The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone (34 page)

That was when Kate made her decision. ‘Granny, don’t worry. Go and be gobbed on by Rosa, who, I must admit, is quite cute. I’ll have lunch with Dad. We’ll sit around and pull sad and lonely crackers, and get quietly stonkered together.’

Meg sounded heartened. ‘Would you do that, dear?’

‘You think I’d rather spend the day with Simon and Wendy, wearing a stupid paper hat?’

Kate was glad she’d made that decision, because her dad perked up when she told him. How the mighty were fallen! A year ago he was Mr Popular and Respectable, hosting a houseful of guests; now he was grateful for one visitor to his bare little basement flat.

‘Don’t you ever look up your London friends?’ she asked him.

‘Well, no. Not often. They tend to ask questions about why I’m living here.’

‘But you’ll have to come out sometime,’ she argued. ‘Won’t you? If you’re really going to . . . what’s the word?’

‘Transition.’

‘Why haven’t you told anyone? Are you having second thoughts?’

There was a pause, and Kate held her breath. Maybe she’d hit the nail on the head. Maybe it hadn’t worked out for him. If he was going to turn back, he’d better get a move on. Mum wouldn’t wait forever.

‘Our human resources manager wants it to happen tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Judi. You might have met her.’

Kate was surprised. ‘You told her?’

‘She got it out of me. She can’t understand why anyone would hesitate to become a woman. We went on a shopping expedition. It was fun.’

Kate snorted, muttering about women who shopped as a pastime.

‘Judi celebrates being female, Kate. It isn’t a crime.’

‘Actually it is a crime, if what she’s celebrating is being vacuous. Women are still not respected, Dad, and why? Because they’ve bought into this giggly fun shopping crap.’

She heard him laughing. Nice sound. ‘Don’t be such a killjoy.’

‘Not all women think shopping is fun. Don’t expect me to go into ecstasies over totes and bright yellow Italian shoes.’

‘Yellow shoes?’ He sounded intrigued. ‘I must hear more! The Italians make bright yellow shoes?’

Kate sighed, and said she’d see him for lunch on Christmas Day.

She’d been feeling sorry for her father, thinking of him as a Nora No-Mates, but when she fronted up on Christmas morning he wasn’t alone after all. She could see two figures in the kitchen as she passed the window. One was her dad; the other was a young woman, sitting at the table. Her head was thrown back and Kate could hear laughter. She also caught a waft of roast chicken, and a blast of Neil Young from the stereo.

The basement door was locked—unusually—but Luke came trotting over to open it, beaming out through the glass. He was in his shirtsleeves, wearing a plastic apron Kate had given him after a trip to Florence. It had a picture of Michelangelo’s David on the front, arranged artfully (or possibly tastelessly) to make the wearer look improbably well hung.

Luke’s eyes were bright as he held out his arms. ‘Happy Christmas, darling girl!’ he cried. ‘Now, come and meet someone.’

As Kate followed him into the kitchen, his visitor unfolded herself from the chair. Beautiful, thought Kate, but not pretty. She wore thigh-length boots, like Puss in Boots, and a red silk scarf around her neck; braided hair cascaded from a high ponytail. Above all, she had terrific posture. Kate had seen women with her kind of looks on the cover of
Vogue
—all cheekbones
and legs—though she suspected that their clothes cost a thousand times more than this woman’s outfit.

‘This is Chloe,’ said Luke. ‘My daughter, Kate.’

Chloe’s reaction was wildly enthusiastic. She held out her hand, then seemed to change her mind, laughed, and grabbed Kate in a bear hug.

‘This is great!’ she cried. ‘You’re the archaeologist, right? You dig stuff up? Lucia’s told me all about you.’

Gender, eh? It was funny; when you were with people like her dad and Chloe, you stopped thinking of it as a binary thing. It confirmed what Kate had long believed: that the world isn’t yin and yang, it isn’t black and white, and it certainly isn’t bloody Venus and Mars; it’s so much more fun than that. Chloe couldn’t hide her male voice, and the silk scarf covered an Adam’s apple, but she
was
female. There was no hint of a chip on her shoulder when it came to education or money or race or gender. They’d broken the conversational ice before Luke had got around to pouring Kate a glass of bubbly. Chloe already had her own, and clinked it against Kate’s, saying, ‘Cheers, m’dear.’

Luke had cooked a chicken (a turkey wouldn’t fit in that silly little oven) and Kate contributed a Tesco’s Christmas pudding. To her immense relief, nobody was wearing a paper hat. It was a blue-sky day outside. As the sun sank lower, they were dazzled by a little square of brightness, shining right on their faces.

‘Do you want me to pull down the blind?’ asked Luke, seeing that Chloe was squinting.

‘No!’ She waved him back into his seat. ‘It feels like a blessing.’

Two glasses down, and they were well away. Kate told the story of Owen, and Baffy, and the stranger in the pub. Chloe sympathised completely.

‘That guy sounds
gorgeous
,’ she cried. ‘You didn’t get a phone number? Oh, that’s tragic. And the poor dog—your ex needs a kick up the backside.’

‘What about you, Chloe?’ Kate leaned her arms on the table. ‘What’s happening in your life?’

Chloe was disarmingly open about herself; said that she was on the waiting list for surgery but God knew when that would happen. She’d be applying for her certificate just as soon as she’d saved enough for the fee. When Kate asked, she explained that this would mean she was legally a woman. Then she mentioned, casually, that she’d been in a car accident the day before.

Luke was fussing about with the oven, a tea towel over one shoulder, but now he whirled around. ‘Chloe! Are you all right? I didn’t even know you had a car.’

‘I don’t! It was a client’s car. One of my regulars. We were on our way to a hotel.’

‘What happened?’ asked Kate.

‘This bicycle courier rode straight across the road, and—oh my God—next moment we’d hit him.’

‘Was he okay?’

‘I thought he was dead. My client was bricking it, you can imagine—I mean, he’s married for one thing, and guess what he does for a job?’

Luke and Kate shook their heads. Chloe paused for effect, looking from one to the other.

‘A bishop?’ suggested Kate. ‘A judge?’

‘Politician?’ added Luke.

Chloe leaned forward, whispering. ‘He’s a policeman. High up. That’s all I can say.’

Her audience made fascinated, scandalised noises.

‘Not another word.’ Chloe zipped up her lips. ‘Take it from me: he’s very senior.’

‘And this man is married?’ asked Luke, who was shaking his head.

‘Hey, Lucia, don’t be too quick to write him off. He’s all right. Anyway, the bloke on the bike had a heck of a wallop and it took a while for him to get up. He just lay there looking like he was dead. People were running up. My client was trying to get his seatbelt off but he was in a state, he was freaking out—“Oh my
God, oh my God, I’ve got to call an ambulance, I’ll be caught with you in my car, this is the end of my career, end of my marriage, end of everything, panic panic panic”—and I pressed the button to release his seatbelt, and said, “Just go and help that poor sod lying in the road, and don’t worry.”’

Kate was hanging on Chloe’s every word. She could see it all: the senior policeman with a transsexual prostitute in his passenger seat, and the lifeless cyclist, and onlookers beginning to gather. Mobile phones, with cameras, would be coming out. Someone would be calling 999. Imagine the headlines! The clock was ticking on that guy’s career.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘I got down low in my seat, oh my God, I was practically sitting on the floor. While everyone was standing around the bloke in the road, I managed to get my door open and crawl away. It wasn’t too easy, but he’d fallen on the driver’s side, so I was hidden by the car. I got around a corner. Then I started running.’

Kate laughed at the idea of Chloe, all six-foot-something of her, crouching behind a car. ‘Anyone see you?’

‘Nope. Got away with it. The cyclist turned out to be okay, just cuts and bruises and hurt pride. My copper’s car had a dent but he just wanted to get away, so they agreed to call it quits. He texted me to say thanks.’

‘He was lucky,’ said Luke. ‘Your policeman. You covered for him. He’s also lucky that you aren’t the type to blackmail.’

Chloe drew her head back, a little offended. ‘You have rules in your job, right? Rules about keeping things under your hat and not talking about your client’s business? Well, so do I. I’m not there to ruin a man’s life.’

‘It’s a dangerous job, though, isn’t it?’ said Kate.

Chloe shrugged. She looked bleak suddenly. Kate cursed her own tactlessness and changed the subject. ‘Christmas pudding,’ she said. ‘Tesco’s own. I shoved a pound coin in, so watch your teeth, Chloe. Dad, got any brandy? Let’s do the flame thing.’

After lunch, Luke suggested a walk. This was a family tradition. Every year, just as Kate and her grandmother were settling down to the BBC’s annual showing of
The Sound of Music
(Granny’s crush on Christopher Plummer was no secret), her dad would suggest a bloody walk. ‘Come on,’ he’d say, rubbing his hands and throwing wellies around, ‘let’s make the most of the daylight! Chop-chop, and we’ll be back in time for the Queen’s Christmas Message.’ Simon and Kate complained like buggery, but they always gave in. They’d slide out across the icy terrace, crunch their way through hoarfrost or drizzle or gale-force winds, and come back feeling as though they’d earned the right to scoff half a Christmas cake.

So when Luke tabled the idea of a stroll, Kate wasn’t surprised. But Chloe was.

‘Walk?’ she squeaked, shivering as though Luke had suggested they all go for a bracing dip in the North Sea. ‘Why would we want to do that? It’s brass monkeys out there, and we could be opening another bottle and sitting in this nice warm flat. Have you lost your tiny mind, Lucia?’

Luke laughed and said yes, he certainly
had
lost his mind. Then he went off to the bathroom.

‘I guess I could manage a quick dash up and down the street,’ said Chloe, once he’d gone.

‘It’s a tradition,’ said Kate, sighing, and explained about
The Sound of Music
and the Queen’s Christmas Message. ‘Think yourself lucky it’s a sunny afternoon, no hurricanes or blizzards.’

‘Erm . . .’ Chloe looked thoughtfully at Kate, and a smile spread across her face. ‘Can I negotiate? Don’t jump down my throat, but . . . okay, here’s the deal. I’ll go for your Christmas walk, if Lucia comes too. As Lucia.’

Kate knew exactly what she was driving at, and was appalled. It was like being asked to meet the monster under your bed. She was still haunted by Simon’s description of the clown in tights and lipstick and a wig. She knew her lovely father did this stuff, but she didn’t want to see it.

‘He’s my dad,’ she protested.

‘Are you scared?’

‘Yes, I am.’ Kate was drumming her fingernails on the table. ‘I’m very, very scared.’

‘Guess what?’ said Chloe. ‘Lucia’s scared too. It’s okay, Kate. She looks great. She doesn’t look like a freak. She needs you to accept her.’

‘I don’t know if I can.’

‘Yes, you can.’ Chloe wagged her forefinger. ‘Transition is the hardest . . . fucking . . . thing e-
ver
. I should know. If people, people she cares about, don’t help Lucia, she might not get through all this. And from where I’m sitting, people she cares about is . . . you.’

The patch of sunshine had moved on. It was gloomy now in the kitchen. Kate got up to switch on the fan heater and stood warming her calves. Her dad had showered her with pure, unquestioning love since the day she was born. He’d loved her through two-year-old tantrums and ten-year-old ones and teenage ones. He’d taught her to drive—ye gods, that must have taken nerves of steel. He’d cleaned up after her twenty-first party, when she tangoed with Owen up and down the kitchen table before vomiting. He’d let her pierce her tongue (closed up now, thank God) and dye her hair, without saying anything judgemental. Despite all her cock-ups, all the times she’d behaved like a total bitch, he’d never stopped being proud of her.

‘There’s nobody else,’ said Chloe. ‘You’re the only one who’s got enough love to stand beside her.’

The bathroom door was being unbolted; she could hear her dad’s measured footsteps, walking into his room and out again. She was running out of time. The next moment he’d reappeared in the kitchen, wearing a waxed jacket and a paisley scarf.

‘Ready to go?’ he asked, with his quiet smile. ‘Anyone need to borrow sensible shoes?’

Kate made her decision.

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Um, I don’t know how to put this, but . . . do you think this Christmas walk could include Lucia?’

Well. As bizarre, screwed-up and yet oddly lovely experiences go, this won the rosette. Kate had never thought of herself as a conventional person: she’d snogged a girl when she was in year ten, in a determined but doomed attempt to be gay; she owned three pairs of Doc Martens and not a single pair of kitten heels; she’d done things with a carrot that she seriously wouldn’t want posted on Facebook; but this was one Christmas Day walk she would never forget. She took it in the company of two women, one of whom was her father.