I wrote this in response to a comment about nasty dads. I've included quite a few of them in recent writings - Seven Dresses, Candy Crush etc - and I'm not sure I can justify it, apart from a mentioning the general impression I have that rigid attitudes and unbending beliefs are more of a masculine trait than a feminine one. I realise this isn't true in all cases, so I wrote a story with a father who's more supportive than the mother, although she doesn't do too badly. Of course that dad's a bit trans, so not a typical male.

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-oOo-

I have a secret

Shh, you mustn’t tell anyone though, please.

It kind of started last year when we were on holiday.

I should explain something though. My mum and dad aren’t that well off, so we get the choice. Either we fly somewhere really exciting and rough it for a couple of weeks, or we go by coach and get to live in a fancy hotel. Personally, I prefer the first kind of holiday, which Mum says is because I get bored easily, but she and Dad prefer the second.

Which was fine, because Collin – that’s my older brother – always used to side with me, so we’d do one year camping somewhere exotic and the next slobbing out at a fancy hotel.

I mean that has its perks. Mum doesn’t have to cook, so she stays in a much better mood, and there’s always a pool and a beach.

The thing is I have very fair skin, so I burn easily, which means for the first few days I’m only allowed ten or fifteen minutes in the sun maximum. Then I have to stay in the shade for the rest of the day, which is boring.

We did the hotel thing the year before last, so last year should have been kid’s preference, only Collin turned sixteen. Which meant he had access to all the extra facilities in the hotel, like the gym and the games room, so he wanted another hotel holiday.

I couldn’t do the same things without adult supervision, meaning Mum or Dad, because, although Collin was old enough to use them unsupervised, he wasn’t old enough to keep an eye on me. I couldn’t ask Mum to come with me because she was busy soaking up the Sun, and I couldn’t ask Dad because he’d just started a new book. You know, they’ll do stuff with us, but first day the rule is leave them alone.

So there we were, Mum slowly basting herself – that’s what Collin calls it anyway – Dad with his nose stuck in a book, Collin off exploring all the new things he could do, and me, sitting under a sun shade having had my ten minute ration of rays with nothing to do.

I didn’t say anything, but I must have been sighing a lot because Mum turned her face towards me. I can’t say she looked at me because she still had her eyes shut, but she knew where I was. Probably because of the sighing.

“Why don’t you go up to the room, sweetheart? You brought some things to do with you, didn’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“I know it’s not much fun for you the first day, love, but you have that new puzzle book, don’t you? Go and give it a try. You’ll feel better if you just find something to do.”

“Key’s on the table, son,” Dad added. Which was his way of saying, ‘Don’t even ask.’ I wouldn’t have. I mean this was their holiday as much as it was ours – something they said every year at some stage.

I picked up the key and headed into the hotel, trying not to look upset. I mean, they didn’t need it spoiled by me moping even if that’s all I felt like doing.

So I made my way up to our rooms. We had a small family suite with a big room for Mum and Dad and a smaller one for Collin and me. Plus a living area with sofas and a breakfast bar and enough kitchen equipment to put together snacks and stuff if we didn’t want to use the hotel facilities. There was a TV too, but we weren’t allowed to use it because that was part of what we were supposed to be getting away from. Besides, a lot of it was pay per view, and Dad said he had better things to spend our holiday money on.

So I picked up my puzzle book and looked at the first puzzle. You know how it is sometimes? When you stare at a book you’re trying to read or a puzzle you’re trying to do and you just can’t think? It’s like there’s something else trying to grab your attention. You don’t know what, but it stays there, getting in the way until you go looking for it.

I dropped my pencil and followed my feelings, which took me into Mum and Dad’s room where Mum had started unpacking but had given up when she’d found her bikini.

Yeah, that’s my mum. Forty something and still looks good in a bikini. It’s something Dad says, and it’s true. She looks like a supermodel. Actually, Mum and Dad and Collin laugh when I say that, but I think she does.

Anyway, she’d left this really pretty dress laying on the bed. It was all black and glittery with sequins all over it. I didn’t particularly like the way it felt, at least not on the outside, but it was kind of stretchy with a really smooth layer on the inside.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I knew this was it, the thing that was keeping me from thinking about other stuff, that was making me feel so restless, but I didn’t really know why.

The feeling was a bit like I get when I do something I know I’m not allowed to, except not altogether like it. There had been a time a few years back when Mum gave me and Collin some of her old clothes so we could play dress up, so it wasn’t as if she thought it was wrong for us to put on dresses and stuff. Collin had stopped doing it first, and after a while it wasn’t much fun doing it on my own. Then one day the dresses disappeared from our wardrobe, and that was that.

Looking at Mum’s sparkly dress, I felt like I had missed feeling pretty, and that funny ‘hole in your tummy’ feeling you get when you’re wearing a skirt instead of trousers.

I walked out onto the balcony and looked down towards the swimming pool. I could see Mum, already looking a lovely golden colour, like fried chicken when it’s just ready to eat, and Dad was sitting there with his book less than half read. Dad’s a really fast reader, but I’ve never known him finish a book in less than a day. There wasn’t any chance either of them would come up to the room any time soon, and Collin had so many things to investigate, I doubted he’d reappear much before lunchtime.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t quite believe I was going to do this, but I was.

I went into the shower and took off my swimming trunks and tee shirt. I was sweaty and greasy thanks to Mum slathering sun tan lotion all over me, and even I could see the mess I’d made of my clothes. I didn’t want to leave any evidence of what I was about to do, so I climbed into the shower.

I’ve read that cold showers are supposed to put you back in your right mind if you think you’re about to do something you think you’ll regret, but all mine did for me was to make me more determined to go through with it. If I’d had any doubts about what I was doing, they were washed away by the cool, refreshing spray of water.

I dried myself off and hunted out a fresh pair of underpants. Putting them on felt like a little bit of a disappointment, but I didn’t really have any alternative. I mean, put on Mum’s underwear? Yu-uk!

The dress felt amazing. It fell to below my knees, which wasn’t quite right, but then I’m a lot shorter than Mum. It wrapped around me like a hug though. I mean sure, Mum has bits that go in and out where I just kind of go straight up and down, but on average we’re not that different, and the stretch in the fabric made up for a lot of what was lacking.

I mean not up top. Mum has big boobies, which Dad really likes, so the dress was fairly saggy up top, but it didn’t matter. I loved that it zipped up at the back, because no clothes I’ve worn – other than the dress up clothes from years ago – do that, and then there’s that little hook at the top. Such a stretch to get it to do up, and then you’re kind of locked into the clothes. I mean if anyone came in to the room while I was wearing it, there would have been no way I could have taken it off before being discovered. It gave me a sense of helplessness which I loved. It sounds really stupid, doesn’t it, but maybe there was a part of me that wanted to be found out, and by doing up that last hook, I was making it far less likely that I could escape.

So, what did I do once I had Mum’s dress on? At first I just walked around in it, admiring myself in the big mirror doors in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Then I walked around the place acting as much like a girl as I could. I found a pair of black heels and put them on. Mum wasn’t that different in size from me so they were neither too tight nor too loose. They were difficult to walk in though, and it took me quite a while to get the hang of them. Even then they made my toes ache, so next I tried sitting in as girly a way as possible. When all the novelty ran out, I went back to my puzzle book and worked through a couple of puzzles. It was silly how much more fun I had doing them wearing the dress, but everything around me seemed brighter and more intense.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. We didn’t have a clock in the room – one of Dad’s rules while on holiday – so I only had a vague sense that lunchtime was coming. I snuck out onto the balcony and checked on Mum and Dad only to see Collin was with them and they were gathering their things together.

I hurried to undo the hook and zip on the dress, panicking a little, but eventually calming down enough to loosen them. I climbed out of the dress and laid it back on the bed as near to how I’d found it as I could remember. The shoes went back where I’d found them and I picked up the towel from where I’d dropped it and hung it on the balcony.

Last, I dug out a pair of shorts and a fresh tee shirt and flopped down on the sofa. I was halfway through the next puzzle when Mum opened the door and told me it was lunchtime.

“Are you okay, love?” she asked as we headed back downstairs to join Dad and Collin.

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t I be?” I said nonchalantly, or as best as I could manage.

“I don’t know. It’s just...”

“I’m fine, Mum.” Time to shut this down before it went South – whatever that meant. “I mean it sucks not being able to go outside, but it’s okay.”

“Well, maybe we can go for a walk on the beach later when the Sun’s not so fierce. If you like, Dad can come with you and Collin to the games room after lunch, and you can have a game of pool or two.”

“Doesn’t he want to relax?”

“He wants to read his book, and he can do that anywhere. Or I’ll come. I don’t think I need anymore Sun today myself. How does that sound?”

Not as good as being able to spend another hour or two in one of Mum’s dresses, but then again, too much of a good thing ruins the experience, so I guess...

I smiled at her. “Sounds great, Mum.”

“Are you sure you’re allright?”

“I’m fine, Mum, except...”

“Except what dear?”

“Well, you can see why I don’t particularly like this kind of holiday, can’t you?”

“I can, sweetie, but you’ll be having fun in next to no time, and I hope you can see why your dad and I really do like this kind of thing. I mean, when do you ever have this sort of choice over lunch?”

We’d arrived at the dining hall, which had one long table down the side, offering an immense variety of breads, meats, veg, fruit, sweets.

Except I’ve always been something of a fussy eater. If I haven’t had it before, I tend not to want to try it now.

Mum pointed out a few things she thought I’d like and I reluctantly filled my plate.

It was all different, even the bread had some slightly odd flavour and texture. I’ll admit it was all quite nice, but because it wasn’t what I was used to, I didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else seemed to.

I let my mind drift to what had happened that morning. That had been very different and I’d enjoyed it immensely. So different could be good. I tried thinking the same about lunch and it worked a bit.

Mum was right about the rest of the week improving as well. I was able to spend longer in the sun every day, and if I had to spend a few hours back in the room by myself, well l, I had something to look forward to, didn’t I?

There weren’t many more opportunities to do so because Mum and Dad ended up feeling a bit guilty about leaving me in the room. I told them I was fine and they should enjoy themselves doing what they wanted, but they said they were grateful for me putting on a ‘brave face’ and it made them all the more determined to help me enjoy myself. I still had a few shorter periods after they’d joined me in the games room or the library or something and before lunch or dinner, and I was able to ‘borrow’ some of Mum’s clothes and enjoy the way they made me feel.

In the second week we did more things outside as my skin adapted to the sunlight, and I felt oddly upset that I didn’t have any way of enjoying my alone time, but we had fun even so. Mum spent most of every day in her swimming costume, but she seemed to have a different outfit for every evening. She kept giving me ideas for what I would want to wear next, and since it ended up in the washing bag, I didn’t have to be so worried about wrinkles and stuff. I mean it’s not as if it was really dirty after just one wear, and it usually smelt faintly of Mum’s perfume, which made wearing it just a little bit more special.

Mum was a bit more cuddly than usual during the whole time we were together, but I kind of liked it, and it made up a bit for not being able to do... you know.

Anyway. All good things must come to an end. Dad says it at the end of every holiday when we need to pack up ready for the return journey. I never want to, so the usual thing happened with everyone packed except me just before dinner time.

“Well,” Dad said, “I suppose you should join us when you’re done. Don’t take too long about it though, but don’t even think about joining us until you’re finished.”

I never have, or at least not since the first time. Dad gave me one of his quietly disappointed looks, which I’ve always found so much more horrible than if he’d shouted at me or even smacked me. Mum and Collin had copied him and I’d had to do it all anyway with them looking at me with grim expressions and disapproving shakes of the head. I’d promised myself I’d never do that to us all ever again.

They closed the door leaving me with a whole lot of things to squeeze into my bags. I looked in on Mum and Dad’s room where Mum had laid out a short, ruffled skirt and plain white tee shirt for the trip home.

Something made me hold back though, so I went back to my packing and started folding my clothes – not very well – and putting them in my case. I hadn’t been doing it for long when the door opened again and Mum came back in. She gave me a funny look. Maybe some sympathy, but also something else. She picked up a bottle of pills from her bedside table then gave me a smile.

“There’s steak and chips. Would you like me to order for you?”

I nodded.

“I know you like it rare, but it’s not a great idea in a hot place like this. Medium rare okay for you?”

I nodded again as I put another tee shirt in my case.

“Okay then. Don’t be long. I expect they’ll be serving it up in about fifteen minutes.”

Which left me fifteen minutes to be girly. I waited one more minute then ducked into Mum and Dad’s room. I was tempted by the tee shirt because it was a lot softer than any of mine, but it was long enough to make a dress on its own. Plus I knew that if I sweated in it at all, Mum would notice.

The skirt came down to my knees and was made of a smooth and really cool material which felt wonderful. It lifted my mood so that I ended up packing all my things – clothes and toys – in just five minutes. I had my bag of things to do on the coach ready and everything. All I needed to do was change back into my shorts and join my family.

Again something niggled at me that maybe I should do it sooner rather than later, so I slipped the skirt off and put it back on the bed exactly how I’d found it, then pulled my shorts on. I did one more look around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and stepped out of the room, just in time to see Collin come out of the lift at the end of the corridor.

“Come on,” he said, waving for me to hurry.

So I did this sort of shuffly walking run sort of thing. Dad always said it was rude to run about in a place like this, and even when there wasn’t anyone around I didn’t like to do it.

Collin held the lift door for me and we headed down together.

“Mum said fifteen minutes,” I said.

“Mum changed her mind,” he replied a little grumpily. “She said I was to help you if you hadn’t finished. You have finished, haven’t you?”

“Of course!”

“Hey! Just asking. You know how Mum and Dad are on the last night of a holiday?”

“Yeah, I know.”

It was a thing with them that the last evening should be a happy one. ‘Don’t cry because it’s over,’ Dad would say. ‘Smile because it happened.’ Then he’d ask who said that and if we didn’t want the boring lecture, we’d have to say Dr Seuss, although I sometimes said the Cat in the Hat man, which apparently was a good enough answer in Dad’s eyes.

So we’d share what had been our favourite parts of the holiday, and laugh about it all.

Of course, I couldn’t really tell them what had been my favourite part this time. I don’t think they’d have understood. So I made something up.

The trip home was long and tedious. Mum sat with me, and Collin with Dad for most of it, which was fine by me because Collin takes up a lot of space whenever he’s sitting next to me, and we end up arguing.

“I like your skirt, Mum. It’s really pretty.” I’m not sure why I said it, but I did.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” It brought a smile to her face, but also that odd look I’d noticed the previous evening. “Would you like to play a game?”

Maybe that’s part of what made me say it. I was bored of my puzzle book. I’d nearly finished it and all that was left were the word searches which I’ve never really liked.

I knew there was a card game where people had to take off their clothes if they lost, and I wondered if there might be one where the players got to swap clothes. It made me feel all breathless for a moment, but then I decided it wasn’t something we could do on a crowded coach, so we played gin rummy instead.

When night time came, Collin stretched out in the aisle. He wasn’t supposed to because we were all supposed to wear our seatbelts all the time we were moving, but there wasn’t much the driver could do about it. It meant that Mum could go and sit with Dad for a bit and that left me a whole double seat for me to curl up in. It meant I had a few hours sleep, and when I woke, I had Mum’s cardigan draped over me. It smelled of her perfume and made me feel soft inside, so I snuggled down under it and pretended to still be asleep for a while longer.

Not much longer though, because we were approaching the place where we were going to get on the ferry, so we all had to get off the coach.

“Don’t forget your jumper, darling,” Mum said to me. “It’s pretty chilly outside.”

“I don’t have it,” I said. “I put it in my suitcase.” It’s something I never think about. If Mum or Dad had been there while I was packing, they’d have reminded me, but you know...

Mum gave me an exasperated sigh. “Well, I suppose you’d better keep that then.” She meant the cardigan, obviously, and it was meant to be a sort of punishment because it was all embroidered and crocheted and stuff and looked really girly. She draped it over my shoulders and did up the top button and it hung down lower than the bottom of my shorts. I should maybe have been horrified, but secretly I loved it.

Dad let Mum have his jacket and pulled a spare jumper out of his bag and put it on. Of course he could have let me use his jumper, but I suppose they wanted to teach me a lesson.

Well, lesson learned, and enjoyed. Collin did keep making remarks about how come he had a sister now, until Dad told him off. I didn’t mind. I was beginning to think I’d like to be his sister.

Anyway, the ferry trip was okay. The sun rose while we were crossing the Channel, not that we could see it because England was covered with cloud as usual. I enjoyed the soft feel of the cardigan as well as the gentle smell of Mum’s perfume. I did have one or two old ladies tell me how pretty I looked, which I found I really liked, so I smiled back at them.

Mum made me keep the cardigan on until we were back on the coach, by which time I didn’t want to give it back, only I didn’t need it anymore, so I didn’t have a reason to keep it on. When we arrived at the coach station, Dad gathered all our cases, handing mine to me as soon as he retrieved it, so I could hunt out the sweatshirt I’d packed. Once we were all sorted, we found a taxi and headed home.

Life returned to normal after that. Dad went back to work the next day, Mum stayed home a lot of the time, but she had her social calendar. Collin and I did what most kids do in the summer holidays, which for Collin meant he went out most days to hang with his mates or something. I didn’t have many friends, so I stayed home a lot of the time and played in my room.

It wasn’t until the third time Mum went out that I realised I was alone in the house and not likely to be disturbed for some hours. More than that, I realised what it meant I was free to do.

I had all of Mum’s clothing at my disposal, and she had a lot to choose from.

The first time I realised this, I went into Mum and Dad’s bedroom, opened the wardrobe and just stared.

I was so scared of being found out. The way Mum had looked at me sometimes on holiday made me think she knew, or at least suspected, so I had to be careful.

In the end, I just closed the door and went looking in the washing hamper. There were enough options in there, including some of her underclothes that had me fascinated. I mean, not her knickers, because that would be just yuk, but I’d wondered about what it would feel like to wear a bra or one of her cotton slips or her tights. The tights looked stretched in the washing, so I had a feeling they’d get stretched if I took a pair from her drawer. The rest should be okay, but I didn’t have the courage to start with, so I’d try a dress or a skirt and top and wear them for no more than half an hour, keeping in the bathroom with my normal clothes so that if someone came back unexpected, I’d be able to change and maybe hide the things until I had a chance to put them back.

I was never found out, so I got braver. I wore things for longer and started wandering about the house. The worst that happened was one time someone rang the doorbell. That was a bit scary, but I ran to the bathroom and changed back into my shorts and tee shirt, then by the time I opened the door, the visitor had gone.

I kept getting braver every day, trying on more things, dressing more completely, even borrowing some of Mum’s shoes, which I think I said were about the right size for me. I’d walk about the house, mainly staying upstairs so I’d have a chance to hide if Mum or Collin came back unexpectedly, but they didn’t.

At least not until Collin came back early one day. He was kind of quiet and I didn’t hear him unlocking the front door. In fact, the first I heard was his footsteps on the stairs. I was in Mum and Dad’s room at the time, admiring myself in the mirror when I heard him coming up the stairs.

I panicked and ran for my room, which is the closest one to the top of the stairs. I caught sight of him nearing the top just as I dashed into my room and closed the door.

I remember leaning against the door so he couldn’t come in and thinking if he’d seen me then my life was over. My heart was racing like a steam train and I felt horrible, like the world was falling away underneath me while I imagined all the ways this could go wrong. A part of me hoped desperately that he hadn’t seen anything and as the silence stretched out, I almost began to think it’d got away with it.

Then there was a knock at my door.

“Glen?” he asked quietly. His voice sounded a bit like Mum’s when she’s worried. He’d want to come in and I was wearing too much to be able to take it all off before he would try. I had a skirt and a slip and tights and thigh boots as well as a bra and blouse. It was so different from what I usually wore that if he’d even seen me for a split second, he’d know something was wrong.

“Glen, can I come in?”

I wanted to tell him to go away, but it wouldn’t work. I felt that it would make things worse if I did so. I was beaten. I took a deep breath and, fighting back tears, I opened the door so he could see me.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe laughter, maybe anger, maybe a telling off, like I shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing. I mean, I kind of knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt so wonderful when I was dressed up.

“I thought so.”

Not what I had been expecting. I looked into his eyes and he smiled. It was a kindly, friendly smile, not the sort of, ‘I’ve got you now’ smile most older brothers like to give their younger siblings.

“Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He led me into his bedroom and opened his wardrobe, where he dug out a big cardboard box that was buried under a stack of books and comics.

“I used to do the same,” he said, “but then I grew and Mum’s clothes didn’t fit me anymore.”

You know Mum is kind of little, and Collin is four years older than me. He kind of grew bigger a year or two back. I mean, not really big bigger. You know, even Dad’s not that big, but you don’t have to be very big to be bigger than Mum.

“Anyway,” Collin continued, “You know I’ve been doing odd jobs around the neighbourhood , like mowing the lawn and stuff?”

“Is that where you’ve been? I thought you were just hanging out with your friends.”

“Well, I suppose there were some times when I did that, but mostly I’ve been working. The reason I’m home early today is because I finished a job early.

“This is what I’ve been spending most of my money on.”

He opened the box and let me look in. It was filled with girl clothes, but more the sort a teenager would wear rather than a mother. He started emptying them onto his bed.

“Some of it I bought off eBay and Facebook market place, but that’s kind of risky because you don’t always get what you think you’re getting, and it’s hard to complain about girl clothes you bought when you’re a boy. Plus there’s always a risk when you send money through the post. So, I’ve been buying quite a bit from charity shops.”

“Isn’t that kind of embarrassing? I mean, going into a place yourself and picking things out. Don’t they want to know why someone like you should be buying girl clothes?”

“No, not really. I mean it’s scary more than embarrassing. I’ve found a few places that are several miles from here. It’s kind of a long way on the bike, but then there’s a lot less chance of being recognised than if I stayed closer to home. I kind of dress up before going in. I mean, check this out.”

He stepped out of his clothes and put on a summer dress that showed a lot of skin. His hair was longer than most boys, which meant once he’d changed, he looked a lot like a girl.

“I was terrified going in for the first time looking like this, but my money’s as good as anyone else’s, and if any of them figured out that I wasn’t quite right, they were always too polite to say anything. After a while you kind of stop caring what they think, and when you’re less bothered about being clocked, you don’t give them any reason to look at you twice.

“I have to shave my whole body every now and again, ‘cos I’m getting hairier, and I have to use girly deodorants and perfumes when I’m out like this, ‘cos the smell would be a dead giveaway, but it showers off easily enough.

“I’ve been wondering what to do with the stuff I’ve grown out of. I mean, I could try taking it back to the charity shops, but if they figured out I was a boy, I’m not sure they’d be that comfortable taking the things from me, and that would be just a bit awkward. Do you want any of it, maybe?”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s just filling up space in my box, and I don’t have a lot left for new stuff. It’d be a shame just to dump it.”

“No, don’t do that. I’d kind of... Yeah, I’d really like them.”

He sorted out a few things that were clearly too small for him. A green ruffled skirt that came halfway to my knees and a really soft white tee shirt.

“Why don’t you try them on?” he suggested, and I didn’t need telling twice.

He helped me put Mum’s things back where I’d found them. I’d borrowed most of the clothes from the washing hamper, which he told me was a really great idea. He’d taken stuff from Mum’s wardrobe and there had been times he’d worried that it looked a bit creased when he’d put it back. The boots, of course, went back on Mum’s shoe rack.

We made ourselves a snack and I went back upstairs into his room, where he sorted through his clothes and put aside more than half of them. I couldn’t believe he was giving so much away, but he showed me how tight some of the stuff was. A lot of it was obviously second hand, but it was all really pretty and, of course, I wanted to try it out straight away. He persuaded me to wait though, saying that anticipation was half the fun.

We found a box in my room that was full of comic annuals I wasn’t ever likely to read again. My new stash more than half filled it, then, with a few books on top, it looked pretty much how it had before and slid into place at the back of my wardrobe.

We played together for the rest of the afternoon, just cards and stuff, but it felt so different with us pretending to be girls.

Actually, it didn’t really feel like pretending. Collin was just so naturally girly I couldn’t see that he’d ever been anything but a girl. He – or maybe she – asked to be called Holly while we were wearing skirts, we spent quite a long time discussing what I should be called and, in the end, I chose Gwendolyn. It was really pretty and shortened to Gwen which sounded quite a lot like my real name, in the same way that Holly sounded a bit like Collin.

Well maybe not much, but a bit.

Collin – sorry, I mean Holly – kept an eye on the clock and kind of paused every now and then to look out the window until one time he told me it was time to change back. I went to look out too and could see he had a great view of the bus stop where Mum was walking back towards the house laden down with shopping bags.

It only took a couple of minutes to change back and to hide my clothes, but that was as long as it took Mum to make it back to the house.

“Glen,” she called, and I pretended inside she’d said Gwen. “Can you come and give us a hand?”

“Coming,” I called back and checked to make sure I looked right. Holly had brushed my hair and made it look somehow a bit girly, so I ran my fingers through it to muss it up a bit.

Collin came with me when I went downstairs, and I could tell he didn’t seem as happy. He was still smiling, but there was something in his eyes that looked kind of sad. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t has such a fun time with my newly discovered sister.

“Oh, hello Collin,” Mum said when we arrived in the kitchen together. “I thought you’d still be out.”

“I finished early at Mrs Prendergast’s,” he said. “She paid me to the end of the week. Said I’d earned it because of how hard I’d worked.”

“That was sweet of her. And well done you. I’m proud of you. Would you mind helping me put these things away?”

So we did. I don’t know about Collin, but I was still very much Gwen inside, helping Mum like any daughter would. It felt good, even if the clothes were wrong.

Collin stayed home for the rest of the week, and Mum took full advantage. One of her groups had arranged a day out, which she’d reluctantly declined because she didn’t want to leave me all day. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could take kids to, so she asked if she could pay Collin his daily rate to stay with me.

“It’s okay Mum, you don’t have to pay me,” he’d said. “I mean, we’ll be fine together. I know we can find something to do.”

“I don’t want you playing computer games or watching TV all day. When the weather’s like this, you should really be outside.”

I could see the twinkle in his eye and feel one in my own. I had a kind of scared feeling, but good scared, like you get before going on one of the big roller coasters. Mum was giving my brother ideas, and could hardly wait to see where they would take us.

“We’ll be fine, Mum. We can ride over to the park or something.”

“That sounds about right. I’ll make you a picnic you can take, and if you won’t let me pay you, I’ll make it up to you later.”

So, Mum left bright and early the next morning, catching a lift with Dad, and we were left with an empty house and a whole day to ourselves.

We watched the car disappear around the corner and ran to our different rooms to change. I picked out a cotton dress with embroidered flowers which I’d really wanted to wear the other day and Holly appeared minutes later wearing a short denim skirt and pink tee shirt.

We had the whole day to ourselves, so we started off doing things around the house. Holly thought it would be fun if we cleaned the place up and gave Mum a lovely surprise when she got back, so we did just that.

I started on my room, which was always a bit of a mess, but not after I’d spent half an hour, which was really weird because usually it would have taken me all morning and me hating every minute, but here I was done in no time at all, feeling an odd sense of satisfaction at a job well done and having a tidy place to live in.

I joined Collin – sorry, Holly – downstairs to find she’d sorted out a coloured wash and put it on, incidentally including most of Mum’s clothes that I’d worn the previous day, and was busy spraying and wiping down the kitchen surfaces.

“Do you want to do the hoovering?” she asked with a little smile, probably because she knew it was the bit of cleaning I didn’t mind doing as Glen.

I jumped to it straight away and spent the next three quarters of an hour giving the downstairs a good blitz. That’s what Dad calls it. It’s a funny word, but it sounds right.

It may have taken me a little longer than usual, but I made sure I moved all the furniture to get to all the awkward spots I usually overlooked.

Our vacuum cleaner’s quite heavy, so I would probably have struggled to carry it up the stairs, so Holly swapped with me once I’d done the downstairs. She gave me a can of polish an a duster and showed me what to do with them. It was a bit fiddly, having to move everything off a surface before spraying on the polish, but it was so satisfying seeing how clean and dust free every surface was with just one wipe. That and the polish smelled really nice.

We were finished by half past ten and the place looked as good as if Mum had done it. We grinned at each other for a moment then collapsed on the sofa, laughing so hard. I don’t know what Holly found funny, but I loved that it had actually felt fun and taken such a short time. Plus, I was imagining Mum’s face when she came back.

“You know that park with the lake?” Holly asked. “It’s a bit of a way away, but the roads are quiet and there’s usually not many people there. Shall we go there for lunch?”

“Okay, but...” I fingered the skirts of my dress and held them out.

“I have a trick for that, and it’s not that hot outside.” She pulled me upstairs and showed me how he looked when he’d pulled his tracksuit over the top of his clothes. “It’s designed to be worn over your sports kit, so it’s okay if it looks a bit baggy. You may want to change into something with a shorter skirt and maybe a bit thinner up top, but nobody will know.”

So, I changed. It wasn’t a hardship, because it meant I got to wear something new from my stash. It ended up being another dress, but thinner material and with quite a short skirt on it. The skirt was quite tight which meant I could feel it under my tracksuit, but it didn’t show.

It even hid most of the white, lacy socks I chose to go with it, and the trainers hid most of the rest.

Holly had our lunch in a rucksack and handed me an empty one. Well nearly empty as it had my water bottle in it, freshly filled with ice fingers in it.

“Do I need a whole bag for just this?” I asked.

“Yes.” She flashed me a grin. “You’ll see why in a little while.”

We locked up the house and fetched our bikes from the garage. I let Holly lead as she seemed to know where she was going. She didn’t race on ahead the way Collin usually did and kept dropping back to make sure I was alright.

I really liked having a sister.

About a quarter of the way there, we were away from the houses and on a quite lane with trees on both sides, when Holly pulled over to one side. There wasn’t anyone around, so she quickly stripped off her track suit.

“Your turn,” she said as she eased the rucksack off my back and tucked her tracky inside.

“But...”

“But what?” she asked. “You remember how much of a girl you looked yesterday and this morning. You look just the same now, or you would if you took that thing off. We’re far enough away from home that no-one will recognise us, and,” she waved around us, “there’s no-one to see anyway. Come on Gwen, you must have known we were going to do this, and I’m pretty sure you want to.”

She was right, but it was scary. I looked around one more time, and there really wasn’t anyone, so I unzipped the tracksuit and stepped out of it.

She tucked it away in the bag and settled it on my back before I had a chance to change my mind, then we mounted up and carried on cycling.

The crossbars meant we weren’t very elegant and my skirt was so short I was afraid people could see right up to my undies. Not that there were many people on the road, and those we passed didn’t give us a second glance, so we can’t have looked as wrong as I felt.

The park was quite a bit busier than Holly had anticipated, but then it was the summer holidays and quite sunny. We found ourselves a quiet place in the shade of a big tree looking down the slope towards the lake, where we unpacked the picnic, laying out a blanket and putting the food to one side. It was early for lunch yet, so we just sat and watched the world and chatted in a way we never had as brothers.

“Hi,” a shy voice said from behind us.

I spun around doing a deer in the headlights impression while Holly just turned and smiled.

“Hi,” she said.

The newcomers were a couple of girls, one about Holly’s age and the other a little older than me.

“I’m Jessica and this is Amy,” the older one introduced herself and her sister, at least I assumed so because they looked similar. “We’re over there.” She waved a hand to where a couple of parent aged adults sat and offered a wave. “We wondered if we could join you for a bit.”

“Sure,” Holly said brightly despite my warning looks. “I’m Holly, and this is Gwen. Don’t mind her; she’s a bit shy.”

“I am too,” Amy said, settling onto her knees beside me. She had long, dark hair which hung down to the middle of her back. Enough of it fell in front of her shoulders to make a decent curtain, behind which she hid most of her face. “I love your hair. I don’t think I would be brave enough to have it that short, but it really suits you.”

“I... I... Er... Thanks,” I said, wishing I had as much hair as she did to hide the blush I could feel rising up my features. “I’d love long hair like yours. It’s very pretty.”

She smiled and blushed as well, and the hair did a good job of concealing most of her embarrassment.

“You know what you remind me of? A pixie. It’s kind of like a fairy, but not so goodie goodie, you know what I mean?”

I could have snapped back that I knew what a pixie was, but it wasn’t like she was trying to be a know it all, just being friendly. I kind of giggled. “Yeah,” I said, but I couldn’t think of anything to add to it. “You’d make a great mermaid. I mean, you know, your hair and stuff.”

I shut up before I made too much of a mess of things, but she was smiling.

“I’ve not seen you around before,” Jessica said to Holly. “We live quite close, over that way.” She pointed again, but it didn’t mean much to me.

“We live a couple of miles away,” Holly pointed at the bikes that we’d left in a heap nearby.

“Those are boys’ bikes.” Jessica was a bit of a know it all. “Isn’t it hard riding one of those in a skirt?”

“Kinda,” I admitted because mine was both short and tight, “but I manage.”

“They used to belong to our cousins,” Holly said, improvising. “They’re okay most of the time, and I’d rather have a bike like that than no bike.”

“I have a bike I’ve grown out of that I think would fit you,” Amy said to me. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind if we gave it to you.”

I looked nervously at Holly.

“That’s really kind, but we’d have to check with our parents first,” she said.

“Okay, well do you have a phone?” Jessica took over.

Holly did. Mum and Dad thought I was still a little young to have one. She fished it out. Jessica did the same and they exchanged digits.

“Cool,” Jessica said as she stored my sister’s number away. “I’ll text you later and we can tell each other what our parents say.”

“Thanks,” Holly said. I kind of hoped she had a plan, because I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to explain the sudden arrival of a girl bike in our garage. I rather liked the idea of owning one, but that was different.

A noise sounded from down the hill and Jessica and Amy turned to see their parents waving at them.

“I guess it’s lunchtime,” Amy said with an apologetic smile. “Maybe we could do something after. We’ve brought some stuff to do, but it’s always more fun when there’s more of you, don’t you think.”

I nodded, though I didn’t really have much experience. I didn’t have many friends at school, so most of the time I played by myself or with Collin – or Holly.

Since they were eating, we decided it was about time we did as well. We munched our way through the feast Mum had made for us, me giving Holly worried looks and her smiling back in a reassuring way.

When we’d done with the food and drunk enough to keep hydrated, our new friends rejoined us. We started off with a frisbee, which was gentle enough exercise for after lunch, then graduated to that game with the fuzzy ball and the velcro bats. That involved a bit more running as none of us were throwing particularly accurately. It did add to the laughter, and nothing makes friends faster than laughter.

That’s one of Mum’s sayings, by the way.

Holly excused us about mid-afternoon, saying how Mum had told us we shouldn’t stay out all afternoon, and Jessica promised to text later. Holly gave me the bag with the lunchtime empties, since it was the lighter one, and we walked our bikes out of the park before getting on them.

It was alright for Holly, her skirt was kind of loose and long enough that it hung around her without looking indecent. Mine kept riding up my thighs and I had to keep pulling it down to stop my underwear from showing.

The afternoon had turned out hotter than the morning, so we rode further in our skirts on the way home. Holly took us by a different route and we were well into the suburbs when she steered us into a hidden cut. It was all high walls and greenery, and it was deserted, so we were able to slip our tracksuits on unobserved. We’d maybe look a little odd riding around in the hot weather with so many clothes on, but it was better than turning up on our road in a dress.

Nobody paid us any attention, but the last stretch had been kind of sweaty, so we peeled off our clothes and took turns in the shower before dressing back into our morning clothes.

“How do you wash your things?” I asked, because the dress I’d been wearing was definitely a bit grubby.

“I make a pile and when I have enough, I take it to the launderette. It’s a bit expensive, but no-one asks questions.” She hunted out a carrier bag. “Put your dirties in here and keep them in your box. I’ll take them with me next time I go.”

We still had a few hours till Mum was due home, so Holly put another wash on and I helped her hang the things that came out of the machine on the drying rack. She slipped on a pair of shorts instead of her skirt for long enough to put the rack outside in the sunshine, then changed back into full girl mode. Our neighbours had a few windows that overlooked our garden. Maybe the chance of being spotted was low, but it wasn’t a risk either of us was prepared to make.

“How do you fancy baking a cake?” she asked. “I mean, I know it’s a bit cliché, but we don’t have a lot else to do.”

Mum had baked with both of us together and separately in the past, so it wasn’t as if we didn’t know what we were doing. She felt that everyone should know their way around the kitchen and had no intention of letting us loose on the world unable to cater for ourselves.

Aprons were a must, all the more so with what we were wearing. I chose the pinafore apron Mum usually used because it protected more of my dress. Holly went for something a bit more basic.

What followed was maybe a little messier than it should have been, but we ended up with what looked like a decent couple of cake tins worth of chocolatey goodness. I let Holly put them in the oven while I wiped down the surface and put away the things we didn’t need anymore. While the cake cooked, we put together a buttercream filling and a chocolaty topping.

It was all done, baked and filled and sitting on a tray to cool, still with a while before Mum was due home. We gave the kitchen one last going over then took ourselves upstairs where we settled down in my room – larger than Collin’s but usually unusable due to the mess I maintained in there – to play.

My choice of game, which meant Mousetrap, and we ended up being so engrossed that we didn’t notice the time passing until we heard the sound of the door shutting downstairs.

I glanced at my clock. It was early yet. Mum had said she didn’t expect to be back before six and it wasn’t quite five.

Collin – and it was Collin even though he was still wearing a skirt – stood up and started heading for the door, but it was already too late. Mum was already coming up the stairs.

“Boys? This is such a lovely surprise. Where are you?”

Collin looked at me and I shrugged. We were trapped, much the same way as I’d been trapped when he’d come home unexpectedly earlier in the week. He gave me an apologetic smile.

“We’re in here Mum, in Glen’s room.”

The door eased open. “I really didn’t know what to expect when I came home, but this most certainly wasn’t it. Oh.”

She stood in the doorway with Collin and me also standing, looking back at her. I don’t know about my brother, but I felt a mix of guilt and worry standing there in my dress.

I don’t really know what Mum thought. She stood in the doorway making a sort of an o with her mouth for a few seconds, then she just turned around and walked back down the stairs.

I looked worried at Collin for a moment.

“Best get changed,” he said quietly, and headed for his own room.

“Kids?” Mum called. “Come down here a minute, would you?”

“Er...” I let my older brother be the spokesman, but he didn’t seem to have much more idea than me about what to say.

“Don’t get changed,” she called. “Your dad’s on his way home, and this’ll be a lot less complicated if you stay as you are.”

“Sure,” Collin said. He didn’t sound it. I put my hand in his and smiled up at him. My lip was quivering a bit so I think I spoiled it.

He kept my hand in his and we headed downstairs together. Mum had a glass of wine, already half empty by the time we joined her in the kitchen.

“Are we in trouble, Mummy?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know how to answer that sweetheart,” she smiled but with a sigh. “Why don’t we wait until your dad gets home, that way we we’ll only need to talk about it once.”

“Could I have a drink while we’re waiting, Mum?” Collin asked.

“Water, orange juice or squash,” she said on autopilot.

“Glen?” he asked.

“Orange squash please, with ice.” We have one of those fancy fridges with an ice maker in the door, which we use a lot on hot days.

I climbed up onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar, struggling to arrange my skirts neatly as I did so. Mum bit back a smile, which made me smile a bit too, only I was still a bit worried about what was going on. Collin gave me my drink and sat next to me.

“Thank you,” I said and took a long drink. I wasn’t that thirsty, but it made me feel better, and the cold helped to settle my insides.

“So, who’s idea was this?” Mum asked after taking a sip of her wine. At least she wasn’t gulping it, which she must have been to half empty it before calling us down.

“I thought we were waiting for Dad,” Collin said quietly.

“Yes, I thought so too,” she said with a sad smile, “but I can’t just wait.”

“It was mine, Mum.”

I gave my brother a confused look. I’d been about to say the same thing. “No Mummy, it was my fault.”

“No-one’s saying anyone’s at fault here, dear. But why don’t you start then?”

“Well,” Collin was giving me funny sort of warning looks, but I didn’t understand, so I ignored him. “Collin caught me wearing some of your clothes a few days ago.”

She looked at me sadly for a moment and nodded. “And how long have you been doing that? Borrowing my clothes, I mean.”

“Since we were on holiday. That first day when you told me to go to the room and find something to do. I found your sparkly black dress and, well I just felt like I had to.”

“Was that the only time?”

“No, but after that I made sure I only put on things you’d already worn.”

“That explains why I kept thinking I smelt my perfume at least. And how often since we’ve been home?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t at first, but then I realised everyone was out of the house all day, so there wasn’t anything to stop me.”

“So, what is this? Something you do because you’re bored?”

“No. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I have a feeling inside me that pulls at me. That first time in the hotel, I was trying to do my puzzles, but my head was sort of fuggy and I couldn’t think, so I went looking for why and that’s when I found your dress. I felt better when I had it on. Sort of better than better, like everything was wonderful. I felt all happy, except for being scared one of you might come back to the room and catch me, but it was a bit like going to the dentist and finding out he didn’t need to do anything.”

“You felt relieved,” Collin suggested, “like something that had been bothering you went away?”

“A bit, I suppose, but I really didn’t know what was bothering me until I found it. Then since we came home, I’ve had a feeling that I’ve really wanted to dress up again and it’s been in my head all the time, like you know, when you have some homework and if you don’t start it soon you’ll never get it finished?”

Mum smiled and it was more of a real smile.

“So, how often?”

“Pretty much every time you went out shopping or to one of your things since a bit more than a week ago.”

“So what happened when your brother caught you?”

“Can I tell that bit, Mum?” Collin could see I was squirming a bit.

“Okay.”

“I can relate to a lot of what Glen’s been saying, because pretty much the same thing happened to me a few years back.”

Mum nodded.

“I didn’t do it quite as often, but I did it for maybe a lot longer. Over a year until I grew too big for your things.

“That’s when I started asking around the neighbourhood for jobs I could do to make some money. I figured if I couldn’t borrow your things – and I really didn’t feel right about that, especially without asking. I figured maybe I should get some of my own.”

“Those parcels that came for you that you were so secretive about?”

“Yeah, and I’ve bought quite a bit from charity shops and stuff.”

“They let you do that?”

“They do when you go in looking like a girl.”

“You go out in public looking like that?”

“I don’t really see why she shouldn’t.”

We turned to see Dad standing in the doorway with something of a bemused look on his face.

“How long have you been there?” Collin said, turning very red.

“I arrived about when Glen was talking about after the holiday. What do you think dear?” He was speaking to Mum, which I suppose is kind of, ‘well duh!’. “Don’t you think we have two very attractive young daughters here.”

Mum shrugged and took a larger sip of her wine. “I’m still eager to hear what happened next.”

“Well,” Dad joined us at the bar, took the wine bottle out of Mum’s reach and poured a glass for himself. “I suppose that puts the ball back in your court, Collin. Or would you prefer a different name?”

Collin’s blush deepened and he seemed unable to say anything, so I took over for him.

Or her.

“She likes Holly, Dad, and I’m Gwendolyn.”

“Holly and Gwen, eh? I think we could live with that.” Dad looked at Mum who shrugged and drained her wine, then looked around for the bottle. Dad poured her a shorter measure.

Mum doesn’t usually drink, at least not more than socially, but there have been a couple of times when she’s been really upset about something and Dad’s had to, er ‘moderate her intake’ is what he called it. I think he was trying to make it sound less serious than it was, but the way Mum was drinking suggested she was pretty upset.

“A couple of days ago, Collin came back early from cleaning Mrs Prendergast’s garden. I was upstairs in your room checking myself out. I had on Mum’s dark red skirt and that cream coloured blouse with the bow at the front. You know the ones I mean? Mum wore them out to her book club at the beginning of the week.”

Dad nodded. Mum shuddered and emptied her wine glass. Dad didn’t offer to refill it.

“They were both in the wash, along with a pair of tights and one of Mum’s cotton slips. I also had a pair of her boots on.

“Then I heard Collin coming up the stairs and tried to run into my room before he saw me, but I was too late.”

“So, you knew what you were doing was wrong?” Dad asked.

“Well, kinda. I mean I knew it was wrong to mess with Mum’s clothes without her saying it was okay, but she did let Collin and me have a couple of her dresses a few years ago of you remember...”

“That was different,” Mum said with a very slight slur to her words. “I was done with those, so we let you have them for a while before getting rid of them. It was your dad’s idea.”

“As is this,” Dad said, taking Mum’s wine glass from her and putting what remained of the bottle of wine back in the fridge. “We’ll tell you more about that in a while, but it’s not nice to find out someone’s been wearing your clothes without you knowing.”

“Yeah, I suppose. I’m sorry Mum. I did only do it with things that were going in the wash though. You know, so they’d be clean next time you wore them? The thing is, how else was I going to get to put on girl clothes?

“When Collin saw me, he knocked on my door. I would never have been able to change out of everything I was wearing, so I just let him in.

“He was really cool about it. He didn’t laugh or anything, but just told me about how he started dressing up. He showed me all the clothes he’d bought...”

“What? Where do you keep them?” Mum asked.

“There’s a box in my wardrobe. I keep it buried under a pile of books and stuff.”

“Have you ever washed any of it?” Mum sounded more worried than curious.

“Of course!” I mean I couldn’t do it here obviously, but we do have a laundrette.”

“You wash it in public!?”

“Yeah! Mixed in with some of my normal clothes. No-one bats an eye, Mum.”

“Yeah,” I said when it felt like they’d finished. “Anyway, Collin said he had a lot of stuff that was too small for him, so he asked if I wanted it.

“I think we both thought it was better than using Mum’s things, and I kind of like it better because it’s little girl clothes rather than grown-up stuff.

“So today, when Mum went out early, me and Holly made a day of it. We cleaned the house, then we went to the park for our lunch...”

“You...”

“We wore tracksuits over the top of our dresses until we were far enough away,” Collin said.

“We made friends and one of them offered her old bike to me.”

“What’s wrong with the one you have?” Dad asked.

“It’s the bar thing in the middle. You have to lift your leg over it which is kind of embarrassing in a skirt.”

“What did you tell her?” Mum asked.

“I said we had to ask you first. Then the older of them – Jessica – Swapped numbers with me. She was going to text me later and I was going to say you weren’t that happy with the idea.”

“I’m not sure why you’d say that,” Dad said.

“Robert!”

“Of course, that’s not the most important decision we need to make right now.”

“Are we in trouble, Dad?” Collin repeated his question from earlier.

“What do you think dear?” Dad asked Mum. “I mean putting on your clothes without asking wasn’t right, but Glen has a point. What alternative did he have?”

“He could have chosen not to dress as a girl in the first place.”

“And we talked about that a long time ago. The reason we agreed to let them have some of your old things was so they could indulge their curiosity early on and maybe grow out of it, but we always knew there was a chance they wouldn’t.

“We also hoped that by showing them we were open to them being a bit girly sometimes, that maybe if they felt the girly side was bigger than usual, they might be more inclined to talk to us about it, but I did tell you how difficult it was to face up to something like that.”

“So, what are you suggesting?”

“Well, you know I thought we took the dresses away a little soon, and since both our children have found their own way back into them, I think we should let them work it out for themselves.

“Sweetheart, we faced this once before and I thought you were okay with it.”

“I was. When it was just you and me. But, I don’t know, it’s different with the boys.”

“Why? When you were pregnant, wouldn’t you have been just as happy with a son or a daughter?”

“Yes, but then we had two sons.”

“And before we had the kids, we talked about what would happen if they turned out the same as me.”

“I know, but I was hoping they wouldn’t.”

“Why? Do you find me so repugnant?”

“Of course not! But I remember how difficult it was for me to accept that side of you. Even now, there’s a part of me that wonders whether or not I made the right decision.”

Dad looked shocked at that. Collin and I were completely bewildered by what Mum and Dad were saying.

“Don’t look at me like that dear. The most important thing we agreed on was complete honesty, and I wouldn’t be completely honest if I didn’t voice my doubts.

“You did a good job of explaining things, and what we’ve read about it since makes sense up here.” She tapped her head, which was obviously working well enough despite the booze. “But what I feel in here,” she put her hand on her breast, “is still affected by what I grew up believing.

“I’ve never regretted marrying you, and I’ve loved everything about you, both sides of you, and never more than after Glen was born, when you agreed not to confuse their lives. I know that was hard for you, even with the measures we’ve taken.”

“Then what...?”

“Women gossip. From time to time I hear what most of my friends think about people like you, and in know things haven’t changed that much in our lifetime. On the surface maybe, but not deep down. We were lucky. You knew how to explain it and you never asked me to accept more than I was ready, and I was at least willing to listen and to try and understand...”

“Don’t sell yourself short love.”

“I’m not, or I’m not trying to. And I know you don’t have a choice about the way you are. I had hoped that our boys could be spared the heartache.”

“And they might have been, but since it seems they’re not, what should we do about it? You know burying it isn’t a great option.”

“I do, but I don’t think being completely open about it is either.”

“Mum, Dad,” Collin had had enough, “what are you talking about.”

To be honest, so had I, I just didn’t know how to say it.

Dad looked at Mum, who sighed and nodded.

“Probably easiest to show you. Give me a few minutes, would you?”

He headed upstairs.

Collin looked at Mum, who stood up and put the kettle on. “Would you like anything more to drink? Or maybe a piece of this amazing cake you’ve made? Did you really make this yourselves?”

“Gwen and I did, yes, but Mum, what’s Dad going to show us.”

“You’ll see soon enough.” The kettle boiled and Mum set about making a pot of tea.

I still had some squash and I wasn’t that keen on tea, but Collin said he wouldn’t mind. I did want to try a slice of our cake, but I didn’t have to say anything because Mum had already pulled out a stack of plates and was cutting slices for as all.

It took ten minutes and two slices of cake before I heard Dad’s footsteps coming down the stairs. They sounded funny, sort of clacky like when Mum wears her posh shoes. Colin and I turned towards the stairs just as Dad appeared wearing a really pretty red dress. He had a wig on which looked like real hair, only longer than Collin’s, and he had a bosom. He was wearing lipstick and something around his eyes that made them look bigger, and he didn’t look like Dad at all.

“Hello,” he said in a soft voice. He looked scared a little and very unsure of himself. He really didn’t seem like a he at all.

“Girls,” Mum said, and it took a second or two to realise she was talking to us, “I’d like you to meet Rachel. She’s the other side of you father, or perhaps the bit of your dad who’s also kind of your mum. Your second mum I suppose. This is confusing.”

Collin climbed down from his stool and straightened his skirt. When he looked back up he, actually she, was Holly again. She ran to Dad, or... I didn’t know what to call him or her, and they threw their arms around each other.

I got down too and did the same rearranging of my clothes. I didn’t run, but I wanted in on the hug. I wanted Mum to be a part of it too, so I took her hand and pulled her across so we were all four of us holding on to each other.

“I don’t understand,” Holly said when we finally separated and Dad – there has to be some better thing to call her – made another pot of tea. His was too cold to drink and everyone else seemed ready for another. I decided I’d try one for a change.

“Well,” Dad said, “it seems this sort of thing runs in families. Modern medicine suggests a genetic cause, so there’s some likelihood I passed it on to you two.

“It’s the sort of thing that can skip a generation though, so after Glen was born, when you were four, we decided it would be better for you both if you grew up in a household where you didn’t have to figure out why your dad was sometimes your second mum, and why none of your friends had to deal with the same sort of confusion. So I put Rachel away.”

“Away how?”

“I think you know. I buried her, or submerged her I suppose would be a better way of putting it. She was always there, but underneath the surface.

“I think you also have an idea how hard it is to keep that side of yourself hidden, so your Mum and I came up with some strategies. It’s why I joined the amateur dramatics society. We may have a few neighbours suspecting something because I always end up as the pantomime dame or the character who ends up in a dress. We’ve also hosted and attended a few fancy dress parties where our speciality is going as each other.”

“It only seems fair that if Rachel has to be a man most of the time, then I should be one for some of it,” Mum smiled.

“We thought that limiting Rachel’s emergence onto the world to occasional and acceptable contexts like plays and parties, you wouldn’t be confused by it all. We hoped you’d find your own way, Mum in particular hoped it would be a different one.”

“Why?” Holly asked.

“Because it’s hard to be a man with a girl inside. Our society hasn’t really known how to cope with people like me. For most of our nation’s history we’ve tried to pretend they don’t exist and even recently the tendency has been to try and persuade us all to stay hidden so most people can carry on pretending there’s no such thing.”

“But that’s not faire,” I blurted. The first thing I’d said in a long while.

“No it’s not, but how fair would it be for someone like me to go out looking like this in a place where people would be shocked and disturbed, where children wouldn’t understand what was happening and would end up being upset because their parents were?”

“But why would they be upset? I mean, you look very pretty and there’s no reason for anyone to think you’re not a woman.”

“Well, thank you for the compliment young lady. You’re right, your mum and I used to go out together, just two young women going out on a shopping trip or some such. We’d go some distance from home in case someone saw through my disguise, but no-one ever seemed to, so it didn’t make any difference. Here where we live is different though. Like I’ve said, most people prefer to pretend people like me don’t exist, so they get quite upset when they find one living in their midst.

“It’s why your mum wanted you to be normal. I’ll admit life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have this inside me wanting to get out, but since she’s there, we’ve both learned it’s best not to ignore her.”

“So, what do we do now?” Holly asked, probably not for the first time.

“Well, I don’t think any of us feel like cooking tonight – really excellent cake, by the way. Lovely and moist – so how about we all go out somewhere?”

“What like this?” I asked, suddenly feeling a cold rush of excitement.

“Of course, unless you have something nicer you’d like to wear instead.”

“What about Mum?” Holly asked.

“Well, much as she looks fantastic no matter what she wears, I rather think she’ll feel a little underdressed unless she puts on a frock too.”

“What do you think Gwen? I suspect you know my wardrobe better than me. What do you think I should wear?”

“How about your sparkly black dress? You always look so pretty in that.”

“I suppose you’ll have to give me a little time to get changed as well then.”

“Half an hour enough, Jean?” Dad asked. “I’m getting hungry.”

“You’ve just had a piece of cake. What are you talking about?”

“Okay,” Dad said with a mischievous smile, “forty-five minutes then.”

So, Mum did what she calls an ‘emergency job’ and it took her less than forty-five minutes. It was a bit of a long fidgety wait for me as I was happy with my dress and had nothing to do except look at the cake longingly. We were going out to eat though, so it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Holly rushed off to change too. Apparently she had something better she wanted to wear, and Dad’s ten minute preparation, while pretty amazing, was not good enough to satisfy him.

He was the last one down. Holly was the first to reappear and she helped me resist temptation by putting the cake on a high shelf in the pantry. Mum was next and spent the time waiting for Dad by brushing our hair into some sort of order. She used a gooey spray on mine since I didn’t have a lot, and needed a little help to keep it in place. I looked a lot more like a pixie when she’d finished.

“Are you okay with this Mum?” Holly asked.

“I suppose I’m going to have to be, aren’t I? It’s not as if you can do anything to change the way you are. It took me a while to get used to Rachel when your dad first introduced us. It may take me a while with you two, but I’ll adjust. Besides, what mother wouldn’t be delighted to have two such pretty daughters?”

“You’re making fun of us.”

“No dear, I’d never do that. Besides,” she pulled us over to the mirror in the hall, “what do you see?”

It was just me and my brother wearing girl clothes with our hair done a little different, but somehow it was the Gwen me and the Holly bit of my brother we saw, and we did look pretty. For body shape, Collin’s always taken after Dad, which means he’ll always look pretty good in a dress. I look more like my mum, which probably doesn’t mean I’ll look as small and cute when I grow a bit, but I guess we’ll see.

Dad arrived finally, but the time he’d taken was worth it. He looked like a movie star.

“Wow,” Holly said. “I can’t call you Dad looking like that.”

Dad gave Mum a look as if asking what she thought.

“Alright,” she said, “why don’t you both call her Mummy R and me Mummy J. If I’m going to Lesbos, it’s as well I’m going with the hottest girl in town.”

She moved in for a kiss, which Dad – sorry, Mummy R – indulged fully, then turned to the mirror to check his lipstick.

Mum laughed. “And you are such a girl, Rachel.”

We went outside to the car only to find our next-door neighbour pottering in the garden. She sniffed at us as she gave us a disapproving look over.

“Another one of your ‘fancy dress’ do’s?” she asked and you could actually hear the quotation marks.

“Something like that, Mrs Greer.” Dad smiled at her and opened the doors for us all.

I mean, I suppose going out for a meal is a do, and we were all dressed pretty fancy.

We stopped off at a shopping mall where Mum jumped out of the car for long enough to buy two packets of girl’s underwear, one in my size and one in Holly’s. She said we’d feel better and look better if we had the right things on. Wearing skirts meant it was really easy to change without showing anything embarrassing, and she was right, they did feel a lot nicer.

It was amazing. Mum and... well Mum were so natural together and the restaurant we went to was... It had a sign out front saying it was friendly with a whole load of capital letters – the first was an L but I don’t remember the rest – and we had such a welcome. Quite a few people came up to speak to us, saying they hadn’t seen my parents in a long while, and telling Holly and me how cute we looked.

The food was quite good, although I didn’t have a lot of appetite after the cake, but what made it so amazing was all the people smiling and being friendly. Some of them were quite obviously men in dresses or women in suits, but it didn’t matter, because they were kind and friendly and welcoming. I couldn’t stop smiling all evening.

Holly was quiet on the way home, and Mum was more relaxed. She’d had some more wine, but not much.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” Mum asked Holly. I mean she couldn’t have been asking me because I was so okay.

“I was thinking about some of the people we met tonight,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, some of them didn’t look, er...”

“They looked like men wearing dresses? Yes some people aren’t that lucky.”

“Will I look like that one day?”

Mum thought for a while. “It’s hard to say, love. You resemble your Dad quite a bit, so I expect you’ll still look as good in twenty or thirty years time, but it’s the curse of every woman that she loses her good looks eventually. When that happens, you’ll always be able to go back to being a man as much as you want.”

“Is there anything we can do to, you know, look less like a man?”

“There are a few things we could look into. It’d mean going to see our doctor.”

“What about?” Holly asked.

Dad glanced across at Mum questioningly.

“Well, firstly it’s important to know just how much of you is girl.”

“What do you mean?”

Mum nudged Dad, who cleared his throat.

“What we have is a bit complicated, love. It affects different people to different degrees. Some of us just feel wrong all the time, like we were born wrong. You’ll hear people talking about being a woman in a man’s body. I don’t know that I feel like that.”

“No, nor me. For me it’s like I have a girl living inside me. I mean she is me, but she’s different from the me you see most of the time. She kind of lives under the surface, but she needs to come up for air every now and again.”

There was something about what Dad and Collin were saying that didn’t feel the same for me. I felt like I should contribute something though.

“Like tonight,” I said.

“Yes, like tonight,” Dad continued. “The thing is, while she’s above the surface, the other me is below. I’ve never tried to be this version of me for very long, but I suspect that if I did so, the male part of me would start wanting to come back to the surface.”

“So what’s that got to do with my question?”

“Well, there are drugs and procedures that can make you more feminine, love, but while they’re doing that, they also make you less masculine.”

I felt a cold feeling run through me at that thought. I’d always believed I had no choice but to be a man.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Dad continued, “but I expect you’ve started having erections?”

I’d heard about them in sex education, but I hadn’t started having them. By the way Collin – not Holly just now – was blushing, I guessed he had.

Dad made the same guess.

“If you were to start taking drugs to make you more like a girl, then it would suppress the masculine part of your body. The next step after that is surgery, to give you breasts, to make your face look more feminine, to remove your, well you know?”

Collin covered his lap with his hands.

“The thing is, that sort of change becomes progressively more permanent, so if you’re like me, as you seem to be, it’s probably not the best solution, because the boy in you wants to keep coming back. The more you change yourself into a girl, the less you’re able to do that so eventually you become trapped into a girl’s body with a guy wanting to get out, a bit like when this all started but the other way around.

“I think your Mum’s right. We should all see a specialist in this field and find out how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone.”

“What’s this got to do with rabbits?” I asked.

“Alice in Wonderland,” Dad replied with a chuckle. “It means that our feelings are taking us to a strange and peculiar new place, and we really need to know whether we belong there, or whether we should just visit.”

“If we just visit, we don’t get the treatment,” Collin said.

“Pretty much, son.” Dad could see Collin in there too. “But that’s kind of okay because, as you can see, it’s still possible to look pretty great without.”

No real doubt about that.

“What if we end up being just visitors in Wonderland?” Collin understands Dad’s way of talking better than me.

“Then you get to be like me: An Alice who steps through the looking glass every now and then to be her other self. And if she ends up not looking as good as she would like, then that’s just one of the sacrifices you have to make in life.”

“Do you think you could be happy if you did become a girl full time?”

“That’s not easy to answer, son. I mean I have you two and your Mum in my life now, and I’d have to think about how making that sort of change would affect you. I know your mother in particular would have a hard time with so I wouldn’t do that to her, especially since I know I can get through life like I am right now.

“If you’re asking about what I might do in your shoes, again I don’t really know. I’ve always thought it would be easier to be a woman who expressed a masculine side to herself every now and then – you know, tomboy sort of thing – but I don’t really know what it’s like from your mum’s side if the gender divide, so it may be I’m imagining greener grass than I have in my garden.”

That confused me, but this was Collin’s time to ask questions. I kept quiet and thought about being a real girl all the time.

“So, do you think it would be better for me to become a full-time girl?”

“That has to be a question for the doctor, but have a think about this – you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Are you physically attracted to girls or boys?”

“Well, girls of course.”

“Okay, then ask yourself another question. Do you think you’d be happiest being a girl in a relationship with another girl, or a guy who has a girl inside him in a relationship, hopefully with a beautiful and understanding girl beside you?”

Mum and Dad exchanged one of those special that usually make Collin and me make being sick noises. Collin was pulling at his lower lip, lost in thought though, and I had a soft feeling inside me that stopped me from reacting in the normal way.

“I can see why you wanted to avoid this,” Dad murmured to Mum.

“No, it’s best we do. If our kids have to navigate this mess, then I’d rather they had us to help them than struggle through it on their own like you did.”

Collin jumped and reached for his handbag which was making buzzing sounds. He dug his phone out and Holly resurfaced.

“It’s Jessica,” she said. “One of the girls we met this afternoon. She says she’s spoken to her parents and they’re okay with Gwen having her sister’s bike if we want it.”

“Tell her thank you, and we’d be delighted,” Dad said. “Gwen and I can come over any evening this week to collect it, or any time on Sunday.”

“Really?” Mum said sceptically

“If she’s going to go cycling around in a skirt, I’d rather she was able to do so without showing off her knickers.”

“But she won’t be cycling around our neighbourhood in a skirt, will she? And do we really want the likes of Mrs Greer pontificating about Why our youngest son is riding around on a girl’s bike?”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, and it’d be good to have the option, don’t you think?”

“Jessica’s dad says tomorrow evening around eight would be good. They may have a few other things we might be able to use as well.”

“Tell them thank you very much and don’t forget to ask for their address.”

Next day Mum stayed home with us, sighing with resignation when she ended up with two daughters for the day instead of two sons.

Holly had spent too much time as Collin doing grotty jobs in the neighbourhood to want to give up being girly just yet. For me, it was all still very new and I still had clothes I hadn’t tried on. Besides, we seemed to get on better as sisters than as brothers. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Collin has always looked out for me, but in the last year or two, I’ve kind of cramped his style a bit, so it’s always been a bit from a distance. As an older sister, Holly seems to have more of a sense of wanting to be guiding me constantly, which I kind of like right now.

“So, what am I supposed to do with you two?” Mum grumbled. “I mean you already cleaned the house, did most of the washing and even baked a cake! I mean, just what is left to do?”

“We could go shopping,” I suggested tentatively.

“You hate shopping!”

“I don’t think I would as a girl.”

“I don’t know that we have much of a budget for girl things just yet. Sorry sweetheart, but I really think we should discuss that with your father before we go spending the housekeeping on pretty things you may not even wear for long.”

“Maybe you could teach us how to sew a little,” Holly suggested. “There are quite a few things in both Gwen’s and my stash of clothes where the hems are coming loose or there are little tears which need to be fixed.”

“Okay, go get your things and I’ll hunt out a some needles and thread.”

So, we spent the morning learning how to thread needles and sew neatly. Mine was awful to start with because I rushed things, but Holly took her time and got it right from the start. I followed her example and improved in leaps and bounds, and by lunchtime, we’d fixed all the issues with the clothes we had.

“Now hang them up,” Mum instructed us. “Because you can’t expect your clothes to stay in good condition if you keep them stuffed in a box. And bring me the things you’ve worn in the past few days. They need to go in the wash. You don’t need to keep wasting your money at the laundrette anymore.”

We did as we were told and returned to find lunch waiting for us. Chicken salad sandwiches, which I guess I didn’t mind. Bread for energy and the rest for health. It wasn’t quite what I would have chosen, but it did feel more girly, and I didn’t mind really.

Plus, there was cake to finish and that made it all alright.

The morning’s activities had given Mum an idea, and after lunch she dug out a whole lot of dress making things including her prized sewing machine. We each picked some material and cut out a pattern to fit ourselves, then we took turns using the sewing machine and doing the fiddly extra bits that had to be done by hand. By the end of the afternoon, we each had a brand new skirt and ran off to change so we could show off our handiwork to Dad when he came home.

Mum also changed into a summery skirt and top and we worked together in the kitchen, putting dinner together. Silly how something as simple as wearing a skirt can make peeling potatoes enjoyable.

Actually, I think it was the smiles we shared and the way we chatted through it all. Mum certainly seemed a lot less frazzled than the previous day, and she sent Dad upstairs to change into a summer dress before we sat down to eat.

It was him who suggested eating outside. Mum thought it was a stupid idea, but Dad said after yesterday we weren’t fooling anyone, and maybe it was time to be open and honest about what we were doing.

Mrs Greer peared over the fence with a sour twist to her mouth

“So, what’s your excuse this time?” she asked.

“Who needs an excuse on such a glorious day as this, Mrs Greer?” Dad smiled, refusing to be drawn.

“No. I mean... I’m quite sure you know what I mean, Robert. You’re not exactly going out anywhere tonight, are you?”

“Not at all. Jean and the girls have cooked a lovely dinner for us all, and it seemed a perfect evening for going al fresco. As for what you mean, don’t you agree, with the weather as hot as this, that it makes sense to dress as cool as possible?”

“I’m sure you could find something a little more suitable under the circumstances.”

“I’m not sure I could Mrs Greer. Not if I want to set an example for the kids. Girls, why don’t you come out and say hello.”

I was giggling too hard to move, but Holly stepped out and gave our neighbour a cheerful wave. She disappeared in a huff of disapproval.

Once I’d regained a bit of self control, I helped Holly set the table while Dad, or Mummy R, helped Mum with bring the plates out. It was a lovely evening and we had a great time chatting over our food with the neighbours prairie dogging one after the other. That’s what D... Mummy R calls it, because it’s like when prairie dogs stand up on their hind legs to look around them for anything unusual. Heads popping up over the fence for a few seconds before disappearing again.

“Just smile and wave,” Holly whispered to me, so I giggled and did what she said.

“Well, I guess we’re out now,” Mum said, not enjoying things as much as the rest of us. “You know I’m never going to hear the end of this when I meet up with my friends?”

“You will if you treat it as normal,” my other mum said. “It’s a sign of a parochial mind that it finds anything even slightly out of the ordinary scandalous.”

“What’s parochial?” I asked.

“Small minded, the way your father’s using it, and it’s a sign of a bohemian mind not to bother questioning if something is too different.”

“What’s...”

“Socially unconventional, the way your mum’s using it. And I know which of the two I’d rather be. I thought you felt the same, sweetheart.”

“You don’t have to live with these people.”

“You’re right, and I should have given this whole thing a bit more thought before diving in. I’m sorry darling, but can you see how much of a release this is for me?”

“Perhaps, but I have a question for the boys, if you can just be boys for a bit. Doesn’t this bother you even a little bit? That you’re doing something that everyone else thinks is wrong?”

“Not everyone, dear,” Dad said. “And just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right, in the same way that just because no-one is doing it, that doesn’t make it wrong.

“Doing what everyone else is doing without question is conformity, which leads to all sorts of problems. Doing what no-one else is doing when you believe it’s right is morality.”

“I was asking the kids.”

“I’m sorry.” Dad held up his beautifully manicured hands in surrender.

“Did you go to work with your hands like that today, Daddy?” I asked.

“Don’t change the subject,” Mum said.

“I’m not,” I responded a little huffily. “At least not on purpose. How many people at your work commented on your nails, Dad?”

“Most of them.”

“I think Gwen’s trying to point out that Dad’s putting himself in the firing line too,” Holly said. “I mean, maybe you didn’t have any choice about tonight, but he’s doing his bit to challenge what everyone believes. It’s kind of like when everyone believed the Earth was flat or everything revolved around the world. It took someone with courage to stand up and question the status quo before people stopped believing what they believed because it’s what they always believed and started considering that something different might be true because there was evidence to support the new idea.”

“I’m not going to win, am I?”

“Not if you try to get us to change our minds by saying that everyone else thinks different, Mum.”

“Will you wear a skirt to work one day, Daddy?” I asked.

“Maybe, but not straight away. Your mum’s right about one thing at least. Changing something that’s deeply ingrained takes time and patience. Eating out here this evening was sort of the thin end of the wedge. A small start, which will only get bigger slowly, and we need to be gentle in the way we respond to how people react to us.”

“You weren’t very gentle with Mrs Greer, darling.”

“Rules and exceptions, sweetheart. For the most part, we want to advance slowly and carefully.

“And speaking of advances, we need to head over to your friend’s house soon, don’t we Holly?”

“Not for another half hour, Dad. It’ll only take us five or ten minutes to get there in the car, and Jessica said eight o’clock.”

“Great, time enough for me to wash up and get changed then. I’ll bring out a pot of tea and the rest of the cake when I’m done.

Holly and I didn’t need asking. We followed Dad in and grabbed a tea towel each. In response to his inquisitive look, Holly said, “It’ll mean we get the cake sooner.”

Dad put on a pair of chinos and a polo shirt before we went out. Holly and I stayed in our skirts since we were still meant to be the girls Jessica and Amy had met in the park, but Dad didn’t look very masculine with all the hair shaved off his arms and his manicured finger nails.

Jessica’s dad greeted us with a friendly smile, that froze a little when he began to notice some of the odd details in our dad.

“I’d like to say something before we do anything else,” I said. Dad and Holly looked at me surprised. “This is for me, isn’t it? Amy offered to give me her bike and Holly said Jessica told her you might have some other things That I might like. I want to tell you that I’m very grateful, but I also want to be truthful with you. You think Holly and I are girls, but that’s not exactly true.

“Holly is really my brother Collin, and my name is actually Glen, not Gwen. The thing is, we both have a bit more girl inside us than most boys and we need to let her out from time to time.

“We didn’t mean to trick you, which is why I’m telling you now. If you only want to give the things you have to a real girl and you don’t think I count, then I don’t want to trick you into doing something you don’t want to do. I still think you’re generous to have made the offer, but if you do decide to give me the bike and things, I want it to be because you wanted to give it to the real me. I’d still like to be friends with Amy, and I’m sure Holly would still like to be friends with Jessica, but friendship starts with trust, and we wouldn’t be very trustworthy if we hid something like this from you, would we?

“Well, I think that’s all I have to say, so now I suppose it’s up to you. If you want us to go away so you can think about it, that’s okay. Then if you still want to be friends, Jessica can text my sister and we can do this again another day. If we don’t hear from you, then I guess we still have your answer, don’t we?”

I kind of petered out towards the end, but mainly because Amy was staring at me and I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking or feeling. I stood awkwardly for a bit, the she stepped towards me and I sort of flinched, half expecting her to slap me. Instead I felt her arms go around me.

“You are so brave,” she said softly into my ear. “Daddy, I’d still like to give her my things if that’s okay.”

“Does that mean we’re still friends?” I asked.

“Of course it does, silly.” She smiled and giggled, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

Jessica walked up to Holly a bit more slowly, more warily. “I’d like to think we’re still friends too, but I’d really like to meet Collin someday soon.”

Their father stood silently shaking his head. “I take it you’re...”

“Somewhat like my kids, yes.” Dad was smiling distractedly. “I don’t know what happened to taking things slowly, but I can’t fault my youngest for his, or if you’ll allow it, her honesty. Sorry to spring this on you like this.”

“Well, I’d rather sooner than later, like after they’d had their first sleepover.” He smiled cautiously. “Shall we load these things into your car? I mean, let me do the lifting, I wouldn’t want you to chip your nails.”

So, I got the bike. I also got a box full of toys including some dolls and some My Little Pony stuff and a makeup bust, you know where you get to practice putting makeup and doing hairstyles on the toy. I also got a couple of boxes of clothes. As a last thing, Amy ran upstairs and came back with a pink, fluffy hippopotamus which she handed to me.

“He’s called Mr Flump and he gets really lonely if you don’t give him lots of hugs.”

“I love him,” I said beaming from ear to ear. “Thank you so much.”

“Perhaps you’d all like to come over for a barbeque on Saturday,” Dad said. “I promise my wife and I will be on our best behaviour, though I won’t be able to guarantee how many daughters we’ll have.”

Amy and Jessica turned pleading eyes towards their father, which meant he had no chance.

Dad gave them our address and said to come any time after noon, and just to bring themselves and their appetites.

Amy looked at me and mouthed Gwen very clearly while I thought I caught Jessica mouthing Collin at Holly.

We still had a few days before the weekend. Mum and Dad must have talked and decided that Holly and Gwen were here to stay, at least some of the time, because Mum suggested we go shopping.

It wasn’t a big spend excursion. For one thing, between the clothes Holly had given me and the unexpected extras from Amy, I didn’t need a whole lot. Just undies and shoes really. I could get by with my trainers for the most part, but there were some things that didn’t look right with them, and Mum’s shoes were a bit too grown up for me. Holly didn’t need much either because she’d already bought most of what she needed, plus I could see my sister receding each day.

I was all excited about the sandals and the patent leather tee bars we’d bought for me, but I could see she wasn’t as into it as she had been. I thought I understood.

“Do you want your brother back?” I asked once we were back from the shops.

She smiled, although there wasn’t a lot of Holly there anymore. “I don’t mind,” she said. “You do what’s best for you. Do you mind if Holly goes away for a while though?”

“Of course not. I’ll get to find out what it’s like being my big brother’s little sister. It’ll be fun.”

Collin reappeared that evening, but I stayed in Gwen mode. I had my new shoes for one thing, and I had a couple of boxes of new clothes, all of which were packing out my wardrobe now. Some of them needed a bit of attention, so I spent the evening with Mum practicing my stitching while my brother settled back into being a teenage boy.

Dad was happy enough being himself, so we didn’t upset the neighbours too much. I mean apart from me cycling about the place on my new (to me) bike, wearing a new (to me) dress and new (brand new) shoes.

I decided I didn’t want my superhero bedspread anymore, so Mum switched it out for a pretty blue flowery pattern that she usually used when we had guests. I pulled all my posters down – Collin persuaded me to roll them up and store them inside an old cardboard tube that used to have wrapping paper on it. In their place I found a number of cute teddy bear cartoons in the Internet and asked Dad to print them out so I could put them on some old frames we had in the attic. By Friday, my bedroom looked more like a girl’s room than a boy’s with Mr Flump sitting in pride of place on my bed.

She smelled sort of flowery which gave me a question.

“Mum, how can I smell more girly when I’m being Gwen?”

She smiled and directed me towards her floral soap and shampoo. She also bought me a small bottle of perfume and made me promise to use it very sparingly. Partly because even cheap perfume was quite expensive, and partly because it was most effective when used in small quantities.

She put some in an atomiser and showed me how to spray it on my neck and wrists, saying I wouldn’t need to use it more than once or twice in a day.

It made such a difference. I started to notice it when I walked into my room and when I put on my clothes in the morning. If anything it made me feel more like a girl than putting on a dress.

Saturday came and I wore my favourite of the dresses Amy had given me, along with some lacy ankle socks and my tee bars. I spent the morning helping Mum bake and doing the few non-yukky things I could do to help Dad get his barbeque ready. Neither Holly nor Collin made an appearance all morning and as midday approached, I excused myself to go and find out what was up.

I found him sitting on his bed looking worried and a bit desperate.

I plonked myself on the bed next to him and leaned on him, looking up at him until he glanced down at me and couldn’t help smiling.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

“Do what?” I asked.

“You know, be a boy. I... think I’ve forgotten how.”

“No, you’re just doing it wrong,” I said.

“Yeah, but I don’t know how to do it right.”

“Yes you do.”

“How do you know?”

“When you’re Holly, do you try to be a girl?”

“No, it’s just how I feel inside and out she comes.”

“Out you come you mean. We just call you Holly when you’re wearing a dress because it sounds better, but it’s still you. Same as it’s you when you’re Collin.”

“But I’m different!”

“Maybe, but you’re also the same, so be you. And if it still doesn’t feel like it’s working, remember you don’t need to be wearing a dress to be Holly. If you find it easier to be you when you’re her, then be her.”

“But Jessica wants to meet Collin.”

“She already has, only he was wearing a dress at the time. You have to know you’re you no matter what clothes you wear, and if she liked you as my sister, then she’ll like you at least as much as my brother.”

“When did you figure this out?”

“I think things got a bit confused when we started calling ourselves by different names, but then I remembered when I put Mum’s things on before I met my sister, it was still me, but feeling girly.

“If it helps, if I was really a girl and you weren’t my brother, I’d fall for you.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.” I bounced up and kissed him on the cheek then disappeared out of his room.

I must have said something right because he came downstairs a few minutes later, just before the doorbell rang.

He smiled shyly at Jessica, who beamed at him like he was Christmas.

I didn’t see much else because Amy ran up to me and gushed.

“Wow, you look gorgeous in that. I knew you’d love it.”

“I do,” I said giving her my biggest grin ever. “It’s my favourite.”

“Can I see your room?”

“Sure, I think. Mum, would it be okay if I showed Amy my room?”

Mum looked over at Amy’s parents who exchanged a nervous glance.

“The decision has to be yours of course,” Dad said from the French doors leading to the garden, “but if I could offer a suggestion?”

“Sure,” Amy’s mother said.

“In my experience, children thrive on trust. If you always tell them what to be, then they’ll only know how to be what you tell them.”

“Is that how your boys both ended up in dresses?” Amy’s mum asked, but it was a genuine question rather than a criticism, or at least Dad took it that way.

“I’m not sure. We certainly didn’t encourage them in that direction, but I imagine their feeling free to explore didn’t stop them from trying anything.”

“You don’t think your appearance might have influenced them?” Again Amy’s mum, this time waving vaguely at Dad’s shiny fingernails.

“Actually,” Mum said as she carried in a couple of bowls of salad, “Robert and I agreed not to show this side of himself to our boys. I was concerned that it might, as you said, influence them. Since both boys found their way there anyway, it didn’t seem worth hiding it anymore.” Her smile was friendly enough, but there seemed to be a slight hint of challenge in it.

That was a funny thing. I know I wouldn’t have noticed it before, but being Gwen meant I saw little details more often. Maybe it was one of the ways I thought girls should be, so I was naturally trying to be that way without thinking.

“Someone will bring you up a couple of drinks in a minute, girls,” Dad smiled at me. “Do you have a preference? We have Sprite, Coke, Tango.”

“Sprite please,” Amy said.

“The same please,” I added. I usually prefer Coke, but this felt like part of making friends.

So, with everyone’s blessing, I led Amy up to my room and showed her all my things.

“This doesn’t look much like a boy’s room,” she said.

“Oh?” I asked, smiling cheekily. “Have you been in many boy’s rooms?”

She laughed.

“It was different,” I admitted. “Iron Man duvet cover, Spiderman and Antman posters on the walls, toys all over the floor. What you see here today is Gwen’s influence.”

“You make it sound like she’s someone else entirely.”

“Not so much.” I sat on the bed and pulled Mr Flump into a hug. I’d been doing it a lot since I’d had him on the bed and it didn’t really click with what Amy had told when she’d given him to me until I saw her smile. “He helps me think sometimes,” I said apologetically. “I was talking to Collin before you came about something like that. I’m always me whether I’m Glen or Gwendolyn, but it’s like being two sides of the same coin. I behave different when I’m like this.”

“Like how?”

“Well, when I’m Glen I don’t make friends very easily, especially with girls. I kind of get nervous and mumbly and they sort of roll their eyes at me and walk away giggling. But when I’m like this, I feel more like I belong, so it’s easier. I mean it helps that you know about me, because I don’t have to be afraid of you finding out, so I’m just free to be a girl with another girl sort of.”

“I think that’s what I like about you. I mean, like you said you were a boy and everything, but I like that you can be just a friend like this, like...” She stuttered to a halt, blushing.

“It’s okay,” I said putting my hand on her arm. “That’s a bit like when I get all mumbly... like.”

She looked at me sharply for a minute, but then her cheeks dimpled and we were laughing together.

“Do you have any games we can play?” she asked.

I nodded and showed her the stack in my wardrobe. It turned out she liked Mousetrap too, so we were halfway into building the trap when Amy’s mum arrived with our drinks.

She smiled at us, not quite sure what to think, then left us to it.

It was a fun afternoon. After the game, which Amy won, except it doesn’t really matter with a game like Mousetrap, does it? After the game, we snuggled up on my bed and shared the magazine she’d brought with her.

“This is just friends, right?” she asked, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Of course,” I said, leaning mine on the top of hers. Friends was all I’d ever wanted with girls, and it kind of made sense that I had to become one to get what I wanted.

Mum called us down when food was ready. Amy and I took a moment to straighten out our clothing and make sure we looked like we hadn’t been up to anything. I mean, we hadn’t, had we? But some people can be awkward even about two friends having a snuggle.

By the time we made it downstairs, Jessica and Collin were definitely well on their way to becoming a couple, which had Amy and me giggling more than the situation deserved, and that earned us a few angry stares from the new couple, until we settled down and got on with our own fun.

It set the pattern for what remained of the summer. Jessica and Amy would cycle over almost daily. It worked better that way because we were closer to town, so Jessica and sometimes Collin, sometimes Holly would head off into town together. Amy and I would find things to do, sometimes around the house, but quite often heading off on our bikes. I don’t know why we enjoyed each other’s company so much. I mean for me it wasn’t hard. She was a girl and she wanted to be my friend, but why she liked me... Maybe she’d had enough of being the younger sister and wanted someone to dominate for a change. If that was the case, then it was fine by me.

The holidays came to an end though, which meant school uniforms and being Glen all day. It also meant no Amy. I mean she went to the same school as me, but she was a couple of years ahead of me, and I knew how much damage I could do to her street cred if I tried to hang with her.

Not to mention how totally she could ruin my life if she breathed even one word of what we had been doing together.

So I went back to being quiet, lonely, secretive reclusive Glen. One plus was that I was old enough to apply to be a librarian, which meant I found it easier to keep away from the kids who made it necessary for me to be secretive. The library was the last place they’d be likely to go at break, and Amy did come in sometimes. Still too dangerous to talk freely, but we could at least exchange smiles, and I could help her find the books she wanted.

Overall, school wasn’t too bad, and I always had Gwen to look forward to when I got home, and Mr Flump.

We eventually had the doctor’s appointments Mum said we should have. It meant taking a morning off from school and work, so Dad took us all in the car. He went first and, no-one was surprised when he came out from the doctor’s office with a big smile on his face.

“Go on darling.” Mum stood to kiss him. “What did the man say.”

“He said that your husband is superbly well adjusted. The term he used to describe me was genderfluid, which sounds about right once you get past what else it sounds like.”

“Robert! Not in front of the kids.”

“At least one of the kids is old enough to understand,” Collin said, “and that’s pretty gross, Dad.”

It was his turn next with similar results, and a similar prescription; to keep on doing what he was doing.

Then it was my turn, and because I was young, Mum came in with me. She and Dad had agreed it was best that way as his own different outlook on life might influence me. They didn’t ask me, but I was just happy to have my mum with me.

“So, Glen,” the doctor smiled affably across his desk, “or would you rather I called you Gwen?”

“Well, I do prefer Gwen, but when I’m in my school uniform like now, I suppose Glen works better.”

“How would you feel about going to school dressed as a girl?”

I couldn’t help smiling at the thought, but I faltered a little as I thought it through. “I’d really like to, but I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Why not? I understand you go out dressed as a girl.”

“Well, that’s different. The people we meet who know what I am underneath either don’t mind or know better than to be mean about it, mainly. At school, everyone would know it was me and there are a lot of kids who’d take it as a reason to... Well, it would be horrible.”

“But if it wasn’t so horrible, why do you think you’d like to go as a girl.”

“I get on better with girls, I think, except they don’t like me very much when they see me as a boy.”

“So, you’re saying the reason you like to dress up is so that you’d find it easier to make friends with girls?”

“Well, no...”

“But you said...”

“You asked if I’d like to go to school as a girl, and why, and so I said it’d be easier to be a girl at school if I looked like one, but if I did that, I’d get picked on by all the older kids who didn’t like it or who saw it as enough of a reason to hurt me. I’d also get ignored by all the kids my age who don’t like anything different.”

“Alright. Why do you dress up?”

“It makes me feel good. I mean, when we were younger, Collin and me...”

“Collin and I,” Mum corrected quietly. She’s always done that. She used to say, “Imagine you were just talking about yourself, how would you say it then?”

“When Collin and I were younger, Mum gave us some of her old dresses to play with, but that was just playing. It was fun, but it didn’t feel special the way dressing up makes me feel now.

“Then we were on holiday and I had to go to the room by myself for a while to stay out of the sunshine.”

The doctor looked confused at my mum, who said, “He burns very easily.”

“I was trying to do my puzzles, but I had this feeling inside me like there was something else I needed to be doing. I couldn’t concentrate, so I got up and started walking around the apartment. Then I saw Mum’s black sparkly dress that she’d put out to wear in the evening and I kind of felt I needed to put it on.”

“You felt you needed to put it on?” He stressed ‘needed’.

“Well... It was a strong feeling that if I put it on the thing that was distracting me would go away. I felt all breathless and kind of cold inside?” it turned into a question because I wasn’t sure how else to put it. “Then when I had the dress on, I just felt wonderful, like it was the happiest day of my life.”

“Did you do anything while you were wearing the dress?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I walked around and made believe I was really a girl. I did all the things I’ve seen Mum doing like brushing the dress under her when she sits and, you know, letting my hands kind of dangle loosely.” I demonstrated that.

“Alright. This may be a bit of an embarrassing question, but did you have an erection at any point while you were wearing your mother’s dress?”

Suddenly I wasn’t so happy that Mum was there with me. I blushed furiously. “I haven’t had one of them yet, I don’t think.”

“You would know, because your penis would become swollen and hard and would stand upright.”

I didn’t think I could blush any more, but I managed. “No, nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

“You’re, er,” he consulted my notes. “You’re twelve years old. Okay, so it’s quite possible you haven’t started puberty yet.”

“I haven’t. We had lessons on it at school and none of the things they said would happen have happened to me yet.”

“Fair enough. So that makes me curious as to why you had such a strong feeling about putting on your mo...”

“It wasn’t because it was my mother’s, alright?” I was getting annoyed. “It was a dress. A pretty dress. And I wanted to know what it would feel like if I put it on.”

“But you knew what it felt like from your dressing up games, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a bit, but that was a few years ago. I remember thinking I would like to be a girl more than being a boy, but I also knew I didn’t have a choice about it. Then Mum took the dresses away which meant I really didn’t have a choice.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Mum for confirmation. “Maybe three or four years?”

“Three I think,” she said, nodding.

“And you haven’t tried to put on a dress in all that time?”

“No.” It was kind of drawn out because I was thinking about it while I said it. “I mean, I saw some of Mum’s things in the laundry sometimes and I felt, ‘wouldn’t it be nice,’ but I never did anything.”

“So what changed on your holiday?”

“I really don’t know. It just felt stronger somehow, the wanting to get dressed. I didn’t even know what it was until I saw Mum’s dress. I’m really sorry Mum.”

She gave my hand a squeeze and smiled at me reassuringly. She wasn’t angry, but I could see she was worried.

“What if you had a chance to be a girl all the time?” the doctor asked. “Would you like that?”

“I think so.” I looked back and forth between them trying to figure out where this was going.

“You wouldn’t miss being Glen, perhaps?”

“Not really. He doesn’t have any friends.”

“You speak about him as if he’s someone else, yet you are Glen at the moment, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but you started it. Glen is me and so is Gwen. I explained it to a friend as being like a coin. When the Glen side is showing, I don’t really have any friends. I don’t know how to do the things most of the people I know at school like doing. I don’t like football or, well that’s most of it I suppose.

“When the Gwen side shows, I’m happier and the girls I meet are more friendly with me.”

“You prefer to be friends with girls?”

“Girls are fun. I have this friend called Amy. She’s a couple of years older than me, but she gave me some of her old toys, so I have this My Little Pony set that I play with a lot and a sort of head thing that I can use to practice make up and doing things with hair, and I have a big pink hippo called Mr Flump who’s really cuddly. Amy came round and played with me a lot in the holidays, but only as Gwen, which I didn’t mind because I like being Gwen better and we have more fun when we’re both girls.”

The doctor exchanged a meaningful look with Mum and then turned back to me.

“Just one more question, Glen. Do you feel that you should have been born a girl, and if so, how long have you felt that way?”

“That’s two questions.”

The doctor shrugged, “Okay, two more questions. Would you mind answering?”

“I’m not sure how to. I don’t think I’ve ever fitted that well into life as a boy, but I never really thought about being a girl because I never thought it was possible.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing when you put on a dress?”

“Maybe a little, but I still know what I am underneath. It kind of works when the people around me don’t know that I’m not really a girl, and it’s better when they do but still treat me like one.”

“Like your friend Amy?”

“Yeah. This is a lot more than two questions.”

“Glen, don’t be rude.”

“It’s alright, Mrs Peters. Perhaps I should have said one more line of questioning. Glen, you said you’ve always felt like you didn’t fit into life as a boy. Can you remember how old you were when you first thought that?”

I shrugged. “Always.”

“What’s your earliest memory of feeling like that?”

I scrunched up my face as I tried to think. “Well, there was that time we went to visit Auntie Liz. I think it was before Christmas?”

“How old would you have been then?”

I looked at Mum for some help.

“You remember,” I said. “You were angry with Collin because he went into the garden and wouldn’t play with Jane and Lauren and me.”

“That time? You’d have been about five, I think.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

“Well, it’s nothing much, but it felt like they spent all the time whispering and giggling. It felt like they were leaving me out and I didn’t know why. I don’t think they were trying to be mean, but all I wanted was to join in and I couldn’t because they saw me as something different.”

“But you think if they had seen you as a girl, they would have accepted you.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, just how I felt left out and all I could think of was because I wasn’t like them.”

“I’m sorry, another question. If you could be Gwen all the time – at home, at school, when you were out – do you think you’d miss being Glen, being a boy?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s like something Dad said a while ago. The longest I’ve been able to be Gwen is the last few weeks of the holidays, and I got to be her every day. It wasn’t enough for the Glen part of me to want to come back to the surface, but I don’t know how long it would take for that to happen. With Dad and Collin it’s just a few days, but with me, when we got to go back to school, I didn’t want to be Glen again, and I’m the same Billy-no-mates when I’m him at school.

“Mum let’s me be Gwen as soon as I get home and over the weekends, and it always feels like such a relief when I can change.”

“One more, and I promise this is the last question.” He smiled with embarrassment at how much he’d gone past his first last question.

I smiled back at him and shrugged. I mean it was a bit funny.

“You know how your brother has changed in the past few years and you know what to expect from puberty. How do you feel about those changes happening to you?”

“I don’t want them.”

“But you’d become big and strong enough to defend yourself.”

“I don’t care, I don’t want to be all big and hairy.”

“If you were bigger and stronger you’d find it easier to be a boy.”

“I wouldn’t. I mean, yeah, I might look more like one, but I don’t get on with boys. I don’t know how to be a boy.”

“Do you think you might ever want to have a boyfriend, if you were a girl I mean?”

I thought about what I’d said to Collin when he’d been waiting to meet Jessica, and me expression softened into a dreamy smile.

“Mhmm,” he said. “Well, I would say that answers that. Glen, I’d like to speak privately with your mother, if you don’t mind. I believe your father and your brother are still here. Would it be alright if you waited with them for a short while?”

“Is anything wrong with me?” I asked, looking back and forth between him and Mum.

“No, not at all. It’s just that after what you’ve told me, I think I need to talk to your mum for a bit.”

“If it’s about me, shouldn’t I be allowed to hear it?”

“Glen, it’s alright,” Mum said, rubbing my arm. “I promise I’ll tell you what I find out. It may just be easier for the doctor to tell me in his way, then I can explain it to you in mine.”

“Alright, I suppose.”

I headed back to where Collin and Dad were sitting and told them as much as I could remember of what the doctor had said.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Dad said, scooching over so I had somewhere to sit.

It didn’t take long, but when Mum finally walked over to us, she had a deeply thoughtful expression on her face. I squinted up to her.

She smiled, but the worry was there. “Well it seems you’re special, kiddo.”

“What do you mean?”

“The doctor wasn’t entirely sure with you, but he is pretty confident you’re not the same as your dad and your brother.”

“But that’s not fair! I’ve been a girl more than Dad and Collin combined in the past month, and I talked to him a lot more!”

“Keep it down, sweetie,” Mum raised a hand and spoke calmly. “And don’t get your knickers in a twist. For one thing, this isn’t quite the conversation to have in public. For another, he thinks you may actually be transgendered.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he thinks you might be all girl in there sweetheart.” She turned towards Dad. “He thinks we should at least start Glen on blockers.”

Dad looked at me.

“What’s blockers?” I asked.

“They’ll stop you going through puberty.”

“I want them.”

“It’ll mean you’ll have to take pills every day.”

“I don’t care.”

“And very soon you’ll be the smallest boy in your year. Another reason for people to pick on you.”

“I don’t care!”

He sighed.

“The doctor said the whole thing is reversible at this stage. If he wants to go back to being a boy, all he needs to do is stop taking them.”

“I won’t stop. I don’t want to be a boy.”

“He also said we really need to find out how much you want to be a girl. He suggested you should try being one all the time, even at school.”

“Even after what I said?”

“Even after what you said, sweetheart. He called it a real life test. If you’re adamant about being a girl all the time, then the sooner you find out how the world will treat you, the better.”

“Okay then.”

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t see there’ll be much difference between being picked on as a boy or being picked on as a girl.”

“I’m not sure you’re right,” Collin said with a worried look, “but I’ll do what I can to keep an eye out for you.”

“Okay then,” Dad said. “We’re still going to do this slowly. I take it you have the prescription?”

Mum waved a small piece of paper.

“Okay, I suppose we get the pills first and start you on them as soon as possible. Any side effects to look for?”

“Nothing we’re likely to see, but we’ll have to visit the doctor for regular checks for liver function.”

“Okay, so make those are booked in. For the rest of this term we carry on as we’ve been doing. You continue to go to school as Glen, but as soon as you come home, you are our daughter. You dress and behave as such and you accept any restrictions your mother or I impose on you.”

“How is that fair?”

“Who said it was? You have to be more careful as a girl, and all the more as a trans-girl though. So if your mother or I think you need to follow a certain set of rules, then you do, okay?”

“I guess.”

“Good. We’ll still try to make it so you have a normal life, or as near to it as we can manage.

“I’ll get in contact with the school and let them know the situation. We’ll try to come up with a solution that works for them and for us, but after the October half-term, you will be going back to school as Gwen.

“Your Mum will sort out uniforms and liaise with the school so we know what you need to do with regard to things like toilets and physed. Gwen, you agree with any reasonable conditions the school sets, okay?”

“You called me Gwen.”

“If this goes the way you want it to, love, that’s who you’ll be, unless you decide you want a different name.”

“No, I like Gwendolyn.”

“Okay, so except for the times when you’re dressed as a boy and we’re in public, we refer to you as Gwen. Everyone okay with this?”

Mum nodded, so did Collin. I added my agreement to theirs.

“Okay. Now, I still have quite a bit of vacation time owed to me, so this is what I have in mind...

I have a secret. You mustn’t tell anyone though, please.

I’m still Glen for a few more weeks, at least while I’m at school, but we break up for the October half term in a few days, and we’re going on holiday again.

We’re going to Ibiza, but it’s probably different from what you’re thinking.

I don’t know much about it other than what Mum and Dad have said about the place. During the summer it’s all beach parties and open to gay and trans visitors. In October it’s cooler an quieter, and still supportive of alternative lifestyles.

Dad, Collin and I will be going as ourselves, because that’s what our passports say, but from the time we arrive at our hotel, we’re all going uber-girly, Mum included.

Mummy R, Mummy J, Holly and me – as Gwen – will be visiting all the neat places on the island.

We’ll have a full week as a family of girls, and there’s lots to Ibiza that has nothing to do with parties. There’s hiking and pony trekking, beach hopping and snorkelling and all sorts of things like that. I’m not sure how Mummy R is going to cope with swimming because her boobies aren’t real, but it won’t affect Holly or me. Girls our age don’t have much with which to fill that part of our costumes, and Dad has a few ideas to make sure we don’t overfill the other parts. That doesn’t affect me so much anymore because the pills mean I don’t have much down there to hide.

We’re all looking forward to it I think, even Mum, who never really wanted any of this, but she accepted it as a part of Dad, and now she’s accepted it as a part of Collin and maybe all of me. I like to think she’s looking forward to having a daughter, even though I’ve come to her by an unusual route.

When we go back, I’ll travel as Gwen, which means we’ll have to explain things to the passport control people, which’ll be embarrassing, but after they’ve had their laugh or whatever, I won’t ever have to see them again.

Dad’s still Dad most of the time, though he’s letting more of the girl inside show. The neighbours aren’t that happy, but, with the exception of Mrs Greer, they’re not making much of a fuss as we thought. It turns out his boss at work is okay with it and Dad’s planning to go to the office Halloween party as Rachel. Whether Mum goes as Mum is still to be decided.

Collin is my brother most of the time, but Jessica still likes going out with Holly sometimes, and Holly often spends an evening or weekend with her sister. I’m not sure the neighbours have figured out what’s going on there and it hasn’t made it to school yet, so that’s part of the secret, so shush, okay?

When school starts, I’ll be going full time as a girl and the big part of the secret will be out. Thanks to Dad, most of the staff at school are supportive, but I know there’ll be some people who won’t like what I’m doing. I hope I’ll find friends, and I hope Amy will be one of them. I hope that it’ll be better than Collin thinks. Whatever happens, I’ll still have the school library as a refuge, and I’ll still have my family.

Oh, and Mr Flump.