by Ray Robinson
And he knew what Hattie was thinking—it reminded her of his mother’s clothes, spread out across her bed.
Hattie said ‘wow’ again.
— I’m scared, he said. I’m fucking bricking it.
Hattie let the fabric of the dress run between her fingers.
— You’re going to be amazing.
His fantasy incarnated.
— You going to put this lot on then?
Suddenly he didn’t want to do this, to be like this, to have this drive.
Heat prickled his cheeks. He coughed into his fist for no reason.
— Did she really say I was a bad son?
Hattie turned him by the shoulders.
— I should never have said that. I was upset.
— It was like half of my life was always missing, he said.
— Jack?
— I loved a man I’d never met. It’s stupid.
— No, Ant. It’s not. It just makes you human.
He felt Hattie’s smile on the inside.
— I may be some time, he said.
— There’s no rush.
— There’s pizza on the kitchen table. The remote’s over there. There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge. Whatever. Shit.
— You’ve waited all of your life for this, son.
He picked up his dress, tights, heels.
He took the new wig from its stand.
— Fuck it, he said. Let’s do it.
Thanks
Thank you Olivia Woolley for your counsel, friendship and inspiration. Thank you Pia, Dr Richard Curtis, Nikki, DeDe, Caroline Greene, and Vicky Lee at the WayOut club for advice on all things tranny. Thank you Sara Maitland for your generous editorial support. Thank you Dr Anna-lyse Rowe for your analytical laser beam. Thank you Clare Allan, Chris Crouch, Laura West, Julia Bird and Andy Ching for being such thoughtful readers. Thank you Dr Chris Evans for letting me use (and abuse) the CORE-OM questionnaire. Thank you Annie Clarkson for driving me around Manchester and listening to the gripes. Thank you Transmission and Succour magazines where extracts of this novel first appeared. Thank you Ralph Wilde for taking me to the WayOut club for the first time dressed as a gay cowboy. Thank you Liam Relph for your outstanding design skills. Thank you Ledig House, New York, where I completed this novel. Thank you Lynne for far too many things to list. And for the generosity of Arts Council England—whose grant enabled me to write full-time while working on this novel—I am deeply grateful.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2008 by Picador
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Ray Robinson, 2008
The moral right of Ray Robinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911420828
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Items from the CORE-OM questionnaire are incorporated by permission of the copyright holders, CORE System Trust. Though CORE System Trust encourage reproduction of the full CORE-OM on paper, provided that it is not changed in any way and do not charge for this, reproduction of the items out of the context of the questionnaire, as in ‘The Man Without’, requires explicit permission of the Trustees. Reproduction here does not constitute any precedent that such permission will necessarily be given. Anyone interested in the measure and the CORE system can find more information at www.coreims.co.uk.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co