The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone Page 33

  Woo-hoo, I thought. Go, Luce.

  Forty-six

  Eilish

  What makes us who we are? Countless things; more than humanity is ever likely to understand. All I know is that by becoming a woman, Luke didn’t lose himself. She found herself. For seven months I’d raged and grieved for what I’d lost. I still grieved, but now I also celebrated her new-found peace. I’d loved him enough to love her, too.

  She made mistakes, of course. In her first week at work I twice had to stop her from heading off to work looking like a Christmas tree.

  ‘So many pitfalls,’ she complained on Thursday morning, as I made her remove a silk scarf that clashed with the rest of her outfit. ‘I used to open the wardrobe and grab the first clean shirt. Now it’s just a constant stream of decisions.’

  ‘Um, I’m afraid that necklace doesn’t show above your collar,’ I said. ‘Here—d’you want to borrow mine?’

  She looked into the mirror, touching the string of green glass beads. ‘This was a birthday present from Chloe. I thought she’d be pleased if I was wearing it this evening.’

  ‘And it’s lovely, but it’s the wrong length. Hang on, I think I can adjust it.’ I managed to clip the necklace several links further down, so that it was short enough to show. ‘How’s that?’

  I wanted to protect her fragile happiness. I wanted people not to sneer. Her hairstyle softened the outlines of her face, and she was humming under her breath. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that she was once Luke. She turned around with a smile. ‘Perfect! Thank you,’ she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

  She was drinking coffee while I pottered about. I’d made it for her in our one remaining red and yellow cup. Bryan turned up with the post as well as the newspaper, and I looked through the mail. Two bills, a bank statement, an invitation to somebody’s silver wedding anniversary.

  And one other.

  I tasted bitterness in my mouth when I saw that last one. I’d been expecting it. I didn’t want to open it.

  Lucia looked up from her newspaper.

  ‘From the court?’ she asked. ‘Go on. It might just be a speeding ticket or something.’

  With a heavy heart I slid my hand under the flap, took out the paper and scanned its contents. ‘Decree absolute,’ I said. ‘We’re divorced.’

  That bitter taste grew stronger. For a time, we were both silent. There were no words for this. I couldn’t look at her.

  ‘We knew it was coming,’ said Lucia. ‘I can’t expect to stay here with you forever.’

  I put the letter to one side, and took her hand. ‘But we’re still family, aren’t we?’ she added, with a desperate smile.

  I agreed that we were. Then I rushed off, saying I must get ready for school. Those wretched tears arrived as soon as I reached my bedroom. I had to hide for a while; in fact, it was a good half-hour before I felt composed enough to come out.

  ‘We’re both running late. I’ll give you a lift to the station, if you like,’ I called, as I hurried along to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When Lucia didn’t reply, I came out of the bathroom onto the gallery, holding my toothbrush. She was standing by the kitchen table.

  ‘Luke? Oops, sorry, Lucia? Did you want a lift?’

  She looked blankly up at me, rocking slightly on her heels, backwards and forwards.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s . . .’ She walked right around the table, hitting herself on the upper arms. It was a primeval gesture, as though she were a creature in pain. I dropped the toothbrush and ran down the stairs. As I reached her I saw that she was horrified. Her eyes were wide.

  ‘You have to tell me,’ I said, frightened now. ‘Is it Kate?’

  When she finally managed to get the words out, they seemed to choke her.

  ‘He killed her,’ she said.

  Police have released the identity of a transsexual sex worker found dead in a South London bedsit on Monday evening. The mutilated body of Callum Robertson, 22, who also used the name Chloe, was discovered by police after a neighbour reported hearing screams. Adam Stuart Walsh, aged 35, was arrested near the scene. Police are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident.

  An autopsy has yet to be carried out. Police sources indicate that the attack involved a sharp object or objects, and described it as savage and sustained.

  The neighbour, who asked not to be named, told reporters that she looked out into her hallway after hearing sounds of a struggle in the bedsit next door. ‘I saw a man walking towards the stairs, covered in blood,’ she said. ‘He told me, “I think I’ve killed something.” So I locked myself in my room and called the police.’

  Callum’s mother, Kirsty Robertson, has made a plea for the family’s privacy to be respected. ‘We are broken-hearted. Callum was a good lad who made some wrong choices. We just want to get him home. He needs to be among his family again.’

  Lucia

  ‘I was going to see her,’ I kept saying. ‘I was going to see her. D’you think, if I just give her a call, it might turn out she’s fine?’

  ‘No,’ said Eilish, who’d rung Bannermans and asked them to cancel my appointments. ‘I’m so sorry, but I don’t.’

  I felt sickened by the gleeful prurience of the newspaper, with its mention of blood and mutilation and the transsexual sex worker called Callum Robertson. All I could think of was Chloe lying with her throat cut and God knows what other cruelties inflicted upon her. Mutilated, the paper said. And I was wearing her green glass beads.

  The wolves had dragged Chloe out from her hiding place in a hollow tree, and they’d torn her apart. I couldn’t save her.

  ‘I should have warned her to be careful,’ I said.

  ‘Darling.’ Eilish touched my hand. ‘From what you’ve told me, she was far more street-wise than you will ever be. I know she was young, but if anyone seemed able to take care of herself it was Chloe.’

  Which was true. In fact, it was Chloe who had done the caring. Chloe, with her nervous laugh and her perspex heels. She cared for me.

  When I couldn’t stand inactivity a moment longer, I rang her local police station. After a lot of explaining I was put through to Detective Inspector Dave someone-or-other. I told him what I knew about the man Chloe had planned to meet. He took my details. Although they’d already made an arrest, they wanted to piece together the last hours of Chloe’s life.

  ‘Look, there’s a mistake in the paper. She wasn’t Callum Robertson,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t the name she used. She was a woman called Chloe.’

  Yes, he said. They were aware that the deceased had an AKA. They’d looked into the appropriate response. She had made no application for a gender recognition certificate, and the next of kin wished her to be referred to by her male name.

  I felt impotent rage. ‘“Chloe” wasn’t an AKA. It was her name. Look at her—she was obviously trying to be a woman! She didn’t have the money to apply for the certificate yet, but she was a woman.’

  ‘Your view is noted,’ he said tersely. ‘Thank you.’

  I asked him for the family’s contact details. No, he said, he couldn’t help me there. There were issues of privacy. If I wanted to give them a message he would pass it on.

  ‘Please ask them to phone me,’ I begged him. ‘Tell them I was a friend of hers.’

  He sounded doubtful.

  ‘I’m a solicitor,’ I added, as though my profession made any difference.

  He’d had enough of me, and ended the call. I stood helplessly in my warm kitchen in my trendy converted barn. I felt disgustingly privileged. Chloe was lying in a cold morgue, to be dissected by someone who would find her body a fascinating example of the preoperative transsexual. To the press she was a lurid weirdo, a creature who lived underneath a stone. Her family would take her back to Manchester. They’d talk about their son and brother who’d gone wrong, and who had paid for it with his life. They’d cut her hair. They’d force her to be Callum forever.

  ‘I wish I c
ould stop them,’ I said to Eilish. ‘I can hear her now, laughing and saying, “Bloody hell, no, don’t let that mob get me.” ’

  ‘You’ve got no say in it, surely? They’re her family.’

  I had to try. I phoned the newspaper, and quoted the Gender Recognition Act at them. It’s meant to protect the privacy of trans people. They didn’t care. ‘Sex-swap’ stories sell papers, so Chloe’s murder boosted their sales. Privacy wasn’t too high on the priority list.

  Then I called Neil, of the Jenny Marsden group. He too had only just heard, and was horrified. We talked for a time, and he said he’d let everyone else know.

  I’d run out of practical things to do, but I just couldn’t keep still. That’s the thing about grief: it hurts, and it can’t be escaped. I paced around and around the kitchen until Eilish suggested a walk in the garden. She took my arm, and we stepped out through the folding doors into a morning that felt alive and mellow. A gauzy haze hung across the lawn, but the sun was breaking through. There were leaf buds on the trees and even the first bursting of blossom. Chloe couldn’t smell the spring. She was twenty-two, and she’d never laugh again.

  ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it. So much hope, so much vivacity.’

  I hadn’t even realised I was crying until Eilish handed me a tissue.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, as I took it. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Luke would have had a large white hankie in his pocket, ready to whip out if his nose was running.’

  ‘Lucia is hopelessly disorganised. I find the lack of pockets confusing.’

  My father’s tree was coming into leaf. Nature goes on, even when life ends. The sun still rises; the world is still beautiful. As we neared the pond, a pair of ducks glided away, leaving a wake on the glassy surface. Their serenity clashed with the images of violence and hatred in my mind. I imagined Chloe happy and excited, getting ready for her date; I imagined the terrible moment when she realised he was going to kill her.

  Eilish and I stood quietly, our two figures reflected in the water.

  Forty-seven

  Kate

  If Adam Stuart Walsh, thirty-five, were sitting in an electric chair right now, she’d cheerfully throw the lever.

  ‘But why?’ she asked Eilish, who’d met her at the station. ‘What kind of moron murders a lovely person like Chloe?’

  ‘He panicked. That’s what he’s telling the police, according to the latest reports. They’ve charged him with murder.’

  ‘Panicked!’ Kate kicked the car, before getting into it. ‘What, because she laughed too much?’

  ‘He didn’t know she was transgender. He says they’d had a good night out, gone back to the bedsit for . . . well, coffee. He assumed that meant sex. Then she mentioned it in passing, as though he already knew. He lost his head.’

  ‘Oh well, that explains everything,’ said Kate, as she slammed the door. ‘I mean, if someone doesn’t walk around with a big placard saying “trans woman”, obviously they deserve to be hacked to death.’

  ‘He did think that. Exactly that. He said he thinks they’re vermin. He says Chloe brought it all on herself. He thought she’d tricked him.’

  Kate kept her eyes fixed on the familiar road unfolding ahead, battling an urge to burst into tears. She’d only heard the news last night, when Lucia phoned. It had been the worst phone call of her life; she’d felt sick ever since. She couldn’t get Chloe out of her head. They’d had Christmas lunch together, gone for a walk, joked about The Sound of Music. They’d been ice-skating. Now Chloe was dead, and all because some lowlife had a hang-up.

  ‘She was a great person,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Mum, I wish you’d met her.’

  ‘I wish I had, too.’

  ‘She loved Dad—Lucia.’

  ‘I make that mistake all the time.’ Eilish waggled her head. ‘Dad, Luke, Lucia. I’m getting better at it. I thought it would be impossible and stupid to think of Luke as a she . . . after thirty years of he. But it’s not impossible, is it? You get used to it. I think it just takes time.’

  Kate could almost hear Chloe’s laughter. ‘How’s Lucia doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Sad,’ said Eilish. ‘Just very, very sad. He—no, get this right—she’s been researching the law, but she can’t see any practical way to make the family respect Chloe’s wishes. Her only victory was forcing the paper to print a tiny addition, saying that Chloe was living as a woman and wanted to be known as Chloe.’

  ‘Are you worried about her?’

  ‘About Lucia? You mean do I think she might have some kind of breakdown?’ Eilish narrowed her eyes, thinking. ‘No, I think she’ll come through this. There’s a whole group of them, all supporting one another. They’re going to hold a memorial vigil soon. I thought I’d go along.’

  ‘I’ll come too.’

  They’d reached East Yalton; past the church, up the lane. Kate knew every pothole. It all seemed so peaceful and ordered, and a million miles from Chloe’s world.

  ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘Now Dad’s home . . . Lucia’s home . . . how long is she going to stay? What’s the plan?’

  Eilish glanced quickly at her, then looked back at the road. ‘Decree absolute came through yesterday. We’re divorced.’

  ‘I don’t think that answers my question.’

  ‘No.’ They were turning into the driveway of Smith’s Barn. ‘No. I don’t think it answers any of my questions either. Love’s a complicated thing, isn’t it, Kate?’

  Kate wasn’t sure how to phrase her next question. They’d passed the copse and parked at the front door before she came out with it.

  ‘You can’t stay together, can you? I know some wives do stick it out, but I really can’t imagine it working unless you’re a little bit bi. Are you a little bi, Mum? I mean, it’s a continuum, isn’t it?’

  ‘A little bit bi?’ There was embarrassment in Eilish’s smile. ‘This is not a conversation I ever expected to be having with my daughter.’

  ‘It’s not a conversation I expected to be having with my mother, either. But then, quite a few things aren’t what we expected.’

  Eilish turned off the engine, and rested both her hands on the steering wheel. ‘No, Kate, I really don’t think I am. Not even a little bit. I had a crush on the head girl when I was at school. I was eleven, so I don’t think it counts. But . . . but . . . I think I really do love your father. I mean, what is love? I’ve no idea, I only know how it feels. When I married him I was infatuated, couldn’t keep my hands off him. I don’t imagine you want to hear about that.’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘After ten years I appreciated him more than ever . . . his empathy, his wisdom, his friendship. We’d lost Charlotte, we had you and Simon. I knew he wasn’t perfect and he knew I wasn’t, but we rubbed along. By the time we got to thirty years he was simply part of my landscape. There’s a depth of understanding after all that time. Our marriage didn’t rely on sex, certainly not by then.’

  ‘Hell, no!’ exclaimed Kate. ‘I bet it didn’t—not after thirty years with just the one guy. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘I didn’t mind.’ Eilish sighed. ‘And then my man became a woman. So now I’m having to rethink it all. One of the things I’m thinking is that this is still the same person. I loved him. I love her.’

  ‘But without sex?’

  ‘Well . . . yes, I think so.’

  ‘You can’t be celibate forever!’ Kate was appalled. ‘No, no, no. That’s just awful, even if you are fifty-six . . . I mean, sorry. I’m not saying fifty-six is old. It isn’t very old, nowadays. Anyway, you don’t look it.’

  Eilish was smiling. ‘If you’re in a hole, stop digging.’

  ‘Dad wouldn’t ask you to give up your sex life forever. You didn’t sign up for that.’

  ‘Nuns do it. They’re celibate all their lives. They do it out of love. What’s the difference?’

  Kate had a brief, surreal image of her mother in a wimple. ‘You’re not a nun,
Mum,’ she protested, chuckling. ‘You snogged Mr Chadwick on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘What if my husband had been in a car accident, had a spinal injury and was wheelchair-bound and impotent forever? Or what if he’d got cancer, and the radiotherapy meant . . .’

  ‘Meant he couldn’t get it up anymore? That’s different.’

  ‘Why? Why is it different? If he were impotent as the result of an accident, would you want me to leave him? Would I want to leave him?’

  ‘Well, no. Obviously not.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘The difference is . . .’ Kate thought for a moment, and then gave up. Love, she thought. Love. I never really believed in it until now.

  ‘I’m getting used to it already,’ said Eilish. ‘To her. You told me, that night in the Bracton Arms, and you were right. At first I was upset by the effect of the hormones, but now it just seems a good thing, because it’s making her whole. I can hug her, kiss her on the cheek at least. I’m having to think again about what intimacy means. After all, it’s just what we make it.’

  Neither of them made any move to get out of the car. It was an oasis of quiet; time to think and talk. Kate watched a pair of blackbirds flying in and out of the copse. They might have been the descendants of birds she’d watched when she was ten years old. Some things didn’t change.

  ‘In an odd way,’ said Eilish, ‘I feel as though my love for Luke had been dozing for years. Lazily and complacently dozing. All of this has reawakened it—reawakened me. I’ve had to question everything I thought I knew.’

  ‘You and me both, Mum. So . . . you two might stay together?’

  The front door opened, and Lucia appeared on the step. Eilish immediately unclipped her seatbelt.

  ‘We’ve tried living apart,’ she said, ‘and we didn’t like it. If giving up our sex lives is the price we have to pay for being together—well. I think we might decide to pay it.’