Author’s note - After finishing the updated story of Laurence I was finding it very difficult to lay the story down. I knew that if I continued, then it would get dark and I knew that I couldn’t avoid that. As readers you may appreciate my dilemma or say it would have been better to leave it as it was?

This is written as a separate short story so readers can avoid the ending that appears here. I needed to write it, but you don’t need to read it although I hope some of you do.

Three months after starting their course at Toulouse our heroes, Aiden and Laurence were working flat out. The course was even more demanding than they had been lead to believe, but together they were succeeding. Their relationship was rock solid and they even had visions of what their future could hold.

Aiden started getting phone calls from a woman we shall call ‘the reporter.’ She represented a salacious magazine that catered for the baser instincts. The copy was made up of half-truths and downright lies to pander to the appetites of the coarser parts of Society. The magazine advertised the ‘Right of the Public to Know’. The fact that that knowledge destroyed lives was secondary to the publisher’s need for profit.

‘The Reporter’ started sniffing round campus trying to interview friends of Aiden and Lawrence. She was tenacious and knew somehow that there was a story here, and she was going to get it.

Aiden had one of these calls just before the class he and Lawrence were going to have that afternoon. The Reporter was badgering, hectoring, almost threatening and Aiden was seriously troubled.

His distraction continued into the lesson where he and Lawrence were going to practice a series of demanding lifts above his head.

The pianist built up to the crescendo but Aiden missed his holds onto Laurence’s body and after an attempt to correct his posture, Laurence crashed to the ground.

The pianist stood, her face aghast. The tutor rushed to Laurence’s aid, but the fall had left Laurence’s neck at a strange angle.

Aiden stood unmoving. Held in paralysis by the enormity of what had befallen his beloved. Laurence’s breathing had stopped within moments of the fall. An attempt to start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation showed that her neck was mobile. Her neck started to colour up as blood leaked into the surrounding tissues. Clearly there was nothing that could be done.

When the ambulance staff arrived the situation was obvious and it only remained to place Laurence’s body into a bag and remove it to a mortuary for officialdom to take its course.

Aiden said nothing but was guided to a quiet area. He showed no grief and did not speak. The enormity of the situation was beyond his capability to understand or rationalise.

The staff were quick to ring the families, but there was no one there to help Aiden at that time, they were all miles away. He was alone. His rock was gone. His raison d’être had ceased.

In a moment when he was unsupervised during Police interviews he slipped away to the roof on the seventh floor and without halting or greeting the sun bathers there, jumped the safety barrier and was gone.

One girl sunbathing thought she heard him say “Je viens maintenant. Attendez-moi ma chérie” in her moment of shock, but it might have been the wind in his clothes or a bird’s hoarse cry.

He was found shortly afterwards with a cast iron railing through his heart, held aloft on the railing like a lost child’s doll.

It would be impertinent as the author to try to record the anguish of two families torn asunder by grief such as this, and as author I can take up the story.

I couldn’t leave the story I had written at any point even after I felt I had to remove Laurence and Aiden. I had tried to create a happy ending but there was always the Reporter in the back of my mind. Every plan I had and she would reappear absolutely resolute and ready to do her worst.

Looking at my computer screen at my reflection, a plan began to form to help me lay Laurence and Aiden to rest.

It only takes the time to type it, to make my body that of a woman some fifty years of age, then to dress her in a midnight blue midi dress with all the accessories and makeup to be seen as presentable. It was how I wanted to be seen by others, being en femme had never been a reality. It was just in my mind.

The double funeral had taken place some couple of weeks ago and the families had decided to meet one last time before parting, perhaps for good. They had hired a room in a local auberge for the celebration of the lives of Laurence and Aiden.

I found myself walking up a gravel drive towards the auberge. The crunch of the gravel was obvious under my heels, then I noticed a second set footfalls approaching. Catching up with me was the reporter dressed formally, but in red.

We met in the auberge entrance and went in together.

The families were in quiet conversation in small groups.

Pierre came across to us.

“Who are you? This is a private party.”

“I am the author, I said clearly to everyone there.” The heads of the whole group turned our way.

…and “I am the Reporter. “ my companion said.

“Tell us your story, Reporter.”

“I got a whiff of a story of Laurent’s transformation back in the North. That sort of tittle-tattle makes the stories that our readers love. I followed the trail to the Midi and followed Laurence and Aiden from a distance making notes as I came. It came to a point where I needed to get a version of the truth from either Laurence or Aiden or both. Even I, regret that I was rather heavy handed with Aiden. I laid it on thick about the people’s right to know about his sordid affair with another man.”

At this point the reporter giggled to herself. “My readers are not interested in true love, or all the genuine reasons for people to be reassigned to different gender. They like stories about perverts getting it off together.”

“I think we have heard enough of the reasons why Aiden was distressed that day, and why he was distracted in performing his lifts with Laurence.”

“I think you have served you purpose Reporter.”

The red dress and the body of the reporter faded from view.

“If you are the author, why have you made us all suffer so much?”

“Let me explain.”

Laurence’s family stood before me now.

“I took a boy who was deeply unhappy and transformed him into a beautiful girl. A daughter to be proud of. She was loved, and loved a boy of her dreams. If I had let it go on she would have died from a thousand cuts. The salacious article, the trolls and social media crucifixion would have reduced her to emotional tatters. She didn’t have the resilience to cope with such a torrent of emotions.”

“I have served you well. You may go.”

They faded away as my memory cleared.

Aiden’s sister stood before me.

“I gave you a new family who loved you. The sadness of losing your mother was tempered by finding a new mother and father. I have done well by you. You may go.”

… and she faded into my past.

Aiden’s French family stood before me.

“To you, I gave the son and brother you yearned for, a new sister and a new daughter-in-law. For a little while they gave you joy, but it would all have come collapsing down when the first article was published. I became very fond of you all and I let you go with great sadness. My recollections of you are harsh for the time being, but you will also fade in my memory over the months and years. It is the nature of things.”

The room seemed to be empty, and I wondered why it still existed in my mind, then I saw two shadows on the far wall that appeared to be dancing.

“You two I loved; no, love. I shall never stop loving you. As long as my heart beats there will be place for you in my heart. I came here dressed as a mother, your mothers, your progenitors. I am the only one who can continue to grieve.”

I shall go to my grave remembering the click of my heels on the gravel, the swish of the midnight blue silk and the susurration of my tights rubbing together over shaved legs. I turned and the auberge was gone. I was peremptorily returned to my computer screen. My midnight blue outfit had been replaced with jeans and an old tee shirt. My maleness was obvious. Only I noticed the tear on each of the L and A keys on the keyboard.