Human Remains

that I can hold even this back from her. Now the balance of power has shifted to me, and I choose to leave her as she is – humiliated, suffering, trapped.
    It gives me immense personal satisfaction.
    Back to work tomorrow. I wonder how Vaughn’s doing. I think I shall need a pint and some inane conversation by lunchtime.
     

Briarstone Chronicle
     
    October
Another Lonely Death – A Community in Shock
     
    Once again this week Briarstone police officers made a grim discovery when they were called to a house in Blackthorn Row, Swepham following reports of a foul smell in the area. The body of a man, believed to be Edward Langton, 28, was discovered in the bedroom of the property. Mr Langton had not been seen for many months and a source said that the body was found in a badly decomposed state.
    At the time of writing, no relatives of the deceased had come forward. The sad death of Mr Langton is just the latest in a shocking number of decomposed bodies found in Briarstone homes in the last few months.
    It is not known if the death of Mr Langton has been linked by the police to Dana Viliscevina and Eileen Forbes, who were both found in their homes last week. Investigations are continuing.
     
Love Your Neighbour Campaign – latest events in your area, pages 34–35.
     

Eloise
     
    I knew I was in the wrong body when I was much younger, probably before I knew anything else that was a solid fact. I played with girls all the time, my two sisters and all their friends, and until the age of about eight or nine I didn’t even really think of myself as different from them, as separate in any way. If it hadn’t been for my dad, we might have carried on as we were and my life would have been very different. But my dad was a man’s man, a former miner, who wanted me to play rugby and if I couldn’t manage that then he would settle for football; he wanted me to stand shoulder to shoulder with him as I grew up. He wanted someone he could take to the pub on a Sunday morning while my mam cooked us both a roast lunch and my sisters chirped and cooed over their babies.
    I loved my father and hated him equally; he was never violent towards me when I was growing up, but his displeasure was bad enough. So I learned how to play the game, I learned how to change my voice to suit his conversation and how to sit on my hands and hold my head down.
    When I passed my A-levels I was offered a place at art school in London. My father wanted me to study engineering if I was going to ‘waste time’ instead of going out to get a proper job. We had arguments about it and I thought that I wasn’t going to be allowed to go. My mother talked him round, in the end, and he gave in because he loved her and she was the rock upon which his life was built.
    At last I set off for the big city. It was like being free when you’d been in prison for most of your life. I studied fashion and design, and every time I drew the female shape and dressed it in gorgeous fabrics and accessories I knew that that was what I was inside, not the lanky lad who everyone thought was obviously gay. By then I had friends, too, whom I loved and trusted. And an older man who taught me how it felt to be loved properly for who I was. I had no money but I started thinking seriously about gender reassignment. I even went so far as to see my GP to ask about the possibility of this being funded by the NHS.
    Mam knew all about this, but we’d both agreed that the time wasn’t right to talk to my dad. It was something that was going to take a long time for him; acceptance was not going to come overnight. She wanted to tell him that I was gay, but that wasn’t the right thing. I wasn’t gay, I was a woman who fancied men the same way as my sisters did. My genitals were wrong; my hormones were wrong. For me it was as simple as having an illness, a physical handicap that meant my bits were malformed and malfunctioning. No different really from having diabetes or hyperthyroidism or any other illness related to the wrong sort of enzyme or hormone.
    She didn’t tell him, in the end. She left it up to me to tell him at the right time.
    Of course, that right time never presented itself until it was all too late. I started going to the gender identity clinic, and after that I started to live as a woman on a permanent basis. This was relatively easy in London, especially in the arty fashion circles I inhabited. Everything felt right for the first time – apart from my