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Every step brought me closer to her voice, until about halfway up I was able to discern her words.
“Oh, my life’s a bit of a disaster at the moment,” she laughed gaily. “It’s not all shits and giggles out here after all. But it’s a damn sight better than what we dealt with at home, as you’ll be finding out shortly enough. I’m just so, so bloody proud of you for getting out of their clutches.”
A pause. I furrowed my brow. Who could she be speaking to?
“Nicholas.” For a split second I thought she was answering my telepathic thought, but then I gauged her firm, no-nonsense tone. “No. Nicholas. You cannot think like that. Mama and Papa’s intentions may have been honourable, but their actions towards us over the years were not.”
Another pause, and then she sighed.
“Well, they’re right enough there. As you know. Perhaps when you’re in a more stable position, one of us can travel to the other and we can meet up. Where have you moved to? Berwick? That’s… on the English border with Scotland, isn’t it?”
My eyebrows shot up, as I imagined hers doing. I wasn’t surprised to learn that her youngest brother had fought her parents and run away the same way she had done, but Berwick-upon-Tweed seemed rather a random place to move to.
“Sorry, did you say your boyfriend?” Petra said faintly. “Are you coming out to me? Because that’s… that’s wonderful. Oh, my God, Nicholas… is that where he lives, then? Your boyfriend?”
Ah. Now it made sense.
“I’m so happy for you, you know that? I don’t even know him but I can hear in your voice how in love you are.”
I smiled despite everything.
“Me? Yes, I’m still with Jean. Um…” she chuckled, “well, just about. We’re going through a bit of a rough patch. Very much my fault. I’ve taken on too much at work, and I’m sort of… neglecting her. And being an arse, to boot. But we only have to get through a handful more weeks, and I think we’ve agreed that we just need to put our heads down and get on with it. Just surge through all the shit we’re going through, then come back to each other when term ends.”
Now I found myself freezing completely. I had been about to go back down the stairs, but hearing this stopped me in my tracks, and I sank down onto the step.
“Oh, of course I do. And I really do miss what we had. But people change, you know? The honeymoon phase doesn’t last forever. We’ve been together nearly ten years, so of course we’re not exactly the same people we fell in love with. But you have to look past that. Around it. Communicate on it. Which we haven’t been doing, even before all this headteacher business. We’ve really been getting on each other’s nerves for a while, but we’re still us. We’re still Jean and Petra – just a slightly different edition. And we’ll be back to normal once work gets sorted out. I’ll be able to be who I was before. Nicholas – Nicholas.” She paused for impact. “Take. Care. Of. Your. Relationship. Hear that? Because we haven’t been doing that, Jean and I, and it’s really driving us apart. I just… can’t help the way I am at the moment. If I rock the boat now, I’ll probably send myself spiralling, and then who knows what could happen?”
I’d heard enough. Nicholas said something, and she latched onto that and started talking about something else. I stood up, hoping to goodness that the floorboards wouldn’t creak, and crept back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
It was good to know that she saw what was happening between us. That it wasn’t just all in my head, like many of the mild delusions I had experienced during my grief-stricken breakdown post-Lyndsey. And that I wasn’t going mad, like I had briefly thought.
I tried hard to believe what she was saying. That we were being pushed and pulled and mauled by life, but that we would spring back into place over the summer holidays and return to how we were. But my gut feeling was that this wouldn’t be the case. Since we last properly checked in with each other, I had discovered that I was a different gender to the one she had thought I was. And who knew what would happen when I told her that? I still didn’t want to think about it.
Because when I realised what gender I really was… what then? Would I transition? Have hormones? Or surgery? Petra had always expressed an appreciation for my physical attributes – if those changed, would she still find me appealing? I knew a relationship could survive without sex, because asexual people existed, but could ours, with Petra’s normally high libido?
Before I could think any further, however, I heard Petra’s footsteps cantering down the stairs, and her voice calling my name.
“What?” I met her in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Nicholas called me,” she said, her eyes shining. “He’s okay. He’s gay. And he’s walked away from Mama and Papa. They had him in the exact same position as they had me – hiding away, working for them. But he made friends with a guy online, and fell in love with him. This guy, this Ajesh, he helped Nicholas realise what a toxic situation he was in, and… now Nicholas has left our parents and moved up North to be with him.” She flopped down on a sofa and beamed. “I’m so, so happy for him.”
“Me too,” I said, a matching smile spreading across my face. “You were so worried about him.”
“I was,” she agreed. “But he’s out of their grasp now, and feeling a million times happier. He sends his regards to you. Perhaps we can all meet up some time.”
“A wonderful end to a shitty day, then,” I surmised.
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “Jean, I’m sorry about how I’m being. I really am. I keep vowing I’ll do better, then I keep being an arse. Can you hold on for just a few more weeks?”
“I can,” I promised her. “I absolutely can.”
Truth be told, I thought that a few weeks might do some good. There would be no point telling her anything while she was so stressed. So yes – why not wait?
Chapter Forty-Two
To say that the next couple of weeks were uneventful would be lying, but they weren’t quite as dramatic. With bullish determination, Petra hauled herself through the days, finalising plans for Sports Day and awards evenings and the next year’s intake of infants. I took on the responsibility of running the rest of our lives, including the choir.
Our summer performance at the school fete was looming at the start of July – another event for Petra to manage – and with every rehearsal, I dreaded it more and more. Petra’s mental absence had taken the wind out of the choir’s sails, and I was a very poor substitute for her flair and ebullience. I’d always been the one who knuckled down and got the basics done, while Petra added the sparkle. Now, it was all she could do to turn up on time, play the piano and pretend to be her usual self. The singers had very clearly picked up on the state of things, because it showed in their lack of confidence.
