‘The politeness was the worst thing.’
Kate retreated into the kitchen, wondering what on earth her mum had been hoping for. For Christ’s sake, what conversation with Dad could possibly be cheerful in this situation? And where were the bloody coffee cups? They normally lived in a row on the dresser, with all the saucers piled up at one end. The shelf was empty, and so was the dishwasher.
‘Where’ve the cups gone, Mum?’ she called. ‘Can only find one.’
No answer. Kate gave up and fished out some chipped mugs that they hadn’t used in donkey’s years. The biscuit tin was in its usual place, though, and well stocked. She took it outside, along with their coffee.
Eilish thanked her, and seemed to try to rouse herself. ‘Have you and Owen really split up?’
‘Yep.’
‘What about your flat?’
Kate dunked a biscuit into her coffee. ‘He’s the tenant. My things are all in bin bags by the front door. Look, it’s okay. Really. Owen’s the least of our problems now, and I can always . . .’ Oops. She’d been about to suggest that she sleep on her father’s sofa bed in London for a week or two. ‘Um, I could stay here for a while, if that’s all right with you. Save me a lot of rent. Term doesn’t start until September.’
‘But you’ve work to do.’
‘I’ve got to write a report on the dig, and I want to start thinking about my dissertation, but there’s no reason I can’t do that from here. I’ve got my field notes. I’d really like to stay until this mess is all sorted out.’
Stupid thing to say. It made the whole disastrous situation sound like a cutlery drawer that needed reorganising.
‘Then stay,’ said Eilish. ‘I’d like that.’
She sank back into a reverie. She was looking out at Charlotte’s tree. A breeze had sprung up, and was tugging at her wrap.
‘How quickly things can change,’ she said. ‘And for you too, I know.’
Kate nodded. ‘Friday morning, I woke up in a tent. All I’d thought about for six weeks were: one, the implications for Judaeo-Christian traditions of our finds; two, how frigging hot it was; and three, whether a scorpion was hiding in my shoes. I was looking forward to a flight home, a nice long bath, and a sloppy reunion with Owen.’ She blew on her coffee. ‘You’re right. A hell of a lot can change in three days.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry! How can this be your fault?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Eilish. ‘Perhaps I just wasn’t woman enough.’
‘Woman . . . ?’ Kate smacked her hand to her brow. ‘Mum! Have I taught you nothing? It is not the role of any woman to be woman enough for a man!’
‘Why not? I expected Luke to be man enough.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did! Of course I did. I liked him to smell of coal tar soap, not Chanel. I loved the five o’clock shadow on his jaw when he came home in the evenings. I liked to see biceps when he took off his shirt. I wanted him to stride along in brogues, not totter in six-inch heels. I wanted—’ Eilish looked towards the front gate. ‘Oh, no. Please, not now.’
A red car was meandering up the drive.
‘You shoot upstairs and hide in the shower,’ offered Kate. ‘I’ll field Granny.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said Eilish, as she got to her feet. ‘He’s her son. I can’t imagine what that would be like. I hate to think, if Simon turned out to be . . . I have to face her, and she has to face me. It won’t be the first time she’s seen me in my nightie.’
Meg pulled on the handbrake and almost fell out of the car. She wasn’t her usual sprightly self.
‘Kate, love,’ she cried. Shock was spilling from her in a breathless rush of words. ‘Oh, my poor girl. Such a terrible thing, Eilish, such a terrible thing. I could tell things were in a mess, but this is . . . Oh, you poor girls.’
‘Come inside,’ said Eilish. ‘There’s a wind getting up.’
The yellow roses were hanging their heads. Meg sank into a chair while Eilish drooped against the kitchen counter. Kate felt rattled. These two women were the unshakable ones of her childhood. They weren’t allowed to fall apart! Tea, she thought, and reached for another mug. A nice strong cup of workman’s for Granny, with extra sugar; that’s what she used to dish out when I was upset.
She was dropping a teabag into the bin when a flash of red and yellow caught her eye. She looked closer, saw what it was, and wanted to cry. She’d solved the mystery of the whereabouts of her parents’ special coffee cups. Not cups anymore, though. Just a pile of broken rubbish. She reached in, retrieved the largest piece and slipped it into the pocket of her sweatshirt. A memento; a jaunty souvenir of normality before everything was smashed.
‘Luke told me you found some of his secret things,’ Meg was saying. ‘Must have been terrible.’
‘It was so . . .’ Eilish shuddered. ‘Meg, you have no idea.’
The older woman looked away, out into the garden. She sipped her tea. Then she said quietly, ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’
Kate and Eilish both stared at her.
Eilish spoke first. ‘You mean . . . sorry, Meg. I must have misunderstood. You don’t mean to imply that you knew?’
‘I hoped he’d changed.’
‘No, Granny!’ Kate felt bewildered. ‘No, no. You can’t have known he was like this. You would have said. You would have warned us, wouldn’t you?’
Meg seemed to shrink into herself. ‘It isn’t as easy as that. These things aren’t cut-and-dried. I only had the one boy, remember. Just the one. Just my Luke.’
Kate felt the ground shift under her feet, and abruptly sat down. A gust of wind shook the folding doors. She had a vague idea that she ought to get up and close them.
‘He never wanted to be a boy,’ Meg was saying. ‘Two years old, he wasn’t like other boys. He just wasn’t. If we went shopping he always headed straight for the girls’ department. He used to love the pink princess clothes.’
‘I’ve never dressed up as a princess,’ protested Kate.
‘True, love. True. But you had a choice, you see? You could’ve if you’d wanted. And it was all my Luke ever wanted. One time I lost sight of him in a department store, and when I found him he’d got a basket. That basket was almost as big as he was, and it was so full he could hardly carry it. He’d put in a ballet dress and a diamond tiara and a wand. He was overjoyed with it all; I remember his face was one great smile. It’s just about the happiest I’ve ever seen him in his life. And you know what I did?’ Meg was very close to tears. She had to stop and swallow more tea.
‘It’s okay,’ said Kate, wanting to comfort her. ‘Don’t worry, Granny.’
‘I smacked his bottom! I was so frightened, you see? Can you see that? I snatched his precious basket out of his hands and I dragged him out of that shop by one arm. His little heart broke. He wailed all the way home. He begged me please please please could he have the tiara for his birthday. He was turning three. He didn’t want anything else, just that.’
‘I suppose you didn’t get it for him?’ asked Kate.
‘How could I? We gave him a cricket bat. He cried again when he saw that bloody thing. I sent him to nursery school because I hoped he’d play with the other boys and be, you know, normal—but it backfired, because he was one of the girls, played dress-ups and dolls. They accepted him without question, especially Janey. D’you know her, Eilish? Janey Patton, that was. She’s Janey Jamieson now. I think she was at your wedding.’
‘I’ve a vague memory,’ said Eilish. ‘We get a Christmas card from her every year.’
‘In those days, Janey and Luke could have been twins, wouldn’t be parted for the world. He was hardly out of nappies, but he was always borrowing her sparkly clips and putting them in his own hair. And if he got the chance at home, he’d go into Wendy’s room and dress up in her things.’
‘He told me about that,’ said Kate.
‘Did he? He remembers, then. When I growled at him he looked a
ll confused. He used to say . . . he used to . . . Oh dear, I’m blubbing again. I’ve been blubbing since he told me, it’s all so . . .’ Meg pressed her knuckle to her mouth. ‘He said to me, “But I want to look pretty.”’
That last word was too much for her, and it turned into a sob.
‘Shh, Granny. Don’t cry. It’s all right,’ Kate begged, anxiously rubbing her grandmother’s arm.
‘It’s not all right, love. It’s not. It’s not.’ Meg pulled a tissue from her pocket and mopped her eyes. ‘Gail kept saying he was a little freak. But he wasn’t a little freak. He was my son, and I loved him. Anyway, what was I meant to do? I’d never in my whole life heard of such things! I’d have believed in mermaids before I believed in boys who were really girls.’
‘Didn’t other people notice, though?’ asked Eilish. ‘What about the nursery school?’
‘“It’s a passing phase, Mrs Livingstone.”’ Meg imitated the singsong tones of some long-ago nursery teacher. ‘“He’s a bright wee fellow. He’ll start running around with toy guns and yelling ‘bang-bang-bang’ soon enough.”’
‘Did you believe them?’
‘I had to.’
‘And later—when he started real school?’
Meg shook her head. ‘He stopped trying to be a girl, but he also seemed to lose all his joy. I don’t think it ever really came back. He became sort of colourless—that’s the only way I can describe it. He never smiled anymore. He wouldn’t talk to me about what was wrong; he wouldn’t talk to anyone. I was worried. That’s why . . . oh dear. I’d better go. I think I’ve said enough.’
‘Go on,’ prompted Eilish. Her face was chalk white. ‘We need to know. We need to understand.’
‘All right. Well . . .’ Meg took several breaths. ‘He had this den in the attic. And in the den he had a tuckbox. He kept it locked, but I found the key hidden among his socks. One day when he was about . . . fourteen? Yes, he was fourteen . . . I climbed up the ladder and I unlocked the box.’ Her mouth was shaking so much that she could hardly form the words. ‘I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I had no business prying, but I was so worried, and he used to look ashamed when he came down, like he’d been doing something dirty. I hoped for girlie mags. Girlie mags would’ve been just fine! Maybe cigarettes. Even a bottle of whisky.’
Kate and Eilish were both frozen, waiting. Meg screwed up her eyes as though the next few words were going to explode.
‘A petticoat. A frock. A bra.’
In the silence that followed, gusts of wind seemed to harry the house. The folding doors swung once, twice, smashing against the trellis outside. Kate got up to pull them shut. It was wild out there. Her grandad’s tree was taking a hammering: bent double one minute, springing up the next. Poor thing. It wasn’t having an easy start in its new life.
Dad hid a bra when he was fourteen. Dad had a petticoat.
‘I locked up that box,’ Meg said. ‘I came down the ladder. I hid the key away again. I tried to forget what I’d seen, and I never, ever said a single word about it to anyone. Not until now.’
‘Not to Robert?’ asked Eilish.
‘Especially not to Robert! It would’ve broken his heart.’ Tears roamed among the wrinkles on Meg’s cheeks. Kate had never seen her grandmother cry before. ‘My poor Robert. My poor Luke. So much hurt. Can you wonder that I shut up that box, and tried to forget I’d ever looked in?’
Fourteen
Lucia
It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, near Mile End tube station. The army of commuters had already set off on their daily route march. Only the stragglers and unemployed, the elderly and the young were left.
She leaned against the bedroom windowsill, craning her neck to look up at the railings. It was as quiet out there as it would ever be. A heather-coloured skirt and blouse lay on the bed, along with knickers and a padded bra. They were all rather dowdy but that was fine with her. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
Her fingers shook as she buttoned the blouse. It was long and hung loosely around her hips, but was caught in under her bust. According to the website she’d been consulting, this would help to disguise her lack of a waist. BK from TransChatterers had sent her the link. She was grateful, because the site was a mine of useful information.
She’d shaved her legs again that morning, blunting several disposable razors, and then rubbed handfuls of body moisturiser into them. She took a guilty pleasure in their new smoothness as she sat down on the bed to pull on a pair of tights. Tricky things, tights. She wondered how other women managed to get them on without sitting down or falling over. The secret seemed to be to lasso them with her toes and then wrangle them up her legs. Once they were almost on, she stood up and did several pliés, hoisting them higher up her hips. Not elegant.
Her shoes were clumsy boats, bought in Oxfam. They weren’t quite large enough for her feet but the leather was soft and could be stretched. She walked towards the mirror, remembering the advice she’d read online (Walk from your hips, be relaxed and loose, keep your upper body still, don’t jut your chin. Draw your shoulders back). Then she began to brush her hair, moving the parting to the centre so that dark waves framed each cheek. There was plenty of it, enough to cover her temples and disguise the male hairline. Gold knots clipped easily onto her ears, although—ouch—they pinched like billy-o.
Now. Make-up. With awkward care, she brushed on a powder foundation. The website had been right: it softened the coarseness of her skin. Next, mascara on her lashes. Finally, she formed her mouth into an ‘O’ shape and added the plum-coloured lipstick. She’d acquired her first lipstick as a teenager (Gail’s cast-off, recovered from the bin) and was quite a dab hand.
There.
She regarded the dark-eyed woman in the mirror. Her jaw was slightly too heavy, her shoulders slightly too broad, her bust not quite the right shape. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her arms.
‘You look ludicrous,’ she said aloud. The woman smiled fearfully.
Lucia picked up her wallet and dropped it into her sky-blue handbag. She’d spotted the bag three years ago, when wandering through the scents and sensations of Peter Jones. It had a William Morris–patterned lining and was made in New York. She’d bought it because she thought it was beautiful, and hidden it in the flat with shame and delight. A man could buy his wife or mistress a handbag, earrings or a silk scarf and raise no eyebrows. Oversized shoes and clothes were rather more difficult.
With the bag over one arm she made her way out of her bedroom, down the short passage and through the kitchen. There was nobody watching her yet, but she felt crippled by self-consciousness. When she reached the street door she stopped dead, her hands clenching and unclenching—hopelessly big hands, on hopelessly long arms. She hadn’t painted her nails.
The world lay on the other side of that door, ready to laugh its head off.
She had been through this same routine yesterday, and the day before. She’d tidied up her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers, which was far more painful than she’d expected. She had tried combinations of clothes, and experimented with her hair and make-up. She’d practised walking in the unfamiliar shoes. She’d got herself completely ready—but every time she reached this door, her courage had deserted her.
Today. It must happen today.
‘Get on with it,’ she muttered, and was suddenly aware of the deep tones of her voice. What a giveaway! Who did she think she was going to fool? She would never be able to speak. Never. She could never go out there.
She must go out there.
Okay. A deep breath in, and out. Lift your hand. Turn the Yale. Open the door . . . well done.
Lucia had never been outside in her life. Sunshine lit up the area steps and she felt its friendly warmth on her face. She’d count to three, and then she’d take that final step across the threshold. She would do it this time. She would.
One. Two. Th—
Footsteps sounded like jackboots, marching along the pavement abov
e. Several pairs of feet. She retreated instantly, a clam into its shell. The steps passed. The street was silent again, yet still she hid.
Now. It had to be now. Now.
And then she’d done it. She was standing outside in broad daylight, and the door had closed behind her. Terror and exhilaration thudded in her chest. Her foot was on the first step. The second. She reached the level of the street and, to her horror, there were people nearby. Two women in burkas, pushing toddlers in pushchairs. She glimpsed strappy sandals under their hems. They knew what it meant to cover up their femininity. Neither of them glanced in her direction as they passed.
She hauled the strap of her bag onto her shoulder and set off along Thurso Lane, feeling the grittiness of the pavement through her soles. She took small steps, remembering not to stride out as though she were in lace-ups and a pinstriped suit. She’d researched everything: how to walk, how to move. How to talk. How to pass. Every tiny nuance mattered. Hold your head high, the anonymous chatroom friends had advised. Be confident. Smile. Hide your fear. Nothing marks you out more than your own fear. She had been acting a part all her life; now, it seemed, she must act another.
After a couple of hundred yards, Thurso Lane met the main road. She could hear children chanting in the school playground, hidden behind fortress-like gratings. Two men were unloading furniture from a van. One nudged the other as she passed by. She heard exaggerated laughter, followed by a wolf-whistle. She knew exactly what they were seeing. She’d seen it herself, in the mirror. Her spine felt cold and exposed; some primal instinct expected an arrow in her back. She wanted to run, but forced herself to walk.
Her destination was the cash machine outside the newsagent’s. She’d planned this as a first challenge. She wouldn’t go into the shop and buy a paper. Not today. If she could only get herself as far as the cash machine, use it and come home again, that would be enough. The machine had never seemed so far away. Two hundred metres. One hundred. Fifty. She was there.
She took her card out of her handbag, soothed by the familiarity of routine. The hole-in-the-wall didn’t care how she looked, so long as her PIN matched the card. It spat out a pile of notes and a receipt. So far, so good. As she tucked them into her wallet she heard movement, very close behind her. Somebody was standing there. Gripping her bag, she turned around.
The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone Page 10