To my surprise I found not only Sandra but both, her and May, cuddled together half asleep on the Sofa in the lounge. Even though I was tired in a way I was much too exited by the day’s events to just let them be and go to bed. In any case Sandra had heard me and they woke up, Sandra jumping off the sofa to hug me fiercely.

“It is just as well we know no news to be good news!” She chided me. “You did it, I assume?”

As I relaxed into her hug the tears came again, but this time a mix of happiness and pain, happiness about my success and pain about the feelings for Josephine.

“Wow,” May said joining in the hug “that meeting must have been something else!”

“You cannot imagine!” I sobbed “Yes, I got the job. But the other thing that happened was so much more intense.”

The tears came back with a vengeance. Both of them just held me, then led me to the sofa and sat either side of me, patiently waiting for me to calm down a little. Sandra gently caressed my cheek.

“Tell us, Honey.” she said softly.

So I tried to calm down and make sense of what I was feeling. Looking back at that moment of terrible clarity I nevertheless had to smile. I had not though myself capable of such love and yet, through all the pain of her apparent rejection I was not to be deterred. I loved her! Deeply!

“I fell in love!” I sighed.

“Oh Honey, that is wonderful! How? Who? Where have you been for so long?” Sandra was excited for me I could feel that.

“It was really frightening, Sandra. I had just started to feel comfortable with the girls of the technical team, when the last one arrived. I just looked at her and I immediately knew that if I could not be with her I would never love anyone else again in my life. But that was not the worst. I also realised, that I would never want to touch her to make love before I was as much a woman as is humanly possible.”

Sandra pulled me back into a tight hug as the tears flowed.

“How did she react?” May asked.

“She hates me!” I sobbed.

“Oh God, why?” May again.

“Because she thinks I am a macho guy who is making fun of all of them and will go back to being a man afterwards and laugh my head off about all of their stupidity. And she thinks I will try to take advantage of being so close to all those girls and try to ...”

The simple thought she could expect that from me stabbed me through the heart.

“She must be one seriously disturbed and hurt woman.” Sandra commented “How can she not see the sweet and gentle girl you are inside?”

“Probably,” I sobbed “because when I talk about the job according to Florence, Valerie and Abigail I have this natural and undeniable authority, I suppose.” I sobbed.

“What the fuck? You are good at your Job! Why should that make you less of a woman?” Sandra fumed.

I had no idea. But slowly a firm determination built inside of me. I would definitely find out. I would be kind, friendly and patient with her, keep my frustration in check. Try to love her without being obvious. Both Sandra and May noticed the change and Sandra’s anger subsided. She wiped the tears of my face and most of the make-up with them. Then she got up and went to the kitchen, coming back with a tumbler half full of an amber liquid that she handed to me saying:

“Here, Honey, that is my very special Whisky. It is highly potent, drink it wisely.” she giggled actually at her last words.

The stuff smelled lovely and was so smooth as the fist tentative sip went down my throat.

“It is eighty proof.” Sandra giggled “You would not believe that possible, would you?”

Well, now that she said it I could certainly feel its potency in my stomach.

“Now that your senses are returning, Monique, what happened otherwise?”

So I went through the event with them, how Florence had taken my hand and helped me through the awkward moment and how I had convinced everyone but Josephine, signed the contract and had gone to dinner with Florence. I recounted her story of her friend and Sandra laughed saying:

“See? It is not just me. You just are a woman inside, Monique. Let her out, BE her. You’re lovely. And I have to meet that Florence and thank her. She sounds a wonderful person.”

“They really are lovely, all three of them, Florence is the manageress, Valerie the director and Abigail the producer. They are paying me a substantial advance, that will be taken off my monthly salary in instalments, so that I can really get myself some nice clothes and so on. I signed the contract with Monique Madelaine, so I’ll have to get my passport adjusted with the name Monique Madelaine as an artists name and a new photo.”

I could not help but to laugh. They are going to make eyes, when they see the old photo and the new me, I thought. Then I would have to change my driving licence for an English one, now that I was certain that I was staying for at least three years. I would have to go and register with the tax office, the NHS and who knows else. I was not looking forward to the bureaucracy of the change, knowing how particular the Germans could be in that respect. But all that was for another day.

“And some really good champaign!”

Sandra pulled me back to the present with her remark “There has to be a real celebration. After all this is your birthday as Monique.”

“Yes,” I sighed “it is, isn’t it? What a day.”

“That woman, what is her name? She is so lucky to be loved by you and she doesn’t even know or appreciate. I might want to shake some sense into her.”

This time it was me who hugged her.

“You, Darling, are the best friend a girl can have.” I whispered and continued towards May “You’re a lucky girl, May.”

“Yes, I am, am I not?” May giggled back and the three of us hugged tightly.

“Her name is Josephine, by the way.” I said.

“What does she look like?”

After I had described her in detail it was May who summed it up nicely saying:

“I bet she doesn’t even know if she is straight or gay. And she is definitely afraid of her own beauty. Does she at least know her job?”

“That is something I’ll have to find out.” I replied “But if she doesn’t I’d love to teach her, if she’ll let me, that is.”

The feelings for her were back in full force.

“How much I’d love that! I do not think I have felt like that ever. It makes my intestines go all liquid and there are butterflies in my stomach.”

“I knew you’d not do anything by half.” Sandra laughed “You’re so much girl! Monique, Honey, it is such a pleasure to see you waking up!”

To my dismay that brought the tears back but it seemed to make Sandra happy as it just reinforced the point she had been making. So I just sipped my whisky and tried to relax, which brought the tiredness forward. I yawned.

“Right, sweetie,” Sandra said “time we got you to bed, Monique.”

I woke up on Sunday to some rays of sunshine that tickled my nose through the gap in the curtains of my bedroom. I felt my new hair in my face and the silk night dress caress my bare skin, reminding me that I now was to be a woman. NO, I thought I now am a woman. After what I realised about my feelings towards Josephine there was no doubt left. I was a woman in love and I was evidently a lesbian. How was I going to cope? I got up and padded barefooted into the kitchen to brew myself a coffee.

Sandra and May were already sitting at the table with some tea and had ground some fresh beans for me, the kettle was still on the gas and the cafetière on the table. This was heaven.

“Look at her” May giggled “dishevelled as she is she looks good enough to eat. Monique, you’re really cute.”

Was there a better way to start a Sunday? I doubted that. I smiled at the two of them and gave each a kiss on the cheek.

“Good morning you two.”

I then filled the coffee into the cafetière and poured the hot water over it then gently pushed the filter down. With a content sigh I poured myself a coffee.

“Any plans for today Honey?” Sandra asked.

“Have a nice hot bath and try to make sense of things.” I replied.

“What is there to makes sense off? You’ve fallen in love, hard!” Sandra giggled.

“Well, that is the easy bit. What about me wanting to be a woman to make love to her?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Monique? You want her to love who you truly are.”

“That is very easy for you to say, Sandra, but inside it all feels very weird and confused to say the least. Don’t forget I thought of myself as a man for most of about thirty years.”

“Sorry, Honey, but did you really? Were there never any doubts? Did you never think it strange, that the two of us were as close as girl friends?”

Honestly thinking about that question I felt something very uncomfortable stirring my memory. Not only uncomfortable, I felt a real pain between my legs and in one of my balls. It was excruciating almost. Sandra was suddenly at my side feeling my forehead.

“You’ve gone all pale, Honey, what’s the matter?”

Just then the memory came back. I was almost eleven. I had managed the exam you needed to pass in those days to be accepted into higher secondary education. It was a very prestigious school and I had been chosen to join the choir as lead Soprano. I had been more than happy. As a result my parents had taken me to a concert of the Wiener Sängerknaben, who, as part of the concert, performed an act of one of Mozart’s minor operas: Bastien and Bastienne. Seeing the boys dressed as beautifully as girls and singing that heavenly music I had immediately started pestering my parents to let me go to the School in Vienna and become one of those boys who sang the female roles. My father was disgusted. My mother did not know what to say.

Then my father chose to explain, that in a couple of years puberty would put an end to my soprano voice and I should man up and forget that nonsense. I did not, though. I read up on it and discovered, that in medieval times the Catholic priests in Italy sometimes castrated the choir boys with the most feminine voices so that they’d become singers for the female roles in operas as well as for the church choirs and - of course – sex objects for the bishops and higher priests, even some popes. So when we went on holidays that Summer to Baltrum, an island off the German North Sea coast, I decided to try and castrate myself disguising it as an accident. I pretended to balance on a wire fence, that had a very sturdy steel wire waste basket next to it, that was higher than my legs were long. I faked losing balance and jumped into it in a fashion, that one leg was in and one out.

It had only partially worked. Yes, my testicles were seriously damaged but not destroyed, the surgeon said to my mother (what she never revealed to me before my 21st birthday) that there was nothing they could do but hope for nature to heal me. It did and it didn’t. My voice broke, but I never produced sperm in one testicle and the other was weak, neither of them produced the full amount of testosterone.

I had completely repressed that memory. I’d even gone so far to have myself tattooed a skull with wings on my left shoulder by a buddy with drawing ink and two needles bound together with sewing thread to prove myself a real man, when I was seventeen.

The three of us were crying hard as I haltingly related the story. May and Sandra moved their chairs to either side of me, as I let the cathartic memory wash out of me with the flood of tears and sobs and held me tight. The pain was reducing in my crotch bit by bit as I cried and I was wondering how Sandra and May were coping with me being such a fuck up. That was the moment I understood, that I needed to stop that exact train of thought. The ones fucked up had been my parents. My music teacher actually had supported the notion of applying to Vienna. There I would have been with other boys in the same situation and teachers who possibly understood. But then in those days transgender was not a word commonly used or understood.

Nevertheless here I was now, beginning my transition to womanhood, a wish I had repressed violently for more time I cared to think about. Finally I stopped crying.