While Paula searched for a suitable date for Faye and dealt with other clients, Stephanie continued to work on Faye’s behaviour and appearance. When Steph mentioned ‘behaviour’, Faye went a little mad.

“My behaviour is very good, isn’t it?”

Steph smiled.
“It is very good indeed, but for a male. Women react very differently to the same situation as men. I see parts of that female side of you from time to time. I did that very first day when you didn’t raise hell at being turned away. An ‘alpha’ male would not have done that. What I need is to gently tease that female side of you out into the open and make it the norm rather than the exception.”

“Ok, I get you now. What is the next step?”

“I think that we need to get you out of here a lot more. We can go shopping and not buy anything. Can you do that?”

“I think so. Before I was placed under virtual guard, I used to go to places like Guildford and Reading. I would wander around the shops and not buy anything because I never had any money. I was always grilled on what I’d spent my money on. Fast food was out of the question because those places were inhabited by the devil, who wanted to tempt me into sin. If I wanted to eat, then it had to be from places like a supermarket or a sandwich shop. I had to produce receipts, so nothing, not even an ice cream from a street vendor, was allowed.”

She swallowed hard.
“If I went to say Reading and bought a ‘meal deal’ from a supermarket, I had to produce a receipt for the meal. Then I’d be grilled on why I went to Reading. I used to say that I was watching people sin and mentally praying for their forgiveness. Most of the time, I was believed, and from time to time, I was even mentioned during the next church service. I hated lying, but at least for a few hours, I could mix with normal people who were not judging my every move.”

“That must have been awful?”

Faye smiled.
“I thought of it as a test of not my faith but simply my willpower. If I buckled, then I’d get a beating from my father’s fellow pastors. He’d never lay a hand on me. It was always one of the others. He would dish out punishment to their children.”

“Yet, you survived?”

“When I was at the public library, I read lots of stories about LGBT people hiding in plain sight. There was one about an SS Captain. He was gay but knew that he’d be shot if it came out that he was anything but a straight and true believer of the Führer. He covered his tracks by being more brutal to members of the LGBT community than his compatriots. That lasted until 1944, when he was posted to the border with Switzerland, where he was dropped in it by someone who had been to one of the same gay clubs that he had before the war. The captain was summarily shot by direct order of Himmler.”

“Ouch, but I get your point. You had to do things that you hated, but you had to survive.”

“Yes. So? Where shall we go shopping?”

“How about Milton Keynes? We can call in at the Shopping Village in Bicester along the way.”

“That’s good, but I still don’t have any money. At the moment, I would not be tempted to even think of buying anything because I could not afford it.”

Steph smiled.
“Let me lend you some money. Then you can buy whatever you want, can’t you?”

Faye shook her head.
“No. That’s your money, and I’d have to pay you back.”

Steph knew that she was going to lose that argument.
“Then let’s go window shopping and talk about things, but neither of us should buy anything other than food and drink. Deal?”

Faye smiled.
“Deal.”

“Well?” asked Stephanie when they returned to the car after spending almost two hours wandering around the shops in central Milton Keynes.

“Nothing really tickled my fancy,” said a slightly dejected Faye.
“I had hoped that something might leap out and say, ‘buy me or you will regret it’.”

Steph laughed.
“Some shops were already full-on for Christmas, which to my mind is silly, and others were trying to get rid of the last dregs of their summer clothes. A bit of a mess, really.”

“Then let’s head to Bicester and get some lunch on the way.”

“Yes, Boss!”

“Hey! Whose bright idea was this trip anyway?”

Steph smiled.
“Ok, it was mine.”

Faye put on her seatbelt with a smug grin on her face.

“Ever been tempted… to go and watch some races?” asked Steph as they passed the entrance to the Silverstone Circuit.

“We were not allowed to watch any sport on TV, let alone attend anything. When the London Olympics were on, the TV was taken out of the living room, apart from Sundays when we’d watch some firebrand preacher from the USA trying to get funds for his next private jet.”

Steph laughed.
“Ever the cynic then?”

Faye shook her head.
“A fact of life. I look back on those events as entertainment rather than a sermon. The grift was there for anyone with half a brain to see. My so-called father lapped it up. The next week, a lot of what we saw on a Sunday afternoon and evening would be in his next sermon. The sad thing was that the punters lapped it up. I used to have to go around with the collection plate. Many a time, I saw an old person empty their purse or wallet into the plate. That was sad, really sad. If I said anything, then he’d threaten me with the family being put out on the street. Not with many hundreds of pounds being collected every week, it wouldn’t. All those bits of information gradually allowed me to see through the façade. A week before I came to see you for the first time, I managed to see his bank statement. He had over half a million in the bank, and all the time, he pleaded poverty. Most of the clothes I wore, except for when I went to church, were bought from charity shops. It was horrible at school. One time, my shorts ripped apart when I was playing football at school. He made me sew them up rather than buy a new pair. I think the word is ‘skinflint’.”

“Are you glad that you got out?”

“Sometimes I have these thoughts that tell me that I should have stayed and then blown the whistle on the whole thing from the inside. But I’m happy that I chose a different path. I turned the other cheek and… well, I did, and that’s that.”

Steph smiled. She knew that what Faye was saying was only the tip of the iceberg of the abuse and brainwashing that had gone on in her childhood home.

After some lunch, the pair went on to the group of shops that were little more than outlets for old stock of major brands. Some items were cheap, but others were full price. It would take an expert to see the difference. Still, for both of them, there was a lot of temptation, which they were able to resist. It was when they’d gone into one shop that Faye suddenly went white in the face and turned around and left Steph looking like a fool.

Stephanie caught up with Faye outside.
“What’s wrong? You look as if you have seen a ghost?”

Faye nodded her head.
“Did you see a young woman sweeping the floor near the rear of the shop?”

“Yes, I remember. Is she someone you know?”

“Do you remember me mentioning someone called Faith?”

Stephanie smiled.
“Yes. You were supposed to marry her or something?”

“We were supposed to get married. That woman sweeping the floor was Faith. At least, I am pretty sure it is her. Her hair is a lot longer than I remember.”

All sorts of questions and theories went racing through Stephanie’s mind.

After some thought, she said,
“I think that we should go home and discuss this with my mother. If I remember right, you identified Faith’s father as giving the sermon in the USA. I wonder if Faith was like you, taken as a baby. To my mind, if she were his real child, then there is no way he’d abandon them like that. We may even get Mr Gold involved. If my suspicions are true, then there could well be a family somewhere who are still looking for their baby.”

“Yeah. That’s much the same as what I was thinking…”

Faye smiled.
“Thank you for that. If you hadn’t done that, then I would have gone up to her and tried to explain who I was.”

“Which could have caused a scene in the shop?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was in reaction mode for a bit.”

Stephanie looked pleased.
“Does starting to think like an adult scare you?”

“It does. I was kept in a virtual cocoon by ‘him’. All he ever said to me was about becoming a preacher. He kept on saying that it was my God-given destiny. The more he said it, the more I became disillusioned with the whole thing. Then, when I realised that I was trans, I knew that I had to get out of his grasp. When he said that I was going to the camp, that was it. I was done. I know that Faith was close to doing the same. She told me that she was going to leave home after the end of her exams. As we came out of the last exam, she told me that her parents had hidden her passport and the passbook for her savings account. She didn’t know what she was going to do if they took her to the camp.”

That evening, after updating Paula on the events of the day, Paula went off to make a phone call to Mr Gold. Faye wasn’t surprised at this move. She would have called him from the car at the outlet centre.

Nearly an hour later, Paula returned with the frown lines on her forehead, working overtime.

“Mr Gold wants to make contact with Faith. If she has representation or does not want it, then it is game over… Understand?”

The last word was aimed at Faye.
“Yes, she is an adult and can make up her own mind.”

“And,” said Paula.
“We don’t want you in the picture when the approach is made. The less she knows about Faye, the better, until she is on board. Your security is uppermost, ok?”

“I think I understand. You and Mr Gold are not sure what side of the fence she is on or something like that.”

Paula smiled and took hold of Faye’s hand.
“If the approach works, then you can tell her about yourself. I take it that she does not know about you being trans?”

“That is true. I only know about her being gay because I saw her one lunchtime at school kissing another girl. Later on, she told me that I was too feminine for her and that she wanted a butch lady. She knows that I know, but I told her that while our parents might be pastors at the same church, I would not tell on her. I hope that she believes me. I never told anyone but you and Mr Gold.”

“Good. Then we have a plan of sorts.”

“Steph, I want you and you alone to go back to the outlet centre tomorrow and make sure that she is working there. If she is, Mr Gold will come with you on Thursday to make contact with her. The mention of Damien should break the ice.”

“What can I do?” asked Faye.

“At the moment, not a thing. We still have to be careful as the church that your fake father was a pastor at is still operating. Their US website has put a price on your head as a follower of the devil and a traitor to the word of God. Thankfully, they are using a photo from well over a year ago, but even still, coming out as who you were could still end up on social media and present a threat to you.”

That news seemed to shock Faye, but Paula had a surprise for her.

“Changing the subject, I have some folders for you to look at.”

She passed over six pink coloured folders.
“Read them and think about what the information in them tells you. If you want to meet one or more of them, just let me know, and I can look into setting up a ‘first date’.”

“Do these women know about my history?”

“They know that you are trans. The rest is down to you to tell them if you want to. They know that you are nineteen and have only recently transitioned. They also know that you have a good brain and are willing and eager to learn.”

“Thanks, Paula. I’ll look at them later, sleep on what my first impressions are, and then review them again in the morning. The last thing I want is to piss these women off. If I’m not the one, then I do not want to lead them on.”

Paula chuckled.
“What did I just say about you having a good brain?”

“Mum is right, Faye,” said Steph.
“You are right to be cautious, and to be thinking about the other party shows a maturity that many others in a similar situation to you just do not have at your age.”

“I guess some of the teaching that was pounded into me at Sunday School about being considerate to your elders did sink in. I was called ‘Teachers Pet’ at school for never mouthing off at the teachers. Even if I got a ‘C’ on a piece of work, I would go and ask why in the hope that I’d never repeat that mistake. Dad… The old one would get one of his minions to beat the living crap out of me if I ever repeated a mistake. The first time was ok, but the second was well over the red line.”

Steph looked at her mother. Both of them would miss Faye when she eventually moved on. Out of all the others like her that they’d helped, Faye was most certainly a one-off.

The following evening, Faye put the folders that Paula had given her the previous evening on the table once the dinner things had been cleared away.

“I looked at the files at least three times. I graded them in order of my preference.”

She pushed them over to Paula.

There was a bit of hesitation before Paula opened the first file.

Then, a smile slowly spread across her face.

“I see that you have chosen ‘No. 3’.”

“Yeah. She sounds far more interesting a person than the others. From the little data that you have included, she seems like she has been there, done it and is now building something from the ground up. Whereas… No 4 and No 1 are workaholics. Their minds seem to be 100% focused on beating men at their own game.”

Steph laughed.
“I think we should employ Faye here as a screener. Her comments are spot on.”

“I agree,” said Paula.
“Don’t you want to know who No. 3 is in real life?”

“Only when you are good and ready to tell me. I have learned one thing since walking through your office door all those months ago, and that is, ‘everything has a time and a place’ and that ‘rushing around like a headless chicken won’t solve anything’.”

“The real name of No. 3 is Becca Youngman.”

Faye looked at Paula without reacting.

“Don’t you know who she is?”

Faye shook her head.
“The name vaguely rings a bell, but that is all.”

“Becca spent eight years as a top, top model. She earned the really big money, and then suddenly, about two years ago, she gave it all up and seemed to disappear off the face of the planet. All sorts of theories were bandied about as to why this was. These ranged from being a junkie to being pregnant and finally to suffering from a mental disease. None of these claims were even remotely correct.”

“I think that’s where I heard the name before, but as I said, we were not allowed to watch or listen to the news on TV or Radio.”

“Becca now lives in East Sussex and runs a bookshop and attached café. Her book business also doubles as a publisher for local authors. She had been running it in the background for a couple of years before she quit the catwalk.”

“She sounds like an interesting woman,” said Faye.
“And before you take me to task for saying that, I don’t know the full picture yet, but I would like to meet her if she is agreeable to meeting me.”

Steph and her mother shook their heads and smiled.

[to be continued]