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“Do you reckon Petra would cheat on me?” I said to Lyndsey’s gravestone the following day. In the absence of Petra herself, and the nullification of my own personal to-do list, I’d found myself up at the graveyard.
It was a bit of a stupid question. Lyndsey, when she was alive, had never met Petra. Petra had been up here with me on a few occasions to visit her, but she’d never said a word to her. On some level, I think she thought that speaking to a dead relative’s gravestone was a bit odd, which was why I’d never asked her to come with me to visit Mum’s and Dad’s. But it was how I coped – it was how I had always coped – and thus she had never questioned it.
“Okay, I know you don’t know her that well,” I sighed. “But if you are watching above me, you’ll have seen what’s going on. The last month or so, she’s been acting very strangely. Paying more attention to what she wears, wearing more perfume, coming home late, darting away at random moments… I didn’t see it until the other day, but they’re all neon flashing signs, aren’t they?”
Silence. As expected, of course.
I sighed again.
“It’s probably my own fault, if she’s playing away. Well, partially. My head’s not exactly been in the game recently. The more I chase her, the more she seems to be withdrawing. But that doesn’t justify her having an affair!” I spat, before forcing myself to remain calm.
“Of course, I have no proof. I looked at her phone, but the only texts between her and the potential culprit are in code, and very sporadic at that. And I can’t catch her in the act, because they work together and I can’t exactly walk into the school unannounced. Perhaps I need to convince her that I’m still desirable. I’m not sure how, though. Neither of us have any sort of libido at the moment.”
Now I stared miserably at the gravestone. I’d run out of words, which was unusual for me. Normally I could chatter away nineteen-to-the-dozen with my sister, just as we had together when she was alive. Today, I seemed to have lost my voice.
But I couldn’t turn around and walk away now. I’d only been here five minutes, including the quickest tidy-up of the stone I’d ever managed. Such a short time was unjustifiable, but I had nothing left to say.
In the absence of anything else to do, I pulled out my phone. Anti-social, maybe, but I preferred to think of it as co-existing in companionable silence. There wasn’t a whole lot of signal in the graveyard, but enough to check my messages (none) and then open Instagram and start scrolling through the short cat videos and interspersed adverts.
One of them caught my eye. I had automatically scrolled past it, but then I backtracked, screwing up my face as a thought passed through my head.
Well… maybe it’s worth a shot.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Just over twenty-four hours later, my lip curled as I surveyed the two objects nestled in a puddle of plastic packaging on the bed.
You might as well put them on, I told myself, but made no effort to pick them up.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. The advert that had given me pause in the graveyard was a lingerie advert. But not the usual ones consisting of a sex goddess wearing crotchless knickers and a pair of ‘fuck-me eyes’. This advert consisted of a middle-aged woman – about my age, actually – modelling underwear that was attractive yet tasteful. It made me wonder. Was this the sort of thing Petra would want me wearing? Would this resurrect us from the Lesbian Bed Death in which we found ourselves?
Lingerie, I had mouthed to myself, then – for the first time in my life, and with more than a little trepidation – clicked on the advert.
Once I’d gotten over the initial astonishment that I had not, in fact, been sent to some dodgy scam website, I’d clicked through the wares. Petra would have worn them to perfection, Greek goddess that she was, but the idea of me adorning any of them turned my stomach. When it came to underwear, I was firmly in my no-frills purely-functional practically-granny-pants era, and the last time I’d worn anything deliberately provocative had been in my twenties, eons before my days with Petra.
But perhaps it was time for a change. Make the most of what nature had given me, as it were. Galvanise us back into action.
“Can’t believe I’m looking at sexy undies while sitting at my sister’s graveside…” I’d muttered to myself, but still didn’t click off the website.
I’d selected what I thought was the least hideous of the matching sets. Then it was a case of going home and measuring myself to find out what actually fit – it had been so long since I’d actually bought anything of this ilk, I didn’t even know my size any more. Once added to basket, I’d discovered that they did an express next-day delivery. No time like the present. Before I could chicken out, I’d entered my card details and had a confirmation email pinging into my inbox. Only then did I sit back and curse my over-ambitious self.
Now I cursed them yet again, and checked my watch. Petra would be home any time now. With that hollow tiredness in her eyes, and the drawn look on her face, and the tense jaw that clearly ached from grinding. The longing to take that all away, and replace it with euphoria, spurred me into action. I adorned the matching lingerie set quickly and efficiently, then opened the wardrobe door to check it out in the full-length mirror.
And immediately started crying. As if some invisible force had taken hold of my lungs, I held a hand to my chest to try and draw in oxygen between my choked sobs.
That’s not me. That’s not me. The words whirled around my head again. I’m not her.
The reflection in the mirror was wrong. It didn’t match the one in my head. There wasn’t one in my head per se, but I knew that the one I saw now was not it. I wasn’t supposed to have these attributes. Or this innately female face, or the womanly voice that filled the room when I moaned “No, no, no,” to myself. My knees gave way and I sunk to the floor.
I really needed to figure this out. I knew I wasn’t a woman, but I’d been putting off thinking about what I actually was. It was a daunting prospect, and my mouth went dry as I struggled to pull in some air. What if it sent my mental health spiralling out of control again? Petra wouldn’t be there for me. She had her hands too full.
How could I put myself at risk of falling, if Petra wasn’t going to catch me?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Just then, as if she’d sensed what was happening and had timed her entrance accordingly, I heard Petra’s key in the door.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself under my breath, making a dive for the bathroom. I heard her call a greeting, then my name, but I didn’t respond, dousing a cloth in cold water and holding it to my eyes, then my nose, praying that the redness would die down. Emotionally, I used every fibre of my being to put a freeze on my distress. In my mind, I selected performance mode, just as I would have done if a neighbour had come to the door, or if it had been time to go to choir practice, or if the phone had rung.
