CHAPTER 1
The Talisman.
My sister and I were close when we were children. Somewhere along the way, though, we drifted apart.
Jessica was two years younger than me. We attended the same college, but we moved in different circles. I was the football team’s quarterback; she wrote for the college newspaper. While I spent my evenings training or celebrating with my teammates, she was chasing interviews and arguing with editors.
We both had ambitions. For a while, it seemed we were both going to achieve them.
A scout from the Denver Broncos spotted me during a college game, and I was invited to try out after graduation. Jessica secured an internship at a local newspaper.
Five years later, I was still with the Broncos, and she was working for the Chicago Tribune.
I thought we had both done well.
Jessica saw things differently.
She wanted to investigate corruption, question politicians and write stories that mattered. Instead, her editor kept assigning her recipes, celebrity gossip and lifestyle features.
Whenever she complained, he told her she had a gift for knowing what women wanted to read.
“You mean he won’t let you try anything else?” I asked during one of our increasingly rare phone calls.
“Exactly.”
“Then keep pushing.”
There was a pause.
“Easy for you to say, Brian.”
I hadn’t known how to answer that.
The assignment that finally pushed her too far was a feature marking the anniversary of the Salem witch trials.
To me, it sounded interesting. To Jessica, it was another opportunity to be sent away while someone else got the story she wanted.
She spent the day interviewing local historians and women who practised witchcraft. By the time she returned to her hotel, she had a notebook full of material and no enthusiasm for writing any of it.
Three vodkas later, she was still sitting at the bar.
One of the women she had interviewed recognised her and took the neighbouring stool.
“You look as though your day went badly.”
Jessica gave a humourless laugh.
“How long have you got?”
The woman listened while Jessica told her about the newspaper, her editor and the assignments that always seemed to go to somebody else.
Then, somehow, she started talking about me.
“My brother gets taken seriously just by walking into a room,” she said. “People listen when he speaks. They assume he knows what he’s doing.”
“And you would like that for yourself?”
“I’d like to know what it feels like.”
The woman studied her for a moment, then reached into her bag and produced a small wrapped package.
Inside was an old metal talisman.
“This has been in my family for generations,” she said.
Jessica turned it over in her hand.
“What does it do?”
“Put it beneath your pillow tonight. As you fall asleep, think about what you want most.”
Jessica smiled faintly.
“And then?”
“Then you may discover how powerful a wish can be.”
“Do you want it back afterwards?”
“There will be no need. Once it has been used, it will return to me.”
Jessica thought it was an eccentric gift from an interesting interview subject.
That was where my nightmare began.
I learned the details of that conversation later, in pieces. At first Jessica could barely tell me what she had wished for. Much later, when we could talk about the night without hurting each other, she remembered the woman’s questions and the little parcel on the bar.
At the time, I knew none of it. I was hundreds of miles away, convinced that the greatest problem waiting for me was a hangover.
I was in Las Vegas that night, enjoying a short gambling trip.
By the time I stumbled back to my hotel suite, it was 2:45 in the morning. I had lost more money than I intended and drunk rather more than I should have.
The room seemed to tilt as I crossed it.
I collapsed onto the bed without bothering to get undressed.
When I woke, my head was pounding and my stomach felt dreadful.
Nothing unusual there.
Then I sat up.
Something shifted against my chest.
I looked down.
For several seconds, I simply stared.
These weren’t my clothes.
Those weren’t my hands.
And that certainly wasn’t my body.
I stumbled out of bed, caught myself against the wall and hurried into the bathroom.
The light flickered on.
A young woman who looked startlingly like my sister stared back at me from the mirror.
I screamed.
The high, frightened sound made everything worse.
I touched my cheeks. The woman in the mirror did the same. I pushed my hair back, opened my mouth and watched the unfamiliar face twist into disbelief. The resemblance was unmistakable, but this woman was younger than Jessica, with a slightly different mouth and longer blonde hair.
“No. No, this can’t be happening.”
Even my voice had something of hers in it, although it was lighter and less familiar than I had first thought.
I backed into the bedroom.
The suite was familiar, but things inside it had changed. A handbag stood on the dresser. Women’s shoes lay beside the bed. A phone I didn’t recognise was charging on the bedside table.
I picked it up.
My fingertips shook as I tried to enter Jessica’s number. My longer nails kept catching the screen, and twice I had to start again.
At last, it rang.
A man answered.
“Hello?”
I knew that voice.
Or rather, I knew something in it: the same family resemblance I had found in the mirror. For an instant, I thought I was hearing myself.
“Can I speak to Jessica?” I asked. “It’s her brother.”
“Very funny.”
“Jessica?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Brian!”
“Whoever you are, you don’t sound anything like—”
“Last night I went to bed as a man. This morning I woke up looking like a younger version of you!”
Silence.
Then I heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Oh, God.”
“Jessica. What have you done?”
She told me about Salem, the woman at the bar and the talisman.
I sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the phone.
“What did you wish for?”
“I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“What did you wish for?”
Her answer came quietly.
“I was thinking about you. About how different my life might have been if I’d been the son instead.”
I shut my eyes.
“And now?”
“I woke up looking like you. Not exactly. Close enough that I thought it was your face at first.”
I looked towards the bathroom door. From where I sat, I could still see part of my unfamiliar reflection.
“Find the talisman.”
“I’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone.”
Of course it had. The woman had warned her about that.
“Then find the woman.”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
“You interviewed her, didn’t you? Check your notes.”
“Brian, I’m sorry.”
I wanted to shout. Instead, I took a breath and tried to think.
“Stay in Salem. I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”
Then I hung up.
I needed identification, money and some idea of what the world now thought had happened to me.
The handbag seemed a reasonable place to start.
I tipped its contents onto the bed.
Keys. Lipstick. Mascara. Two tampons. A couple of condoms.
And a purse.
I opened it and pulled out the driving licence.
The photograph showed the face I had just seen in the mirror.
The name beneath it read:
CHANTELLE WHITE.
White was still my surname.
Chantelle had never been my name.
I checked the credit cards. Every one of them said the same thing.
This was more than a simple exchange of bodies. Whatever Jessica had wished for had changed enough of the world to give me an identity I had never lived.
I wondered what had happened to my career.
I searched my name on the phone.
There were other Brian Whites: a dentist, a builder, a man selling fishing equipment. None of them was me. When I added the Broncos, the results gave me players I recognised and games I remembered. My name was absent from all of them.
A photograph showed the team celebrating a win I could still feel in my throwing arm. Someone else stood where I should have been.
I closed the browser before I could look for any more.
Until then, a part of me had imagined this as a bizarre inconvenience, something I could have put right before anyone noticed. That photograph made my hands go cold.
Then I wondered what Jessica would find when she checked her own wallet.
I nearly called her back, but stopped myself. We could compare notes later. First, I needed to get dressed.
The wardrobe contained women’s clothes in my size.
I chose sweatpants, a T-shirt and trainers.
I considered flying. Then I looked at the unfamiliar face on the licence and imagined explaining myself to an airport security officer. I could barely say the name on it without hesitating. A long drive felt like something I could control, and I clung to that idea harder than it deserved.
I would later have plenty of time to question the decision. Getting into the bra took considerably longer than I wanted to admit. By the time I had managed it, I was hot, frustrated and close to tears.
I left the makeup where it was and tied my hair back as best I could.
There was a suitcase on top of the wardrobe. I dragged it down, packed whatever looked practical and checked the room for anything I might need.
Before leaving, I glanced once more at the mirror.
The face that resembled Jessica’s looked frightened.
I wished I could stop thinking of it as hers.
The young man at reception smiled when I approached.
“Checking out, Miss White?”
“Yes, please.”
“How was your stay?”
I looked at him.
“It’s been memorable.”
He handed me the bill.
I paid with one of Chantelle’s credit cards, holding my breath as I entered my usual PIN.
Approved.
For the first time that morning, something had gone right.
Outside, I handed my valet ticket to the attendant.
Then another thought struck me.
What was I driving now?
A few minutes later, he brought round a silver convertible.
Despite everything, I smiled.
At least Chantelle had good taste in cars.
I tipped him, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and gripped the steering wheel.
Somewhere in Salem, my sister was looking into a mirror and finding a man who resembled me.
Somewhere nearby, a woman had a talisman that could turn a careless wish into reality.
I intended to find them both.
I pulled away from the hotel and headed for the road out of Las Vegas.
————————————————————————
Jessica was two years younger than me. We attended the same college, but we moved in different circles. I was the football team’s quarterback; she wrote for the college newspaper. While I spent my evenings training or celebrating with my teammates, she was chasing interviews and arguing with editors.
We both had ambitions. For a while, it seemed we were both going to achieve them.
A scout from the Denver Broncos spotted me during a college game, and I was invited to try out after graduation. Jessica secured an internship at a local newspaper.
Five years later, I was still with the Broncos, and she was working for the Chicago Tribune.
I thought we had both done well.
Jessica saw things differently.
She wanted to investigate corruption, question politicians and write stories that mattered. Instead, her editor kept assigning her recipes, celebrity gossip and lifestyle features.
Whenever she complained, he told her she had a gift for knowing what women wanted to read.
“You mean he won’t let you try anything else?” I asked during one of our increasingly rare phone calls.
“Exactly.”
“Then keep pushing.”
There was a pause.
“Easy for you to say, Brian.”
I hadn’t known how to answer that.
The assignment that finally pushed her too far was a feature marking the anniversary of the Salem witch trials.
To me, it sounded interesting. To Jessica, it was another opportunity to be sent away while someone else got the story she wanted.
She spent the day interviewing local historians and women who practised witchcraft. By the time she returned to her hotel, she had a notebook full of material and no enthusiasm for writing any of it.
Three vodkas later, she was still sitting at the bar.
One of the women she had interviewed recognised her and took the neighbouring stool.
“You look as though your day went badly.”
Jessica gave a humourless laugh.
“How long have you got?”
The woman listened while Jessica told her about the newspaper, her editor and the assignments that always seemed to go to somebody else.
Then, somehow, she started talking about me.
“My brother gets taken seriously just by walking into a room,” she said. “People listen when he speaks. They assume he knows what he’s doing.”
“And you would like that for yourself?”
“I’d like to know what it feels like.”
The woman studied her for a moment, then reached into her bag and produced a small wrapped package.
Inside was an old metal talisman.
“This has been in my family for generations,” she said.
Jessica turned it over in her hand.
“What does it do?”
“Put it beneath your pillow tonight. As you fall asleep, think about what you want most.”
Jessica smiled faintly.
“And then?”
“Then you may discover how powerful a wish can be.”
“Do you want it back afterwards?”
“There will be no need. Once it has been used, it will return to me.”
Jessica thought it was an eccentric gift from an interesting interview subject.
That was where my nightmare began.
I learned the details of that conversation later, in pieces. At first Jessica could barely tell me what she had wished for. Much later, when we could talk about the night without hurting each other, she remembered the woman’s questions and the little parcel on the bar.
At the time, I knew none of it. I was hundreds of miles away, convinced that the greatest problem waiting for me was a hangover.
I was in Las Vegas that night, enjoying a short gambling trip.
By the time I stumbled back to my hotel suite, it was 2:45 in the morning. I had lost more money than I intended and drunk rather more than I should have.
The room seemed to tilt as I crossed it.
I collapsed onto the bed without bothering to get undressed.
When I woke, my head was pounding and my stomach felt dreadful.
Nothing unusual there.
Then I sat up.
Something shifted against my chest.
I looked down.
For several seconds, I simply stared.
These weren’t my clothes.
Those weren’t my hands.
And that certainly wasn’t my body.
I stumbled out of bed, caught myself against the wall and hurried into the bathroom.
The light flickered on.
A young woman who looked startlingly like my sister stared back at me from the mirror.
I screamed.
The high, frightened sound made everything worse.
I touched my cheeks. The woman in the mirror did the same. I pushed my hair back, opened my mouth and watched the unfamiliar face twist into disbelief. The resemblance was unmistakable, but this woman was younger than Jessica, with a slightly different mouth and longer blonde hair.
“No. No, this can’t be happening.”
Even my voice had something of hers in it, although it was lighter and less familiar than I had first thought.
I backed into the bedroom.
The suite was familiar, but things inside it had changed. A handbag stood on the dresser. Women’s shoes lay beside the bed. A phone I didn’t recognise was charging on the bedside table.
I picked it up.
My fingertips shook as I tried to enter Jessica’s number. My longer nails kept catching the screen, and twice I had to start again.
At last, it rang.
A man answered.
“Hello?”
I knew that voice.
Or rather, I knew something in it: the same family resemblance I had found in the mirror. For an instant, I thought I was hearing myself.
“Can I speak to Jessica?” I asked. “It’s her brother.”
“Very funny.”
“Jessica?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Brian!”
“Whoever you are, you don’t sound anything like—”
“Last night I went to bed as a man. This morning I woke up looking like a younger version of you!”
Silence.
Then I heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Oh, God.”
“Jessica. What have you done?”
She told me about Salem, the woman at the bar and the talisman.
I sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the phone.
“What did you wish for?”
“I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“What did you wish for?”
Her answer came quietly.
“I was thinking about you. About how different my life might have been if I’d been the son instead.”
I shut my eyes.
“And now?”
“I woke up looking like you. Not exactly. Close enough that I thought it was your face at first.”
I looked towards the bathroom door. From where I sat, I could still see part of my unfamiliar reflection.
“Find the talisman.”
“I’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone.”
Of course it had. The woman had warned her about that.
“Then find the woman.”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
“You interviewed her, didn’t you? Check your notes.”
“Brian, I’m sorry.”
I wanted to shout. Instead, I took a breath and tried to think.
“Stay in Salem. I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”
Then I hung up.
I needed identification, money and some idea of what the world now thought had happened to me.
The handbag seemed a reasonable place to start.
I tipped its contents onto the bed.
Keys. Lipstick. Mascara. Two tampons. A couple of condoms.
And a purse.
I opened it and pulled out the driving licence.
The photograph showed the face I had just seen in the mirror.
The name beneath it read:
CHANTELLE WHITE.
White was still my surname.
Chantelle had never been my name.
I checked the credit cards. Every one of them said the same thing.
This was more than a simple exchange of bodies. Whatever Jessica had wished for had changed enough of the world to give me an identity I had never lived.
I wondered what had happened to my career.
I searched my name on the phone.
There were other Brian Whites: a dentist, a builder, a man selling fishing equipment. None of them was me. When I added the Broncos, the results gave me players I recognised and games I remembered. My name was absent from all of them.
A photograph showed the team celebrating a win I could still feel in my throwing arm. Someone else stood where I should have been.
I closed the browser before I could look for any more.
Until then, a part of me had imagined this as a bizarre inconvenience, something I could have put right before anyone noticed. That photograph made my hands go cold.
Then I wondered what Jessica would find when she checked her own wallet.
I nearly called her back, but stopped myself. We could compare notes later. First, I needed to get dressed.
The wardrobe contained women’s clothes in my size.
I chose sweatpants, a T-shirt and trainers.
I considered flying. Then I looked at the unfamiliar face on the licence and imagined explaining myself to an airport security officer. I could barely say the name on it without hesitating. A long drive felt like something I could control, and I clung to that idea harder than it deserved.
I would later have plenty of time to question the decision. Getting into the bra took considerably longer than I wanted to admit. By the time I had managed it, I was hot, frustrated and close to tears.
I left the makeup where it was and tied my hair back as best I could.
There was a suitcase on top of the wardrobe. I dragged it down, packed whatever looked practical and checked the room for anything I might need.
Before leaving, I glanced once more at the mirror.
The face that resembled Jessica’s looked frightened.
I wished I could stop thinking of it as hers.
The young man at reception smiled when I approached.
“Checking out, Miss White?”
“Yes, please.”
“How was your stay?”
I looked at him.
“It’s been memorable.”
He handed me the bill.
I paid with one of Chantelle’s credit cards, holding my breath as I entered my usual PIN.
Approved.
For the first time that morning, something had gone right.
Outside, I handed my valet ticket to the attendant.
Then another thought struck me.
What was I driving now?
A few minutes later, he brought round a silver convertible.
Despite everything, I smiled.
At least Chantelle had good taste in cars.
I tipped him, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and gripped the steering wheel.
Somewhere in Salem, my sister was looking into a mirror and finding a man who resembled me.
Somewhere nearby, a woman had a talisman that could turn a careless wish into reality.
I intended to find them both.
I pulled away from the hotel and headed for the road out of Las Vegas.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 2
The Voyage to Salem
The Voyage to Salem
Driving a car should have been the easiest part of the day.
I knew how to drive. I had been doing it for years. Yet sitting behind the wheel in a woman’s body made even this familiar task feel awkward.
First, I had to move the seat closer so that my feet could reach the pedals comfortably. Then I spent several minutes adjusting the seat belt, trying to find a position that did not press uncomfortably across my chest.
My hair kept falling into my eyes.
“For heaven’s sake,” I muttered, pushing it back for what felt like the hundredth time.
The voice still startled me.
I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror. The woman looking back wore the same irritated expression I could feel on my face.
At least something about me was recognisable.
I entered the address my sister had given me into the satellite navigation system.
Salem, Massachusetts.
The route stretched across the screen. From Las Vegas, it was an enormous journey—several days behind the wheel, even with long stretches of driving. I had hoped to reach Bloomington for an overnight stop, but one look at the estimated arrival time made me reconsider.
Apparently, becoming a woman had not improved my grasp of geography.
I would drive as far as I safely could, find a hotel, and carry on in the morning.
Whatever answers awaited me in Salem, I needed to arrive in one piece.
Four hours later, I pulled into a service station.
The car needed petrol, and I desperately needed the toilet.
I stood outside the entrances for a moment, staring at the signs. Years of habit had already steered me towards the men’s.
Then I remembered.
“Right,” I whispered, changing direction.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice.
Inside, I found an empty cubicle and dealt with another unfamiliar part of my new life. It was awkward, made worse by a door that would not quite lock and a toilet seat I had no intention of trusting.
By the time I emerged, I felt as though I had completed an examination for which nobody had given me the questions.
I washed my hands and looked into the mirror.
The woman above the basin looked tired and rather lost.
I tucked my hair behind my ears.
“Just get to Salem.”
Before leaving, I bought some water, a sandwich, and a packet of hair ties.
The last purchase proved to be the most useful.
It was dark when I finally stopped at a Best Western.
At reception, I asked for a room, gave the name on my driving licence and managed a tired smile when the clerk handed me a key card.
“Have a pleasant stay, ma’am.”
I nearly looked behind me.
Instead, I thanked the receptionist and carried my bag upstairs.
Once inside the room, I locked the door and leaned against it. For the first time all day, I did not have to concentrate on traffic, directions, or whether somebody might notice how uncomfortable I felt.
I ordered a burger and fries from a nearby takeaway, then went into the bathroom.
A hot shower helped ease the stiffness in my shoulders. Even so, washing and drying my unfamiliar body required more thought than I had expected. Nothing seemed quite where habit told me it should be.
When the delivery driver knocked, I hurried into the hotel bathrobe and checked that it was securely tied before opening the door.
I accepted the bag, thanked him and sat down to eat.
Usually, a burger and a beer would have been welcome after a long drive. Tonight, I managed barely half the meal.
Perhaps I was exhausted.
Perhaps I was frightened.
I folded the paper bag closed and put it aside.
Drying my hair took another age. Eventually, I gave up trying to make it look presentable and searched my bag for something comfortable to sleep in.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed.
All day, practical problems had kept me occupied. Now, in the quiet hotel room, there was nothing to distract me from what had happened.
I lifted one hand and studied it: the slender fingers, the unfamiliar nails.
This was my hand now.
For how long?
I wished my sister were there. I had questions I had been too overwhelmed to ask before leaving, and the thought of waiting until Salem suddenly felt unbearable.
Still, calling her in a panic would not shorten the journey.
I turned out the light.
Sleep came slowly.
I could not find a comfortable position. Each time I began to drift off, some unfamiliar sensation brought me awake again.
There was curiosity mixed in with my unease, too. Alone, with the door locked and the curtains drawn, I finally allowed myself to acknowledge it.
The rest of that night remained private.
Morning arrived much sooner than I wanted.
For a few seconds, I lay staring at the ceiling, expecting to wake properly and find everything restored.
Then a strand of long hair brushed my cheek.
“Oh, yes,” I murmured.
I showered, dressed, and struggled with the fastening of my bra until I finally managed it.
By the time I stood in front of the mirror, I was flushed with irritation.
“How does anyone do that behind their back?”
The woman in the mirror offered no advice.
I tied up my hair, packed my belongings, and checked the room twice before leaving.
Downstairs, I bought a coffee and something for breakfast. Then I returned to the car and entered Salem into the navigation system again.
There were still many miles ahead.
I adjusted the mirror. This time, my reflection did not quite startle me.
That troubled me almost as much as it had the day before.
I started the engine.
I needed to find out what the talisman had done—and whether it could be undone.
The next two days became a procession of service stations, road signs and motel rooms. I called Jessica whenever I stopped for the evening. At first we spoke only about practical things: where I was, whether she had found the woman, how much farther I had to drive.
By the third evening, the silences between those questions had become unbearable.
“Have you looked for me online?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I think we should talk when you get here.”
“Jessica.”
“I don’t want you driving after that conversation.”
I sat very still on the edge of the motel bed. Outside, a lorry reversed with a steady, cheerful beeping.
“I already know about the team,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Find her. Please.”
“I have. She’s agreed to see us.”
It was the first useful news I had received since leaving Las Vegas. I wrote the appointment down, although I was hardly likely to forget it. Then I set an early alarm for the final stretch.
————————————————————————
I knew how to drive. I had been doing it for years. Yet sitting behind the wheel in a woman’s body made even this familiar task feel awkward.
First, I had to move the seat closer so that my feet could reach the pedals comfortably. Then I spent several minutes adjusting the seat belt, trying to find a position that did not press uncomfortably across my chest.
My hair kept falling into my eyes.
“For heaven’s sake,” I muttered, pushing it back for what felt like the hundredth time.
The voice still startled me.
I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror. The woman looking back wore the same irritated expression I could feel on my face.
At least something about me was recognisable.
I entered the address my sister had given me into the satellite navigation system.
Salem, Massachusetts.
The route stretched across the screen. From Las Vegas, it was an enormous journey—several days behind the wheel, even with long stretches of driving. I had hoped to reach Bloomington for an overnight stop, but one look at the estimated arrival time made me reconsider.
Apparently, becoming a woman had not improved my grasp of geography.
I would drive as far as I safely could, find a hotel, and carry on in the morning.
Whatever answers awaited me in Salem, I needed to arrive in one piece.
Four hours later, I pulled into a service station.
The car needed petrol, and I desperately needed the toilet.
I stood outside the entrances for a moment, staring at the signs. Years of habit had already steered me towards the men’s.
Then I remembered.
“Right,” I whispered, changing direction.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice.
Inside, I found an empty cubicle and dealt with another unfamiliar part of my new life. It was awkward, made worse by a door that would not quite lock and a toilet seat I had no intention of trusting.
By the time I emerged, I felt as though I had completed an examination for which nobody had given me the questions.
I washed my hands and looked into the mirror.
The woman above the basin looked tired and rather lost.
I tucked my hair behind my ears.
“Just get to Salem.”
Before leaving, I bought some water, a sandwich, and a packet of hair ties.
The last purchase proved to be the most useful.
It was dark when I finally stopped at a Best Western.
At reception, I asked for a room, gave the name on my driving licence and managed a tired smile when the clerk handed me a key card.
“Have a pleasant stay, ma’am.”
I nearly looked behind me.
Instead, I thanked the receptionist and carried my bag upstairs.
Once inside the room, I locked the door and leaned against it. For the first time all day, I did not have to concentrate on traffic, directions, or whether somebody might notice how uncomfortable I felt.
I ordered a burger and fries from a nearby takeaway, then went into the bathroom.
A hot shower helped ease the stiffness in my shoulders. Even so, washing and drying my unfamiliar body required more thought than I had expected. Nothing seemed quite where habit told me it should be.
When the delivery driver knocked, I hurried into the hotel bathrobe and checked that it was securely tied before opening the door.
I accepted the bag, thanked him and sat down to eat.
Usually, a burger and a beer would have been welcome after a long drive. Tonight, I managed barely half the meal.
Perhaps I was exhausted.
Perhaps I was frightened.
I folded the paper bag closed and put it aside.
Drying my hair took another age. Eventually, I gave up trying to make it look presentable and searched my bag for something comfortable to sleep in.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed.
All day, practical problems had kept me occupied. Now, in the quiet hotel room, there was nothing to distract me from what had happened.
I lifted one hand and studied it: the slender fingers, the unfamiliar nails.
This was my hand now.
For how long?
I wished my sister were there. I had questions I had been too overwhelmed to ask before leaving, and the thought of waiting until Salem suddenly felt unbearable.
Still, calling her in a panic would not shorten the journey.
I turned out the light.
Sleep came slowly.
I could not find a comfortable position. Each time I began to drift off, some unfamiliar sensation brought me awake again.
There was curiosity mixed in with my unease, too. Alone, with the door locked and the curtains drawn, I finally allowed myself to acknowledge it.
The rest of that night remained private.
Morning arrived much sooner than I wanted.
For a few seconds, I lay staring at the ceiling, expecting to wake properly and find everything restored.
Then a strand of long hair brushed my cheek.
“Oh, yes,” I murmured.
I showered, dressed, and struggled with the fastening of my bra until I finally managed it.
By the time I stood in front of the mirror, I was flushed with irritation.
“How does anyone do that behind their back?”
The woman in the mirror offered no advice.
I tied up my hair, packed my belongings, and checked the room twice before leaving.
Downstairs, I bought a coffee and something for breakfast. Then I returned to the car and entered Salem into the navigation system again.
There were still many miles ahead.
I adjusted the mirror. This time, my reflection did not quite startle me.
That troubled me almost as much as it had the day before.
I started the engine.
I needed to find out what the talisman had done—and whether it could be undone.
The next two days became a procession of service stations, road signs and motel rooms. I called Jessica whenever I stopped for the evening. At first we spoke only about practical things: where I was, whether she had found the woman, how much farther I had to drive.
By the third evening, the silences between those questions had become unbearable.
“Have you looked for me online?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I think we should talk when you get here.”
“Jessica.”
“I don’t want you driving after that conversation.”
I sat very still on the edge of the motel bed. Outside, a lorry reversed with a steady, cheerful beeping.
“I already know about the team,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Find her. Please.”
“I have. She’s agreed to see us.”
It was the first useful news I had received since leaving Las Vegas. I wrote the appointment down, although I was hardly likely to forget it. Then I set an early alarm for the final stretch.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 3
The Last Leg to Salem
The Last Leg to Salem
On the fourth morning of the journey, I silenced the alarm and made the mistake of closing my eyes again. Three days on the road had left me exhausted.
When I next looked at the clock, two hours had disappeared.
“Wonderful,” I muttered. “Another late start.”
I opened the suitcase, determined to find something clean. After searching through clothes I didn’t remember buying, I settled on a skirt and a low-cut top. There were very few trousers, and none looked particularly comfortable for another long drive.
I held the skirt against myself and studied my reflection.
Only a few days earlier, I had been Brian White, a six-foot-five professional quarterback. Now I was a petite woman trying to work out what to wear.
After a quick shower, I dressed, checked that the top covered everything it ought to, and went downstairs to settle the bill.
Then it was back on the road.
The skirt took some getting used to.
Every time I shifted in the driver’s seat, it seemed to creep a little higher. I kept tugging it down until I realised I was spending almost as much time worrying about my clothes as watching the road.
I had roughly twelve hours of driving ahead of me.
To make the miles pass, I switched on the radio. Before long, I caught myself singing along to a string of eighties hits.
That surprised me. I had never been much of a singer, particularly while driving alone.
Still, it helped.
Three toilet stops, a fuel stop, and far too much time behind the wheel later, I finally reached Salem. It was almost ten that evening.
I pulled over and sent my sister a message.
I’m here. Where are you?
Her reply arrived a moment later.
The Black Cat Inn. I’ll meet you downstairs.
I drove straight there.
Getting out of the car required more thought than it ever had before. I kept my knees together, swung my legs round, and stood up carefully. Then I pulled down my skirt, straightened my top, and put on my jacket.
The cold evening air found its way beneath the skirt almost immediately.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” I grumbled.
Inside the lobby, I searched for a familiar face.
“Brian!”
The voice was male.
I turned towards a young man approaching from beside the reception desk. I knew who he must be, but hearing my sister’s voice replaced by his made the whole situation feel even stranger.
“Apparently, it’s Chantelle now,” I said.
He stopped in front of me, his expression full of relief and guilt.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would affect you as well.”
I glanced around the lobby.
“Can we talk somewhere else?”
“There’s a diner nearby.”
We sat opposite each other in a booth, with two cups of coffee between us.
I kept staring at the man who had been my sister. There were traces of familiar expressions in his face, but his shorter haircut, unfamiliar clothes and anxious expression made him look like a stranger despite the family likeness.
“We’re meeting Anagrammer tomorrow at one,” he told me. “She’s the woman who gave me the talisman.”
“Tomorrow?”
He nodded.
I looked down at myself, then back at him.
“Look at me. I’m wearing a skirt.”
“You look quite nice in it.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.” He lowered his eyes to his coffee. “Sorry.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“Have your drink,” he said eventually. “Then we’ll get you back to the hotel. You look exhausted.”
“I’ve been driving for twelve hours. And I’m beginning to think looking after this much hair should count as a second job.”
That earned a small smile, but I wasn’t ready to return it.
He had booked a twin room.
“I thought we ought to stay together,” he explained as he unlocked the door. “You might need some help.”
As soon as we were inside, all the anger I had held back in the diner came spilling out.
“Do you understand what you’ve done to me? I don’t even know who I am any more. My driving licence says Chantelle White. My clothes belong to a stranger. And every time I look in a mirror, she’s standing there!”
He closed the door quietly.
“I’ve been doing some research.”
“Research?”
“Into us. Into the lives we have now.”
I folded my arms.
“Go on, then.”
“My name is Frank White. I’m twenty-five, I live in Chicago, and I still work for the Chicago Tribune. Only now I’m one of their lead journalists.”
“So that part worked out nicely for you.”
His face tightened.
“I’m covering this story because the reporter they originally assigned went into labour.”
I stared at him.
“Even that’s changed?”
He nodded.
“And me?”
“You’re Chantelle White. You’re twenty-three.”
I waited.
“You live in Chicago too. With me.”
“What about Denver?”
He hesitated.
“What about the Broncos?”
“You don’t play for them.”
The room seemed very quiet.
“What do I do?”
“You work in a florist’s.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
For several seconds, I could think of nothing to say.
Then I looked up at him.
“So I’ve gone from six-foot-five to five-foot-four. From a man to a woman. From your older brother to your younger sister. And my entire career has disappeared.”
“I know.”
“No, Frank. You’ve read it on a screen. I’m the one who has to live it.”
He took that without answering.
A little later, Frank picked up the room-service menu.
“We should eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ve barely eaten all day.”
He studied the menu.
“I was thinking a burger and fries for me. Perhaps a tuna salad and club soda for you?”
I slowly turned towards him.
“Why do you get a burger?”
“I only thought—”
“I still like burgers.”
“All right. Two burgers.”
But by then I had opened the minibar.
I found a miniature vodka, unscrewed the cap, and swallowed it.
“Chantelle, take it easy.”
I reached for another.
“I think I’m entitled to a drink.”
“You’re exhausted. You haven’t eaten, and you don’t know your limits in that body.”
“What do you care?” I snapped. “You got what you wanted.”
He put the menu down.
“That isn’t fair.”
“Neither is this.”
I should have stopped there.
Instead, I kept drinking.
My memory of the rest of the evening came in fragments: the room-service trolley, Frank putting a glass of water beside me, and an argument I could no longer remember clearly.
Then nothing.
“Chantelle. Wake up.”
Someone was shaking my shoulder.
I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it.
“What?”
“It’s just after twelve. Anna will be here at one.”
I sat up too quickly.
The room lurched.
“Oh, no.”
I scrambled out of bed and hurried into the bathroom, reaching the toilet just in time.
Afterwards, I splashed cold water over my face and stared at my pale reflection.
Frank appeared in the doorway.
“Are you all right?”
“What do you think?”
He handed me a glass of water.
“Small sips.”
I took it.
“My mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage. Have you got any mouthwash?”
“Beside the sink.”
After a shower and a thorough brushing of my teeth, I felt slightly more human. Unfortunately, my hair looked as though I had spent the night being dragged through a hedge.
“Sit down,” Frank said, picking up a brush.
I lowered myself into the chair.
He began easing out the tangles, working carefully from the ends.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “It hasn’t been easy for me either.”
I watched him in the mirror.
“I wanted people at work to take me seriously. I wanted the opportunities I kept being passed over for. I wanted to feel successful.”
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
The brush paused.
“I didn’t ask for this face. Or shaving every morning. Or waking up and taking a second to remember why everything feels wrong.”
Some of my anger loosened.
Not all of it. But enough for me to hear him properly.
“I’m frightened,” I admitted.
His eyes met mine in the mirror.
“So am I.”
A knock at the door interrupted us.
The woman outside introduced herself as Anagrammer.
“But please,” she said as Frank let her in, “call me Anna.”
We sat around the small table by the window.
I had spent the entire journey imagining this meeting. In every version, she took one look at us, apologised, and explained how to put everything right.
Instead, she listened quietly while Frank described what had happened.
Then she turned to me.
“The talisman granted the wish by altering both your lives.”
“Why both of us?”
“Because the change required a balance. It made Frank the successful older brother, and it placed you in the younger sister’s life.”
I stared at her.
“You make it sound like moving furniture.”
“It is cruel to have your life changed without your agreement.”
“Then change us back.”
Anna didn’t answer immediately.
My stomach tightened.
“Change us back,” I repeated.
“I can’t.”
Frank leaned forward.
“There must be something.”
“The talisman has finished its work. This reality has settled around the wish.”
“Then use it again,” I said. “Make a different wish.”
Anna looked down at her hands.
“It cannot be used to undo a life it has already remade. I should have told Jessica that before I gave it to her.”
“Yes,” Frank said. “You should.”
It was the first time he had spoken to her sharply. I was grateful for it.
“I thought I understood what she was asking for,” Anna said.
“You didn’t ask me anything,” I replied.
“No. I didn’t.”
Her apology offered nothing I could use. There was no instruction to follow, no price to pay, no last-minute task that would earn my old life back. I had arrived ready to do almost anything. Having nothing to do was worse.
I looked from one to the other.
“So that’s it? I’ve driven all this way for you to tell me I’m stuck?”
“I’m sorry,” Anna said.
I pushed my chair back and stood.
“I don’t want to be Chantelle White. I want my own life.”
No one answered.
Outside, a car passed beneath the window. Somewhere along the corridor, a door slammed. Ordinary sounds, on an ordinary afternoon, while my life was being pronounced over.
Eventually, I sat down again.
“What happens now?”
“You may begin remembering this life,” Anna said gently. “Small things at first. Familiar places. People you’ve met. Perhaps something you know how to do.”
“Memories of things that never happened?”
“Things that happened here.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“And Brian?”
“You’ll still remember him. The three of us will remember how things were before.”
“Am I taking someone else’s place?” I asked. “Was there a Chantelle before this morning?”
“There was no separate person waiting to be displaced. The wish changed your history. The memories coming to you belong to the life you have in this world.”
“And they’ll make me want everything she wanted?”
“Remembering something is not the same as choosing it. You may find habits and skills returning before you understand them. What you do next will still be yours.”
I wanted to believe that. At the time, I could not see how I would ever know the difference.
Frank reached across the table towards me.
This time, I let him take my hand.
We decided to fly to Chicago the following day. I could not face another long journey behind the wheel. Frank booked the flights and arranged to have the convertible transported home; I surrendered the keys to the collection service with considerably more relief than I had expected.
There seemed little point in staying in Salem. Anna had given us her answer, and asking the same question again hadn’t changed it.
That night, I lay awake for hours.
Every time I began to drift off, a cramp tightened across my lower stomach.
At first, I blamed the drink. Then the room-service food.
By morning, the pain was still there.
I went into the bathroom, tired and irritable. When I noticed blood on the tissue, I froze.
“Frank?”
He answered sleepily from the bedroom.
“What?”
“Come here. Something’s wrong.”
He was at the door in seconds.
I explained what I had found.
His worried expression changed to recognition.
“Oh.”
“What does ‘oh’ mean?”
“I think your period’s started.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Chantelle—”
“No. After everything else?”
“I’m sorry.”
I sat there, trying to take in yet another thing about this body that I hadn’t been ready to face.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I bought a few things yesterday. Just in case.”
He disappeared into the bedroom. I stayed where I was, listening to the rustle of a carrier bag and wondering how a body could keep presenting me with things I had never thought to fear.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 4
A New Chapter in My Life
Frank returned with sanitary towels, tampons and the expression of someone approaching a frightened animal.
I stared down at the bag in dismay.
I had not even finished my first week as a woman, and already I was having my first period.
I felt bloated, sore and thoroughly fed up. After everything the talisman had done to us, this seemed like one more cruel joke.
My brother stood outside the bathroom door.
“I know it’s unpleasant,” he said, “but you’ll learn to manage it.”
“You were born a girl!” I shouted. “I was born a boy. I don’t want to learn!”
My voice broke. Before I could stop myself, I was crying.
I sank onto the bathroom floor and covered my face.
“I don’t want this. I want my old life back.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He asked if he could come in, then crouched beside me when I nodded.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know any of this would happen.”
“Well, it did.”
“I know.”
He sat beside me instead of trying to make me get up.
Between the cramps, the exhaustion and the fear I had been trying to ignore, I had simply reached my limit.
Eventually, he passed me a tissue.
“Let’s get you comfortable first. We can worry about everything else afterwards.”
By the time I had washed and dressed, he had packed our belongings and set out clean, comfortable clothes. The sanitary towels from his shopping bag were tucked into a side pocket of my handbag.
Those small kindnesses made it difficult to stay angry with him, although part of me wanted to.
“I should be stronger than this,” I muttered.
“You’ve had your entire life turned upside down. You’re allowed to be upset.”
“I don’t even recognise myself.”
He looked at me in the mirror.
“You don’t have to get used to everything today.”
I managed a faint smile.
“When I had my first period, I hated it too,” he continued. “I was frightened, and I didn’t know what I was doing. You’ll find out what helps you. And whenever you need me, I’ll be here.”
Then he glanced at my hair.
“Would you let me tidy that up?”
“Nothing over the top.”
“Nothing over the top,” he promised.
I sat while he brushed my hair and applied a little makeup. The sensation of the brush against my cheeks was unfamiliar, and a dab of perfume seemed surprisingly strong.
“There,” he said.
The young woman in the mirror looked tired, but more composed than I felt.
“Hopefully, some of those memories will help you with this,” my brother said. “If they don’t, I can show you.”
I reached for my trainers.
He held up a pair of flat pumps.
“Try these with that outfit.”
I sighed.
“Apparently even my feet need a new life.”
That earned a laugh from both of us. It was the first time I had laughed all morning.
By the time a taxi had taken us to the airport and we had checked in, there was still an hour before boarding. We wandered slowly through the airport shops.
My brother bought a few toiletries and some basic cosmetics, explaining each item as he added it to the basket.
I tried to listen, but my mind kept drifting. A week ago, none of this would have concerned me. Now I was carrying a handbag containing sanitary towels and wondering whether my makeup looked right.
When our flight was called, I followed him onto the plane.
The flight from Boston to Chicago lasted a little under three hours. I slept through almost all of it.
By the time I woke, we were descending towards O’Hare.
Getting through the airport took another half-hour. Then we climbed into a taxi, and my brother gave the driver our address without hesitating.
I turned towards him.
“How did you know that?”
He looked almost as surprised as I felt.
“I just did.”
His new memories seemed to be arriving faster than mine. He knew where we lived, which roads looked familiar and where we usually bought groceries.
I watched Chicago slide past the window, waiting for something to feel like home.
At a red light, I saw a woman laughing into her phone outside a bakery. A cyclist argued with a taxi driver. People crossed the road carrying shopping bags, lunch boxes, flowers wrapped in brown paper.
All of them appeared to know where they were going.
Frank’s hand rested on his knee, clenched so tightly that the knuckles had whitened. I realised he was watching the same streets with his own version of my fear.
“Do we have enough money?” I asked.
“For the rent? Yes.”
“And everything else?”
“We’ll sit down and work it out.”
It was an ordinary answer. It calmed me more than another promise that everything would be fine.
The apartment was familiar in unsettling little ways.
I recognised the view from the window, but could not remember ever standing there. I knew a cupboard contained mugs before I opened it, yet had to try two doors before finding the bathroom.
By then, all I wanted was to get out of my uncomfortable bra and into a warm bath.
“I’ll order some food,” my brother said. “You go and relax.”
For once, I did not argue.
I ran a bubble bath, undressed and lowered myself carefully into the water.
The warmth eased some of the aching. I leaned back, closed my eyes and listened to the distant sounds of my brother moving around the kitchen.
For a few precious minutes, nobody needed me to make a decision or learn anything new.
When I emerged in my dressing gown, he was setting plates on the table.
“Chinese,” he announced. “I hope that’s all right.”
“It’s perfect.”
We ate quietly at first.
“Tomorrow,” he said eventually, “we can go through anything you’re unsure about.”
“That might take more than a day.”
“Then we’ll take more than a day.”
I wanted to thank him. Instead, I stared down at my plate.
I was grateful he was there.
I was still angry that any of this had happened.
Both feelings followed me to bed.
The next morning, my brother found me in the kitchen, drinking coffee in my underwear.
He stopped in the doorway.
“Have you forgotten your dressing gown?”
“I always used to walk around like this.”
“I remember.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He glanced towards the uncovered window.
“The neighbours have quite a good view.”
I looked at the window, then down at myself.
“Oh.”
He handed me the dressing gown without another word.
I put it on and returned to my coffee.
There seemed to be no end to the things I could no longer do without thinking.
After a while, I asked, “Can I ask you something about my bra?”
“Of course.”
“Is it supposed to hurt?”
He frowned.
“What sort of hurt?”
“The straps dig in, and the band feels too tight. Yesterday, I couldn’t wait to take it off.”
“It sounds as though it doesn’t fit properly.”
“I thought uncomfortable was just how they were.”
“No. Let’s get someone to check.”
That afternoon, my brother took me to a lingerie shop he remembered.
I slowed outside the entrance.
“Do you have to stay with me?”
“I can, if you want.”
I nodded.
Inside, a friendly assistant asked what we needed.
“A fitting,” my brother said, then let me explain.
The words came out awkwardly.
“I don’t think I’m wearing the right size.”
“That’s easily checked,” the assistant replied.
She led us to a fitting room and explained what she would do before taking any measurements. Frank waited just outside the curtain while she checked the fit, grateful to be within calling distance without having to supervise. I kept my bra on and listened to her explanation, reassured by her calm manner.
To her, this was an ordinary afternoon.
To me, standing in front of another woman while she discussed my bust and bra straps felt like crossing into another part of a life I had never expected.
She noted down a few measurements.
“I’ll bring some different sizes and styles. We’ll see what feels comfortable.”
When she returned, she had several bras draped over her arm.
I stared at them.
“Why are there so many different kinds?”
“Different shapes, different clothes, different amounts of support,” she explained. “You don’t need all of them. We’re just finding what suits you.”
Putting one on proved easier than I expected. My hands seemed to remember the fastening even while my mind was still worrying about it.
The first was no better than the one I had worn yesterday.
The next felt surprisingly comfortable.
I moved my shoulders and took a deeper breath.
“Oh,” I said.
I called Frank back when I was dressed. He took one look at my expression and smiled.
“Better?”
“Much.”
The assistant adjusted a strap and showed me what to look for when checking the fit.
I listened carefully this time.
There were still things I wanted to shout about. I still wanted my old body and the easy familiarity of my old life.
But standing there in the fitting room, I realised how tired I was of being uncomfortable as well as frightened.
I looked at the remaining bras.
“All right,” I said. “What’s that one for?”
————————————————————————
A New Chapter in My Life
Frank returned with sanitary towels, tampons and the expression of someone approaching a frightened animal.
I stared down at the bag in dismay.
I had not even finished my first week as a woman, and already I was having my first period.
I felt bloated, sore and thoroughly fed up. After everything the talisman had done to us, this seemed like one more cruel joke.
My brother stood outside the bathroom door.
“I know it’s unpleasant,” he said, “but you’ll learn to manage it.”
“You were born a girl!” I shouted. “I was born a boy. I don’t want to learn!”
My voice broke. Before I could stop myself, I was crying.
I sank onto the bathroom floor and covered my face.
“I don’t want this. I want my old life back.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He asked if he could come in, then crouched beside me when I nodded.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know any of this would happen.”
“Well, it did.”
“I know.”
He sat beside me instead of trying to make me get up.
Between the cramps, the exhaustion and the fear I had been trying to ignore, I had simply reached my limit.
Eventually, he passed me a tissue.
“Let’s get you comfortable first. We can worry about everything else afterwards.”
By the time I had washed and dressed, he had packed our belongings and set out clean, comfortable clothes. The sanitary towels from his shopping bag were tucked into a side pocket of my handbag.
Those small kindnesses made it difficult to stay angry with him, although part of me wanted to.
“I should be stronger than this,” I muttered.
“You’ve had your entire life turned upside down. You’re allowed to be upset.”
“I don’t even recognise myself.”
He looked at me in the mirror.
“You don’t have to get used to everything today.”
I managed a faint smile.
“When I had my first period, I hated it too,” he continued. “I was frightened, and I didn’t know what I was doing. You’ll find out what helps you. And whenever you need me, I’ll be here.”
Then he glanced at my hair.
“Would you let me tidy that up?”
“Nothing over the top.”
“Nothing over the top,” he promised.
I sat while he brushed my hair and applied a little makeup. The sensation of the brush against my cheeks was unfamiliar, and a dab of perfume seemed surprisingly strong.
“There,” he said.
The young woman in the mirror looked tired, but more composed than I felt.
“Hopefully, some of those memories will help you with this,” my brother said. “If they don’t, I can show you.”
I reached for my trainers.
He held up a pair of flat pumps.
“Try these with that outfit.”
I sighed.
“Apparently even my feet need a new life.”
That earned a laugh from both of us. It was the first time I had laughed all morning.
By the time a taxi had taken us to the airport and we had checked in, there was still an hour before boarding. We wandered slowly through the airport shops.
My brother bought a few toiletries and some basic cosmetics, explaining each item as he added it to the basket.
I tried to listen, but my mind kept drifting. A week ago, none of this would have concerned me. Now I was carrying a handbag containing sanitary towels and wondering whether my makeup looked right.
When our flight was called, I followed him onto the plane.
The flight from Boston to Chicago lasted a little under three hours. I slept through almost all of it.
By the time I woke, we were descending towards O’Hare.
Getting through the airport took another half-hour. Then we climbed into a taxi, and my brother gave the driver our address without hesitating.
I turned towards him.
“How did you know that?”
He looked almost as surprised as I felt.
“I just did.”
His new memories seemed to be arriving faster than mine. He knew where we lived, which roads looked familiar and where we usually bought groceries.
I watched Chicago slide past the window, waiting for something to feel like home.
At a red light, I saw a woman laughing into her phone outside a bakery. A cyclist argued with a taxi driver. People crossed the road carrying shopping bags, lunch boxes, flowers wrapped in brown paper.
All of them appeared to know where they were going.
Frank’s hand rested on his knee, clenched so tightly that the knuckles had whitened. I realised he was watching the same streets with his own version of my fear.
“Do we have enough money?” I asked.
“For the rent? Yes.”
“And everything else?”
“We’ll sit down and work it out.”
It was an ordinary answer. It calmed me more than another promise that everything would be fine.
The apartment was familiar in unsettling little ways.
I recognised the view from the window, but could not remember ever standing there. I knew a cupboard contained mugs before I opened it, yet had to try two doors before finding the bathroom.
By then, all I wanted was to get out of my uncomfortable bra and into a warm bath.
“I’ll order some food,” my brother said. “You go and relax.”
For once, I did not argue.
I ran a bubble bath, undressed and lowered myself carefully into the water.
The warmth eased some of the aching. I leaned back, closed my eyes and listened to the distant sounds of my brother moving around the kitchen.
For a few precious minutes, nobody needed me to make a decision or learn anything new.
When I emerged in my dressing gown, he was setting plates on the table.
“Chinese,” he announced. “I hope that’s all right.”
“It’s perfect.”
We ate quietly at first.
“Tomorrow,” he said eventually, “we can go through anything you’re unsure about.”
“That might take more than a day.”
“Then we’ll take more than a day.”
I wanted to thank him. Instead, I stared down at my plate.
I was grateful he was there.
I was still angry that any of this had happened.
Both feelings followed me to bed.
The next morning, my brother found me in the kitchen, drinking coffee in my underwear.
He stopped in the doorway.
“Have you forgotten your dressing gown?”
“I always used to walk around like this.”
“I remember.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He glanced towards the uncovered window.
“The neighbours have quite a good view.”
I looked at the window, then down at myself.
“Oh.”
He handed me the dressing gown without another word.
I put it on and returned to my coffee.
There seemed to be no end to the things I could no longer do without thinking.
After a while, I asked, “Can I ask you something about my bra?”
“Of course.”
“Is it supposed to hurt?”
He frowned.
“What sort of hurt?”
“The straps dig in, and the band feels too tight. Yesterday, I couldn’t wait to take it off.”
“It sounds as though it doesn’t fit properly.”
“I thought uncomfortable was just how they were.”
“No. Let’s get someone to check.”
That afternoon, my brother took me to a lingerie shop he remembered.
I slowed outside the entrance.
“Do you have to stay with me?”
“I can, if you want.”
I nodded.
Inside, a friendly assistant asked what we needed.
“A fitting,” my brother said, then let me explain.
The words came out awkwardly.
“I don’t think I’m wearing the right size.”
“That’s easily checked,” the assistant replied.
She led us to a fitting room and explained what she would do before taking any measurements. Frank waited just outside the curtain while she checked the fit, grateful to be within calling distance without having to supervise. I kept my bra on and listened to her explanation, reassured by her calm manner.
To her, this was an ordinary afternoon.
To me, standing in front of another woman while she discussed my bust and bra straps felt like crossing into another part of a life I had never expected.
She noted down a few measurements.
“I’ll bring some different sizes and styles. We’ll see what feels comfortable.”
When she returned, she had several bras draped over her arm.
I stared at them.
“Why are there so many different kinds?”
“Different shapes, different clothes, different amounts of support,” she explained. “You don’t need all of them. We’re just finding what suits you.”
Putting one on proved easier than I expected. My hands seemed to remember the fastening even while my mind was still worrying about it.
The first was no better than the one I had worn yesterday.
The next felt surprisingly comfortable.
I moved my shoulders and took a deeper breath.
“Oh,” I said.
I called Frank back when I was dressed. He took one look at my expression and smiled.
“Better?”
“Much.”
The assistant adjusted a strap and showed me what to look for when checking the fit.
I listened carefully this time.
There were still things I wanted to shout about. I still wanted my old body and the easy familiarity of my old life.
But standing there in the fitting room, I realised how tired I was of being uncomfortable as well as frightened.
I looked at the remaining bras.
“All right,” I said. “What’s that one for?”
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 5
A New Woman
By the time we had been back in Chicago for a few days, I had lost track of how many times I had said, “What a week.”
I had gone to Las Vegas to relax after months of football. A few drinks, a little gambling, and some time away from the pressure of being a professional sportsman—that was all I had wanted.
Instead, I had woken up as a young woman.
Since then, I had spent four days travelling to Salem, discovered that my sister was now my brother, and experienced my first period. Now I was living in my room in our shared apartment, preparing to return to a job in a flower shop.
A job I had never done.
Except, apparently, I had.
That was the part that frightened me most.
Losing my money, my property, my cars, and the body I had known all my life had been bad enough. But now I was beginning to remember a life that should never have existed.
And some of those memories felt just as real as my own.
My brother had been patient with me.
He had helped me find comfortable clothes, explained the things I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else, and taken me bra shopping.
That had been an afternoon I would happily have forgotten.
“You can’t keep guessing your size,” he had told me.
“I wasn’t guessing.”
He had glanced at the uncomfortable garment I had spent the morning tugging into place.
“Then you’re remarkably bad at being right.”
I had managed a reluctant laugh.
There were so many little things to get used to. Reaching the top cupboard now required a stepladder. Clothes fitted differently. My breasts sometimes got in the way when I leaned across the kitchen counter, and I kept misjudging how much space I needed.
Then there were the men.
I had spent years being recognised for what I could do on a football field. Now some men struggled to look me in the eyes when I spoke.
My brother noticed my expression after one particularly uncomfortable encounter.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That happens.”
“You had years to learn how to deal with all this.”
“I did.”
“I’ve barely had time to catch my breath.”
“I know.”
For once, he offered no advice. I was grateful for that.
When we arrived in Chicago, I had five days before I was expected back at the flower shop.
Five days to prepare for being someone everyone else already knew. Michael had agreed that I could return on Monday after the family emergency Frank had invented to explain my extended absence.
I started with Facebook.
There I was in a college cheerleading uniform, smiling beside a row of young women.
I remembered that photograph being taken.
The thought made me go cold.
No. I remembered playing football. I remembered the weight of my helmet, the noise from the stands, and the ache in my shoulders after training.
Yet I could also remember standing on the sidelines, rehearsing a routine until my legs hurt.
I clicked on another photograph.
Senior prom.
There I stood in a dress, my arm linked through a young man’s. My friends crowded around us, laughing beneath a string of decorations.
I knew his name before I read the caption.
I remembered being nervous when he arrived to collect me.
But I also remembered taking a girl to my own prom.
I pushed back from the desk.
“How can I remember both?”
My brother appeared in the doorway.
“What’s happened?”
I pointed at the screen.
“I remember this night.”
He came closer.
“Perhaps the memories will help you settle in.”
“That’s what worries me.”
He looked at the photograph, then at me.
I wished he had seemed more surprised.
There were pictures from spring break, too.
In one set of memories, I had gone away with the lads. There had been drinking, foolish bets, and mornings spent trying to remember the night before.
In the other, I had shared a room with my sorority sisters. I remembered borrowing a dress, searching for a missing earring, and lying on the beach while we discussed our plans.
Then I found photographs of my eighteenth birthday.
A cake. Balloons. Friends gathered around me.
I could almost hear them singing.
But my eighteenth birthday had been the day I received my first car. I remembered running outside to see it. I remembered the keys in my hand.
I sat staring at the screen until the photographs blurred.
Was I remembering another life?
Or was the talisman slowly making me into the woman this world expected me to be?
Even my ordinary habits were becoming unfamiliar.
One afternoon, I realised I had watched several episodes of Gilmore Girls without once reaching for the remote.
In my old life, I would have chosen something full of explosions.
There was nothing wrong with enjoying a different programme. What unsettled me was the feeling that I had watched it before. I seemed to know the characters. I anticipated a joke seconds before someone said it.
Later, I asked my brother to pick up a couple of celebrity magazines.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Since when do you read those?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
I found myself interested in the clothes, the interviews, and the gossip. I even read my horoscope.
Once, I would have dismissed the whole page without a glance.
Now I caught myself wondering whether it might tell me something useful.
I closed the magazine.
“What’s happening to me?”
My brother sat opposite me.
“Are you enjoying any of it?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re allowed to.”
“That isn’t the point.” I struggled to explain. “I don’t mind finding something new that I like. I mind remembering that I’ve always liked it.”
He nodded slowly.
This time, he understood.
That night, I bought a cheap notebook. On the first page, I wrote BRIAN across the top and listed things I was afraid of losing: the smell of the training ground after rain, Dad teaching me to throw, the sound Jessica made when she laughed too hard.
On the next page, I wrote CHANTELLE.
I sat over it for a long time before adding anything. Eventually I wrote: Knows how to find the mugs. Likes the window seat. Is frightened too.
When Frank saw the notebook, he did not make a joke. The following evening, he brought home one for himself.
He showed me a page a few nights later. He had written about a meeting at work, an argument with an editor and the strange ease with which his suggestions had been accepted.
“I used to spend half the meeting finding a moment to speak,” he said. “Now I have to remind myself to let other people finish.”
“Do you?”
“I’m trying.”
He told me about a younger reporter whose proposal had been dismissed, then revived when a man repeated it ten minutes later. This time, Frank had said who the idea belonged to.
“Did that help?” I asked.
“I hope so. It wasn’t enough to make up for anything.”
“I wasn’t asking you to make up for everything.”
He looked relieved and ashamed at the same time.
That weekend, I helped him choose clothes for a formal dinner. He had tied and retied his tie until it looked as though it had been in an argument.
“Here,” I said, turning him towards the mirror. “Watch my hands.”
For once, I knew exactly what I was doing and he was the one asking questions. The relief on his face made me realise how often he had been hiding his own uncertainty to make room for mine.
He seemed much more comfortable with his own changes.
I still slipped sometimes and thought of him as my sister. Then he would speak, or I would look up and see him standing in the doorway, and I would have to correct myself again.
But he looked increasingly at ease.
I had always called him the clever one. It was a convenient division: Jessica had the brains, Brian had the sporting scholarship. Remembering hours spent studying opponents, recognising defensive formations and making decisions under pressure, I began to see how little that division had ever explained about either of us.
Before the talisman, I had heard enough of his stories about being overlooked, interrupted, or underestimated at work.
Now he talked about his future with an excitement I had not heard in years.
Whatever I felt about what had happened to me, I could not resent that happiness.
One evening, I told him so.
“I’m glad something good has come out of this for you.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I wish it hadn’t cost you so much.”
“So do I.”
For a little while, neither of us spoke.
By Sunday evening, nearly two weeks had passed since I had woken up in that hotel room.
In that time, I had received a hurried education in clothes, makeup, personal care, and a hundred small things I had never considered before.
Now Monday was waiting.
“Ready for work tomorrow?” my brother asked.
“Of course.”
He gave me a doubtful look.
“Your clothes?”
“Just a little ironing.”
“Your bag?”
“Packed.”
“Alarm?”
“Set.”
He smiled.
“You sound almost organised.”
“I used to manage a professional sporting career.”
“Yes, but tomorrow you have to find the flower shop.”
I threw a cushion at him.
He caught it easily.
For a moment, we were simply ourselves again.
Later, as I got ready for a shower, he reminded me about the things I might want to take care of before work.
“I know,” I said.
The answer came so quickly that we both paused.
Then I added, more quietly, “I think I know.”
Once I was alone, I found that I did.
The routine felt familiar. I knew where everything belonged, how to use it, and what order I preferred.
Afterwards, I smoothed lotion over my legs and caught myself thinking how nice it felt to be comfortable again.
Again.
I stood very still.
I could remember doing this before evenings out, before holidays, before work.
Years of ordinary moments were arriving in my head without warning.
I dried my hands and gripped the edge of the basin.
“My name is still my name,” I whispered.
“Brian White,” I said. Then, after a moment, “Chantelle White.”
Both names meant something to me. Saying one did not make the other disappear.
My brother went to bed before I finished the ironing.
The house grew quiet. I stood in my bedroom in a loose nightshirt, pressing the blouse I would wear in the morning.
At least I had taken my bra off. After a full day, the relief was wonderful.
I caught my reflection in the dark window: a young woman ironing her work clothes on a Sunday night.
There was nothing unusual about her.
That was what made me put the iron down.
For several minutes, I had been thinking about tomorrow’s deliveries. I had remembered a customer who always wanted white lilies. I had wondered whether there would be enough ribbon behind the counter.
I had not been trying to remember.
I simply knew.
I hung the blouse on the wardrobe door and checked that my alarm was set.
Then I reached for my phone to look at the football results.
For a moment, I hesitated. Then I searched for the Broncos and read every line of the latest team news.
Some things were still mine, even when remembering them hurt.
————————————————————————
A New Woman
By the time we had been back in Chicago for a few days, I had lost track of how many times I had said, “What a week.”
I had gone to Las Vegas to relax after months of football. A few drinks, a little gambling, and some time away from the pressure of being a professional sportsman—that was all I had wanted.
Instead, I had woken up as a young woman.
Since then, I had spent four days travelling to Salem, discovered that my sister was now my brother, and experienced my first period. Now I was living in my room in our shared apartment, preparing to return to a job in a flower shop.
A job I had never done.
Except, apparently, I had.
That was the part that frightened me most.
Losing my money, my property, my cars, and the body I had known all my life had been bad enough. But now I was beginning to remember a life that should never have existed.
And some of those memories felt just as real as my own.
My brother had been patient with me.
He had helped me find comfortable clothes, explained the things I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else, and taken me bra shopping.
That had been an afternoon I would happily have forgotten.
“You can’t keep guessing your size,” he had told me.
“I wasn’t guessing.”
He had glanced at the uncomfortable garment I had spent the morning tugging into place.
“Then you’re remarkably bad at being right.”
I had managed a reluctant laugh.
There were so many little things to get used to. Reaching the top cupboard now required a stepladder. Clothes fitted differently. My breasts sometimes got in the way when I leaned across the kitchen counter, and I kept misjudging how much space I needed.
Then there were the men.
I had spent years being recognised for what I could do on a football field. Now some men struggled to look me in the eyes when I spoke.
My brother noticed my expression after one particularly uncomfortable encounter.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That happens.”
“You had years to learn how to deal with all this.”
“I did.”
“I’ve barely had time to catch my breath.”
“I know.”
For once, he offered no advice. I was grateful for that.
When we arrived in Chicago, I had five days before I was expected back at the flower shop.
Five days to prepare for being someone everyone else already knew. Michael had agreed that I could return on Monday after the family emergency Frank had invented to explain my extended absence.
I started with Facebook.
There I was in a college cheerleading uniform, smiling beside a row of young women.
I remembered that photograph being taken.
The thought made me go cold.
No. I remembered playing football. I remembered the weight of my helmet, the noise from the stands, and the ache in my shoulders after training.
Yet I could also remember standing on the sidelines, rehearsing a routine until my legs hurt.
I clicked on another photograph.
Senior prom.
There I stood in a dress, my arm linked through a young man’s. My friends crowded around us, laughing beneath a string of decorations.
I knew his name before I read the caption.
I remembered being nervous when he arrived to collect me.
But I also remembered taking a girl to my own prom.
I pushed back from the desk.
“How can I remember both?”
My brother appeared in the doorway.
“What’s happened?”
I pointed at the screen.
“I remember this night.”
He came closer.
“Perhaps the memories will help you settle in.”
“That’s what worries me.”
He looked at the photograph, then at me.
I wished he had seemed more surprised.
There were pictures from spring break, too.
In one set of memories, I had gone away with the lads. There had been drinking, foolish bets, and mornings spent trying to remember the night before.
In the other, I had shared a room with my sorority sisters. I remembered borrowing a dress, searching for a missing earring, and lying on the beach while we discussed our plans.
Then I found photographs of my eighteenth birthday.
A cake. Balloons. Friends gathered around me.
I could almost hear them singing.
But my eighteenth birthday had been the day I received my first car. I remembered running outside to see it. I remembered the keys in my hand.
I sat staring at the screen until the photographs blurred.
Was I remembering another life?
Or was the talisman slowly making me into the woman this world expected me to be?
Even my ordinary habits were becoming unfamiliar.
One afternoon, I realised I had watched several episodes of Gilmore Girls without once reaching for the remote.
In my old life, I would have chosen something full of explosions.
There was nothing wrong with enjoying a different programme. What unsettled me was the feeling that I had watched it before. I seemed to know the characters. I anticipated a joke seconds before someone said it.
Later, I asked my brother to pick up a couple of celebrity magazines.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Since when do you read those?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
I found myself interested in the clothes, the interviews, and the gossip. I even read my horoscope.
Once, I would have dismissed the whole page without a glance.
Now I caught myself wondering whether it might tell me something useful.
I closed the magazine.
“What’s happening to me?”
My brother sat opposite me.
“Are you enjoying any of it?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re allowed to.”
“That isn’t the point.” I struggled to explain. “I don’t mind finding something new that I like. I mind remembering that I’ve always liked it.”
He nodded slowly.
This time, he understood.
That night, I bought a cheap notebook. On the first page, I wrote BRIAN across the top and listed things I was afraid of losing: the smell of the training ground after rain, Dad teaching me to throw, the sound Jessica made when she laughed too hard.
On the next page, I wrote CHANTELLE.
I sat over it for a long time before adding anything. Eventually I wrote: Knows how to find the mugs. Likes the window seat. Is frightened too.
When Frank saw the notebook, he did not make a joke. The following evening, he brought home one for himself.
He showed me a page a few nights later. He had written about a meeting at work, an argument with an editor and the strange ease with which his suggestions had been accepted.
“I used to spend half the meeting finding a moment to speak,” he said. “Now I have to remind myself to let other people finish.”
“Do you?”
“I’m trying.”
He told me about a younger reporter whose proposal had been dismissed, then revived when a man repeated it ten minutes later. This time, Frank had said who the idea belonged to.
“Did that help?” I asked.
“I hope so. It wasn’t enough to make up for anything.”
“I wasn’t asking you to make up for everything.”
He looked relieved and ashamed at the same time.
That weekend, I helped him choose clothes for a formal dinner. He had tied and retied his tie until it looked as though it had been in an argument.
“Here,” I said, turning him towards the mirror. “Watch my hands.”
For once, I knew exactly what I was doing and he was the one asking questions. The relief on his face made me realise how often he had been hiding his own uncertainty to make room for mine.
He seemed much more comfortable with his own changes.
I still slipped sometimes and thought of him as my sister. Then he would speak, or I would look up and see him standing in the doorway, and I would have to correct myself again.
But he looked increasingly at ease.
I had always called him the clever one. It was a convenient division: Jessica had the brains, Brian had the sporting scholarship. Remembering hours spent studying opponents, recognising defensive formations and making decisions under pressure, I began to see how little that division had ever explained about either of us.
Before the talisman, I had heard enough of his stories about being overlooked, interrupted, or underestimated at work.
Now he talked about his future with an excitement I had not heard in years.
Whatever I felt about what had happened to me, I could not resent that happiness.
One evening, I told him so.
“I’m glad something good has come out of this for you.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I wish it hadn’t cost you so much.”
“So do I.”
For a little while, neither of us spoke.
By Sunday evening, nearly two weeks had passed since I had woken up in that hotel room.
In that time, I had received a hurried education in clothes, makeup, personal care, and a hundred small things I had never considered before.
Now Monday was waiting.
“Ready for work tomorrow?” my brother asked.
“Of course.”
He gave me a doubtful look.
“Your clothes?”
“Just a little ironing.”
“Your bag?”
“Packed.”
“Alarm?”
“Set.”
He smiled.
“You sound almost organised.”
“I used to manage a professional sporting career.”
“Yes, but tomorrow you have to find the flower shop.”
I threw a cushion at him.
He caught it easily.
For a moment, we were simply ourselves again.
Later, as I got ready for a shower, he reminded me about the things I might want to take care of before work.
“I know,” I said.
The answer came so quickly that we both paused.
Then I added, more quietly, “I think I know.”
Once I was alone, I found that I did.
The routine felt familiar. I knew where everything belonged, how to use it, and what order I preferred.
Afterwards, I smoothed lotion over my legs and caught myself thinking how nice it felt to be comfortable again.
Again.
I stood very still.
I could remember doing this before evenings out, before holidays, before work.
Years of ordinary moments were arriving in my head without warning.
I dried my hands and gripped the edge of the basin.
“My name is still my name,” I whispered.
“Brian White,” I said. Then, after a moment, “Chantelle White.”
Both names meant something to me. Saying one did not make the other disappear.
My brother went to bed before I finished the ironing.
The house grew quiet. I stood in my bedroom in a loose nightshirt, pressing the blouse I would wear in the morning.
At least I had taken my bra off. After a full day, the relief was wonderful.
I caught my reflection in the dark window: a young woman ironing her work clothes on a Sunday night.
There was nothing unusual about her.
That was what made me put the iron down.
For several minutes, I had been thinking about tomorrow’s deliveries. I had remembered a customer who always wanted white lilies. I had wondered whether there would be enough ribbon behind the counter.
I had not been trying to remember.
I simply knew.
I hung the blouse on the wardrobe door and checked that my alarm was set.
Then I reached for my phone to look at the football results.
For a moment, I hesitated. Then I searched for the Broncos and read every line of the latest team news.
Some things were still mine, even when remembering them hurt.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 6
Sexual Urges
It was almost eleven before I climbed into bed.
In the morning, I would be starting my first day at a job this world said I had been doing for two years.
Even thinking about it made my head ache.
One set of memories belonged to an American football quarterback. The other belonged to a young woman who worked in a flower shop two blocks from her apartment. Both felt real, although the second set still came to me in fragments.
Sometimes, I seemed to know things before I remembered learning them.
Little routines were becoming automatic. I would reach for something in the bathroom and find it exactly where I expected it to be. My hands knew how to fasten jewellery that had looked impossibly fiddly a few days earlier.
It was reassuring—and unsettling.
Was I learning to live this life, or was this life gradually taking over?
At least I no longer felt quite so angry with my sister.
My brother, I corrected myself.
That was another habit I had yet to master. The person I remembered as my little sister was now my big brother, while I had become the younger sibling who needed help with almost everything.
Still, there were moments when the pressure of my old career felt distant. I could be relieved about that and grieve for it in the same evening.
I no longer lay awake worrying about injuries, contracts or how many seasons I had left. Nobody expected me to throw the winning touchdown. Tomorrow, I had to turn up at a flower shop and learn what was expected of me there.
For the first time in years, that sounded like enough.
The alarm woke me at seven.
I did not start work until nine, but I wanted plenty of time to get ready. Before the transformation, I would have pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Now I stood before a dressing table covered in brushes, bottles and little coloured palettes.
“All right,” I told my reflection. “You can do this.”
I wanted to manage without calling my brother.
If this was going to be my life for the next sixty years, I could hardly ask him to get me ready every morning.
To my relief, the familiar feeling returned.
I picked up a brush, then another. I recognised what each product was for. Once I stopped worrying about getting everything wrong, my hands seemed to remember the rest.
When I finished, I studied myself in the mirror.
The woman looking back seemed ready for work.
I was still catching up.
With my hair done and a blue towel wrapped securely around me, I opened the bathroom door.
“Does this look all right?”
My brother looked up from his coffee.
For a moment, he simply stared.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“Nothing. You look lovely.”
“You’re sure?”
“You look as though you’ve been doing it for years.”
“In one set of memories, I suppose I have.”
His smile softened.
“Yes. I suppose you have.”
After coffee and toast, I got dressed. My brother insisted on walking with me, even though the shop was only two blocks away.
“You don’t have to escort me,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m only going to work.”
“I know that too.”
But I was glad of his company when the flower shop came into view.
The bell above the door rang as I stepped inside.
Warm air carried the scent of roses, damp leaves and freshly cut stems. Buckets of flowers stood beneath the window, while ribbons and wrapping paper filled the shelves behind the counter.
I knew where everything was.
More than that, I knew the people turning towards me.
Their names came without effort.
“There you are!”
Before I could answer, one of my colleagues had wrapped me in a hug. Another squeezed my arm and asked how I was feeling.
Their welcome was so warm that I almost forgot to be nervous.
Almost.
My brother lingered by the door until I gave him a small nod. Then he smiled and left me to it.
Michael, the owner, approached a few minutes later.
“Everything all right with your family now?”
For one awful second, my mind went blank.
Then I remembered the excuse we had used to explain my absence.
“Yes, thank you. Mum slipped and broke her leg, but her sister’s staying with her now.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Tell her we hope she’s soon feeling better.”
“I will.”
The lie came out more easily than I expected. I felt a pang of guilt, but there was no sensible way to explain what had really happened.
By midmorning, I was working on my first bouquet.
I stood before the flowers, waiting for panic.
Instead, I reached for the stems I needed.
I knew which colours would work together, how much greenery to add and where to trim each stalk. My fingers gathered and arranged everything with a confidence I certainly did not feel.
A colleague glanced over my shoulder.
“That’s lovely.”
I looked down at the finished bouquet.
It was.
Later, a man came in carrying a crumpled piece of paper. He stood before the display for so long that I thought he might leave without speaking.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“My wife always did this,” he said.
He handed me the paper. It was a list of names and a funeral date.
I waited while he gathered himself. Something in me knew to leave the silence alone.
“She liked yellow,” he said at last. “Nothing too grand. She’d tell me off for spending too much.”
We chose flowers together. I asked about the size of the arrangement, wrote down what he wanted on the card and read it back to him quietly. When he left, he thanked me twice.
I stood behind the counter holding the order form.
On a football field, I had known precisely what a good performance looked like. I was beginning to learn how different it could look here.
For the first time since the transformation, these unfamiliar memories had helped me do something I could feel proud of.
The uniform took more getting used to. By lunchtime, I had adjusted my apron several times, and I was grateful that my properly fitted bra no longer dug into my shoulders. Standing all day also left me tired in ways I had not expected.
Yet I kept smiling.
Customers thanked me. My colleagues chatted while we worked. I helped someone choose anniversary flowers and made up an order for a birthday.
They were ordinary things.
After the days I had endured, ordinary felt wonderful.
I walked home feeling tired, but pleasantly so.
Work had given me something to think about besides the talisman, my lost career and the woman I saw whenever I passed a mirror.
There was another distraction I had been trying to ignore.
My feelings about attraction and intimacy had become confusing. Familiar thoughts brought unfamiliar responses, while things I had never considered before could suddenly leave me flustered.
I was not ready to share a bed with anyone.
I barely understood how I felt about myself.
When I reached the apartment, I found it empty. My brother would not be home for another hour, so I ran a hot bath and sank into the bubbles.
Before the transformation, I had preferred a quick shower.
Now I understood the appeal of sitting still in warm water with the door shut and nobody asking whether I was all right.
Gradually, I relaxed.
For once, I stopped treating my body as a problem to solve. I allowed myself some privacy, some curiosity, and a little time without feeling guilty about either.
A gentle knock eventually brought me back to the room.
“Are you nearly finished? I need the bathroom.”
I glanced at the clock.
Surely that could not be right.
“Sorry! I’ll be out in a minute.”
By the time I emerged in my bathrobe, my face was burning.
My brother hurried past me, mercifully saying nothing.
Unfortunately, I could not leave it there.
When he came back into the sitting room, I stared into my mug and asked, “Did I make you late?”
He paused.
“Nearly. I was about to make a very undignified dash to the café downstairs.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Please don’t look so mortified.”
“I would rather disappear.”
He sat down opposite me.
“You’re allowed some privacy. You’re also allowed to have feelings about your own body.”
“It’s just strange.”
“I know.”
I finally looked at him.
He gave a small, awkward laugh.
“My first week as a man was hardly dignified. There were quite a few things I had to get used to.”
That made me laugh despite myself.
Then I looked down again.
“I’m not ready for a relationship.”
“Then don’t have one.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“The decision can be easy. Everything you feel about it might take longer.”
For a while, we drank our tea in silence.
Then he asked, gently, whether I had found anything among my belongings that might help me explore those feelings privately.
I shook my head.
“If you want,” he said, “we could visit a shop on Saturday. Just have a look.”
I stared at him.
“With you?”
“I can wait outside.”
Somehow, that sounded even more embarrassing.
“I’ll think about it.”
By Saturday morning, I had thought about it far too much.
I nearly changed my mind twice on the walk into town.
Now I stood outside the shop, pretending to read a notice in the window while my brother waited beside me.
“You know we can leave,” he said.
“I know.”
“And looking doesn’t mean you have to buy anything.”
“I know that too.”
A woman carrying a shopping bag walked past us without giving the place a second glance.
Apparently, I was the only person in the street who considered this a momentous occasion.
“Do you think I’m ready?” I asked quietly.
He considered the question.
“I think you’re curious. That’s enough reason to have a look.”
I took a breath and opened the door.
The shop was brighter and more ordinary than I had imagined. There were neat displays, shelves of boxed products and an assistant who greeted us with a friendly smile before leaving us to browse.
I had expected to feel conspicuous.
Instead, I mostly felt bewildered by the choice.
“I didn’t realise there were so many,” I whispered.
My brother leaned closer.
“Neither did I, the first time.”
I glanced at him, and we both started laughing.
That helped.
Then I caught sight of our reflections in a mirror beside one of the displays: a young woman with pink cheeks standing next to her older brother.
Less than three weeks earlier, I had been the big brother. She had been my little sister.
Now he was patiently helping me through an experience I would once have found impossible to imagine.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Just thinking how strange my life has become.”
His expression softened.
“Yes,” he said. “Mine too.”
I looked back at the shelves.
For once, neither of us needed to pretend that we had all the answers.
————————————————————————
Sexual Urges
It was almost eleven before I climbed into bed.
In the morning, I would be starting my first day at a job this world said I had been doing for two years.
Even thinking about it made my head ache.
One set of memories belonged to an American football quarterback. The other belonged to a young woman who worked in a flower shop two blocks from her apartment. Both felt real, although the second set still came to me in fragments.
Sometimes, I seemed to know things before I remembered learning them.
Little routines were becoming automatic. I would reach for something in the bathroom and find it exactly where I expected it to be. My hands knew how to fasten jewellery that had looked impossibly fiddly a few days earlier.
It was reassuring—and unsettling.
Was I learning to live this life, or was this life gradually taking over?
At least I no longer felt quite so angry with my sister.
My brother, I corrected myself.
That was another habit I had yet to master. The person I remembered as my little sister was now my big brother, while I had become the younger sibling who needed help with almost everything.
Still, there were moments when the pressure of my old career felt distant. I could be relieved about that and grieve for it in the same evening.
I no longer lay awake worrying about injuries, contracts or how many seasons I had left. Nobody expected me to throw the winning touchdown. Tomorrow, I had to turn up at a flower shop and learn what was expected of me there.
For the first time in years, that sounded like enough.
The alarm woke me at seven.
I did not start work until nine, but I wanted plenty of time to get ready. Before the transformation, I would have pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Now I stood before a dressing table covered in brushes, bottles and little coloured palettes.
“All right,” I told my reflection. “You can do this.”
I wanted to manage without calling my brother.
If this was going to be my life for the next sixty years, I could hardly ask him to get me ready every morning.
To my relief, the familiar feeling returned.
I picked up a brush, then another. I recognised what each product was for. Once I stopped worrying about getting everything wrong, my hands seemed to remember the rest.
When I finished, I studied myself in the mirror.
The woman looking back seemed ready for work.
I was still catching up.
With my hair done and a blue towel wrapped securely around me, I opened the bathroom door.
“Does this look all right?”
My brother looked up from his coffee.
For a moment, he simply stared.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“Nothing. You look lovely.”
“You’re sure?”
“You look as though you’ve been doing it for years.”
“In one set of memories, I suppose I have.”
His smile softened.
“Yes. I suppose you have.”
After coffee and toast, I got dressed. My brother insisted on walking with me, even though the shop was only two blocks away.
“You don’t have to escort me,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m only going to work.”
“I know that too.”
But I was glad of his company when the flower shop came into view.
The bell above the door rang as I stepped inside.
Warm air carried the scent of roses, damp leaves and freshly cut stems. Buckets of flowers stood beneath the window, while ribbons and wrapping paper filled the shelves behind the counter.
I knew where everything was.
More than that, I knew the people turning towards me.
Their names came without effort.
“There you are!”
Before I could answer, one of my colleagues had wrapped me in a hug. Another squeezed my arm and asked how I was feeling.
Their welcome was so warm that I almost forgot to be nervous.
Almost.
My brother lingered by the door until I gave him a small nod. Then he smiled and left me to it.
Michael, the owner, approached a few minutes later.
“Everything all right with your family now?”
For one awful second, my mind went blank.
Then I remembered the excuse we had used to explain my absence.
“Yes, thank you. Mum slipped and broke her leg, but her sister’s staying with her now.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Tell her we hope she’s soon feeling better.”
“I will.”
The lie came out more easily than I expected. I felt a pang of guilt, but there was no sensible way to explain what had really happened.
By midmorning, I was working on my first bouquet.
I stood before the flowers, waiting for panic.
Instead, I reached for the stems I needed.
I knew which colours would work together, how much greenery to add and where to trim each stalk. My fingers gathered and arranged everything with a confidence I certainly did not feel.
A colleague glanced over my shoulder.
“That’s lovely.”
I looked down at the finished bouquet.
It was.
Later, a man came in carrying a crumpled piece of paper. He stood before the display for so long that I thought he might leave without speaking.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“My wife always did this,” he said.
He handed me the paper. It was a list of names and a funeral date.
I waited while he gathered himself. Something in me knew to leave the silence alone.
“She liked yellow,” he said at last. “Nothing too grand. She’d tell me off for spending too much.”
We chose flowers together. I asked about the size of the arrangement, wrote down what he wanted on the card and read it back to him quietly. When he left, he thanked me twice.
I stood behind the counter holding the order form.
On a football field, I had known precisely what a good performance looked like. I was beginning to learn how different it could look here.
For the first time since the transformation, these unfamiliar memories had helped me do something I could feel proud of.
The uniform took more getting used to. By lunchtime, I had adjusted my apron several times, and I was grateful that my properly fitted bra no longer dug into my shoulders. Standing all day also left me tired in ways I had not expected.
Yet I kept smiling.
Customers thanked me. My colleagues chatted while we worked. I helped someone choose anniversary flowers and made up an order for a birthday.
They were ordinary things.
After the days I had endured, ordinary felt wonderful.
I walked home feeling tired, but pleasantly so.
Work had given me something to think about besides the talisman, my lost career and the woman I saw whenever I passed a mirror.
There was another distraction I had been trying to ignore.
My feelings about attraction and intimacy had become confusing. Familiar thoughts brought unfamiliar responses, while things I had never considered before could suddenly leave me flustered.
I was not ready to share a bed with anyone.
I barely understood how I felt about myself.
When I reached the apartment, I found it empty. My brother would not be home for another hour, so I ran a hot bath and sank into the bubbles.
Before the transformation, I had preferred a quick shower.
Now I understood the appeal of sitting still in warm water with the door shut and nobody asking whether I was all right.
Gradually, I relaxed.
For once, I stopped treating my body as a problem to solve. I allowed myself some privacy, some curiosity, and a little time without feeling guilty about either.
A gentle knock eventually brought me back to the room.
“Are you nearly finished? I need the bathroom.”
I glanced at the clock.
Surely that could not be right.
“Sorry! I’ll be out in a minute.”
By the time I emerged in my bathrobe, my face was burning.
My brother hurried past me, mercifully saying nothing.
Unfortunately, I could not leave it there.
When he came back into the sitting room, I stared into my mug and asked, “Did I make you late?”
He paused.
“Nearly. I was about to make a very undignified dash to the café downstairs.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Please don’t look so mortified.”
“I would rather disappear.”
He sat down opposite me.
“You’re allowed some privacy. You’re also allowed to have feelings about your own body.”
“It’s just strange.”
“I know.”
I finally looked at him.
He gave a small, awkward laugh.
“My first week as a man was hardly dignified. There were quite a few things I had to get used to.”
That made me laugh despite myself.
Then I looked down again.
“I’m not ready for a relationship.”
“Then don’t have one.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“The decision can be easy. Everything you feel about it might take longer.”
For a while, we drank our tea in silence.
Then he asked, gently, whether I had found anything among my belongings that might help me explore those feelings privately.
I shook my head.
“If you want,” he said, “we could visit a shop on Saturday. Just have a look.”
I stared at him.
“With you?”
“I can wait outside.”
Somehow, that sounded even more embarrassing.
“I’ll think about it.”
By Saturday morning, I had thought about it far too much.
I nearly changed my mind twice on the walk into town.
Now I stood outside the shop, pretending to read a notice in the window while my brother waited beside me.
“You know we can leave,” he said.
“I know.”
“And looking doesn’t mean you have to buy anything.”
“I know that too.”
A woman carrying a shopping bag walked past us without giving the place a second glance.
Apparently, I was the only person in the street who considered this a momentous occasion.
“Do you think I’m ready?” I asked quietly.
He considered the question.
“I think you’re curious. That’s enough reason to have a look.”
I took a breath and opened the door.
The shop was brighter and more ordinary than I had imagined. There were neat displays, shelves of boxed products and an assistant who greeted us with a friendly smile before leaving us to browse.
I had expected to feel conspicuous.
Instead, I mostly felt bewildered by the choice.
“I didn’t realise there were so many,” I whispered.
My brother leaned closer.
“Neither did I, the first time.”
I glanced at him, and we both started laughing.
That helped.
Then I caught sight of our reflections in a mirror beside one of the displays: a young woman with pink cheeks standing next to her older brother.
Less than three weeks earlier, I had been the big brother. She had been my little sister.
Now he was patiently helping me through an experience I would once have found impossible to imagine.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Just thinking how strange my life has become.”
His expression softened.
“Yes,” he said. “Mine too.”
I looked back at the shelves.
For once, neither of us needed to pretend that we had all the answers.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 7
The Floodgates Have Opened
After twenty minutes of wandering around the shop, studying labels and trying to appear as though I knew what I was doing, I finally made my purchases.
My brother reached for his wallet.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m paying.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. But this is embarrassing enough without my own sibling buying everything for me.”
His smile faded a little.
“When I was growing up, I had Mum to ask about things I didn’t understand,” he said quietly. “You’ve been dropped into this without any warning. Because of me.”
I glanced down at the bag.
“I’m managing.”
“You are. Better than I think you realise.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“Perhaps we can help each other,” he continued. “I can help you get used to being a woman, and you can help me get used to being a man.”
“You haven’t asked me for much advice.”
“That doesn’t mean I know everything.”
“You seem awfully confident.”
“So do you sometimes.”
I laughed at that.
“Then we’re both putting on a good performance.”
It was the first day I had felt brave enough to wear a dress out of the house.
During the week before returning to work, I had spent far more time than I cared to admit trying to understand my new wardrobe.
There were bows, ribbons, fiddly fastenings and pieces of lace that seemed to serve no practical purpose whatsoever. Some clothes clung to me; others hung loosely in ways I kept mistaking for a poor fit.
Whenever I complained, my brother would inspect the outfit and say, “It’s supposed to look like that.”
Apparently, I had a great deal to learn.
Some necklines left me tugging at the fabric all day. Some skirts made sitting down feel like a task requiring advance planning.
Heels remained firmly outside my comfort zone. Pumps, sandals and trainers were quite enough to be getting on with.
And handbags?
Please don’t get me started.
I missed putting a wallet in my pocket and leaving the house. Half my new clothes had no pockets, and the other half had little decorative slits apparently designed to mock me.
Now I carried a bag containing my purse, phone, keys, tissues and several other things I was still learning to remember.
Every time I needed something, it seemed to migrate to the bottom.
By lunchtime, however, I had stopped worrying quite so much about my dress.
We found a café and sat by the window, talking over sandwiches and coffee. Somewhere between complaining about handbags and arguing over whose turn it was to pay, I realised we were enjoying ourselves.
We had been getting on better since the change than we had in years.
I still missed my old life. That hadn’t disappeared.
But I no longer spent every conversation blaming him for losing it.
Back at the apartment, I paused outside my bedroom.
“Thank you for today.”
He looked up.
“You’re welcome, little sister.”
I rolled my eyes, although the words didn’t sting quite as much as they once had.
“And thank you for not making it worse.”
“I considered making several jokes.”
“I could tell.”
He grinned, then softened.
“You don’t have to figure everything out tonight, you know.”
“I know.”
“Take your time.”
For once, I had no sarcastic reply.
I closed my bedroom door, put my shopping away and sat on the edge of the bed.
For days, I had treated this body as a collection of problems: clothes that didn’t fit as expected, unfamiliar routines, aches, changes and feelings I couldn’t explain.
That evening, alone and with no reason to hurry, I let myself be curious.
By the time I switched off the light, I felt a little less like a visitor in someone else’s life.
The next morning was Sunday, but my brother had to visit the office to hand in an article he had been working on.
I sent him a message.
I’ll meet you outside at three.
Then I packed our gym bags.
As a professional quarterback, exercise had structured my days. Training, fitness sessions, recovery—there had always been something.
Since the change, I had barely done any of it.
I missed moving. I missed the simple satisfaction of finishing a workout and knowing I had accomplished something.
At three o’clock, I sat on the steps outside his office in a summer dress, reading a book.
Unfortunately, the book was rather good.
I became so engrossed that I forgot about the dress altogether.
When my brother appeared, he stopped halfway down the steps.
I looked up.
“What?”
He sat beside me and leaned closer.
“Knees together.”
I glanced down and immediately adjusted my skirt.
“Oh.”
He pressed his lips together.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re thinking it very loudly.”
That did it. We both burst out laughing.
“I used to sit like that all the time,” I said.
“Yes. Different wardrobe.”
“One more thing for the list.”
I pointed to the bags at my feet.
“I thought we could go to the gym.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Both of us?”
“You want to keep that body in shape, don’t you?”
“I was hoping looking after it might involve less effort.”
“Four times a week,” I said.
“Let’s survive the first visit before you draw up a timetable.”
I stood and handed him both bags.
“Why am I carrying yours?”
I smiled sweetly.
“Because you’re a gentleman.”
He looked at the bags, then at me.
“You’re adapting remarkably quickly in some areas.”
At the gym, we separated outside the changing rooms.
I hesitated before entering the women’s.
Nobody else paused. Women came and went with towels over their arms, discussing classes, work and what they were having for dinner.
To them, it was an ordinary Sunday afternoon.
I wished it felt ordinary to me.
Inside, I found an empty locker and busied myself arranging my things.
A woman nearby smiled.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
Then she returned to her conversation with a friend.
That was all.
No startled look. No suspicious questions. Nobody somehow recognising the man I remembered being.
I had known that fear made no sense, but it still took a few minutes for my shoulders to relax.
I changed into leggings and a sports bra, checking the fit twice before pulling on my trainers.
The reflection in the mirror looked ready for a workout.
I decided I might as well try to feel that way too.
My first mistake was approaching the equipment with my old expectations.
I selected a weight, attempted a few repetitions and quickly lowered it.
Then lowered it again.
That bruised my pride more than anything else.
My brother found me staring at the machine.
“Problem?”
“I used to manage much more than this.”
“You also used to train every day in a different body.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then give this one a chance.”
Annoyingly, he had a point.
I stopped trying to prove something and began finding out what I could actually do.
I spent time on the treadmill and exercise bike, then joined an aerobics class. Keeping up with the steps required far more concentration than I expected.
For much of the session, I was a beat behind everybody else.
By the end, I was tired, flushed and laughing at myself.
It felt good.
I had spent so long measuring this body against the one I had lost that I had barely given it an opportunity to surprise me.
Afterwards, I went into the steam room to rest my aching muscles.
Warm mist softened the tiled walls. A few women were already there, chatting with the easy familiarity of regular visitors.
I sat down, initially content to listen.
The conversation wandered from work to disastrous dates, then to somebody’s girlfriend borrowing an expensive jacket and returning it with a broken zip.
Within minutes, I was laughing along.
After days of worrying about how to behave, I found myself joining in without rehearsing every sentence.
A dark-haired woman sitting nearby turned towards me.
“First visit?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only because I haven’t seen you before.”
“I’ve just joined.”
“I’m Rebecca, by the way.”
“Chantelle.”
“Good to meet you, Chantelle.”
Hearing my new name spoken without a question or a correction felt oddly pleasant.
“How are you finding it?”
“My legs may lodge a formal complaint tomorrow.”
She laughed.
“That sounds about right.”
We talked for a while. Rebecca was friendly, confident and very easy to speak to.
Then she asked, “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
“Neither.”
She smiled.
“Would you be interested in going for a coffee sometime?”
It took me a moment to catch up.
“With you?”
“Preferably. It would be awkward if I didn’t turn up.”
I laughed, feeling warmth rise in my cheeks despite the steam.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I’d like that.”
“What’s your locker number?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“I’ll leave you my number.”
Then she stood, wished me a pleasant afternoon and left.
I remained where I was, staring at the door.
Had that really just happened?
My brother was waiting near reception when I emerged.
“How was it?”
“The workout or the steam room?”
He studied my face.
“Apparently, I need to ask about the steam room.”
I showed him the folded piece of paper I had found at my locker.
He looked at the number, then back at me.
“Well.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re doing that loud thinking again.”
He laughed as we headed outside.
The afternoon air felt cool against my face. My muscles ached, my gym bag seemed heavier than when we arrived, and I had someone’s telephone number tucked carefully inside my purse.
I had gone to the gym hoping to recover a small piece of my old routine.
Instead, I had come away wondering whether I might enjoy a new one.
Of course, one question still bothered me.
Had I joined a gym—or stumbled into a very effective dating service?
————————————————————————
The Floodgates Have Opened
After twenty minutes of wandering around the shop, studying labels and trying to appear as though I knew what I was doing, I finally made my purchases.
My brother reached for his wallet.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m paying.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. But this is embarrassing enough without my own sibling buying everything for me.”
His smile faded a little.
“When I was growing up, I had Mum to ask about things I didn’t understand,” he said quietly. “You’ve been dropped into this without any warning. Because of me.”
I glanced down at the bag.
“I’m managing.”
“You are. Better than I think you realise.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“Perhaps we can help each other,” he continued. “I can help you get used to being a woman, and you can help me get used to being a man.”
“You haven’t asked me for much advice.”
“That doesn’t mean I know everything.”
“You seem awfully confident.”
“So do you sometimes.”
I laughed at that.
“Then we’re both putting on a good performance.”
It was the first day I had felt brave enough to wear a dress out of the house.
During the week before returning to work, I had spent far more time than I cared to admit trying to understand my new wardrobe.
There were bows, ribbons, fiddly fastenings and pieces of lace that seemed to serve no practical purpose whatsoever. Some clothes clung to me; others hung loosely in ways I kept mistaking for a poor fit.
Whenever I complained, my brother would inspect the outfit and say, “It’s supposed to look like that.”
Apparently, I had a great deal to learn.
Some necklines left me tugging at the fabric all day. Some skirts made sitting down feel like a task requiring advance planning.
Heels remained firmly outside my comfort zone. Pumps, sandals and trainers were quite enough to be getting on with.
And handbags?
Please don’t get me started.
I missed putting a wallet in my pocket and leaving the house. Half my new clothes had no pockets, and the other half had little decorative slits apparently designed to mock me.
Now I carried a bag containing my purse, phone, keys, tissues and several other things I was still learning to remember.
Every time I needed something, it seemed to migrate to the bottom.
By lunchtime, however, I had stopped worrying quite so much about my dress.
We found a café and sat by the window, talking over sandwiches and coffee. Somewhere between complaining about handbags and arguing over whose turn it was to pay, I realised we were enjoying ourselves.
We had been getting on better since the change than we had in years.
I still missed my old life. That hadn’t disappeared.
But I no longer spent every conversation blaming him for losing it.
Back at the apartment, I paused outside my bedroom.
“Thank you for today.”
He looked up.
“You’re welcome, little sister.”
I rolled my eyes, although the words didn’t sting quite as much as they once had.
“And thank you for not making it worse.”
“I considered making several jokes.”
“I could tell.”
He grinned, then softened.
“You don’t have to figure everything out tonight, you know.”
“I know.”
“Take your time.”
For once, I had no sarcastic reply.
I closed my bedroom door, put my shopping away and sat on the edge of the bed.
For days, I had treated this body as a collection of problems: clothes that didn’t fit as expected, unfamiliar routines, aches, changes and feelings I couldn’t explain.
That evening, alone and with no reason to hurry, I let myself be curious.
By the time I switched off the light, I felt a little less like a visitor in someone else’s life.
The next morning was Sunday, but my brother had to visit the office to hand in an article he had been working on.
I sent him a message.
I’ll meet you outside at three.
Then I packed our gym bags.
As a professional quarterback, exercise had structured my days. Training, fitness sessions, recovery—there had always been something.
Since the change, I had barely done any of it.
I missed moving. I missed the simple satisfaction of finishing a workout and knowing I had accomplished something.
At three o’clock, I sat on the steps outside his office in a summer dress, reading a book.
Unfortunately, the book was rather good.
I became so engrossed that I forgot about the dress altogether.
When my brother appeared, he stopped halfway down the steps.
I looked up.
“What?”
He sat beside me and leaned closer.
“Knees together.”
I glanced down and immediately adjusted my skirt.
“Oh.”
He pressed his lips together.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re thinking it very loudly.”
That did it. We both burst out laughing.
“I used to sit like that all the time,” I said.
“Yes. Different wardrobe.”
“One more thing for the list.”
I pointed to the bags at my feet.
“I thought we could go to the gym.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Both of us?”
“You want to keep that body in shape, don’t you?”
“I was hoping looking after it might involve less effort.”
“Four times a week,” I said.
“Let’s survive the first visit before you draw up a timetable.”
I stood and handed him both bags.
“Why am I carrying yours?”
I smiled sweetly.
“Because you’re a gentleman.”
He looked at the bags, then at me.
“You’re adapting remarkably quickly in some areas.”
At the gym, we separated outside the changing rooms.
I hesitated before entering the women’s.
Nobody else paused. Women came and went with towels over their arms, discussing classes, work and what they were having for dinner.
To them, it was an ordinary Sunday afternoon.
I wished it felt ordinary to me.
Inside, I found an empty locker and busied myself arranging my things.
A woman nearby smiled.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
Then she returned to her conversation with a friend.
That was all.
No startled look. No suspicious questions. Nobody somehow recognising the man I remembered being.
I had known that fear made no sense, but it still took a few minutes for my shoulders to relax.
I changed into leggings and a sports bra, checking the fit twice before pulling on my trainers.
The reflection in the mirror looked ready for a workout.
I decided I might as well try to feel that way too.
My first mistake was approaching the equipment with my old expectations.
I selected a weight, attempted a few repetitions and quickly lowered it.
Then lowered it again.
That bruised my pride more than anything else.
My brother found me staring at the machine.
“Problem?”
“I used to manage much more than this.”
“You also used to train every day in a different body.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then give this one a chance.”
Annoyingly, he had a point.
I stopped trying to prove something and began finding out what I could actually do.
I spent time on the treadmill and exercise bike, then joined an aerobics class. Keeping up with the steps required far more concentration than I expected.
For much of the session, I was a beat behind everybody else.
By the end, I was tired, flushed and laughing at myself.
It felt good.
I had spent so long measuring this body against the one I had lost that I had barely given it an opportunity to surprise me.
Afterwards, I went into the steam room to rest my aching muscles.
Warm mist softened the tiled walls. A few women were already there, chatting with the easy familiarity of regular visitors.
I sat down, initially content to listen.
The conversation wandered from work to disastrous dates, then to somebody’s girlfriend borrowing an expensive jacket and returning it with a broken zip.
Within minutes, I was laughing along.
After days of worrying about how to behave, I found myself joining in without rehearsing every sentence.
A dark-haired woman sitting nearby turned towards me.
“First visit?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only because I haven’t seen you before.”
“I’ve just joined.”
“I’m Rebecca, by the way.”
“Chantelle.”
“Good to meet you, Chantelle.”
Hearing my new name spoken without a question or a correction felt oddly pleasant.
“How are you finding it?”
“My legs may lodge a formal complaint tomorrow.”
She laughed.
“That sounds about right.”
We talked for a while. Rebecca was friendly, confident and very easy to speak to.
Then she asked, “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
“Neither.”
She smiled.
“Would you be interested in going for a coffee sometime?”
It took me a moment to catch up.
“With you?”
“Preferably. It would be awkward if I didn’t turn up.”
I laughed, feeling warmth rise in my cheeks despite the steam.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I’d like that.”
“What’s your locker number?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“I’ll leave you my number.”
Then she stood, wished me a pleasant afternoon and left.
I remained where I was, staring at the door.
Had that really just happened?
My brother was waiting near reception when I emerged.
“How was it?”
“The workout or the steam room?”
He studied my face.
“Apparently, I need to ask about the steam room.”
I showed him the folded piece of paper I had found at my locker.
He looked at the number, then back at me.
“Well.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re doing that loud thinking again.”
He laughed as we headed outside.
The afternoon air felt cool against my face. My muscles ached, my gym bag seemed heavier than when we arrived, and I had someone’s telephone number tucked carefully inside my purse.
I had gone to the gym hoping to recover a small piece of my old routine.
Instead, I had come away wondering whether I might enjoy a new one.
Of course, one question still bothered me.
Had I joined a gym—or stumbled into a very effective dating service?
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 8
The Loss of Control
During the week after meeting Rebecca, I kept finding her note whenever I searched my handbag for something else. The lipstick kiss had smudged slightly at the fold.
Something had changed at the gym that afternoon. For the first time, I had gone for a while without feeling that everyone could see through me. I was beginning to feel comfortable enough to forget to be self-conscious.
Even the unfamiliar movement of my body bothered me less. I was learning how to walk, bend and reach without constantly comparing everything to the way it used to feel.
And, to my surprise, I had started enjoying some of the attention I received.
A glance across a room could still make me uncomfortable. But sometimes it made me smile.
Nearly three weeks had passed since the transformation. Life was beginning to settle into a routine, although I still approached each new experience with the feeling that I might be given a test at any moment.
I was doing well at Michael’s flower shop. Tasks that had once made me hesitate were becoming familiar, and the other staff no longer needed to guide me through every order. I liked seeing a customer’s face brighten when I handed over an arrangement I had made myself.
At home, I found unexpected satisfaction in cooking.
My brother worked longer hours than I did, so it usually made sense for me to prepare dinner. He helped with the cleaning whenever he could, and we gradually worked out an arrangement that suited us both.
I had rarely bothered to cook properly in my old life. Now I enjoyed choosing ingredients, following a recipe and discovering that I could make something worth eating.
Sometimes I wondered whether that interest belonged to me or came from Chantelle’s memories.
Either way, dinner still needed making.
By Friday, the note had been in my handbag for five days.
I had not seen Rebecca again, but I kept thinking about our conversation. Occasionally, while searching for my keys, my fingers would find the folded paper, and I would consider calling.
Then I would lose my nerve.
One Friday evening, after work and a quick session at the gym, I took it out and placed it beside my phone.
My brother was in France covering a story. I had the apartment to myself, no work the following morning and no convincing excuse left.
I dialled before I could change my mind.
She answered after three rings.
“Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Chantelle. From the gym.”
“The cute, nervous blonde?”
I looked down at the note.
“Yes. That would be me.”
“I was hoping you’d call.”
That helped more than she could have known.
We talked for a few minutes before she asked whether I fancied meeting for a drink.
“Why not?” I said, trying to sound more relaxed than I felt. “It’s Friday.”
Then I hesitated.
“There’s something I should probably tell you. I haven’t dated a woman before.”
It was not the whole truth, but it was the closest I could come without telling her a story she would never believe.
“Then we’ll take it slowly,” she said.
Some of the tension left my shoulders.
She suggested a bar called the Goblin.
“I don’t think I know it.”
“Take a taxi. The driver will know.”
Once we had arranged a time, I put down the phone and hurried upstairs.
For the next hour and a half, getting ready occupied every thought I had.
In my old life, choosing an outfit had usually meant finding a clean shirt and deciding whether I needed a jacket.
Now the bed had disappeared beneath rejected clothes.
A dress felt too formal. Trousers seemed too ordinary. One skirt looked lovely until I tried to sit down in it.
Then there were shoes, a handbag and makeup.
I almost called my brother before remembering that he was working abroad. Besides, I wanted to manage this myself.
Eventually, I stood back from the mirror.
The woman looking at me appeared ready for an evening out.
I wished I felt as composed as she looked.
She was waiting outside the Goblin when my taxi pulled up.
For a moment, I simply watched her through the window. At the gym, we had been two people talking in the heat of the steam room. Here, with the lights of the bar behind her, she looked striking.
I paid the driver and climbed out carefully.
Her smile widened as I approached.
“Well, look at you.”
“Is that good?”
“Very good.”
“You look lovely yourself.”
She offered me her arm, and we went inside.
At first, I was painfully aware of everything: where to put my handbag, how close to stand, whether I was talking too much.
But she was easy company. She asked about my work, laughed at my jokes and gave me time to answer when I stumbled over a question.
I had spent years relying on confidence and practised charm. That evening, I found myself listening more carefully.
When she asked me to dance, I said yes.
After that, the evening seemed to pass all at once.
There was music, laughter and the pleasant surprise of finding that I wanted to stay close to her. We had a couple of cocktails, then switched to water while we talked.
By the time I checked my phone, it was almost three in the morning.
“Would you like to come back to mine?” she asked.
I looked at her, suddenly nervous again.
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
Her apartment was on the east side of town. During the taxi ride, our hands rested together on the seat between us.
Outside her front door, she paused with the key in her hand.
“Still all right?”
“Yes. Just nervous.”
“We don’t have to rush.”
Once we were inside, I found myself admitting it again.
“Please be patient with me. This is all rather new.”
She took my hand.
“I gathered that.”
Her kindness made it possible to laugh.
When she kissed me, I stopped searching for the right thing to say.
Saturday passed more quietly than I would have expected.
We slept late, drank coffee and talked. There were long silences that did not need filling, and moments when I caught her looking at me and felt myself blush.
I had expected the experience to answer a question.
Instead, it gave me several new ones.
I was attracted to her. That much was clear. But it did not explain every change I had noticed in myself, or tell me what I might feel for someone else.
For once, I was willing to leave those questions unanswered.
Lying beside her that afternoon, I realised I had not spent the morning wishing for my old body.
The thought startled me.
I still missed my career. I missed the security of knowing who I was and how my life fitted together. There were things I had lost that a pleasant weekend could never replace.
Yet I was happy.
Not pretending to cope. Not congratulating myself for getting through another unfamiliar task.
Happy.
For the first time, I could admit that there were things I loved about being Chantelle.
A quiet thought followed, one I would never have imagined having during those first miserable days.
Perhaps there can be a life for me here.
I was not ready to tell Frank. I still needed him to understand what I had lost. But that afternoon, I could begin to imagine a future without first imagining how to escape it.
Later, when my phone chimed with a reminder, I reached for it reluctantly.
There were errands waiting at home. Clothes to wash. Food to buy before Monday.
Ordinary things.
“You need to go?” she asked.
“Soon.”
She smiled. “You said that an hour ago.”
“I know.”
I put the phone down for another few minutes.
That was what unsettled me most. I had always liked to believe I was in control of myself. Even after the talisman changed my life, I had held on to the idea that I could decide exactly how much of this new existence I would accept.
Now I wanted something I had never planned for.
I wanted to stay.
As she reached for my hand, I let myself enjoy the moment, though somewhere beneath the happiness a small uncertainty remained.
I could remember the man I had been with perfect clarity.
I was beginning to wonder what he would make of me now.
————————————————————————
The Loss of Control
During the week after meeting Rebecca, I kept finding her note whenever I searched my handbag for something else. The lipstick kiss had smudged slightly at the fold.
Something had changed at the gym that afternoon. For the first time, I had gone for a while without feeling that everyone could see through me. I was beginning to feel comfortable enough to forget to be self-conscious.
Even the unfamiliar movement of my body bothered me less. I was learning how to walk, bend and reach without constantly comparing everything to the way it used to feel.
And, to my surprise, I had started enjoying some of the attention I received.
A glance across a room could still make me uncomfortable. But sometimes it made me smile.
Nearly three weeks had passed since the transformation. Life was beginning to settle into a routine, although I still approached each new experience with the feeling that I might be given a test at any moment.
I was doing well at Michael’s flower shop. Tasks that had once made me hesitate were becoming familiar, and the other staff no longer needed to guide me through every order. I liked seeing a customer’s face brighten when I handed over an arrangement I had made myself.
At home, I found unexpected satisfaction in cooking.
My brother worked longer hours than I did, so it usually made sense for me to prepare dinner. He helped with the cleaning whenever he could, and we gradually worked out an arrangement that suited us both.
I had rarely bothered to cook properly in my old life. Now I enjoyed choosing ingredients, following a recipe and discovering that I could make something worth eating.
Sometimes I wondered whether that interest belonged to me or came from Chantelle’s memories.
Either way, dinner still needed making.
By Friday, the note had been in my handbag for five days.
I had not seen Rebecca again, but I kept thinking about our conversation. Occasionally, while searching for my keys, my fingers would find the folded paper, and I would consider calling.
Then I would lose my nerve.
One Friday evening, after work and a quick session at the gym, I took it out and placed it beside my phone.
My brother was in France covering a story. I had the apartment to myself, no work the following morning and no convincing excuse left.
I dialled before I could change my mind.
She answered after three rings.
“Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Chantelle. From the gym.”
“The cute, nervous blonde?”
I looked down at the note.
“Yes. That would be me.”
“I was hoping you’d call.”
That helped more than she could have known.
We talked for a few minutes before she asked whether I fancied meeting for a drink.
“Why not?” I said, trying to sound more relaxed than I felt. “It’s Friday.”
Then I hesitated.
“There’s something I should probably tell you. I haven’t dated a woman before.”
It was not the whole truth, but it was the closest I could come without telling her a story she would never believe.
“Then we’ll take it slowly,” she said.
Some of the tension left my shoulders.
She suggested a bar called the Goblin.
“I don’t think I know it.”
“Take a taxi. The driver will know.”
Once we had arranged a time, I put down the phone and hurried upstairs.
For the next hour and a half, getting ready occupied every thought I had.
In my old life, choosing an outfit had usually meant finding a clean shirt and deciding whether I needed a jacket.
Now the bed had disappeared beneath rejected clothes.
A dress felt too formal. Trousers seemed too ordinary. One skirt looked lovely until I tried to sit down in it.
Then there were shoes, a handbag and makeup.
I almost called my brother before remembering that he was working abroad. Besides, I wanted to manage this myself.
Eventually, I stood back from the mirror.
The woman looking at me appeared ready for an evening out.
I wished I felt as composed as she looked.
She was waiting outside the Goblin when my taxi pulled up.
For a moment, I simply watched her through the window. At the gym, we had been two people talking in the heat of the steam room. Here, with the lights of the bar behind her, she looked striking.
I paid the driver and climbed out carefully.
Her smile widened as I approached.
“Well, look at you.”
“Is that good?”
“Very good.”
“You look lovely yourself.”
She offered me her arm, and we went inside.
At first, I was painfully aware of everything: where to put my handbag, how close to stand, whether I was talking too much.
But she was easy company. She asked about my work, laughed at my jokes and gave me time to answer when I stumbled over a question.
I had spent years relying on confidence and practised charm. That evening, I found myself listening more carefully.
When she asked me to dance, I said yes.
After that, the evening seemed to pass all at once.
There was music, laughter and the pleasant surprise of finding that I wanted to stay close to her. We had a couple of cocktails, then switched to water while we talked.
By the time I checked my phone, it was almost three in the morning.
“Would you like to come back to mine?” she asked.
I looked at her, suddenly nervous again.
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
Her apartment was on the east side of town. During the taxi ride, our hands rested together on the seat between us.
Outside her front door, she paused with the key in her hand.
“Still all right?”
“Yes. Just nervous.”
“We don’t have to rush.”
Once we were inside, I found myself admitting it again.
“Please be patient with me. This is all rather new.”
She took my hand.
“I gathered that.”
Her kindness made it possible to laugh.
When she kissed me, I stopped searching for the right thing to say.
Saturday passed more quietly than I would have expected.
We slept late, drank coffee and talked. There were long silences that did not need filling, and moments when I caught her looking at me and felt myself blush.
I had expected the experience to answer a question.
Instead, it gave me several new ones.
I was attracted to her. That much was clear. But it did not explain every change I had noticed in myself, or tell me what I might feel for someone else.
For once, I was willing to leave those questions unanswered.
Lying beside her that afternoon, I realised I had not spent the morning wishing for my old body.
The thought startled me.
I still missed my career. I missed the security of knowing who I was and how my life fitted together. There were things I had lost that a pleasant weekend could never replace.
Yet I was happy.
Not pretending to cope. Not congratulating myself for getting through another unfamiliar task.
Happy.
For the first time, I could admit that there were things I loved about being Chantelle.
A quiet thought followed, one I would never have imagined having during those first miserable days.
Perhaps there can be a life for me here.
I was not ready to tell Frank. I still needed him to understand what I had lost. But that afternoon, I could begin to imagine a future without first imagining how to escape it.
Later, when my phone chimed with a reminder, I reached for it reluctantly.
There were errands waiting at home. Clothes to wash. Food to buy before Monday.
Ordinary things.
“You need to go?” she asked.
“Soon.”
She smiled. “You said that an hour ago.”
“I know.”
I put the phone down for another few minutes.
That was what unsettled me most. I had always liked to believe I was in control of myself. Even after the talisman changed my life, I had held on to the idea that I could decide exactly how much of this new existence I would accept.
Now I wanted something I had never planned for.
I wanted to stay.
As she reached for my hand, I let myself enjoy the moment, though somewhere beneath the happiness a small uncertainty remained.
I could remember the man I had been with perfect clarity.
I was beginning to wonder what he would make of me now.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 9
A New Relationship
Sunday morning arrived with sunlight slipping between Rebecca’s curtains and the sound of someone trying to make coffee without rattling every cup in the kitchen.
“You can stop creeping about,” I called. “I’m awake.”
“Good. Because I’ve dropped a spoon twice and was beginning to think you might be unconscious.”
She appeared with two mugs and a piece of toast balanced precariously on a plate.
I moved the duvet aside so she could sit beside me. For a while, we ate in companionable silence. I had spent so much of the past fortnight rehearsing things—names, explanations, ways of behaving—that it was a relief to be with someone who did not seem to require a performance.
“Fancy a picnic later?” she asked.
“In a park? Like normal people?”
“We can be suspiciously mysterious about it if that would help.”
I laughed. “A picnic sounds lovely.”
I took a taxi home to change and collect a towel. The apartment was quiet; Frank was not due back from France until Monday evening. I opened a window, watered a plant I somehow knew needed less water than I had just given it, and stood looking at the familiar room.
I had come home with something to look forward to.
It was such a small thing that I nearly missed how much it meant.
***
By the time Rebecca arrived at the park, I had spread a blanket beneath a tree and read the same page of my book four times.
She put down a bag containing sandwiches, fruit and a bottle of lemonade.
“Did you bring enough for an entire department?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what you liked.”
“Neither did I until recently.”
She smiled, taking it as a joke. I helped her unpack.
We ate in the shade while a dog pursued a ball across the grass with an enthusiasm I admired. Nearby, a couple were trying to persuade a child that ducks had no interest in sharing an ice lolly.
Rebecca told me about a work trip she had coming up. She would be away for a fortnight.
“I’d like to see you when I get back,” she said.
“I’d like that too.”
She picked at the corner of her sandwich wrapper.
“There’s something I ought to be clear about. I enjoy being with you, but I’m not looking for anything serious at the moment.”
The honesty stung a little, though she had made me no promises.
“I’m still working out what I want,” I said.
“That’s all right. Just tell me if that changes.”
I nodded.
There were things I could not explain to her. There were other things I could explain perfectly well, including whether I was comfortable with what we were doing. I promised myself I would not confuse the two.
Later, we stretched out in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and listened to her turning the pages of my book.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
“I think you’ve been reading the same page for twenty minutes.”
“I’m a very thorough reader.”
She reached for my hand.
We stayed until the shadows lengthened across the grass.
***
At work on Monday, one of my colleagues asked whether I had enjoyed my weekend.
“Yes,” I said. “I went out with someone.”
There was the predictable brightening of interest.
“Anyone we know?”
“Her name’s Rebecca.”
The words were out before I could reconsider them.
My colleague smiled. “Well, I hope she’s nice.”
“She is.”
Then the telephone rang, a delivery arrived and the conversation moved on. I had been prepared to make myself a little smaller to avoid a question nobody had asked.
That evening, Frank came home with a suitcase, a bag of washing and the exhausted look of someone who had discovered that a foreign assignment still involved answering emails.
I made tea while he unpacked.
“How was your weekend?” he asked.
I told him.
Not every detail. There were limits to how much either of us needed to know about the other’s private life. But I told him about Rebecca, the picnic and how happy I had felt.
He listened without interrupting.
“Does it bother you?” I asked at last.
“What?”
“Me dating her.”
“No.” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Is she kind to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m pleased.”
I looked into my mug.
“I keep expecting someone to tell me I’m doing this wrong.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I know the feeling.”
Only then did he tell me about Susan.
They had met online. There had been two dates before France, and they had arranged a third for the following weekend. As he spoke, he kept trying to sound casual and failing.
“You like her,” I said.
“I think I might.”
“You’ve smiled every time you’ve said her name.”
“That could be exhaustion.”
“Of course.”
He threw a cushion at me. I caught it and felt absurdly pleased with myself.
***
Over the following months, I saw Rebecca several more times. We went dancing, met for meals and occasionally spent a weekend together. Her company helped me relax, but the boundary she had described in the park remained clear.
Eventually I realised I wanted the kind of relationship in which someone might leave a favourite mug at my home and be there on an entirely unremarkable Tuesday. Rebecca wanted something different.
We talked about it over coffee.
“I don’t want to lose you as a friend,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
It took a little time to find our way into that friendship. We managed it, helped by a shared gym routine and the discovery that we could argue for an hour about a film without either of us taking offence.
Meanwhile, Susan began spending more evenings at the apartment.
She was warm, observant and capable of making Frank put his phone down during dinner. The first time she came round, she brought a cake because he had told her I liked cake.
“I like eating baking,” I explained. “My actual qualifications are limited.”
“Excellent,” she said. “So are mine. I bought it.”
I liked her immediately.
One evening I opened the bathroom door, assuming Frank had gone out, and found the two of them together beneath the shower.
I shut it again so quickly that the handle struck my wrist.
“Lock,” I announced through the door. “There is a lock.”
“We know!” Frank called, sounding mortified.
The next morning, we avoided one another’s eyes until Susan put a little handwritten sign on the breakfast table: PLEASE KNOCK.
Underneath it, I wrote: PLEASE LOCK.
After that, we could laugh about it.
***
By the time six months had passed since Salem, I had begun to notice men in a way I could no longer dismiss as idle curiosity.
It happened in small moments. A voice on the telephone. A smile from a customer. The warmth in my face when a man at the gym asked whether I wanted him to adjust a machine.
None of it made my feelings for Rebecca less real. Nor did the memories of Chantelle’s earlier relationships tell me what I was obliged to want now.
I wanted to find out for myself.
Creating a dating profile proved more difficult than I expected.
“What am I supposed to say?” I asked Frank.
“Something true.”
I stared at him.
“Something true that doesn’t require a book.”
He pulled up a chair. “Start with flowers and terrible jokes.”
I added music, cooking and a fondness for football. Then I deleted three sentences that sounded like a job application.
There were several dates that went nowhere. One man spent the entire meal explaining his exercise regime. Another asked about my work and interrupted the answer to tell me how much he had paid for his car.
Then I met Luke Fredericks.
He was an architect, lived in my neighbourhood and arrived at the café with rain on his coat and an apology for being two minutes late.
“The pavement outside is trying to become a canal,” he said.
“Surely you could redesign it.”
“I’d need six meetings and someone would object to the colour.”
I laughed before we had even ordered.
He asked about the flower shop and listened to the answer. When I mentioned that I used to spend more time following football, he asked which team.
“The Broncos.”
“Do I need to pretend to support them?”
“Only if you intend to have a second coffee.”
We had two coffees. Then we walked until the rain returned and took refuge in a bookshop, where he admitted he sometimes bought books faster than he read them.
For the first time in months, I went home from a date wanting another one.
***
Luke did not become part of my life all at once.
There were dinners and walks, messages during lunch breaks and an evening when he helped me rescue an ambitious meal I had allowed to burn while answering the phone. He ate the unburnt parts without complaint and helped scrub the pan afterwards.
When we disagreed, he stayed interested in what I was saying.
That mattered more than I had expected.
He could also be infuriatingly particular about how to load a dishwasher.
“You’re arranging cups,” I told him one evening. “They don’t need planning permission.”
“They do if you put that bowl there.”
By our third month together, he knew my usual coffee order and recognised the expression that meant I needed a quiet evening rather than cheering up.
He knew there had been a difficult family upheaval before we met. I had told him that much honestly, though I had not found a way to explain the impossible part.
Once, on a walk, he asked whether I wanted to talk about it.
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
“You’re not going to ask again?”
“Not today.”
He left his hand open between us. After a few steps, I took it.
***
Frank suggested a double date.
I worried about it more than anyone else did. Over dinner, Luke and Susan discovered that they had once worked in neighbouring buildings, while Frank and I argued over a childhood incident neither version of our memories could settle.
“You’re both equally convincing,” Susan said. “Which probably means neither of you is reliable.”
The evening led to a weekend hike. I packed more water than anyone wanted, checked the route twice and rediscovered the pleasure of being the person who knew what to do.
On a steep stretch, Luke offered me a hand. I accepted it, then returned the favour when his boot slipped in the mud.
At the top, we sat together looking out across the trees. The wind lifted my hair, and he tucked a strand behind my ear before passing me a sandwich.
Nothing remarkable happened.
For weeks afterwards, it was the afternoon I kept remembering.
***
By the fourth month of our relationship, I wanted to become more intimate with him.
Wanting it did not prevent me from being nervous. My memories could offer familiarity, but they could not turn a decision I was making now into one I had already made.
I told Luke that over dinner.
“We can wait,” he said.
“I know. I don’t think I want to wait much longer. I just need you to understand that I might get frightened.”
“Then we stop.”
He said it so simply that I believed him.
We discussed sexual health and contraception and arranged tests. While I was at the clinic, I also made time to talk privately with a doctor about the questions I had been putting off. Having a calm professional explain things was easier than searching online at midnight and imagining every possible disaster.
When our results came back, Luke and I talked again. There was no promise hidden inside them, no obligation to take a next step simply because we had prepared for one.
The following Saturday, I decided I was ready.
I had my hair trimmed, chose an outfit I could actually sit down in and abandoned a pair of shoes after discovering that they hurt before I had even left my bedroom.
Frank watched me replace them with a more comfortable pair.
“Good decision.”
“I’m trying a new approach. Enjoying the evening.”
“Radical.”
He walked with me as far as the park, where Luke was waiting. Before we separated, I turned to my brother.
“I’ll let you know I got there.”
“Thank you.”
“And you don’t need to wait up.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
We both knew he would keep his phone nearby.
***
Luke stood when he saw me.
For an instant I was back in the hotel in Las Vegas, looking at the face in the mirror and certain that nothing good could ever happen to me again.
Then he smiled, and the memory loosened its hold.
We walked through the park before dinner. I found myself talking too quickly about a difficult order at the florist’s. He listened until I ran out of words.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Me too.”
That surprised me.
“I want you to have a good evening,” he said.
“I already am.”
At his apartment, he took my coat and offered to make tea. The ordinary question nearly undid me. I had built the evening into something so enormous that I had forgotten we were allowed to be ourselves inside it.
“Tea first,” I said.
We sat on the sofa with our mugs. Later, when I kissed him, I could feel his hand trembling against mine.
“We can still change our minds,” he whispered.
“I know.”
I put down my mug and took his hand.
There were awkward moments, quiet questions and laughter when we needed it. He listened when I told him what felt right, and I stopped pretending that I ought to know everything.
What happened between us belonged to the two of us. By the time we lay quietly together, my fear had given way to a tenderness I had not expected to feel so strongly.
I rested my head against his shoulder.
Luke brushed his lips over my hair.
I had spent months asking whether the woman I was becoming could still be me. That night, the question did not disappear, but I no longer needed an answer before I could be happy.
I wanted to be there with him.
And I was beginning to understand that I loved him.
————————————————————————
A New Relationship
Sunday morning arrived with sunlight slipping between Rebecca’s curtains and the sound of someone trying to make coffee without rattling every cup in the kitchen.
“You can stop creeping about,” I called. “I’m awake.”
“Good. Because I’ve dropped a spoon twice and was beginning to think you might be unconscious.”
She appeared with two mugs and a piece of toast balanced precariously on a plate.
I moved the duvet aside so she could sit beside me. For a while, we ate in companionable silence. I had spent so much of the past fortnight rehearsing things—names, explanations, ways of behaving—that it was a relief to be with someone who did not seem to require a performance.
“Fancy a picnic later?” she asked.
“In a park? Like normal people?”
“We can be suspiciously mysterious about it if that would help.”
I laughed. “A picnic sounds lovely.”
I took a taxi home to change and collect a towel. The apartment was quiet; Frank was not due back from France until Monday evening. I opened a window, watered a plant I somehow knew needed less water than I had just given it, and stood looking at the familiar room.
I had come home with something to look forward to.
It was such a small thing that I nearly missed how much it meant.
***
By the time Rebecca arrived at the park, I had spread a blanket beneath a tree and read the same page of my book four times.
She put down a bag containing sandwiches, fruit and a bottle of lemonade.
“Did you bring enough for an entire department?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what you liked.”
“Neither did I until recently.”
She smiled, taking it as a joke. I helped her unpack.
We ate in the shade while a dog pursued a ball across the grass with an enthusiasm I admired. Nearby, a couple were trying to persuade a child that ducks had no interest in sharing an ice lolly.
Rebecca told me about a work trip she had coming up. She would be away for a fortnight.
“I’d like to see you when I get back,” she said.
“I’d like that too.”
She picked at the corner of her sandwich wrapper.
“There’s something I ought to be clear about. I enjoy being with you, but I’m not looking for anything serious at the moment.”
The honesty stung a little, though she had made me no promises.
“I’m still working out what I want,” I said.
“That’s all right. Just tell me if that changes.”
I nodded.
There were things I could not explain to her. There were other things I could explain perfectly well, including whether I was comfortable with what we were doing. I promised myself I would not confuse the two.
Later, we stretched out in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and listened to her turning the pages of my book.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
“I think you’ve been reading the same page for twenty minutes.”
“I’m a very thorough reader.”
She reached for my hand.
We stayed until the shadows lengthened across the grass.
***
At work on Monday, one of my colleagues asked whether I had enjoyed my weekend.
“Yes,” I said. “I went out with someone.”
There was the predictable brightening of interest.
“Anyone we know?”
“Her name’s Rebecca.”
The words were out before I could reconsider them.
My colleague smiled. “Well, I hope she’s nice.”
“She is.”
Then the telephone rang, a delivery arrived and the conversation moved on. I had been prepared to make myself a little smaller to avoid a question nobody had asked.
That evening, Frank came home with a suitcase, a bag of washing and the exhausted look of someone who had discovered that a foreign assignment still involved answering emails.
I made tea while he unpacked.
“How was your weekend?” he asked.
I told him.
Not every detail. There were limits to how much either of us needed to know about the other’s private life. But I told him about Rebecca, the picnic and how happy I had felt.
He listened without interrupting.
“Does it bother you?” I asked at last.
“What?”
“Me dating her.”
“No.” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Is she kind to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m pleased.”
I looked into my mug.
“I keep expecting someone to tell me I’m doing this wrong.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I know the feeling.”
Only then did he tell me about Susan.
They had met online. There had been two dates before France, and they had arranged a third for the following weekend. As he spoke, he kept trying to sound casual and failing.
“You like her,” I said.
“I think I might.”
“You’ve smiled every time you’ve said her name.”
“That could be exhaustion.”
“Of course.”
He threw a cushion at me. I caught it and felt absurdly pleased with myself.
***
Over the following months, I saw Rebecca several more times. We went dancing, met for meals and occasionally spent a weekend together. Her company helped me relax, but the boundary she had described in the park remained clear.
Eventually I realised I wanted the kind of relationship in which someone might leave a favourite mug at my home and be there on an entirely unremarkable Tuesday. Rebecca wanted something different.
We talked about it over coffee.
“I don’t want to lose you as a friend,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
It took a little time to find our way into that friendship. We managed it, helped by a shared gym routine and the discovery that we could argue for an hour about a film without either of us taking offence.
Meanwhile, Susan began spending more evenings at the apartment.
She was warm, observant and capable of making Frank put his phone down during dinner. The first time she came round, she brought a cake because he had told her I liked cake.
“I like eating baking,” I explained. “My actual qualifications are limited.”
“Excellent,” she said. “So are mine. I bought it.”
I liked her immediately.
One evening I opened the bathroom door, assuming Frank had gone out, and found the two of them together beneath the shower.
I shut it again so quickly that the handle struck my wrist.
“Lock,” I announced through the door. “There is a lock.”
“We know!” Frank called, sounding mortified.
The next morning, we avoided one another’s eyes until Susan put a little handwritten sign on the breakfast table: PLEASE KNOCK.
Underneath it, I wrote: PLEASE LOCK.
After that, we could laugh about it.
***
By the time six months had passed since Salem, I had begun to notice men in a way I could no longer dismiss as idle curiosity.
It happened in small moments. A voice on the telephone. A smile from a customer. The warmth in my face when a man at the gym asked whether I wanted him to adjust a machine.
None of it made my feelings for Rebecca less real. Nor did the memories of Chantelle’s earlier relationships tell me what I was obliged to want now.
I wanted to find out for myself.
Creating a dating profile proved more difficult than I expected.
“What am I supposed to say?” I asked Frank.
“Something true.”
I stared at him.
“Something true that doesn’t require a book.”
He pulled up a chair. “Start with flowers and terrible jokes.”
I added music, cooking and a fondness for football. Then I deleted three sentences that sounded like a job application.
There were several dates that went nowhere. One man spent the entire meal explaining his exercise regime. Another asked about my work and interrupted the answer to tell me how much he had paid for his car.
Then I met Luke Fredericks.
He was an architect, lived in my neighbourhood and arrived at the café with rain on his coat and an apology for being two minutes late.
“The pavement outside is trying to become a canal,” he said.
“Surely you could redesign it.”
“I’d need six meetings and someone would object to the colour.”
I laughed before we had even ordered.
He asked about the flower shop and listened to the answer. When I mentioned that I used to spend more time following football, he asked which team.
“The Broncos.”
“Do I need to pretend to support them?”
“Only if you intend to have a second coffee.”
We had two coffees. Then we walked until the rain returned and took refuge in a bookshop, where he admitted he sometimes bought books faster than he read them.
For the first time in months, I went home from a date wanting another one.
***
Luke did not become part of my life all at once.
There were dinners and walks, messages during lunch breaks and an evening when he helped me rescue an ambitious meal I had allowed to burn while answering the phone. He ate the unburnt parts without complaint and helped scrub the pan afterwards.
When we disagreed, he stayed interested in what I was saying.
That mattered more than I had expected.
He could also be infuriatingly particular about how to load a dishwasher.
“You’re arranging cups,” I told him one evening. “They don’t need planning permission.”
“They do if you put that bowl there.”
By our third month together, he knew my usual coffee order and recognised the expression that meant I needed a quiet evening rather than cheering up.
He knew there had been a difficult family upheaval before we met. I had told him that much honestly, though I had not found a way to explain the impossible part.
Once, on a walk, he asked whether I wanted to talk about it.
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
“You’re not going to ask again?”
“Not today.”
He left his hand open between us. After a few steps, I took it.
***
Frank suggested a double date.
I worried about it more than anyone else did. Over dinner, Luke and Susan discovered that they had once worked in neighbouring buildings, while Frank and I argued over a childhood incident neither version of our memories could settle.
“You’re both equally convincing,” Susan said. “Which probably means neither of you is reliable.”
The evening led to a weekend hike. I packed more water than anyone wanted, checked the route twice and rediscovered the pleasure of being the person who knew what to do.
On a steep stretch, Luke offered me a hand. I accepted it, then returned the favour when his boot slipped in the mud.
At the top, we sat together looking out across the trees. The wind lifted my hair, and he tucked a strand behind my ear before passing me a sandwich.
Nothing remarkable happened.
For weeks afterwards, it was the afternoon I kept remembering.
***
By the fourth month of our relationship, I wanted to become more intimate with him.
Wanting it did not prevent me from being nervous. My memories could offer familiarity, but they could not turn a decision I was making now into one I had already made.
I told Luke that over dinner.
“We can wait,” he said.
“I know. I don’t think I want to wait much longer. I just need you to understand that I might get frightened.”
“Then we stop.”
He said it so simply that I believed him.
We discussed sexual health and contraception and arranged tests. While I was at the clinic, I also made time to talk privately with a doctor about the questions I had been putting off. Having a calm professional explain things was easier than searching online at midnight and imagining every possible disaster.
When our results came back, Luke and I talked again. There was no promise hidden inside them, no obligation to take a next step simply because we had prepared for one.
The following Saturday, I decided I was ready.
I had my hair trimmed, chose an outfit I could actually sit down in and abandoned a pair of shoes after discovering that they hurt before I had even left my bedroom.
Frank watched me replace them with a more comfortable pair.
“Good decision.”
“I’m trying a new approach. Enjoying the evening.”
“Radical.”
He walked with me as far as the park, where Luke was waiting. Before we separated, I turned to my brother.
“I’ll let you know I got there.”
“Thank you.”
“And you don’t need to wait up.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
We both knew he would keep his phone nearby.
***
Luke stood when he saw me.
For an instant I was back in the hotel in Las Vegas, looking at the face in the mirror and certain that nothing good could ever happen to me again.
Then he smiled, and the memory loosened its hold.
We walked through the park before dinner. I found myself talking too quickly about a difficult order at the florist’s. He listened until I ran out of words.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Me too.”
That surprised me.
“I want you to have a good evening,” he said.
“I already am.”
At his apartment, he took my coat and offered to make tea. The ordinary question nearly undid me. I had built the evening into something so enormous that I had forgotten we were allowed to be ourselves inside it.
“Tea first,” I said.
We sat on the sofa with our mugs. Later, when I kissed him, I could feel his hand trembling against mine.
“We can still change our minds,” he whispered.
“I know.”
I put down my mug and took his hand.
There were awkward moments, quiet questions and laughter when we needed it. He listened when I told him what felt right, and I stopped pretending that I ought to know everything.
What happened between us belonged to the two of us. By the time we lay quietly together, my fear had given way to a tenderness I had not expected to feel so strongly.
I rested my head against his shoulder.
Luke brushed his lips over my hair.
I had spent months asking whether the woman I was becoming could still be me. That night, the question did not disappear, but I no longer needed an answer before I could be happy.
I wanted to be there with him.
And I was beginning to understand that I loved him.
————————————————————————
CHAPTER 10
Happy Families
The next morning, I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of my feelings.
Last night had meant something to me. That was what frightened me most.
For so long, I had measured every new experience against the man I used to be. Would he have wanted this? What would he have thought of me now?
Behind me, Luke stirred.
“Everything all right?”
I looked over my shoulder. His hair was a mess, and he was squinting at me in the morning light.
“I’m thinking too much.”
“That sounds exhausting. Come back to bed.”
I laughed, and some of the tension left me.
When I lay beside him, he brushed a strand of blonde hair away from my face.
“We don’t have to rush anything,” he said.
For a moment, I simply looked at him. Then I kissed him.
We spent a lazy morning together, talking between kisses and repeatedly promising that we really ought to get up. By the time we finally made breakfast, it was almost lunchtime.
For once, I let myself enjoy being happy without questioning every second of it.
Later that morning, Luke found me looking out of his kitchen window while the kettle boiled.
“Still thinking?” he asked.
“I do that occasionally.”
“I’ve noticed.”
I turned towards him. “There are things about my past I find difficult to explain.”
He waited.
“I don’t mean an old boyfriend or an embarrassing haircut. I mean things that changed how I see myself.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything at once.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m keeping you at a distance.”
He set a mug beside me.
“Then let me know when you need me closer.”
I kept that sentence with me for years.
By December 2019, six years had passed since Salem. Luke and I had built a life together.
Looking back, I can make those years sound as though they disappeared overnight. They didn’t. They were filled with ordinary days: early starts at the florist’s, bills, birthdays, disagreements, holidays and evenings when Luke came home too tired to do anything except fall asleep beside me on the sofa.
Luke was still an architect, and I was still a florist. We had built a life together, gradually enough that I sometimes forgot how unlikely it would once have seemed.
There was a winter when work at the shop slowed and I worried about money in a way Brian never had. There was a summer when one of Luke’s projects kept him away so often that we had to learn how to argue without treating disappointment as an accusation.
When we decided to live together, I cried while packing my things at Frank’s apartment. I had wanted a home of my own with Luke. I had not expected leaving my brother’s spare key on the table to feel like another departure.
“You can keep that,” Frank said, putting it back in my hand.
“What if I abuse the privilege?”
“You already do. You eat all the good biscuits.”
We settled into Sunday dinners, shared holidays and messages about nothing important. Our lives grew larger without quite growing apart.
Before moving in with Luke, I finally told him about Salem.
I had rehearsed the explanation so many times that the real conversation came out in the wrong order. I began with football, went back to Jessica, forgot to mention the talisman and had to start again. Luke listened without smiling.
When I finished, he sat for a long time without speaking.
“I know how it sounds,” I said.
“I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
I showed him the notebook I had begun in Chicago. Some entries were written through tears, some in anger. Others were lists of small things: how to get through a day at work, what I missed, what I was beginning to enjoy.
He turned the pages carefully. I could see how impossible it was to offer him proof of a world that had been erased.
“Have you been carrying all this alone?” he asked.
“Frank knows. He remembers too.”
“Your brother?”
I nodded.
Luke put the notebook down.
“I can’t pretend I know how to make sense of the magic.” He reached for my hand. “But I believe you’re telling me what happened to you.”
The relief was so sharp that I began to cry before I could answer.
There were more conversations after that. Sometimes he needed to ask a question twice. Sometimes I had to tell him I did not know. He spoke with Frank, with my agreement, and came away looking shaken but less bewildered.
One night he asked whether I still wished I could go back.
“Sometimes I miss it,” I said. “That isn’t the same as wanting to leave you.”
“I needed to hear that.”
“I needed to be able to say it.”
He drew me closer. We stayed on the sofa until the room grew dark.
Frank told Susan in his own time. I knew because she asked me, very gently, whether I wanted to talk about my childhood. When I said not that evening, she simply offered to put the kettle on.
After that, neither of us had to keep the most important part of our past outside the lives we were building.
I still watched football. Once, I volunteered to help with a local youth session and discovered that explaining a throw to a child was harder than making it myself had ever been. When the ball finally landed where she wanted it, she turned to me with such triumph that I found myself cheering as loudly as her father.
I came home with grass stains on my jeans. Luke asked how it had gone.
“Good,” I said, and meant more by the word than I could explain.
Frank and Susan were still together too. He was now working for Fox News and seemed to thrive on the pressure.
Rebecca remained a good friend. We still met at the gym and occasionally went out for coffee, although the romantic part of our friendship belonged firmly in the past.
Then, in December 2019, our parents invited us all home for Christmas.
I spoke to Mum and Dad regularly, but I had not been back to the family house since before Salem. We had met them for short visits in Chicago over the years. Even those had taken courage at first. Going home felt like a different test, one I had found excuses to postpone.
The truth was harder to admit.
The last time I remembered standing in their house, I had been their son.
The talisman had given them a lifetime of memories of Chantelle, their daughter. I had inherited some of those memories too, but they never quite erased my own.
Now I was approaching thirty and bringing my boyfriend home.
Frank understood why I was nervous. He had his own memories to contend with.
We travelled from Chicago to Kansas in one car, sharing the driving on the long journey. Susan brought enough snacks for a small expedition, and Luke spent the final hour insisting that we must be nearly there.
When Dad opened the front door, all my carefully rehearsed greetings vanished.
“There she is!”
He pulled me into a hug before I could answer.
Mum appeared behind him, already smiling.
“Come inside, all of you. You must be freezing.”
For a few seconds, I held on to her longer than I intended.
The house smelled of baking and furniture polish. There were new curtains and a different sofa, but the familiar creak on the stairs was still there.
I was home.
The sleeping arrangements caused the first awkward moment.
“Your cousin’s having Frank’s old room when she arrives,” Mum explained. “So Luke and Frank can have the den. Chantelle, you and Susan can share your room.”
“My room?”
Mum gave me a puzzled look.
“Yes, darling. Where else?”
Upstairs, I opened the bedroom door and stopped.
Pink walls. Pale curtains. A white dressing table.
Susan peered past me.
“Oh, I had almost exactly that colour when I was little!”
“I was hoping you might not notice.”
“The entire room?”
I dropped my bag beside the bed and laughed.
There were photographs on the shelves of a childhood I could remember in two different ways. In one picture, a young blonde girl stood beside Frank in the garden.
I recognised the afternoon.
I also remembered being the boy holding the football.
“You all right?” Susan asked.
“Yes. Just strange being back.”
We unpacked, and I glanced at the double bed.
“You don’t mind sharing?”
“Of course not.”
“I can get another blanket if you’d prefer—”
“Chantelle, it’s fine.” She smiled. “Although I should warn you, I sometimes cuddle people in my sleep.”
“I’ll consider myself warned.”
“Frank does it too. He can fall asleep holding me and stay like that all night.”
There was such affection in her voice that I found myself smiling.
“I’m glad he’s got you.”
“So am I.”
That evening, I discovered why Luke had been unusually nervous throughout the journey.
After dinner, he asked me to join him beside the Christmas tree. Frank and Susan followed, while Mum suddenly became very interested in finding her camera.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Luke took both my hands.
“Chantelle, I had a speech planned.”
“That sounds worrying.”
He laughed, but his fingers were trembling.
“It was a good speech too. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any of it.”
Then he lowered himself onto one knee.
I stared at him.
“I love you,” he said. “I love the life we’ve made together, and I want to keep making it with you. Will you marry me?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Then I managed, “Yes.”
“Was that a yes?”
“Yes, you idiot!”
He slipped the ring onto my finger, and I was laughing and crying when he stood to kiss me.
Before I had recovered, Susan gasped beside us.
Frank was on one knee too.
“You two planned this?” I asked.
“For months,” Frank admitted.
Susan said yes before he could finish his proposal.
Mum cried. Dad shook both men’s hands, then decided handshakes were insufficient and hugged them instead.
Somewhere amid the laughter and photographs, Susan suggested a double wedding.
“In the spring,” she said.
I looked at Luke.
He smiled. “If that’s what you want.”
I looked down at my ring.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Susan and I barely slept that night.
We lay in my old bedroom discussing dresses, flowers, venues and whether a simple wedding could remain simple once our mothers became involved.
Every so often, one of us would switch on the bedside lamp to look at her ring again.
At three in the morning, Susan caught me doing it.
“You too?”
“I wanted to make sure it was still there.”
She laughed and held up her own hand.
By breakfast, we had made several plans, changed most of them and agreed that we probably needed some sleep before making any deposits.
After a walk in the cold morning air, we gathered around the tree to open our Christmas presents.
I gave Luke the watch I had chosen weeks earlier.
He fastened it around his wrist immediately.
“Perfect.”
His present to me was a necklace with matching diamond earrings.
I lifted the necklace from its box, watching it catch the light.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Help me put it on.”
My fingers brushed his as he fastened the clasp, and Mum insisted on another photograph.
Later, I joined her in the kitchen. Susan followed, and soon we were peeling potatoes and trying to keep three separate conversations going over the noise of the extractor fan.
Mum stopped halfway through preparing the vegetables.
“A son-in-law and a daughter-in-law,” she said, smiling to herself. “That’s quite a Christmas present.”
“The weddings haven’t happened yet,” I reminded her.
“I’m choosing to be optimistic.”
“And already planning where everyone will sit?” Susan asked.
“Possibly.”
Christmas dinner was noisy, crowded and wonderful.
Afterwards, Frank unpacked the games console Susan had bought him. I picked up a controller and discovered that years of playing less often had done very little to soften my competitive streak.
“You said you hadn’t played in years,” Luke protested after I beat him.
“I haven’t.”
Frank grinned.
“She’s always been like this.”
I glanced at him, and for a moment we shared a memory that belonged only to us.
Five months later, the wedding day arrived.
The preparations had been more work than I expected. Even with a modest guest list and a simple ceremony, there always seemed to be another decision waiting.
Choosing the dresses was the strangest day of all.
I stood on a little platform in front of a full-length mirror while Mum and Susan studied me.
“Well?” I asked.
Mum pressed a tissue to her eyes.
“That good?”
She nodded.
I turned slightly, watching the skirt move.
Never, in my old life, had I imagined being the bride. Yet as I looked at the woman in the mirror, I could picture Luke waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
“I think this is the one,” I said.
Two weeks before the wedding, Susan and I went to Atlantic City with our friends for a hen weekend.
There was gambling, dancing, too little sleep and an evening’s entertainment that had Rebecca laughing at my embarrassment.
The last time I had gone away for a wedding celebration, I had been one of the men on a stag weekend.
Now I was wearing a ridiculous sash while my future sister-in-law insisted that the next round was hers.
Life had certainly become inventive.
On the morning of the wedding, I woke before the alarm.
For a few quiet minutes, I lay in the hotel bed and listened to Susan sleeping.
Then she opened one eye.
“Are you panicking?”
“A little.”
“Good. I’d hate to be doing it alone.”
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of hairpins, makeup brushes and people telling us to sit still.
By the time I was dressed, my feet were already questioning my choice of shoes.
Then Dad knocked.
When he stepped into the room, he stopped in the doorway.
“Oh, Chantelle.”
“Please don’t cry,” I said. “They’ve only just finished my makeup.”
He laughed, although his eyes were wet.
“You look beautiful.”
He took a photograph of Susan and me standing together by the window. In it, we were holding our bouquets and trying very hard to look calm.
Neither of us succeeded.
I remember very little of walking down the aisle.
I remember Dad’s arm beneath my hand.
I remember the flowers.
Most clearly, I remember Luke’s face when he saw me.
Once I reached him, I stopped worrying about the guests, the dress and whether I might trip.
“You look incredible,” he whispered.
“You look nervous.”
“I am.”
“Me too.”
His hand closed around mine.
Beside us, Frank and Susan exchanged a look that made Mum reach for another tissue.
We spoke our vows. We exchanged rings.
When Luke kissed me, our family applauded, and I found myself laughing against his lips.
Later came speeches, photographs and a meal I had been too nervous to feel hungry for until the moment it arrived.
Our first dance was slightly clumsy.
“Sorry,” Luke murmured after stepping on my dress.
“You’re supposed to be an architect. I thought you understood space.”
“I work with buildings. They move less.”
Across the room, Frank was dancing with Susan.
He caught my eye over her shoulder and smiled.
I smiled back.
We had both come a long way.
Frank and Susan went to Honolulu for their honeymoon.
Luke and I went to Venice.
We wandered beside canals, got lost in narrow streets and stopped for coffee whenever our feet began to ache. Some days we made plans over breakfast and abandoned them before we reached the hotel door.
There were quiet evenings, long conversations and mornings when neither of us wanted to get up.
The week passed far too quickly.
Soon we were home, unpacking suitcases and remembering which day the bins went out.
Then, a few weeks later, I started feeling unwell.
At first, I blamed tiredness. When the nausea kept returning, I bought a pregnancy test.
I left it on the bathroom counter and walked away.
Then I came back almost immediately.
Two lines.
I sat on the edge of the bath.
“Oh.”
I had known pregnancy was possible. We had both known. Somehow, that knowledge had remained comfortably distant until that morning.
I made an appointment with my doctor.
When she confirmed the result, I felt frightened, delighted and completely unprepared.
That evening, I waited until Luke had put his work bag down.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
His expression changed.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.”
I took his hand.
“I’m pregnant.”
He stared at me.
For one awful second, I thought I had misjudged everything.
Then his face broke into a smile.
“Really?”
I nodded.
He hugged me, then pulled back abruptly.
“Sorry. Was that too tight?”
“No,” I said, laughing through tears. “You can hug me.”
We sat together for a long time that evening.
We discussed money, work, the spare room and all the things we didn’t know. For the first time, we spoke seriously about becoming parents.
The next day, I telephoned Frank.
He went quiet when I told him.
“Frank?”
“I’m here.”
“Say something.”
“I’m trying to imagine you telling me this when we were sitting in that hotel in Salem.”
“So am I.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Happy. Scared. Sick.”
“That sounds like quite a combination.”
“It is.”
He told me how pleased he was for us. Before we ended the call, he added, more softly, “I’m glad you’ve found a life you want.”
I looked across the room at the wedding photograph on the mantelpiece.
“So am I.”
The following months passed in appointments, antenatal classes and increasingly determined attempts to find a comfortable sleeping position.
At the florist’s, I eventually had to let someone else carry the heavy buckets.
“You can supervise,” my colleague told me.
“I was already doing that.”
“Yes, but now you can do it sitting down.”
Michael helped me plan my leave before I had worked out how to ask. He showed me the rota, asked what I hoped to manage and reminded me that a flower shop could survive without my personally lifting every bucket.
I went home that evening remembering the man who had come in to order his wife’s funeral flowers on my first day. By then I had made arrangements for births, anniversaries, apologies and farewells. Some customers knew my name. One always asked whether I had seen the game.
When people asked what I did, I no longer heard a silent comparison with the career I had lost.
“I’m a florist,” I told them.
By the final weeks, everything required planning: getting out of bed, putting on shoes, locating the nearest toilet.
Luke assembled the cot, took it apart because he thought he had made a mistake, then assembled it again exactly as before.
I stood in the nursery doorway watching him.
“Are you sure you design buildings?”
“Please don’t tell anyone about this.”
At night, we would sit with his hand resting against my stomach, waiting for a kick.
“There,” I whispered one evening.
He looked at me in astonishment.
“I felt that.”
“I should hope so. It’s been happening to me all day.”
Naturally, labour began while Luke was out of town.
When my waters broke, I stood in the kitchen staring at the floor.
Then I reached for my phone.
Luke didn’t answer.
I tried again.
Still nothing.
For a moment, panic made it difficult to think. Then I remembered the plan we had made.
I called Susan.
“I think it’s happening.”
“I’m coming.”
She arrived within minutes, collected my hospital bag and somehow managed to sound perfectly calm while I asked the same questions repeatedly.
At the hospital, she finally reached Luke.
“He’s on his way,” she told me.
“How far away?”
“He’s coming as quickly as he safely can.”
She stayed beside me through the early contractions, held my hand and reminded me to breathe when I forgot everything I had learned.
Then Luke appeared in the doorway, breathless and pale.
“I’m here.”
“You took your time,” I said.
“I know.”
I gripped his hand.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
Labour was harder than I had hoped and different from what I had feared.
There were long stretches of waiting, followed by moments when nothing mattered except getting through the next contraction.
The midwife’s steady voice helped. So did the pain relief, Luke’s hand and knowing Susan was nearby.
When the time came to push, I was exhausted.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“You’re doing it,” the midwife told me. “Listen to me. One step at a time.”
So I listened.
And eventually, amid the effort and confusion, I heard our baby cry.
The midwife placed the tiny, warm bundle against my chest.
I looked down at a scrunched face and a little hand opening against my skin.
“Hello,” I whispered.
It was the only word I could manage.
Luke kissed my forehead. When I looked up, he was crying.
Our baby settled against me, and I began to cry too.
The next day, Frank arrived carrying flowers and a stuffed toy almost as large as the baby.
He approached the bed with unusual caution.
“Come closer,” I told him. “We don’t bite.”
“You might. You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
He looked down at the baby, and his smile softened.
“How was it?”
I considered the question.
“Hard.”
“I gathered that.”
“Frightening at times. Then suddenly there was a baby.”
He sat beside me.
After a while, he asked, “Would you do it again?”
“Ask me when I’ve had some sleep.”
He laughed.
“Luke and I have talked about two,” I admitted. “Eventually.”
“Eventually sounds sensible.”
The baby stirred, and I adjusted the blanket.
For a little while, neither of us spoke.
Then I looked at my brother.
“I haven’t forgotten, you know.”
There was more behind those words than the two of us could ever explain in a hospital room. But by then, Luke and Susan knew our story. We no longer had to hide the difficult memories from the people we loved.
His smile faded slightly.
“What happened?”
I nodded.
“I know.”
“It was hard, Frank.”
“I know that too.”
I watched him for a moment, then reached for his hand.
“But I’m happy now.”
He squeezed my fingers.
“I can see that.”
Motherhood did not turn every day into a perfect ending.
There were nappies, broken nights, feeding worries and mornings when I couldn’t remember whether I had eaten breakfast.
Sometimes Luke and I were so tired that we argued over things neither of us cared about.
Sometimes the baby settled just as my tea went cold.
But there were other moments too.
A little hand closing around my finger.
Luke asleep in the chair with our baby against his chest.
The first smile I was certain belonged to me.
One evening, after a particularly difficult day, I stood in the nursery doorway and watched my husband lift our child from the cot.
“There’s Mum,” he said softly.
I stepped forward and held out my arms.
Years earlier, I had woken in an unfamiliar body, desperate to get back everything I had lost. I could still remember that fear. I could still remember the life before it.
Now our baby settled against my shoulder, and Luke rested his hand on my back.
“Coming downstairs?” he asked.
“In a minute.”
I stayed there a little longer, listening to the small, sleepy breaths beside my ear.
Then I followed my husband downstairs.
THE END
A story by AG 💕
Happy Families
The next morning, I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of my feelings.
Last night had meant something to me. That was what frightened me most.
For so long, I had measured every new experience against the man I used to be. Would he have wanted this? What would he have thought of me now?
Behind me, Luke stirred.
“Everything all right?”
I looked over my shoulder. His hair was a mess, and he was squinting at me in the morning light.
“I’m thinking too much.”
“That sounds exhausting. Come back to bed.”
I laughed, and some of the tension left me.
When I lay beside him, he brushed a strand of blonde hair away from my face.
“We don’t have to rush anything,” he said.
For a moment, I simply looked at him. Then I kissed him.
We spent a lazy morning together, talking between kisses and repeatedly promising that we really ought to get up. By the time we finally made breakfast, it was almost lunchtime.
For once, I let myself enjoy being happy without questioning every second of it.
Later that morning, Luke found me looking out of his kitchen window while the kettle boiled.
“Still thinking?” he asked.
“I do that occasionally.”
“I’ve noticed.”
I turned towards him. “There are things about my past I find difficult to explain.”
He waited.
“I don’t mean an old boyfriend or an embarrassing haircut. I mean things that changed how I see myself.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything at once.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m keeping you at a distance.”
He set a mug beside me.
“Then let me know when you need me closer.”
I kept that sentence with me for years.
By December 2019, six years had passed since Salem. Luke and I had built a life together.
Looking back, I can make those years sound as though they disappeared overnight. They didn’t. They were filled with ordinary days: early starts at the florist’s, bills, birthdays, disagreements, holidays and evenings when Luke came home too tired to do anything except fall asleep beside me on the sofa.
Luke was still an architect, and I was still a florist. We had built a life together, gradually enough that I sometimes forgot how unlikely it would once have seemed.
There was a winter when work at the shop slowed and I worried about money in a way Brian never had. There was a summer when one of Luke’s projects kept him away so often that we had to learn how to argue without treating disappointment as an accusation.
When we decided to live together, I cried while packing my things at Frank’s apartment. I had wanted a home of my own with Luke. I had not expected leaving my brother’s spare key on the table to feel like another departure.
“You can keep that,” Frank said, putting it back in my hand.
“What if I abuse the privilege?”
“You already do. You eat all the good biscuits.”
We settled into Sunday dinners, shared holidays and messages about nothing important. Our lives grew larger without quite growing apart.
Before moving in with Luke, I finally told him about Salem.
I had rehearsed the explanation so many times that the real conversation came out in the wrong order. I began with football, went back to Jessica, forgot to mention the talisman and had to start again. Luke listened without smiling.
When I finished, he sat for a long time without speaking.
“I know how it sounds,” I said.
“I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
I showed him the notebook I had begun in Chicago. Some entries were written through tears, some in anger. Others were lists of small things: how to get through a day at work, what I missed, what I was beginning to enjoy.
He turned the pages carefully. I could see how impossible it was to offer him proof of a world that had been erased.
“Have you been carrying all this alone?” he asked.
“Frank knows. He remembers too.”
“Your brother?”
I nodded.
Luke put the notebook down.
“I can’t pretend I know how to make sense of the magic.” He reached for my hand. “But I believe you’re telling me what happened to you.”
The relief was so sharp that I began to cry before I could answer.
There were more conversations after that. Sometimes he needed to ask a question twice. Sometimes I had to tell him I did not know. He spoke with Frank, with my agreement, and came away looking shaken but less bewildered.
One night he asked whether I still wished I could go back.
“Sometimes I miss it,” I said. “That isn’t the same as wanting to leave you.”
“I needed to hear that.”
“I needed to be able to say it.”
He drew me closer. We stayed on the sofa until the room grew dark.
Frank told Susan in his own time. I knew because she asked me, very gently, whether I wanted to talk about my childhood. When I said not that evening, she simply offered to put the kettle on.
After that, neither of us had to keep the most important part of our past outside the lives we were building.
I still watched football. Once, I volunteered to help with a local youth session and discovered that explaining a throw to a child was harder than making it myself had ever been. When the ball finally landed where she wanted it, she turned to me with such triumph that I found myself cheering as loudly as her father.
I came home with grass stains on my jeans. Luke asked how it had gone.
“Good,” I said, and meant more by the word than I could explain.
Frank and Susan were still together too. He was now working for Fox News and seemed to thrive on the pressure.
Rebecca remained a good friend. We still met at the gym and occasionally went out for coffee, although the romantic part of our friendship belonged firmly in the past.
Then, in December 2019, our parents invited us all home for Christmas.
I spoke to Mum and Dad regularly, but I had not been back to the family house since before Salem. We had met them for short visits in Chicago over the years. Even those had taken courage at first. Going home felt like a different test, one I had found excuses to postpone.
The truth was harder to admit.
The last time I remembered standing in their house, I had been their son.
The talisman had given them a lifetime of memories of Chantelle, their daughter. I had inherited some of those memories too, but they never quite erased my own.
Now I was approaching thirty and bringing my boyfriend home.
Frank understood why I was nervous. He had his own memories to contend with.
We travelled from Chicago to Kansas in one car, sharing the driving on the long journey. Susan brought enough snacks for a small expedition, and Luke spent the final hour insisting that we must be nearly there.
When Dad opened the front door, all my carefully rehearsed greetings vanished.
“There she is!”
He pulled me into a hug before I could answer.
Mum appeared behind him, already smiling.
“Come inside, all of you. You must be freezing.”
For a few seconds, I held on to her longer than I intended.
The house smelled of baking and furniture polish. There were new curtains and a different sofa, but the familiar creak on the stairs was still there.
I was home.
The sleeping arrangements caused the first awkward moment.
“Your cousin’s having Frank’s old room when she arrives,” Mum explained. “So Luke and Frank can have the den. Chantelle, you and Susan can share your room.”
“My room?”
Mum gave me a puzzled look.
“Yes, darling. Where else?”
Upstairs, I opened the bedroom door and stopped.
Pink walls. Pale curtains. A white dressing table.
Susan peered past me.
“Oh, I had almost exactly that colour when I was little!”
“I was hoping you might not notice.”
“The entire room?”
I dropped my bag beside the bed and laughed.
There were photographs on the shelves of a childhood I could remember in two different ways. In one picture, a young blonde girl stood beside Frank in the garden.
I recognised the afternoon.
I also remembered being the boy holding the football.
“You all right?” Susan asked.
“Yes. Just strange being back.”
We unpacked, and I glanced at the double bed.
“You don’t mind sharing?”
“Of course not.”
“I can get another blanket if you’d prefer—”
“Chantelle, it’s fine.” She smiled. “Although I should warn you, I sometimes cuddle people in my sleep.”
“I’ll consider myself warned.”
“Frank does it too. He can fall asleep holding me and stay like that all night.”
There was such affection in her voice that I found myself smiling.
“I’m glad he’s got you.”
“So am I.”
That evening, I discovered why Luke had been unusually nervous throughout the journey.
After dinner, he asked me to join him beside the Christmas tree. Frank and Susan followed, while Mum suddenly became very interested in finding her camera.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Luke took both my hands.
“Chantelle, I had a speech planned.”
“That sounds worrying.”
He laughed, but his fingers were trembling.
“It was a good speech too. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any of it.”
Then he lowered himself onto one knee.
I stared at him.
“I love you,” he said. “I love the life we’ve made together, and I want to keep making it with you. Will you marry me?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Then I managed, “Yes.”
“Was that a yes?”
“Yes, you idiot!”
He slipped the ring onto my finger, and I was laughing and crying when he stood to kiss me.
Before I had recovered, Susan gasped beside us.
Frank was on one knee too.
“You two planned this?” I asked.
“For months,” Frank admitted.
Susan said yes before he could finish his proposal.
Mum cried. Dad shook both men’s hands, then decided handshakes were insufficient and hugged them instead.
Somewhere amid the laughter and photographs, Susan suggested a double wedding.
“In the spring,” she said.
I looked at Luke.
He smiled. “If that’s what you want.”
I looked down at my ring.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Susan and I barely slept that night.
We lay in my old bedroom discussing dresses, flowers, venues and whether a simple wedding could remain simple once our mothers became involved.
Every so often, one of us would switch on the bedside lamp to look at her ring again.
At three in the morning, Susan caught me doing it.
“You too?”
“I wanted to make sure it was still there.”
She laughed and held up her own hand.
By breakfast, we had made several plans, changed most of them and agreed that we probably needed some sleep before making any deposits.
After a walk in the cold morning air, we gathered around the tree to open our Christmas presents.
I gave Luke the watch I had chosen weeks earlier.
He fastened it around his wrist immediately.
“Perfect.”
His present to me was a necklace with matching diamond earrings.
I lifted the necklace from its box, watching it catch the light.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Help me put it on.”
My fingers brushed his as he fastened the clasp, and Mum insisted on another photograph.
Later, I joined her in the kitchen. Susan followed, and soon we were peeling potatoes and trying to keep three separate conversations going over the noise of the extractor fan.
Mum stopped halfway through preparing the vegetables.
“A son-in-law and a daughter-in-law,” she said, smiling to herself. “That’s quite a Christmas present.”
“The weddings haven’t happened yet,” I reminded her.
“I’m choosing to be optimistic.”
“And already planning where everyone will sit?” Susan asked.
“Possibly.”
Christmas dinner was noisy, crowded and wonderful.
Afterwards, Frank unpacked the games console Susan had bought him. I picked up a controller and discovered that years of playing less often had done very little to soften my competitive streak.
“You said you hadn’t played in years,” Luke protested after I beat him.
“I haven’t.”
Frank grinned.
“She’s always been like this.”
I glanced at him, and for a moment we shared a memory that belonged only to us.
Five months later, the wedding day arrived.
The preparations had been more work than I expected. Even with a modest guest list and a simple ceremony, there always seemed to be another decision waiting.
Choosing the dresses was the strangest day of all.
I stood on a little platform in front of a full-length mirror while Mum and Susan studied me.
“Well?” I asked.
Mum pressed a tissue to her eyes.
“That good?”
She nodded.
I turned slightly, watching the skirt move.
Never, in my old life, had I imagined being the bride. Yet as I looked at the woman in the mirror, I could picture Luke waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
“I think this is the one,” I said.
Two weeks before the wedding, Susan and I went to Atlantic City with our friends for a hen weekend.
There was gambling, dancing, too little sleep and an evening’s entertainment that had Rebecca laughing at my embarrassment.
The last time I had gone away for a wedding celebration, I had been one of the men on a stag weekend.
Now I was wearing a ridiculous sash while my future sister-in-law insisted that the next round was hers.
Life had certainly become inventive.
On the morning of the wedding, I woke before the alarm.
For a few quiet minutes, I lay in the hotel bed and listened to Susan sleeping.
Then she opened one eye.
“Are you panicking?”
“A little.”
“Good. I’d hate to be doing it alone.”
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of hairpins, makeup brushes and people telling us to sit still.
By the time I was dressed, my feet were already questioning my choice of shoes.
Then Dad knocked.
When he stepped into the room, he stopped in the doorway.
“Oh, Chantelle.”
“Please don’t cry,” I said. “They’ve only just finished my makeup.”
He laughed, although his eyes were wet.
“You look beautiful.”
He took a photograph of Susan and me standing together by the window. In it, we were holding our bouquets and trying very hard to look calm.
Neither of us succeeded.
I remember very little of walking down the aisle.
I remember Dad’s arm beneath my hand.
I remember the flowers.
Most clearly, I remember Luke’s face when he saw me.
Once I reached him, I stopped worrying about the guests, the dress and whether I might trip.
“You look incredible,” he whispered.
“You look nervous.”
“I am.”
“Me too.”
His hand closed around mine.
Beside us, Frank and Susan exchanged a look that made Mum reach for another tissue.
We spoke our vows. We exchanged rings.
When Luke kissed me, our family applauded, and I found myself laughing against his lips.
Later came speeches, photographs and a meal I had been too nervous to feel hungry for until the moment it arrived.
Our first dance was slightly clumsy.
“Sorry,” Luke murmured after stepping on my dress.
“You’re supposed to be an architect. I thought you understood space.”
“I work with buildings. They move less.”
Across the room, Frank was dancing with Susan.
He caught my eye over her shoulder and smiled.
I smiled back.
We had both come a long way.
Frank and Susan went to Honolulu for their honeymoon.
Luke and I went to Venice.
We wandered beside canals, got lost in narrow streets and stopped for coffee whenever our feet began to ache. Some days we made plans over breakfast and abandoned them before we reached the hotel door.
There were quiet evenings, long conversations and mornings when neither of us wanted to get up.
The week passed far too quickly.
Soon we were home, unpacking suitcases and remembering which day the bins went out.
Then, a few weeks later, I started feeling unwell.
At first, I blamed tiredness. When the nausea kept returning, I bought a pregnancy test.
I left it on the bathroom counter and walked away.
Then I came back almost immediately.
Two lines.
I sat on the edge of the bath.
“Oh.”
I had known pregnancy was possible. We had both known. Somehow, that knowledge had remained comfortably distant until that morning.
I made an appointment with my doctor.
When she confirmed the result, I felt frightened, delighted and completely unprepared.
That evening, I waited until Luke had put his work bag down.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
His expression changed.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.”
I took his hand.
“I’m pregnant.”
He stared at me.
For one awful second, I thought I had misjudged everything.
Then his face broke into a smile.
“Really?”
I nodded.
He hugged me, then pulled back abruptly.
“Sorry. Was that too tight?”
“No,” I said, laughing through tears. “You can hug me.”
We sat together for a long time that evening.
We discussed money, work, the spare room and all the things we didn’t know. For the first time, we spoke seriously about becoming parents.
The next day, I telephoned Frank.
He went quiet when I told him.
“Frank?”
“I’m here.”
“Say something.”
“I’m trying to imagine you telling me this when we were sitting in that hotel in Salem.”
“So am I.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Happy. Scared. Sick.”
“That sounds like quite a combination.”
“It is.”
He told me how pleased he was for us. Before we ended the call, he added, more softly, “I’m glad you’ve found a life you want.”
I looked across the room at the wedding photograph on the mantelpiece.
“So am I.”
The following months passed in appointments, antenatal classes and increasingly determined attempts to find a comfortable sleeping position.
At the florist’s, I eventually had to let someone else carry the heavy buckets.
“You can supervise,” my colleague told me.
“I was already doing that.”
“Yes, but now you can do it sitting down.”
Michael helped me plan my leave before I had worked out how to ask. He showed me the rota, asked what I hoped to manage and reminded me that a flower shop could survive without my personally lifting every bucket.
I went home that evening remembering the man who had come in to order his wife’s funeral flowers on my first day. By then I had made arrangements for births, anniversaries, apologies and farewells. Some customers knew my name. One always asked whether I had seen the game.
When people asked what I did, I no longer heard a silent comparison with the career I had lost.
“I’m a florist,” I told them.
By the final weeks, everything required planning: getting out of bed, putting on shoes, locating the nearest toilet.
Luke assembled the cot, took it apart because he thought he had made a mistake, then assembled it again exactly as before.
I stood in the nursery doorway watching him.
“Are you sure you design buildings?”
“Please don’t tell anyone about this.”
At night, we would sit with his hand resting against my stomach, waiting for a kick.
“There,” I whispered one evening.
He looked at me in astonishment.
“I felt that.”
“I should hope so. It’s been happening to me all day.”
Naturally, labour began while Luke was out of town.
When my waters broke, I stood in the kitchen staring at the floor.
Then I reached for my phone.
Luke didn’t answer.
I tried again.
Still nothing.
For a moment, panic made it difficult to think. Then I remembered the plan we had made.
I called Susan.
“I think it’s happening.”
“I’m coming.”
She arrived within minutes, collected my hospital bag and somehow managed to sound perfectly calm while I asked the same questions repeatedly.
At the hospital, she finally reached Luke.
“He’s on his way,” she told me.
“How far away?”
“He’s coming as quickly as he safely can.”
She stayed beside me through the early contractions, held my hand and reminded me to breathe when I forgot everything I had learned.
Then Luke appeared in the doorway, breathless and pale.
“I’m here.”
“You took your time,” I said.
“I know.”
I gripped his hand.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
Labour was harder than I had hoped and different from what I had feared.
There were long stretches of waiting, followed by moments when nothing mattered except getting through the next contraction.
The midwife’s steady voice helped. So did the pain relief, Luke’s hand and knowing Susan was nearby.
When the time came to push, I was exhausted.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“You’re doing it,” the midwife told me. “Listen to me. One step at a time.”
So I listened.
And eventually, amid the effort and confusion, I heard our baby cry.
The midwife placed the tiny, warm bundle against my chest.
I looked down at a scrunched face and a little hand opening against my skin.
“Hello,” I whispered.
It was the only word I could manage.
Luke kissed my forehead. When I looked up, he was crying.
Our baby settled against me, and I began to cry too.
The next day, Frank arrived carrying flowers and a stuffed toy almost as large as the baby.
He approached the bed with unusual caution.
“Come closer,” I told him. “We don’t bite.”
“You might. You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
He looked down at the baby, and his smile softened.
“How was it?”
I considered the question.
“Hard.”
“I gathered that.”
“Frightening at times. Then suddenly there was a baby.”
He sat beside me.
After a while, he asked, “Would you do it again?”
“Ask me when I’ve had some sleep.”
He laughed.
“Luke and I have talked about two,” I admitted. “Eventually.”
“Eventually sounds sensible.”
The baby stirred, and I adjusted the blanket.
For a little while, neither of us spoke.
Then I looked at my brother.
“I haven’t forgotten, you know.”
There was more behind those words than the two of us could ever explain in a hospital room. But by then, Luke and Susan knew our story. We no longer had to hide the difficult memories from the people we loved.
His smile faded slightly.
“What happened?”
I nodded.
“I know.”
“It was hard, Frank.”
“I know that too.”
I watched him for a moment, then reached for his hand.
“But I’m happy now.”
He squeezed my fingers.
“I can see that.”
Motherhood did not turn every day into a perfect ending.
There were nappies, broken nights, feeding worries and mornings when I couldn’t remember whether I had eaten breakfast.
Sometimes Luke and I were so tired that we argued over things neither of us cared about.
Sometimes the baby settled just as my tea went cold.
But there were other moments too.
A little hand closing around my finger.
Luke asleep in the chair with our baby against his chest.
The first smile I was certain belonged to me.
One evening, after a particularly difficult day, I stood in the nursery doorway and watched my husband lift our child from the cot.
“There’s Mum,” he said softly.
I stepped forward and held out my arms.
Years earlier, I had woken in an unfamiliar body, desperate to get back everything I had lost. I could still remember that fear. I could still remember the life before it.
Now our baby settled against my shoulder, and Luke rested his hand on my back.
“Coming downstairs?” he asked.
“In a minute.”
I stayed there a little longer, listening to the small, sleepy breaths beside my ear.
Then I followed my husband downstairs.
THE END
A story by AG 💕
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