthew lived in a house full of love and care with Suzy his older sister, Judith his younger sister and Edward known as Teddy his much younger baby brother. Matthew was not a brilliant child, but he was moderately bright and had all the encouragement he needed to achieve highly at school. He was ambivalent about sport, but some of his friends enjoyed it and he enjoyed being with them, so although he never made it into any of the first teams he was considered to be reasonable at games and he often played for the school second teams.

~o~O~o~

Andrew Winstanley lived in an environment full of violence and nightmares for a child. Jack his ‘father’, a petty criminal constantly in and out of gaol, beat him up regularly till Jack was found dead from multiple stab wounds in an alley behind a casino that was a cover for a brothel known to the authorities. The police and the nearby residents tolerated the brothel because its presence avoided them the headaches that the girls working on the streets would have caused them. As long as nothing happened in the casino to generate significant numbers of complaints everyone was happy to look the other way. The police weren’t over bothered by Jack’s death and didn’t expend too much effort to discover his killer. The case was still open, but it would be a long time before anyone looked at it again, if ever. A dead criminal with a track record for drugs, vice and violence was after all one that was permanently off the streets. It was an unfortunate attitude that was clearly a dereliction of duty, but the police did have more pressing concerns, and had any of the city’s residents known none would have been concerned, neither the law abiding nor those who weren’t.

Andrew was nearly eleven when Jack was murdered, but Jack’s death was a huge relief to him. Anne Winstanley Andrew’s mother was a heroin addicted prostitute who had given birth to Andrew at the age of fourteen. She subsequently blamed Andrew for Jack’s death. She’d never had a long term relationship, and Jack, her pimp, had beaten her up regularly too, but after his death she’d been without a ‘protector’ for long enough to frighten her. Andrew was neither big nor strong, but he was strong enough to prevent Anne from hurting him. Years of drugs had taken both Anne’s strength and her speed. Anne tried to persuade Andrew to deliver drugs for petty criminals of her acquaintance and shoplift too to feed her habit, but Andrew had decided his future lay elsewhere, and he dropped off the grid during the summer after leaving primary school. His major reason for leaving the erratic and dubious protection afforded by staying with his mother was Clark, the new man in his mother’s life. Clark was even more unpredictably violent than Jack had been, and he’d decided that Andrew was going to be a drug runner for him.

~o~O~o~

Andrew had attended primary school with Matthew for a short time, and Matthew considered them to be friends, though Andrew was cautious about all relationships, especially with Matthew who he knew liked him. Andrew had managed to avoid his bruises and injuries being noticed at school, but Matthew was sharp eyed, and that made Andrew nervous. When he had a particularly severe or obvious set of injuries he astutely managed to end up in an accident on the games field or in a fight on the playground. He was no good at games and hated all forms of sport, so his injuries were thus ascribed to his ineptitude and lack of ability. Though possibly the brightest pupil his primary school had ever taught that was not known to the staff because Andrew had deliberately never drawn attention to himself by achieving anything, and though he had assimilated all that had been put before him he kept that to himself. Andrew didn’t attend the local secondary school in September that year, and it was assumed his mother had moved house and he attended elsewhere.

Some of the other children who had attended the same primary school as Andrew and Matthew knew they were friends and asked if Matthew had seen him. Matthew said no and that he didn’t know where Andrew had lived, but he thought it was on the estate [hood] that lay on the other side of the dual carriageway. The dual carriageway separated the affluent parts of the town from the drug and crime riddled nightmare that many on the wealthy side tried to pretend didn’t exist. The much smaller estate only was connected to the bulk of the town by two tunnels that went under the dual carriageway. Not entirely in jest, the estate residents referred to the northern tunnel as the mugger’s piggy bank and the southern one as the druggies’ piggy bank. Children from the estate on their way to school waited some distance away for their friends till there was a sizeable group of them before they used the tunnels. The only shops on the estate had long been burnt out and abandoned, so women from the estate going shopping in the town did likewise.

~o~O~o~

Andrew had several problems living on the streets. It was difficult to continue learning, and he wanted to, for he knew that was the way out of the hell that was his existence. Reluctant to get caught and hence be returned back to his mother, Andrew avoided stealing, and in the early days he had managed to legally earn enough to eat doing odd jobs, washing cars, walking dogs and the like, but he was aware a lot of what he did to earn money would dry up when the summer gradually became autumn and would disappear completely when the winter arrived. Too, the weather was warm at the time, so staying alive was not too difficult, but later in the year when the temperature dropped to minus ten Celsius [12ºF] at night he knew he would be in trouble. All of which paled into insignificance with his major issue which was Social Services.

Social Services knew about him, and they knew about Anne, in fact they knew Anne by at least a dozen names none of which were rightfully hers, and Andrew suspected her heroin fogged brain no longer knew what her rightful name was, yet he feared they would make him return to her and Clark. Life had made the young Andrew cynical, and he suspected if they had their hands on him Social Services would naturally return him to his mother simply because it was the most obvious fuck up they could make. Andrew was terrified Clark would eventually kill him in temper, or maybe just because he was bored and he could. He considered it unlikely Social Services would help him. Why would they? Even living with Anne he’d been a street kid. It had been a squalid existence, if anything the way he was living on the street was cleaner and certainly preferable to returning to Anne’s sordid squat.

Intelligent and logical Andrew thought about what would be his dream life. He considered it better to aim for the top and subsequently settle for less rather than aim for less, achieve it and then spend endless time wondering if he could have achieved more. His conclusion was simple, a proper family. That was it. That was all he wanted. A proper family would be in work and willing and able to give him a bed, decent warm clothes instead of his threadbare and torn rags and enough to eat, and they would enable him to go to school. Deep down he knew even all that wasn’t enough, he longed for love, kindness, understanding and tolerance too, things he’d never experienced, but he’d settle for a life without them if that enabled him to make it to adulthood when he would be able to make his own decisions.

~o~O~o~

Matthew missed Andrew, and he’d never completely bought into his explanations concerning his injuries, for some of them couldn’t possibly have resulted from playing field incidents and playground fights. Some of the bruises were too old to have happened that day, or even that week, but respecting Andrew’s wishes he said nothing, for he realised Andrew was frightened of bad things happening to him if anyone in authority put two and two together and actually made four. By the beginning of October Matthew hadn’t seen Andrew for ten weeks, and he was worried about him. Matthew wasn’t sure why he was worried, but he reckoned if Andrew were still at home he was in danger, and if he had run away he could possibly freeze to death soon. Matthew would have been even more concerned for Andrew had he known about Jack, his death and subsequent replacement by Clark, and even more concerned still had he know that Clark had killed Jack because Jack had been pimping Anne on what Clark considered to be his turf. Matthew was desperate to tell an adult about his concerns, but he was even more desperate not to possibly make Andrew’s life worse.

The two adults Matthew trusted most were his parents, but his mum was a nurse, and if she didn’t pass the information on to Social Services she could lose her job. He knew she could not and would not promise to keep anything he told her to herself, which left his dad. Would his dad, he wondered, promise not to tell his mum what he told him. Matthew agonised over the matter, but eventually decided he would approach his dad carefully. He considered his approach, and it took him three days to decide how to do it. “Dad, I need to talk to you about something serious. I think someone’s life is at risk. If Social Services find out about the situation that someone’s life would probably be at greater risk. Mum would have to tell them, or risk losing her job, so if you can’t promise me you won’t tell her I won’t tell you any more.”

“You can’t leave it at that, Son.”

“Yes I can, and yes I must. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life knowing that someone ended up dead because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. If this blows up on me there’s a real possibility that I’ll end up dead too because I won’t be able to live with myself.”

“I can’t accept that you know what you are talking about, Matthew, you’re only eleven.”

It was in a chilling voice Matthew said, “Actually just for the record I’m twelve now. I’m surprised you didn’t know, but tell me, Dad, are you willing to take a chance on whether I know what I’m talking about or not? Are you willing to risk my life on it? I’ll promise you now if you make the promise and break it that will be us forever because I’ll never forgive you, nor ever trust you again. Never, is a long time, Dad. I’ve thought this through for a long time now. I’m not just making it up as I go along. Yes I’m only twelve, but I do know what matters to me and what doesn’t, and being responsible for someone’s death matters.”

The two were silent for going on ten minutes. Damien was waiting for Matthew to break the silence with more information, but Matthew had said as much as he was going to without his father’s promise. Eventually Matthew stood and said, “I’ll see you later, Dad.”

“What about this person you talked about?”

“What about them, Dad? No promise means no information. I told you that. Either you weren’t listening,` or you didn’t do me the courtesy of believing me. You’re trying to play mind games with me, but I’m not playing. I told you the terms. Since you are not prepared to accept them that’s it. I’ll find someone else to talk to eventually. Someone I can trust. If someone dies in the meanwhile it’s your fault. I’ll hold you responsible, and that’s a promise. See you later.”

“Now just a minute, young man—”

“No, Dad. You’ve kept me waiting long enough. See you later.” As Damien stood and walked towards his son, Matthew said quietly, “What are you going to do, Dad? Beat it out of me?” That stopped Damien in his tracks, and with that Matthew was gone.

At first Damien couldn’t believe the conversation he’d just had with his son. The conversation his son had terminated by walking out on him. It was a conversation he could have had with a grown man. Eventually he realised that to Matthew the matter was so serious that it had, on this topic at least, transformed him into a grown man, and if he wanted to restore his relationship with his son he had to make the required promise. Having given it he knew he would not break it, for the relationships he had with all his children were based on many things, but one of them was the absolute nature of promises. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d said to them, “If you are not absolutely sure you can keep a promise then don’t make it, for a broken promise is a lie, and I don’t wish to even think one of my children is a liar.” That Matthew had promised he would hold him responsible for someone’s death, an as yet unnamed and unidentified someone, if they died before he had made his promise was unnerving, for he knew Matthew meant it, he’d seen it in his eyes, and there would be no going back. He would in Matthew’s eyes be responsible for that death forever. He was also aware he didn’t even know whether Matthew had been talking about a girl or a boy. Matthew had given him absolutely minimal information, and he begrudgingly respected that.

Damien made the promise, and father and son left no stone unturned to locate Andrew. Hospitals, morgues, court records, newspapers, but they found nothing. They visited homeless shelters and places where the homeless slept in their local towns, but again they found nothing. Andrew had truly dropped off the grid. That they had not cast their net wide enough early enough to include the city sixty miles away they didn’t consider till too late, for by the time they did consider it, and then did something about it, Matthew wasn’t aware of it, but he was no longer able to recognise Andrew. Olivia wondered what they were up to, but Damien was convincing when he said it was just father and son stuff, and it wouldn’t be long before they started involving Teddy too. When they took Teddy to the city and spent some of their time doing things Teddy enjoyed to camouflage their activities her younger son’s explanations of the things they had done left Olivia completely convinced by Damien’s explanations.

~o~O~o~

Andrew got lucky, very lucky. Though wet and blustery, that winter was unusually mild, the temperature at night had never dropped below minus two degrees Celsius, [28ºF] and he had found a multi-storey car park above a shopping mall. The ducted hot air blew out from the shops below behind some large concrete piers with industrial wheelie bins [small dumpsters] in front of them. He was warm and out of sight. He managed little formal education though he managed to find plenty of reading material, some of which was educational in the broadest sense of the term. His clothes had just about reached the end of their useful existence when he found the four boxes of clothes in front of the bins. The holes in his shoes had been letting water in for some time, his jeans had more holes than material and his shirt was ripped to shreds as a result of a fight over some thrown out food he’d been eating. He’s lost the fight, the food and more significantly a lot of warmth due to his damaged clothing. The boxes of clothing contained items from a charity shop that hadn’t sold. After three months anything still on the racks was dumped to make way for newer stock. After ratching(1) through the boxes all the way to the bottom, twice, he realised they only contained women’s and girls’ clothes. The solitary pair of foot ware in the largest box was a pink pair of girl’s trainers, [sneakers] but they fit him and were watertight. There were no jeans nor trousers of any description in the boxes.

Andrew was cold, and needed clothes. At least there were enough clothes in the boxes to provide all the layers he needed to keep warm. Coats, underwear, socks, slips, skirts, vests, blouses, scarves, woolly hats, gloves everything he needed to keep warm. It was just that they were all not only girls garments, but obviously so. It was a classic case of Hobson’s Choice,(2) take it or leave it. The ankle length heavy tweed skirt was too big at the waist, but a belt fashioned from a length of rope solved that problem, and it was very warm especially at night. He hadn’t been that warm for weeks. He soon discovered the downside of clothes that screamed girl was the unwanted attention from males when he went looking for food. He speculated that that was probably why all the girls he’d known went around in groups of at least six, and more often a dozen or more. However, it was a few days before he saw the pretty girl with hair well below her shoulders in the shop window, and it took a minute or so to realise it was his reflection. He hadn’t realised his hair had grown so much. He wasn’t in the least disturbed by his new look, for none he knew would recognise him, least of all any of the social workers. To play safe he started to refer to himself as Andrea.

~o~O~o~

The Spring weather had started to warm, and folk were out and about more, shopping and enjoying being outside in the sun after an unusually warm but wet and windy winter. It was a sunny Saturday when Jim, a market trader, started the ball rolling for Andrea to step out onto her new path. Jim had a fast food trailer that served the shoppers with coffee, tea, burgers, hot dogs, bacon buns and the like, and that afternoon he was rushed off his feet trying to keep up with the trade. Jim had seen the girl eyeing up his wares with a hungry look on her face, so he shouted “Hey, Girl! Yes you! Give me an hour of your time, and I’ll make it worth your while. A tenner, and I’ll feed you. How about it, Girl? I need the help.”

Andrea took no time to make her mind up. She moved to the trailer immediately and asked, “What do I do?”

“Just get behind here and keep making coffees and teas to put on the counter. Just keep them coming, and I’ll do the rest. When you need more water in one of the boilers tell me, and I’ll fill it up from the containers. They’ll be too heavy for you to lift. Tins of coffee and boxes of tea bags are in the corner, and folk help themselves to milk and sugar on the counter. Here eat this first. You look like you need it.” With that the man passed her a large burger with onions before turning to resume serving the crowd tightly packed around his trailer. For two and a half hours Andrea made teas and coffees and placed them on the counter without ever managing to get in front of demand. The entire time the only words the man had said to her were either, “More coffees, Love, please,” or, “More teas, Love, please.”

All she’d said to him was, “I need more water in the left boiler please,” or, “ I need more water in the right boiler please.” True to his word, when there was none left to serve and it was clear folk were going home to get out of the wind, Jim handed over twenty-five pounds and let her eat as much as she could hold whilst he started to wipe things down and clean up the equipment. When he watched her eat an egg and bacon bun the look on her face told him a lot about her.

“That good, Girl?”

Andrea nodded and replied, “I haven’t eaten anything this good ever I think.” She’d have said more but the bun called to her.

He packed a bag of food up for her and said, “It’s not usually that frantic. It was because folk hadn’t had a chance to get out in the sun for months, so every man and his dog decided to go out today. You did me proud, Girl. Thanks, here take this with you to eat later. I’m Jim. Jim Sykes. What do you call yourself? I can’t keep calling you Girl.”

“Andrea. I’ve got a crazy family background and I’m not too sure what my surname is.”

“If you’re here tomorrow, Andrea Nosurname Supplied, same deal okay?” Andrea smiled and nodded. “You’re living rough aren’t you? No! Don’t answer me. I’ve been there, and none will find out from me. You must have your reasons. Anyone living rough does so because it’s preferable to living where they were before, or because there’s nowhere better to go. I’m asking no questions, but is there anything you need I can help with?” Andrea shook her head.

“Okay, Andrea. See you here at half past nine. That gives us time for you to learn how to do some cooking too, before there’s much trade. That’s so I can catch a break once or twice in the day.”

~o~O~o~

Jim, who was in his mid fifties, did four markets a week, and folk got used to seeing Andrea with him. Some started referring to her as Jim’s lass, and on hearing that many assumed she was his granddaughter. Some called her Andrea and some called her Miss Sykes, and neither Andrea nor Jim ever refuted that. She was earning enough to buy educational materials and to clothe herself better, though it never occurred to her to revert to boyhood, for she’d too much to lose. However, she didn’t earn enough to find somewhere to live. A woman she’d served one Wednesday had said, “You need your hair doing properly, Andrea. I’m Jean of Jean’s salon on Upperton Street. If you come to the salon at fourish on any week day it’s quiet and we’ll fit you in. I’ll sort it for you at a reasonable rate. You’ve a pretty face, but really your granddad needs to wake up to the fact that you’re a girl. I’m not having a go at him because I know it’s not his fault he’s a man, and there’re any number of men who’ve been in the services just like him. No grandma, nor mum?”

“No.”

“Well that explains your hair, nails and make up. We can sort the lot for you without breaking the bank, so don’t leave it too long to visit, Dear. How much do I owe you for the tea and the bun?”

~o~O~o~

Andrea went to Jean’s where her hair was washed, cut and blown dry, and she cried when she saw herself in the mirror. Jean said, “Just your nails now. I’ll have Daph sort those for you, and we’ll leave the highlights and make up lesson till next time. How does a tenner sound?” Andrea knew that ten pounds was a seriously cut rate for what Jean had done for her and expressed her gratitude. Jean had smiled and said, “Nonsense. We can’t have a girl of your age looking like you did. It’s letting the side down. Seriously, Andrea, any woman worthy of being called a woman would wish to help a girl in your position. All I ask is that you remember that, and if ever when you’re older you are in a position to repay the favour do so by passing it on.” At that she kissed Andrea’s cheek and said, “The tragedy is it’s unlikely your granddad will even notice the difference, and even if he does he’ll say nothing. Come back in a week or two and we’ll deal with the rest.”

Andrea felt much better about herself because for the first time ever she truly felt she was herself. She then realised that had been one of her problems when she’d lived with Anne, she’d had to live as a boy, and it just wasn’t her. It never had been, but she hadn’t been aware of it at the time. Now she was acutely aware of exactly what she was. Jean had been wrong about Jim. As soon as he saw Andrea the following morning he said, “You look nice, Love. You’ve obviously been splashing out a bit on having a hair do and a manicure. Your new look suits you.” Jim’s words made Andrea think about herself and realise looking so much prettier and more feminine now was going to cause her a lot of grief if she didn’t find somewhere to live that wasn’t on the streets. After a lot of thought she decided to speak to Jim about the situation when there was a lull in the trade. She knew Jim was wary of officialdom too, and she’d come to trust him because when ever the law was about he’d always kept her out of their sight.

“Jim, when we first met you said if there were anything I needed that you could help with you would. Well, I need advice about somewhere to live. Somewhere proper. Trouble is I’m only thirteen, but I look younger. The new hair style and make up take me back up to thirteen, maybe. I don’t go to school to make sure Social Services don’t catch up with me. Those bastards would put me back where I came from and I doubt I’d live long if that happened. Looking like this, and I don’t want to look any different now, if I don’t get off the streets someone’s going to hurt me, and I may even end up dead, which would be no better than going home. You got any ideas?”

“It didn’t take me long to reckon you were in serious trouble, and I reckoned it wasn’t your fault almost as quickly. I hadn’t figured it being quite that bad, but life is what it is and our job is to deal with it.” Jim was clearly thinking deeply, but when he spoke it was to ask a question on another matter, “So that’s why you buy school books off the the second hand book stalls is it. To get some education?” Andrea nodded. “I’d let you live with me, but I live in a trailer that’s not even as big as this one, so that’s a non-starter. I always guessed that Andrea was not your real name and you didn’t come from round here. I presume that’s correct?”

“No it’s not and no I don’t.”

“Right, to specifics. Do you specifically want to go to school? It’s not the only way to get education, and if you aren’t bothered how you get your learning I know a lass that could teach you how to do make up to look like you’re twenty. She does stage and film make up. I also know a couple of guys who would make you some ID for a couple of hundred. That way you could get a small apartment flat and do evening classes at the local tech. Problem is I can only help to start with. You’d need to earn enough to pay the rent. At least a ton, [£100, $150] a week possibly half as much again. I can’t pay you enough to cover that as well as everything else you’d need. You got any ideas to throw into the pot, Girl?”

There was a silence for a few seconds before Jim said, “Tell you what I have a better idea. I wouldn’t mind getting a permanent all day diner, a small café. The trailer trade is getting a bit much for me. I’m not as young as I was, and I admit I couldn’t do it any more without you, or at least I don’t want the struggle it would be without you. If you’re up for it, I’ll see if I can find a place with accommodation. Then we could both live a lot better. Come to that, I could get you some faked up ID that says you’re my sixteen year old granddaughter. That would mean your daily make up would be a lot easier to do than trying to look twenty. It would be easy enough to look older by wearing higher heels and enhancing your chest a bit if you get my drift. You’re clever and always sound older than you are, so that’ll help too, and it’ll be no effort for you. If you’re sixteen, School truancy officers and Social Services wouldn’t be interested in you. I’d be happy to go halves with you on it. What do you reckon?”

Andrea was attracted to the idea. Jim was an eccentric but decent man who’d helped her a lot, and in many ways he’d taken on the rôle of her grandfather a long time back. His ideas to make her look older made sense. She’d been wearing heels and a padded bra for months to help herself blend in as a girl and look a bit more mature, and it had worked so well that she was frightened she’d give herself away by accident if she lived with Jim. However, the idea was the only solution she could think of, and she could get some shoes to put four inches on her height that would be easy enough to wear, and bras with bigger cups and breast forms from the lingerie shop would be a quick fix. “I like the idea, but I have a personal issue that is holding me back. I’m frightened if you find out you’ll hate me and maybe even hurt me, so I want time to think about it.”

When Jim replied he took her breath away. “You’ve just confirmed that Andrea was not your original name, but I doubt any girl’s name was your original name. Maybe you started as Adam, Adrian, or Andrew, or even something else, but to me Andrea is your real name. It always has been right from that first afternoon when you helped me out. Don’t worry, it’s nothing you’ve ever done. You’ve always been completely convincing. It was something you said so long ago I can’t even recall what it was. None of that matters to me. However, if we’re going for it you’d better stop calling me Jim and start calling me Granddad. So are we going for it?”

“Yes, Granddad.”

“Good girl, now give me a kiss and get that bacon turned over before it burns. I’ll get some eggs ready and top the water up in the hot dog sausages.”

~o~O~o~

Jim found a run down diner in the city centre with everything they required except trade. It was an excellent site with a lot of potential, but having been closed down three years previously for food hygiene violations it required a lot of work. Work they would have to do themselves, as they needed all their money for other things. The day the lease was signed, they both moved in to their rather unpleasant bedrooms, but as Andrea pointed out at least their beds and bedding were new and clean. Jim’s first job was to pick up a new lavatory pan and cistern from B&Q the DIY superstore for the separate lavatory. While he was out, Andrea made a start on cleaning their bedrooms. Jim had bought some tools and some cleaning supplies too, and when he started to install their new lavatory Andrea was amazed that he was so handy. For a month, four days a week they worked the markets with the trailer and three days and seven evenings a week they worked on the diner.

Every market day evening they tipped the takings out on the kitchen table and after taking out the money to replace stock they decided what they were going to spend the rest on. House keeping money was put to one side and the rest went into a biscuit tin called the renovation piggy bank. Home was now two bedrooms, a living room, a large bathroom which contained a decent lavatory that Jim had installed a new seat on and a decent kitchen. All were complete with peeling wallpaper and shabby paintwork, but they were all damp free. Downstairs the public lavatories were in decent condition and the kitchen just needed some serious cleaning. The diner itself was a disaster zone, but till they promoted some trade all they could do was sweep up the mess and wash everything down. Even when clean the tables looked disgusting, but Andrea bought a pack of disposable paper table cloths and it was a good temporary solution. Jim had negotiated the rent on the as it is basis, but in return he’d had to commit to a five year rental agreement.

Obviously to get any trade and a licence from the council it had to be inspected and passed before they could start cooking food for sale. Jim had asked the inspector to visit before they did anything, so all could be agreed in advance as to what was required to obtain the licence. He’d called before Jim had headed off to B&Q. The only thing the inspector insisted on that had not been foreseen was better lighting over the cooking areas, but he’d suggested a relatively cheap solution that did not require an electrician, and all was done as agreed. On his second visit the inspector had his list that he’d prepared on his first visit, and he merely ticked everything off as he went around the premises.

He told the couple that since Andrea was under twenty-one and in the catering business all relevant courses, which could include business courses and anything even vaguely connected to catering, or in her case running a business since she was a partner in the business rather than an employee, would be free at the local college under a government sponsored scheme. He stressed it was not a legal requirement that she undertook any courses, but it would probably assist her in the future. He also added if there were any problems they should tell the college to contact him, and he’d deal with it on their behalf. Andrea had her name down for several courses that started the following September. A fortnight before term started, she read of her mother’s death from an overdose in the local paper. When she pointed the snippet out to Jim, he asked her how she felt about it. After a moment’s thought she told him she felt nothing about it, for since he was the only person who’d ever cared about her he was by definition the only family she’d ever had. Jim had just nodded. He was no stranger to serious personal issues, and he understood what she had said because it was exactly how he felt concerning Andrea.

~o~O~o~

They’d had to give up the trailer trade when they opened the diner which was a bit traumatic to start with as their income dropped to nearly nil and the reserve in their coffers kept shrinking. However, after having watched an American legal office based romcom on the TV in which someone went round the offices with a basket of sandwiches and the like for the staff’s lunches, Andrea made a few phone calls to ask office building managers for permission to do like wise. All had said yes, and then the business at least had some income and a little bit of free advertising too. Initially it didn’t add much to the coffers, but it did halt the shrinkage. By September trade had picked up, not a massive amount, but enough to employ someone to deliver the office sandwiches, many of which were now orders that had been phoned in, on Mondays and Thursdays when Andrea was at college. Jim put an advert in the diner window announcing they did a free delivery service for office lunches, and he provided the diner phone number. Andrea started including business cards with the lunches.

A local twenty-four hour call centre manager had enquired if they could possibly do something for their overnight shift. Jim was dubious, but Andrea told the call centre manager that if they phoned in the night’s orders by the previous lunchtime she’d have the order made up in the early evening and dropped at the call centre reception at nine ready for the night shift that started at ten. Payment could be collected from reception by whoever did the delivery. Shortly after that the night manager told her they’d just bought four microwaves, and asked if was there any chance of microwaveable meals being made up to include with the night shift’s order. Andrea said she’d talk to her granddad, and they’d put a menu together that the operators could choose from, and naturally they would welcome any workable suggestions. It worked, but it meant they had to take on yet more staff. The lunch orders had started as a major part of their business and remained so. The diner had to operate a shift system with staff because it was working from six in the morning till ten at night seven days a week in order to provide a twenty four hour meal service.

It all brought in a little extra trade that soon expanded to cover the early losses incurred when sales didn’t cover wages. They noticed that as soon as they had one customer in an office block they soon had a lot more. It was just a question of getting that first customer, so Andrea spent more time on the phone and visiting office blocks. It wasn’t long before the diner, thanks to the lunch orders, was earning enough for them to have upstairs professionally painted and redecorated which made them both feel a lot more content with life. “I know you said you thought that romantic office drama was a waste of time, Granddad, but you have to admit we’d have been struggling if I hadn’t watched it.”

~o~O~o~

The couple were making too much money, too visibly, to escape the attentions of various government departments, notably the taxation authorities, and they knew they had to do something to allow Andrea to officially exist as a sixteen year old to avoid the attentions of Social Services. Andrea and Jim had planned her emergence into society at large meticulously. Jim, who had never married, maintained to the authorities that after leaving the army he had worked abroad for years and had met his wife over there. He said he’d lost his wife and daughter in a car crash many years before in a part of eastern Europe where a civil war had been going on at the time. Since there had been four military coups in the region and national borders had moved due to the decades old conflicts it was virtually impossible for the UK authorities to obtain any information going back that far, and what they could obtain was of dubious authenticity because officials there were known to cheerfully fabricate whatever they thought folk wanted to hear and were prepared to pay for. Jim had told the authorities he and his baby granddaughter had survived the accident and returned to the UK some years after that.

To Andrea the most significant event in her life up to that point was her registration with the local doctor who prescriber her testosterone blockers. However, as anticipated the doctor had a problem establishing her identity since she did not exist in the NHS(3) data base. Andrea said her granddad had told her years ago that her name had originally been Adrian Sykes, but she couldn’t remember ever being called Adrian. That according to the pair of them she’d never attended school in the UK and had been home schooled abroad due to her grandfather’s itinerant lifestyle meant there was no data in the education system for them to tap into. Andrea considered that dying was the only positive thing her mother had ever done for her since it meant recognition by her was not even a minor threat.

Andrea said her granddad had told her her mum was called Amarie, but she no memory of her and she’d no idea who her father was. Jim said his daughter had never married, probably hadn’t known who her baby’s father was and she’d never mentioned anyone as a possibility to him. The NHS had to call her something so Andrea Sykes, aged sixteen it was. Andrea insisted that she had been living as a girl named Andrea at least as far back as the age of three, but she couldn’t remember much about anything before that and had no memory of being a boy.

Jim’s part in all this was closely questioned, but he gave the appearance of not being over bright, and he was to the authorities’ experts somewhat disturbed, which after examining his army medical records they ascribed both to his experiences in the military that had led to him being invalided out. Given his UK army experience and his vague references to his work abroad, the authorities deduced that after leaving the army he had been at best a civilian contractor but more probably a mercenary. Since the latter was possibly a serious criminal offence punishable by a lengthy prison sentence they knew he would provide them with no details no matter how hard they pressed him, and in any event Andrea not Jim was the focus of their investigation, so they dropped that line of questioning. Jim’s story was accepted because it was entirely consistent with what they had deduced from what he had not said, for the area had employed many like him, and heated international arguments were still going on as to the exact status of the civilian contractors / mercenaries employed in the area. When asked why he hadn’t registered his granddaughter with the authorities upon her entry into the UK he’d said he didn’t know he had to. When asked why he hadn’t sent her to school, he’d replied he’d taught her himself for years abroad, and neither he nor Andrea had seen any reason to change the arrangement which he knew was perfectly legal. Since that was true, and they believed Andrea now to be sixteen and hence over the age of compulsory education the matter was at an end.

There was so much to cloud the issues that eventually Andrea was issued with a National Health number and a National Insurance number too. Ironically, it was Her Majesty’s inspectors of taxes and Her Majesty’s collectors of taxes who between them provided the official recognition as a UK citizen that Andrea required. Since she was earning a significant amount of money and lived in the UK, the collector of taxes wanted her registered for tax as a UK citizen which made it possible for them to demand and collect the tax after the inspectorate had issued a demand for a tax return. It was the business accountant who pointed out to the inspector of taxes that if there were any possibility of his client being deemed a foreign national they were on shaky ground because he would have to advise her to refuse to accept that they had any right to issue a demand for a tax return, and without that the collector of taxes was hamstrung. He pointed out that the matter could drag on in the courts for years by which time she and the money could have left the country and no arm of the government had the legal authority to prevent either.

He also suggested that if she were not deemed to be a UK citizen why on Earth would she desire to stay in the UK if the government insisted on making life difficult for her, and further more there was a distinct possibility that if she were not deemed a UK citizen the Home Office would order her deported to Eastern Europe, or wherever else it was they decided she came from. He suggested that if they influenced the powers that be to fast track his client’s acknowledgement as a UK citizen as soon as his client was in receipt of the appropriate documentation he would naturally advise her to comply with all legally required procedures. He pointed out that since he’d been authorised to handle the entire matter by both his client and her grandfather he’d already done the required accounting and had prepared their business books, but he could not according to the law hand them over for inspection till he was convinced they had the right to demand them.

The inspectorate thought it unlikely Andrea would wish to leave the UK, but now she had attracted the attention of the system they conceded there was a small but possible chance of her deportation if the matter were not expedited, for stranger things had come to pass. Since the inspectorate were almost certain that Andrea would eventually be declared a UK citizen and it was her wish that the matter be clarified as soon as possible it made no sense to them not to comply with her accountant’s suggestion. In six weeks the inspector of taxes provided the documentation required for the passport office to issue a passport which enabled the DVLA(4) to issue a provisional driving licence. Andrea had no intention of driving even as a learner till she was truly seventeen, but possession of the licence was something that provided her with a bit more protection. Then the inspector of taxes’ demand for a tax return arrived, and the accountant really started to earn his fee. The horse trading with the collector of taxes started in earnest.

~o~O~o~

Time went on, and Andrea was prescribed hormones. To her joy it wasn’t too long before she started to fill out her clothes in what she considered to be an appropriately feminine way without the benefit of any padding. She found boys to be interesting, but had no desire for a relationship with one, and Jim was sufficiently imposing to discourage any of them from taking advantage of his granddaughter. Many knew he had dodgy contacts, and his threat to ‘Have the balls off any boy who took liberties with his granddaughter without her express permission’ was taken seriously. Eventually Andrea reached the supposed age of eighteen, in reality she was a few months short of sixteen, and her name was down on the list for GRS which was scheduled to happen when she would really have just turned sixteen. Unlike her driving licence she wasn’t bothered by her being two years too young to legally have the procedure. “What can they do about it, Grandad? It’s not like a driving licence which they can take off me. They can’t put it all back the way it was before if they find out I’m too young, can they.”

Her Granddad had smiled and said, “No. I don’t think they could. I’m not going to insult you, Love, by asking if you’re sure about it, or by asking any other inane questions, but I suggest you negotiate to have the date set back a couple of months, so as to have it done at the beginning of the summer holidays. That way your recovery won’t mess up your education. You’d be trashed if you had to repeat a year wouldn’t you?”

After kissing his cheek, Andrea said, “Smart thinking, Granddad. I’ll ring up the hospital tomorrow. You need a shave by the way.”

Her granddad’s suggestion proved to be wise, for Andrea didn’t recover anywhere near as quickly as she’d heard some had done. Her recovery took most of her summer holidays, and she’d been on painkillers for weeks, but despite that she’d never been as happy. That she could no longer be ‘discovered’ by anyone, whether by accident or by force, relieved her mind of worries she’d not been aware she had till they were gone along with everything else she’d left behind in the hospital too. The diner was doing well. Jim now came in at eight-thirty rather than five, and they employed twelve full time staff and twice as many part timers. The office delivery service had really taken off, and Andrea and her granddad regarded themselves as wealthy beyond their wildest dreams of not so long ago.

“We’ve not done badly for a geriatric ex-para with PTSD(5) and a trans refugee from violence, vice and drugs have we, Love?” Jim asked one evening. “So what’s next? Seriously, Andrea, now you’re wearing the kit(6) like every other lass of your age, are you thinking about finding someone to settle down with? You could do worse. We could always find a manager to run this spot, and I’d hate you to think you had to remain tied to me forever. You have a life to live, and I want to see you living it. That would make me happy, Girl.”

“I don’t know, Granddad. I agree we’ve done very well for ourselves. I don’t have a problem with you retiring if you want to, but I’m not ready to give up managing here yet. I don’t have a problem with the idea of settling down and even adopting children. Maybe I’ll see about adopting trans children. At least they’d be treated decently by me and anyone I were interested in enough to settle down with. Thing is I’ve never met anyone I could have been interested in in that way. I think I’d like to, but you can’t go to the supermarket shopping for a man and just take one off the shelf, and I’ve no idea where to look. The clubs and pubs aren’t the right places for sure, so maybe I’ll just have to keep my eyes open and be ready for an opportunity. As for being tied to you. I am tied to you, Granddad, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You looked after me when I needed it, and God knows how many false impressions, half truths and outright lies you’ve created and told over the years to keep me safe. Enough to do time I imagine, and I’ll willingly do the same for you. No man is ever going to drive a wedge between us because no man would do that. Any who would is not a man, and certainly no man I would have any interest in.”

The couple’s business interests diversified further and they became wealthy, not just by their reckoning, but by anyone’s. Much to Andrea’s amusement it wasn’t her that settled down first but her granddad. Diane was a plump, buxom, natural blonde divorcee of fifty-two whom Andrea interviewed for the job of senior chef in The Golden Goose their upmarket restaurante in the more expensive part of the city. The interview was going well, and Andrea was pleased she’d found someone suitable from what she’d considered to be a rather short list of possibilities. However, the interview collapsed when Jim entered the office. Jim and Diane both blushed bright red and became tongue tied. Andrea realised what had happened, gave Diane the job on condition she and her granddad were kind to each other and left. A month later Jim and Diane were sharing a bed and two months after that they were married. Diane and Andrea like each other and Andrea had confided to Diane that she considered her gran to be the best thing that had ever happened to her granddad.

~o~O~o~

Andrea recognised Matthew immediately when he entered the restaurante with his parents. It was their wedding anniversary, and he was taking them out to dinner. It crossed Andrea’s mind immediately that Matthew’s partner was his sister Suzy, and that caused her face to feel warm, for surely it indicated he was still single. As she went to take their order, Andrea noticed Matthew looking hard at his mother’s face and then equally hard at hers. “Do I know you you from somewhere?” he asked.

Andrea was feeling butterflies fluttering in all sorts of unfamiliar places, but she was familiar enough with all sorts of romantic fiction to have a good idea what they signified. She felt safe enough to reply, “It’s entirely possible, Matthew, but I suspect it was a long time ago.”

Matthew’s mother looked at his puzzled face and asked, “How do you know my son’s name? He only seemed to vaguely recognise you, and clearly doesn’t know who you are. Who are you? Suzy doesn’t seem to recognise you at all.”

“I’m Andrea Sykes, and I and my grandfather, James Sykes, own The Golden Goose. Suzy, Matthew, Judith and I went to the same school for a short time many years ago. He has hardly changed. I suspect I have changed rather a lot. May I take your order, or shall I have some one bring you a drink first whilst you think about what you would like to eat. I can particularly recommend the salmon.” Matthew and his family kept looking at Andrea from time to time throughout their meal, and when Matthew came to the counter to pay Andrea said, “It has been taken care of, Matthew. Call it for old times’ sake in return for pleasant memories and favours given probably long forgotten by you, but not by me, for I was grateful.”

“There is something elusively familiar about you, but I truly don’t really remember who you are. I apologise if I’m being impertinent, but may I see you again? Take you out somewhere? If you are already spoken for you have my apologies again, but I really would like to know you better and discover our shared past.”

Against her better judgement Andrea nodded and gave Matthew a business card from out of her handbag [US purse] which was hanging over her chair back rather than one from the dispenser on the counter. “Ring me sometime in the afternoon, so I can arrange for Gran or Granddad to cover for me. Now I have to go. The place doesn’t run itself.”

~o~O~o~

In the taxi on their way home Suzy asked, “ You were a while talking to her when you paid. Who is she, Matt?”

“I have no idea, Suze, but I didn’t pay. She took care of the bill. She said to call it for old times’ sake in return for pleasant memories and favours given probably long forgotten by me, but not by her because she was grateful. I asked her out, and she agreed. She gave me a personal card rather than a business card and said to ring in the afternoon, so she could arrange for her Gran or Granddad to cover for her. But she is definitely in my memory somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me think where or why. I don’t remember doing any one, girl or boy, favours of the magnitude she was implying.”

“It was uncanny the way she looked like you, Mum. Did you not think so, Dad?”

“Indeed there was a certain resemblance, Suzy. It was clear Matthew thought so too. Didn’t you, Son.

“At first I did, but after a while I wasn’t so sure. Now I’m not certain what I think about her. I am certain I’d like to know her better and find out how she knows not just me, but Suze and Judy too. Why I wonder didn’t she mention Teddy? If she never met him, and she went to school with the three of us that would perhaps mean secondary school, not primary school, but that wasn’t so long ago, and I’m sure I’d remember her, but I don’t know what to make of things.”

“I don’t agree, Matt. It could have been primary because if three of us were there Teddy wouldn’t have been. I left the year before Teddy was old enough to go into reception class. So it could have been top end of primary, or your second or third year at secondary. I was still there for both, and so was Judy. So it was my last year at primary or my last two at secondary. She’s so pretty like you I’m sure I’d remember her at secondary, so I’m betting it was at primary. But I still think it’s spooky the way she looks like Mum.”

~o~O~o~

Matthew did some digging and discovered there had never been an Andrea Sykes at either of his schools, but still she knew himself and his sisters yet not Teddy, so the mystery that was the girl he knew he was attracted to deepened considerably. He rang as arranged and took Andrea out for a meal at a high end restaurante, which laughing she thanked him for as she said it enabled her to check out the competition. Matthew was eager to find out more about Andrea and their past, but she was blunt and said, “It’s not up for discussion, Matthew, maybe it never will be, but certainly not till I know you a lot better. I’ll be honest, I’m interested in you, but if you can’t accept that I won’t answer your questions about the past I’ll just walk away, and it won’t be over because whatever it may have been will never have begun.”

Matthew remembered his hard line conversation with his dad when he was twelve, and he respected that Andrea was drawing her personal line in the sand. He would just have to wait. After dinner they went to a club for some dancing where he noticed Andrea was not drinking. She noticed he was aware of that and said, “This place is notorious for unfortunate happenings. It is commonly said if you know the right barman you can buy date rape drugs over the bar. May be that’s true. I don’t know, but I do know that for sure there are always a hell of a lot of roofies(7) floating about in here.” Andrea he considered was considerably more worldly wise than himself. After an enjoyable evening, Matthew had the taxi drop Andrea off at her home first where he received a rather chaste kiss. He’d hoped for more, but he’d received as much as he’d been promised.

Over the next six months, Matthew and Andrea became an item, and the kisses became increasingly passionate, but that was as far as Andrea was prepared to go. “I have my reasons, Matthew. If you just want to jump some girl’s bones I can point you in the direction of any number who’d be only too pleased to oblige you for the price of a few drinks, but I’m not one of them.” It seemed fair enough to Matthew because as often as he picked up the bill for their entertainment so did Andrea. “I’m not after your wallet, Matthew. I’m here because I wish to be, and I’ve probably got a lot more money than you to throw about. I’m not going to do that because I earnt it the hard way and I appreciate what it’s worth, so I don’t expect you to do so either.”

When Matthew took Andrea home for Sunday lunch she and his family got on well, and the only embarrassing moment was when Teddy asked, “Why do you look like Mum and my sisters?”

Andrea laught and replied easily, “Because we’re all girls, and all girls have certain things in common that boys don’t have, Teddy.” Thinking she meant breasts which Teddy had recently become interested in he blushed and didn’t pursue the matter.

Matthew’s visit to meet Jim and Diane had nothing to embarrass anyone, and Jim who had already made discreet enquiries into the young man who was clearly courting his granddaughter was completely satisfied that the information he’d been given concerning Matthew was correct. He was a gentleman.

~o~O~o~

It was a serious shock to Matthew and his family when the results of their DNA heritage enquiries returned. Judith had become interested in their family background, and was researching it for a project at school. The family had cooperated, though Teddy had required considerable persuasion thinking it would hurt. Matthew was not a member of the family. It was clear cut, he was neither the child of his father, nor that of his mother. The only explanation was there had been a swapping of babies at the hospital when Olivia had given birth. The entire family was united, DNA or no Matthew was family, but all wished to know what had happened to the other baby and whose genetic offspring was Matthew.

There had been three other baby boys born within the possible time frame, two left only the one who was untraceable. The mother’s records were contradictory. She’d given two different names to two different hospital administrators, and they contained no information concerning a father. The baby had not been named when she had walked out of the hospital with her son without telling anyone she was going. The police had searched for the woman and her baby, for it was known she had a serious heroin habit, thus her baby would have the dependency too. It was considered her baby was unlikely to survive the rigours of withdrawal without medical help, but the address she’d provided had been false. It didn’t actually exist, and there was no record of anyone with either of the names she’d provided anywhere. There was no record of the birth with the local Registrar’s office, nor with the National Family Records Centre within the legal time limit of forty-two days after the birth of a child.

Matthew’s parents had exhausted all avenues they could think of and all the avenues that experts in the field could think of too. Naturally enough Matthew’s family were bothered by that, but there was nowhere else to look. Matthew’s mother didn’t love him any less, and to her he was her son not some nameless woman’s, but still she cried over the son she’d lost. “If I knew he was happy and loved I could have a sense of closure,” were words she regularly cried into her husbands shoulder. She told her children what tormented her was thinking that her son had grown up uncared for by a woman who couldn’t care for herself, and she was haunted by the thought that he’d died years ago hungry in poverty and pain.

~o~O~o~

Despite, the uncertainty over his parentage Matthew remained happy, for his relationships with his family hadn’t changed in any way and Andrea was becoming more intimate, which was satisfying, but even more satisfying to him was that she was becoming more open to confiding her past. When she finally admitted that she was trans Matthew was surprised but not shocked. He was completely okay with the matter, but when Andrea told him that was why she had refused intimacy, puzzled he’d asked why that had anything to do with her being trans. She explained she’d not been prepared to be intimate till he knew the truth of the matter, and she’d taken a long time to feel able to tell him. It was later that month when she finally took him to her bed. In the morning he’d asked her to marry him. “I’d like that, but are you sure about this, Matthew? What about your family, especially your parents? They may think we are rushing into things.”

“I don’t see that it’s got anything to do with them. They don’t need to know you’re trans. They’ll be okay about it as will my siblings, but don’t feel obliged to tell them. If you wish to tell them I’m okay with that, but it’s your decision to make, not mine, not even ours. Okay? As to rushing anything. I asked you to marry me, and you said yes, but that doesn’t commit us to any particular time frame. We have agreed to marry, but it’s up to us to decide when isn’t it? If asked we just say we are still making up our minds.”

~o~O~o~

The wedding preparations were in full swing when Andrea said, “I know you always wanted to know how I knew who you and your sisters were, but after admitting to being trans I forgot all about it, because it was nowhere near as significant to me.”

“I just presumed you’d get around to telling me when you were ready, and I didn’t want you to feel pressurised to tell me before you were, so I just left it alone. I knew there had never been an Andrea Sykes at either of my schools, but you obviously knew who I and my sisters were, but not Teddy. That meant we met either when Suzy was in year six at primary or in year ten or eleven in secondary. She said she’d have remembered someone as pretty as you in secondary, and put her money on primary. I thought I’d have remembered you if we’d met at secondary, but when you told me you were trans and started to live as a girl after leaving primary I reckoned all bets were off, but I wasn’t bothered.”

Andrea took a deep breath and took a few seconds to organise her thoughts before speaking. “I was known as Andrew Winstanley when we were at primary together. I lived on the estate the far side of the dual carriageway. We were friends, and you covered my back from time to time, for which I was grateful. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my real name, and I’m not even certain I actually ever had a real name. I’ve already told you a bit about my home life before I left, and why I left. However I’ll expand on that. I was told I was born a heroin addict because my mother was, and my mother was going to inject me to stop me crying, but an old woman called Alice who was a whore like my mother and lived in the room next to us took me off her before she could and took care of me. She told me later I went cold turkey from birth. She said I must have been strong because many such babies don’t survive, but I seemed to thrive from the moment I was away from my mother. Alice died when I was eight, but by that time I was old enough to survive living with my mother.

“Mum’s pimp was a bloke called Jack who beat the crap out of me regularly, just for fun I think. When I was nearly eleven, Jack was found stabbed to death behind a local brothel which I considered to be a bit of good news. I couldn’t hide my relief that he was dead, so Mum blamed me for his death. The word on the street was that Clark, who eventually took over as Mum’s pimp, had killed Jack because Jack had been operating an ‘unlicenced’ whore on what Clark had staked out as his turf. What that meant was he wasn’t paying Clark a share of Mum’s earnings. Clark was a lot more violent and dangerous than Jack, so I kept well below his radar. It was when Mum said Clark had decided I was going to be a drug runner for him and that I had to start shoplifting to help out at home, which meant to feed her habit, that I knew I had to get out, so I left home and education to live on the streets in the city the day I left primary. I never went to a secondary school, so I wasn’t missed.

“That winter I found some boxes of women’s and girl’s clothes when mine were little more than rags. Cutting a long story short, that was when I started dressing as a girl just to stay warm and survive, but it wasn’t long before realised I was a girl. After, I don’t know, a couple of months, maybe more, I don’t remember, I met Granddad who had a trailer burger bar in those days. He gave me work, fed me and helped me sort myself out. He was on his own in those days, and his PTSD was pretty bad, much worse than it is now he’s got Gran and me. He’s never told me what he went through, but I know he was a paratrooper and was invalided out of the army. One thing led to another, and a lot of folk just assumed he was my Granddad. It suited both of us just to go with that, and to keep me out of the hands of officialdom we let it be known that I was sixteen, when in fact I was a good bit short of thirteen. Four inch heels and big falsies in my bra helped to maintain the fiction.” Andrea laught, “I was sixteen for a lot longer than twelve months. Nobody cares what happens to a sixteen year old who has left school and has a job no matter how little it pays. Though to be fair even then I was doing okay. Somewhere in that time, we sorted out ID for me and I started medically transitioning.

“I read in the paper that Mum overdosed, and I never knew who my father was. I don’t think it was Jack because I don’t think Mum knew him then. I suspect Mum didn’t know who my dad was. Most of the time she was too wrecked to make any sense, and she got nasty if I asked questions. Since I wasn’t bothered who he was I kept quiet. From my point of view the only family I have ever had has been Granddad and then later Gran. Eventually Granddad and I leased and ran the Clarges Street diner and lived above it. It was in pretty grim condition to start with, but we cleaned it up, got it licenced and the business just kind of grew after that. Then Granddad met and married Gran. We’d pulled all kinds of stunts to keep me out of the hands of Social Services, some of them would doubtless have been gaolable offences at the time, but enough time has gone by now for many issues to have been resolved.

Granddad can’t be accused of preventing me from getting education. Officially I was home schooled which is legal, and the authorities have already retrospectively signed off on that because they didn’t have a choice since they believed I was past school leaving age. Sure I didn’t go to secondary school, and my education didn’t follow the usual GCSE, A’ Level, BA degree route, but I took evening classes increasing in level that ultimately qualified me to study and eventually obtain a BA degree with the Open University in Hospitality Management, which is the line of work I’ve been in since I was twelve. Since I was officially eighteen when I had GRS I signed the paperwork, so Granddad can’t be held responsible for that. I never went short of anything and I lived well. That’s on record too because when the diner had its quarterly inspections the flat above it that we lived in then was inspected too to ensure there were no vermin anywhere in the building. The records state the flat was clean and tidy with no objectionable nor unexpected smells anywhere and there was no evidence of anything there there shouldn’t have been despite a kitchen well stocked with food. All that of course was from a view point of a dwelling above an establishment licenced to cook and sell food, but none the less it’s evidence that we lived well.

“Granddad says he has a plan that will eventually allow me to return to be my real age as his adopted granddaughter without either of us getting into trouble with the law. He says it all hinges on the facts that as a child I was in serious danger from folk like Clark and that I was terrified that if Social Services were involved I’d end up dead, because for sure they couldn’t protect me, so he did what was necessary to do so.”

“That I can understand. When you disappeared I was worried about you. I couldn’t tell Mum because she’d have had to involve Social Services. I made Dad promise not to tell Mum and we went to incredible lengths to try and find you. Obviously we failed, but I’m sure that what Dad and I have to add to things could help if the law does get involved.”

After having said that, Matthew started to put things together, his elusive recognition of Andrea, her knowing who he and his sisters were and the similarity of his hard line conversation with his dad and Andrea’s with himself. Most of all the uncanny resemblance that Andrea had to his mum and sisters, for that alone should have enabled him to put it all together a long time ago, but he hadn’t. That he’d said to Suzy that he couldn’t remember having done any one, girl or boy, a favour of the magnitude that Andrea had implied when she’d paid for their dinner made him want to kick himself – girl or boy – he’d said it himself, and he’d not considered taking the thought further.

The realisation of the total picture occurred as it all hit him at once. Andrea had been known at school as Andrew Winstanley. Winstanley was one of the names the mother of the untraceable baby had given, and Andrea had told him her birthday was the day before his. She’d told him, from what presumably Alice or her mother had told her, she was a mere handful of hours older than he. He’d presumed she’d lived not too far from himself, probably on the estate [hood] on the other side of the dual carriageway, for they’d attended the same primary school, and Andrea had confirmed that.

It all fit. Andrea was the unlucky child of his parents, she was a Manstead not a Winstanley, and he was the lucky child who’d escaped the hell that Andrea had lived with instead of himself. He was a Winstanley or whatever his birth mother’s real name had been, not a Manstead. It all made sense. He’d been told that he had cried almost continuously for the first three weeks of his life and he’d had trouble latching to his mother’s breast and nursing. He now knew that was because he not Andrea had been born a heroin addict and his problems had been due to withdrawal. He also knew he had breathing problems and hadn’t developed as quickly as most babies, though he had caught up by the time he went to school, both of which were common in babies born to addicted mothers.

In a state of shock far greater than when he’d discovered he was not the child of either of his parents, he explained what he’d just realised, and it was with the fear of losing her that he asked, “Do you resent or even hate me now, Andrea?”

“Why are you asking me that? Why on Earth should I do either, Matthew?”

“I had your parents, and as a result you went through hell for years. I can understand it if you harbour resentment towards me at least, but I really don’t want to lose you.”

“I suppose I could give you a classically female, emotional response based on the fact that I love you, that you’re mine and I’m not letting you escape the influence of my oh so delectable body. Your words not mine, and I would ask you to remember what we were doing when you said them, but I suspect that would not satisfy your male mind and the what you assert is merely logic that emanates from it. So I’ll provide you with some facts. Logic if you will. I’ll provide a list of things that I can only be grateful for that could not have happened had the babies not been mixed up which you can in no way be held responsible for. You could argue that I wouldn’t have needed them to happen had the mix up not occurred, but then you can argue what ifs and if onlys for ever to no effect. Indeed, for years my life was hell, but those experiences obviously contributed to what I am now which is an exceedingly wealthy, young, self employed, highly educated, successful business woman.

“Initially it was fate and the winter weather that conspired to force me into female clothes which was perhaps one of the better things to happen to me, though I didn’t think so at the time. Hunger drove me to eye the food on Granddad’s trailer that Saturday. I hadn’t had the equivalent of a decent meal in over a week, and I was so desperate for food I was considering begging for something to eat. It was the first sunny day of the Spring, and folk turned out to enjoy it in droves. Granddad was desperate to keep up with the trade before he lost it when he spotted me. He offered me work and food. We became a family of two. I got lucky when I served Jean who offered to do my hair, after which I looked so pretty to myself that I knew I couldn’t survive on the streets looking like that. I’d end up seriously hurt or dead. I had to have a place to live. I only had Granddad to talk to. That ended up with us leasing the diner and living in the flat above it. Trade wasn’t good when I watched an office based romcom on the telly one night from which I got the idea of delivering lunches to offices, and as a result we ended up wealthy. Granddad met Gran when I was interviewing her for the top chef’s job at the restaurante. That’s how we became a more complete family. All complete chance, pure fluke, but hell you can’t lose ’em all.

“Granddad kept me safe, enabled my education, and now we are seriously wealthy. You on the other hand have a decent job as a trainee supermarket manager, but even when you get your own branch in what, five years? You’ll be earning less than a tenth of what I’m earning now. I’m certainly not saying it’s all about money, but we both have a good and loving family and earn enough to be happy and comfortable. Agreed, I’ve lived through a pile of crap, but it’s all relative, if you’ll pardon the unintended pun, and everyone has some crap in their lives. Why on Earth should I resent or hate you. I agree my relationships with the members of your family will never be what they would have been had I grown up there, but that’s life. Oh, and talking about family, something for you to think about. I want a family, and I want a family soon. Years ago, I said to Granddad that when I settled down I’d try to adopt trans children, so they’d have a decent life, and I still want to do that. Apparently the adoption services and Social Services have a mechanism to match parents and children with unusual requirements from across the whole UK. Does that somewhat lengthy answer satisfy you and ease your doubts? If you lose me it’ll be due to carelessness on your part, but for sure I have no intention of losing you.”

“Thank you. Yes that satisfies me. I hadn’t thought about children, but I have no problem with adopting trans children. I think given your life it’s a good idea. Would you be prepared to submit a DNA sample for my Mum’s sake? That and the record of your birth at the hospital even though it contains next to nothing useful would provide you with an ID that is unassailable.”

Andrea was unperturbed by what Matthew had said, for in her mind wherever she had come from her Grandparents were her family and always would be, so she agreed, but said, “The DNA result would mean I’ll have to tell your family the entire tale including that I’m trans, and that your parent’s didn’t lose a son they lost a daughter, but that’s okay with me, even when it all comes out in the end, and I’m sure it will. I’m a long way from childhood now, so Social Services can’t touch me, and all the folk who would have hurt me are all dead now. Clark was shot dead years ago by one of the whores he pimped. I heard he’d knocked her about once too often and she did twelve months for manslaughter with half of it knocked off for good behaviour. She’d been in custody for four months before the trial, so eight weeks later she was out. She’s still a whore, though her pimp treats her considerably better than Clark did. I doubt that Granddad will suffer for protecting me, and in any case he reckons between them a good shrink and a good brief(8) will be able to attribute everything he did to his PTSD.

“Whether it’s okay or not with your parents that their lost son is trans we’ll find out soon enough. Unfortunately there is little I can tell you about my, or your genetic, background. I’ve told you what little I know about Mum, and I was not aware of any other relatives. I’m pretty certain Winstanley wasn’t her real surname because over the years she’d used dozens of different names, though there were a few that she went back to using after a while, but maybe that was because she couldn’t think of any new names, or maybe she forgotten she’d used them before. I don’t have an issue about us looking in to it if you wish to, but since I don’t really know who she was I haven’t a clue where we’d start looking.”

“No, I’m not bothered. It’s not that I’d rather not know. It’s rather that it’s irrelevant. Whoever your mum was, she died years ago. She’s not part of my family, nor of my history. My family love me, and that’s where I belong. It’s where I grew up and and became who I am thanks to my parents. I apologise in advance, but I have no interest in delving into a midden(9) in the foolish hope of finding something of value. It doesn’t make sense. It’s much the same as the way you feel about your grandparents. However, you on the other hand will be much loved by my family, and will be very welcome as both a daughter and a daughter in law.”

Andrea nodded and said, “No apology required, after all that’s why I lit out at the age of twelve. I have no problem with the way you see things, but changing the subject a bit to what you said about me being both a daughter and a daughter in law.” Andrea was laughing as she asked, “Does this mean that I’m now my own sister? Or do I mean my own brother? Or both? And when I marry you will you be my brother or my husband? Will I be your sister or your wife? It’s bizarre, but normally when a son gets married the joke is that his parents aren’t losing a son but gaining a daughter. How does that work in our case?

“More seriously, Matthew, it is illegal in this country for even adopted siblings with no genetic relationship to marry, so I imagine you will have to go to court to apply for a writ of separation from your parents to invalidate any adoptive relationship that was implicitly established by the mix up at the hospital and their subsequent rearing of you as their son. That’s sort of like a divorce between parents and children. That of course may upset your parents and siblings for a while, but though I doubt it will alter the way you regard each other in the long term it will probably be a legal requirement for us to be able to get married. Then since you will be neither their genetic nor adopted son you would be able to marry me who will by then be established as their genetic trans daughter. Still, as long as we all accept the situation with a considerable degree of good humour regardless of the exact legal situation and the hoops we’ll have had to jump through at least we will be able to marry and your mum will have some kind of closure.”

1 Ratching, rummaging.
2 Hobson’s choice, a choice of taking what is available or nothing at all.
3 NHS, National Health Service.
4 DVLA, Driver Vehicle Licencing Authority.
5 PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
6 Wearing the kit, an expression used by northern UK men that doesn’t refer to ‘kit’ as in clothes, which is the usual usage. It refers to the female body, as in the women are wearing, or walking about with, the parts that men are interested in.
7 Roofies, vernacular term for Rohypnol possibly the most widely used and available date rape drug.
8 Brief, vernacular for a barrister, a legal representative in court.
9 Midden, a farm dung pile.