Epilogue

I wonder what Vicky and I will be like in thirty years time. There doesn’t appear to be any research on the effect of a transgendered woman taking female hormones for thirty of forty years, but it may not be entirely safe, long-term. It may, as any HRT can, increase the risks of high blood pressure, strokes, heart disease, even some kinds of cancer. There may be side effects that don’t happen to non-transgendered women, that may happen to Vicky, but then I may die in a freak chocolate fudge factory accident long before that. I hope we get there. A pair of old dears holding hands on the bus, making jam for the church fete and being spoken to politely in case we’re shocked. I don’t imagine at that stage anyone will have the slightest idea that one of us used to look like a man. I don’t imagine we’ll ever talk about it. I think we’ve talked about it enough to last us a lifetime.

When I married Anthony, I thought I had found the fairytale. The tall dark handsome man who I loved and who loved me. He was everything I wanted, but he couldn’t stay, because, some of him wasn’t real. It turned out it wasn’t the most important part, but it still hurt to lose it. What I really needed was a new fairytale. So here it is:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. She had been locked in a tower since she was a baby and nobody knew she was there. Everybody thought it was just a tower. It was a very useful tower and people came to live in its shade, they built their houses and planted their fields. Everyone was very happy. Except the princess of course. She was trapped. She shouted out to the villagers, “Help, I’m trapped in here, I’m a princess!”, but no one listened.

One day the princess decided to knock down the tower brick by brick. As she started throwing the bricks down to the ground the villagers shouted, “Hey stop that, that’s our tower” but she wanted to be free so she kept throwing bricks down. Some landed on the fields and one went straight through the roof of a house and broke a chair. Everyone was very angry. When the whole tower was just a pile of rubble the princess stepped out into the fresh air. She was covered in dust and no one believed she was a princess, she looked more like a bit of the tower. One of the villagers walked up to her and asked “Why did you ruin our tower?”

“I was trapped” said the princess “But no one knew I was there.”

Most of the villagers didn’t really believe her and they laughed at her, but one villager, called Emma, who was exceptionally gorgeous and wise and had a picnic basket of destiny said, “You are very brave and beautiful. You better come and live with me. Even though the tower was a useful part of the village, I didn’t know anyone was trapped in it and we’d much rather have you than a tower that was really a prison.”

And they all lived happily ever after. (despite Emma never putting the lids back on anything... ever.)

The End