Dieithryn Chapter 1

© Maeryn Lamonte 2026

Introduction

Of all the places in the UK I never expected to live, Wales had to be at the top of the list. Or near if you include the places I have lived but had no choice. Much of my childhood was spent in Nottingham, and I have absolutely no desire to return to the place.

And no, it has nothing to do with the whole reputation for unnatural forms of erotic ovine recreation. I’ve lived in plenty of places that have dodgy reputations and it always comes down to neighbours looking for something disparaging to say to help them feel better about themselves.

Devon and Cornwall have undeserved reputations for incest, as does eastern Kent, largely from those living in western Kent. Norfolk has a more deep seate reputation for the same to the extent that the medical abbreviation NFN – or normal for Norfolk – is reserved for patients showing peculiar or rustic behaviour. Having lived in all of these places, I can't say I've noticed anything to suggest there's any truth behind it, so I can only imagine the same is true of Wales.

So, why my aversion to the place? It's the same for pretty much the entire west coast of the British Isles – the weather.

Most of Britain's weather comes from the west. Humid air comes in from the Atlantic on the prevailing winds, is pushed upwards by the land masses and condenses into saturated clouds that then drop the majority of their load before heading further inland. The higher the hills, the greater the lift, which leads to more impressive downpours.

On average, the west coast of the United Kingdom has three to four times as much rain as the rest of the country, and after living so much of my life in Nottingham, I have always had a greater need for clear skies and dry days,

Actually, Nottingham sits on the right side of the Pennines so doesn't have so much rain, but throughout my childhood it did have its own personal cloud machine in the form of Ratcliffe power station. It's powered down now, but its eight giant cooling towers belched a constant flow of steam into the atmosphere throughout my youth, putting so many of my memories under a slate grey sky and an almost constant -- or so it seemed -- mizzle.

Normally I have an intense dislike of portmanteau words, but the combination of misery and drizzle forms an almost perfect description of the less cheerful aspect of memories growing up, for which read almost all of them.

If only the weather were the only cause of depression in my life. I mean, sure, it's in there. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I've never thought was a great choice of words to describe what it's about. Its only saving grace is in the acronym, but they could still have come up with a better choice of words. Seasonally Acquired Depression for instance.

Anyway, I'm digressing. I can deal with the SAD using sunrise alarm clocks to give myself a little more consistency in when I believe the sun peeps above the horizon. The other aspects I've fought with over the years have proven a lot harder to cope with.

Friday (day 1) part 1

Now

Anyway, Wales. Nowhere near the top of my list of places to live, or even to stay, so all the more surprising when I found myself driving down a road barely wider than my car between overgrown hedgerows and rundown stone walls.

My satnav told me I'd arrived as I came alongside a wooden gate set in a stone built wall. I pulled up and stared somewhat disbelieving at the buildings on the other side.

I'd used Google Street View to check on the property once I'd agreed to the terms in my aunt's will, and it had looked considerably more run down. Corrugated iron roofs of the sort that you expected to find hiding sheets of asbestos, rough stonework badly in need of pointing and doors and windows that were either boarded up or badly rotted (or both). The courtyard had been paved in utilitarian concrete with weeds growing through everywhere. In short, the place looked derelict and, with the risk of hazardous substances involved, downright dangerous to live in. I'd agreed to the terms though, so here I was, sitting in my brand new Mini Clubman and staring in disbelief at my new home.

There was a way of checking. The envelope with all the legal documents I'd been given included a couple of remote control key fobs, two buttons on each. I retrieved one of them and pressed the top button. The five bar gate that stood between me and the property swung open.

I still couldn't quite believe this was the same place. All the buildings, including the stable block opposite the main house and the smaller building at the back of the plot, which I'd assumed to be an old dovecote, had all been renovated. The stonework was all mended, new slate roofs replaced the cheap ironwork and new hardwood doors and windows filled every hole. The courtyard had been completely redone with a tarmac drive leading from the gate to what had appeared to be a badly built porch, but now, if the large double doors lived up to appearances, was actually a spacious garage.

The bottom button on the remote opened the garage doors. The entrance was easily large enough for the Mini – it could have accommodated pretty much anything smaller than a truck – and the garage itself just about large enough to hold two Minis.

I reversed a few feet – enough to give me room to turn into the driveway – and straight into the garage. A couple more button presses closed the gate and garage doors behind me. The garage lights came on automatically to reveal a space larger and quite possibly better decorated than my last flat.

Then

So anyway, Aunt Daisy isn't really my aunt. She's actually my mum's second cousin, or she was. I'm not great at genealogy, but Mum told me once that means they had the same great grandparents and she is – was – actually my second cousin once removed.

According to Mum, her grandparents died young, leaving their nine children – including Mum's mum, my grandmother – to be distributed among various family members. So the story goes, my nan was mistreated by the family that adopted her so she ran away as a young teenager, bought a one way coach ticket to as far away as her saved money would take her and found work in a grocers. Eventually, she met and married my grandad who was also an orphan and they muddled through as best they could. My Mum was the oldest of their two children and wanted to go to art college, but they could never afford it. In the end she met my dad who worked as a junior clerk in an insurance firm.

Minor irony there; Dad didn't believe anything bad was going to happen to him so when he and Mum were killed in a senseless and easily avoided accident at home, he had neither will nor life insurance, which meant I didn't inherit a whole lot.

Not that I cared much. My parents' death devastated me. I was already struggling with a different aspect of my life, and losing them pushed me over the edge for a while.

A long enough while that my wife took it as a reason to leave me. She took our kids and most of what meagre wealth we had accumulated by then and left me with nothing much. I managed to scrape enough together to put down a deposit on a one bedroom leasehold flat in a less than salubrious part of the city, and from there I just about managed to keep my life from totally imploding.

That was where Aunt Daisy came to my rescue. In more ways than one.

Her branch of the family tree had fared better than mine. Her grandfather set up a haulage firm and managed to grow it into a successful enough business that his children and grandchildren ended up being very well supported. When my great grandparents died, it was mainly her side of the family that took in the children, but they couldn't look after them all, and it was my nan who ended up with the bum deal and was placed in a home where she wasn't wanted. When she ran away from home, Daisy's grandad made a considerable effort to find out what happened to her, and when he found her, he kept an eye on them. Both my nan and grandad were proud people and wouldn't have accepted charity, even from family, so there wasn't much he could do directly. He did make sure both my mum and her sister were invited to family gatherings though, and it was through this that Mum and Aunt Daisy became friends.

After I was born, Aunt Daisy became my godmother, and she took her role seriously. She never missed a birthday and at least once a year she would make an appearance and take me out for a meal. At first it was Mum, Dad and me, then after I married it became Lynn and me, then Lynn, me and the kids, then after my life fell apart, just me. In those last years she made sure she visited several times a year – quite a commitment since she lived at least a hundred miles away.

She's always been like that though. She sets her mind to something and she goes ahead and does it. Very much a force to be reckoned with. A product of her generation with quite a lot of influence from the one before her, I don't think I ever saw her wearing trousers. That being said, there was always a forcefulness about her personality. My dad once mentioned how her body language was actually more typical of a man's. In arguments she would square off against her opponent, and quite often win when her opponent didn't know how to respond to her aggression.

With the best will in the world you could never have called her attractive, but formidable worked for her. Between her looks – or lack of them – and her forcefulness, no man showed interest in her, but that didn't seem to bother her. She made her way through life contented enough with a number of close female friends -- platonic relationships I should hasten to add -- and using her drive and personality to fight her way up past the glass ceiling and establish herself as a magistrate in her area. She was well suited to the role as well, and I doubt anyone would have questioned it. She was always herself and took her rightful place in the world, dismissing as irrelevant the consideration that being a woman should have been a handicap.

Of all the people in the world, Aunt Daisy was the one who understood me best. She was the one who listened and never judged, which was at least part of the reason she was the one I felt safest confiding in. Besides, I'm pretty sure she suspected beforehand. You know, from all the hints she dropped?

"Gareth, you know how your father is so committed to amateur dramatics? Have you ever wondered how he ends up always being the pantomime dame?"

I'd noticed, and wondered, just never said anything. Too afraid where a conversation like that would lead.

"They say the apple never falls far from the tree."

Apparently, I'd started looking uncomfortable at that, so she'd changed the subject.

On another occasion she'd talked about her work and how much she enjoyed the challenge. "You know, if I had to do it all over again, I think I'd have preferred to have been born a man. Still it must be so much easier to be a woman trying to fit into a man's world than the other way around, don't you think?"

I'd stammered out nothing much of a response to that and missed yet another opportunity.

It occurs to me now that Mum might have said something to her. She'd never caught me, but I'm pretty sure she suspected something, especially if what Aunt Daisy said about my dad had any substance to it.

You see, I'm a product of my generation too, and influenced by my parent's generation. Ours was the first to acknowledge that people weren't all the same, that alternative sexualities and genders actually existed. Only none of that happened early in my life. I grew up in an environment where you didn't talk about such things, where raising the topic made people uncomfortable -- doubly so when your parents were doing their best to pretend that there was no such thing.

The only time I saw a man wearing a dress was when I saw my dad doing it on stage, or on rare occasions when the Two Ronnies would cross-dress. We never watched Dick Emery or Stanley Baxter because the whole man dressed as a woman thing happened much too often on those shows, and came across as much too believable.

Throughout all of my life, men dressing as women was only seen as something to laugh at, and feel a little uncomfortable about, so I never felt I had anyone I could go to with the feelings I had inside me. All I knew was that I should keep such feelings buried, and that I should feel intensely guilty about them when they came to the surface.

Carrying a secret is a burden though. It weighs on you all the time, and all the more when you don't feel you can share it with anyone. I tried it once or twice with friends I felt were close enough I could trust them. All I succeeded in doing was make them extremely uncomfortable. Fortunately, I was correct in my assessment that they could be trusted to keep my secret, though unfortunately not in my assumption that they would wish to continue as my friends. I risked and lost two good friends before giving up.

The only other person I told from my age group was Lynn, and for two reasons. The first was that I felt a marriage could only be built on complete honesty and I could hardly consider starting our lives together with such a massive secret hanging between us. The other reason was that old saying about a burden shared being a burden halved. I hoped that by talking about it to my significant other, I could reach a point where I could cope with it better.

I was wrong on both counts. Firstly, this was the point where I discovered that even in a marriage there was such a thing as too much truth. I'm still not sure I accept that, but Lynn definitely believed it. Secondly, the whole thing about sharing burdens only works if the other person is prepared to do their part. If they're not, then they become a whole lot heavier.

Now

Yeah, if anyone wants evidence of a German sense of humour, you only need to look at what they've done to the Mini. It was originally designed in response to the fuel shortages following the Suez crisis. It was supposed to be small and fuel efficient – which it was for the age. The design brief was to create a four seat car that could fit in a box four feet by four feet by ten. My Clubman was half as big again in every dimension. Mind you, with its hybrid engine, its fuel consumption was about three times more efficient and I rather liked the extra space, even if the name could only be thought of as ironic.

I did like the sideway-opening double doors at the back. Mind you, that had been a feature of the clubman right back to its earliest incarnation. I would have liked the wooden trim of the original, but given the damp environment I was moving into, it was probably for the best that I didn't have to worry about parts of my car rotting.

In the seclusion of my garage, I felt safe stepping out of the car. Replace my driving flats with a pair of kitten heels – no need to totter around on stilts with no-one around to enjoy the shape of my calves – and open the back to begin unloading.

Most of it would stay where it was until I'd had a chance to wander around the place and decide where what went, but I did have a box of essentials for the kitchen. It was heavy and squashed my breasts in a way that I'm sure would have been at least a little uncomfortable had they been real.

I loved the extra space in the garage. In time I'd probably line a couple of the walls with shelves, but only once I'd had a chance to enjoy the space and decide how much of it I needed to keep.

The door from the garage fed into a corridor. To the left it eventually opened up into a large single story space that was mainly living room and dining area. To the right it found its way to a staircase that led up to the bedrooms and bathroom, at least according to the notes I'd been given, and opposite at points along the length of the corridor were doors through to an office or downstairs guest room, depending on what I wanted to do with it, a downstairs toilet and shower -- I wasn't sure when I'd want to use a downstairs shower, but it was there, and who knew when the upstairs facilities might become unusable -- and closest to the living room/diner, a large and well appointed kitchen.

Lights went on wherever I went, courtesy of my smartwatch detecting which room I was in and responding. I unpacked the contents of the box into the fridge and cupboards, opened up a bag of coffee beans and added them to the all singing, all dancing machine waiting patiently for me to christen it.

The door bell rang and I took in a long calming breath. This was part of the deal and I'd have to face it sooner or later. I smoothed down my dress, checked my appearance quickly in the hall mirror and headed for the front door – middle of the corridor with space to hang coats and remove muddy boots. This door didn't open into the courtyard but rather into a short road I shared with one other house.

Another breath and I opened the door.

"Hello, we saw the light on and thought we'd welcome you to the neighbourhood. My name's Gwen and this is Patrick. I put together a shepherd's pie because I didn't know if you'd have the means to cook yourself anything. There are a few fast food places down in the village, but they charge quite a lot to deliver up here."

Gwen had a lilting Welsh accent which shouldn't have come as a surprise given where we were. Her welcoming smile had turned a little glassy as her brain had made sense of what her eyes were telling her. I mean, I look a lot better than a lot of the women I've seen around rural Norfolk, but that doesn't really say a lot. I know I don't pass particularly well, but then what do you expect after just a day? Patrick's smile had also frozen on his face, but his eyes had turned angry.

"That's very kind of you," I said. "I'm Gillian." A name I'd always liked and quite recently adopted. It had the advantage that any form of identity that only used my first initial -- which included my signature -- didn't need to change. I softened my voice a little, but it was no more feminine than my appearance -- which is to say, some small effort made, but I know I'm not convincing anyone. "I know I'm not exactly normal, but it's not my intention to cause offence. Since I'm not entirely what you were expecting, I won't be upset if you take back your welcome, though I hope you'll be open to a conversation at some stage. I am your new neighbour and I'd like for us to be on friendly terms at the very least."

"Oh, don't be silly," Gwen said, holding out her casserole dish. "I made this for you, so you should have it."

"Thank you very much," I said, taking it from her. "I'll be glad of this later. Long drive and don't feel much like cooking if you know what I mean. I was just making myself a drink if you'd like to join me. The kitchen's still a bit of a mystery, but I think I should be able to find what I need."

"Oh no, it's very kind, but we'd better leave you to your unpacking. We just wanted to say hi and welcome to the neighbourhood."

"Maybe another time then. I take it you live across the road?"

"That’s right." Was there a hint of reluctance in her movements? Or was I being paranoid?

"Well, thanks for popping by. I'll drop this back in a day or two."

"Oh, no rush. It was nice to meet you, er, Gillian."

"You too. I'll see you again soon, I'm sure."

They were gone before I'd finished speaking. I closed the door gently and carried my supper back into the kitchen. Supper for two or three nights by the looks of it. It seemed they'd been expecting a family rather than a... whatever they thought I was.

The coffee machine was one of the newer ones with a milk reservoir. The one I was used to I'd bought back when I could afford such luxuries. It had lasted nearly a decade and I'd worried about what I'd do when it finally gave up the ghost. The refrigerated milk reservoir meant no messing about with a jug of milk and a steam spout, just push the button and let the built in computer decide what to do next. I set it up with all the raw materials it needed and selected a cappuccino. A minute's grinding and gurgling produced a very serviceable looking cup of coffee, complete with pattern on the foam.

It was a little weak for my tastes, but then the screen popped up with a feedback screen. I touched it and raised the strength a couple of points. Next time would be better.

I carried my drink through to the living room. Windows large enough to light the place well, but not so large that they gave a good view outside unless you were standing right next to them. Better for privacy maybe, but I'd have liked french doors looking into the courtyard. The renovators had kept to the original style. They'd done a good job too. The entire place looked like the images I'd seen on Street View might have done fifty years ago.

The inside was quite beautiful as well. I'd not had any say in how they'd decorated or furnished it, and if I had I'd have chosen something radically different, and I'd have liked it a lot less. There was a subtle feminine feeling to the place that I found surprisingly restful. The TV was smaller than I'd have chosen, but somehow that didn't bother me as much as I'd thought it would. Binge watching TV was a thing of my sad past. What I was going to replace it with, I couldn't say, but whatever else my life was becoming, I didn't feel like I was trying to escape from any part of it.

I finished my coffee and carried my mug through to the kitchen, depositing it in the pristine, brand new dish washer. I still had a car full of things to unpack. Just clothes and personal effects, and almost all of them newly purchased. The house was fully stocked and furnished, so I didn't need anything else, and this was part of the terms I'd agreed to. I'd filled up the back of the car, so it would most likely take several trips to unload. Quite a few trips if the weight of the first case was anything to go by. I wasn't sure if it was psychosomatic, but I could only manage one case at a time.

The shoes didn't help, so I kicked them off. I'd just about managed to lug to the top of the stairs when the door bell rang again.

More neighbours to upset with my abnormality? I straightened myself out and checked myself quickly in the hall mirror before opening the door.

"Gwen. I thought I'd chased you and your husband away."

"I'm sorry about that," she said. "We weren't exactly welcoming, but you did take us by surprise a bit. I could feel Patrick getting tense, so I thought it best to back off before he said something we'd all regret."

"Does he know you're here?"

"He had a few things to check with the farm. Actually, I think he just said that to get out of the house. He has his way of dealing with things, and I have mine. Anyway, I felt pretty dreadful about how we reacted, so I came back to apologise."

"Would you like to come in for a coffee, or a tea?"

"Thank you, I think I could do with a cup of tea. And I'm sorry for being nosy, but I've been curious to see what the contractors did with this place. It's been derelict for quite a few years now."

"Tea and a tour then. Which would you like first?"

"Oh, tea first, I think. We should have a chat. Clear the air, if you know what I mean."

I'm not as precious about tea as I am coffee, but I still prefer it loose leaf and brewed for four minutes in a preheated teapot. Fortunately it was a preference Aunt Daisy knew about me, that we had shared, so teapot, cosy, strainer, milk jug, tray, even bone china cups and saucers, because tea tastes so much nicer out of bone china.

"Do you take sugar?" I asked as I assembled everything. I'd spotted a box of sugar cubes in the cupboard, which had to be for guests as I hadn't taken sugar in either tea or coffee since I was twelve, or there abouts.

"No thanks. I can't afford to."

"What do you mean? You have an amazing figure."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't if I put sugar in everything, would I?"

I glanced over my shoulder and returned the smile I'd heard in her voice. I added a handful of shortbread fingers to a plate then carried the tray through to the living room.

"This is lovely," she said looking around. "Did you decorate it yourself?"

"I wish. It's so much nicer than anything I could have come up with."

My internal clock told me four minutes had elapsed so I busied myself with the tea making. Gwen accepted the cup I offered as well as one biscuit. More calories than a spoonful of sugar, but I wasn't going to judge.

"I'm not sure where to begin," she said.

"Then let me." I paused and took a breath. I'd spent a fair amount of time considering how to handle situations like this, and the only example I'd found that helped me make my point was a Marvel one shot of Agent Carter. The chances of Gwen being into scifi were pretty remote.

Maybe I didn't have to mention the geek factor though.

"There was a telly program I watched recently, set in the nineteen forties. The main character was a woman working in an office full of men with a boss who kept giving her drudge work.

"There was this scene at the end of a day where the boss calls her over and says something like, 'We're done for the day. Me and the boys are just heading down to the bar for a drink."

"He pauses long enough for a glimmer of hope to appear in her eyes. Maybe she's finally convinced them to accept her as an equal.

"Except the boss man goes on to say, 'There's a stack of files on my disk. Why don't you work through them before you knock off?'"

I could see the spark of anger in her eyes. These days it doesn't take much to wake the latent feminist in just about any woman. I waited until she had a good smoulder going before adding.

"That's how every group of women I ever met made me feel."

Then

Lynn's reaction to my revelation was not great. She didn't lose her temper with me or shout or call me a pervert or anything, although it might have been easier if she had. Instead she glared at me with a frosty silence for long enough to make sure I felt uncomfortable, then she walked out of the room.

After a couple of days continued silence I sent her a text. 'I'm probably the last person you want to hear from,' I said, 'so I'm just going to reach out this once and leave you alone. When you're ready to talk, assuming you ever are, let me know.'

She left me hanging for another two weeks before texting back. 'Seven tomorrow, where we went on our first date.'

It was meant to be another test. Did I remember stuff like that? Sure I did. It wasn't the most romantic of destinations, but it was all I'd been able to afford. More a cafeteria than a restaurant, but the owner had taken pity on me and set us up in a back room with the best china and everything.

She wasn't present when I turned up five minutes early, but a quirked eyebrow at the proprietor had him indicating the back room with his head. I made my way back to the room and let myself in.

"You remember this much then," Lynn said through pursed lips. It was the sort of expression that might lead to wrinkled lips and that skin having spent altogether too long sucking on lemons. Not the time to comment on it though.

"When have I ever missed an anniversary?" I asked calmly.

Her lips relaxed a little. "That's true. You were always good at that sort of thing."

"Nothing's changed, Lynn..."

"How can you say that!?"

"Alright, bad choice of words, perhaps, but I do stand by them, because the only thing that's changed is that I've told you something you didn't know a couple of weeks ago. It was still true before I told you about it..."

"Did you ever put on any of my clothes?"

"Do you seriously think I could fit into any of your clothes?" I was slim enough, but Lynn was smaller and more slender than I could ever have hoped to be. She waited even so. "No, I have never put on any of your clothes."

"How can I believe you?"

"You never used to have a problem trusting what I told you."

"That was before you lied to me."

"No Lynn. I never lied to you, and before you tell me that not saying anything about this is the same as lying, it isn't. It's not the sort of thing you share on a first date, or on any number of following dates. I've learnt from experience that it's not something I can share with just anybody."

"Do your parents know?"

"Not as far as I know."

She snorted incredulously. "So you'll tell me about this... thing of yours, but not them?"

"For one thing they wouldn't understand; I hoped you would. For another, I wanted to be honest with you before our relationship went any deeper."

"Well, I don't want anything to do with this side of you. If there's any chance of our relationship going anywhere from here, I'm going to need your word that you will never speak to me about this again, and that you'll not indulge in... whatever it is you do."

It seemed a little unfair that she thought I indulged in anything. Other than wishful thinking that was. All I'd ever done was gaze over the fence and long for the greener grass I saw there. It didn't seem like my life would be any different if I agreed to her demands, and nothing had changed in the way I felt about her, so I agreed.

Of course something had changed, only at the time I was too young and naïve to recognise it. From Lynn's perspective, I'd revealed an aspect of myself she had no idea existed. Somehow, I wasn't the person she'd been falling in love with all these years, but rather something unknowable. Someone with the deep seated hidden past which left her wondering if she could ever trust me again.

The thing is, an iceberg remains an iceberg regardless of whether you know that ninety percent of it is below water. It remains the same, and suddenly discovering that so much of it lies hidden below the surface does nothing to change its nature or the beauty of what you see on the surface.

Then again, witless oaf that I was back then I hadn't the first idea of what was going on in Lynn's mind, and even if I had I wouldn't have known enough of what was going on to use the iceberg metaphor.

Instead, Lynn and I tried to rebuild our relationship on a foundation that had been seriously undermined. I noticed the questioning looks and the increased tendency to respond in a distrustful and critical manner, but I put them down to her coming to terms with what I'd told her, and checking to make sure I was keeping my part of the deal. I'd managed to do so since we'd first met so I had no doubts I'd be able to continue to do so. In time things would go back to the way they'd been, including Lynn. All I needed to do was be patient.

We found our new normal. The frostiness in her eyes diminished but never quite disappeared. I still had the same feelings for her I'd always had, so managed to convince myself things would mend in time.

Eventually I noticed her looking in jewellery shops and took notice of the style of ring she seemed to prefer. I'd been saving since well before I told her my guilty secret so was able to afford her choice albeit at a stretch. It meant the special night out took us back to the back room in the cafeteria, which I thought was romantic. I splurged on flowers and managed to make enough of an impression that when I presented her with the ring, she accepted it readily enough.

We married within the year and became parents within two, then again just under two years later. A pigeon pair my mum called them. Our daughter, May, was born first, then twenty-two months later, or son, Liam.

It was almost enough. Lynn's frosty edge thawed almost completely once she had children in her life, and parenting turned out to be an exciting adventure regardless of my role. I mean, I couldn't ever come close to the experience from Lynn's point of view, The feeling of having a small life growing inside you, the pain of childbirth -- I'll admit not overly upset about missing out on that -- the overwhelming sense of love I saw in her eyes when she held each of our children for the first time.

I'll admit to a small degree of jealousy over that last one. It had been a lot of years since Lynn had looked at me with that unreserved delight and try as I might, I couldn't match it. They were my children and I would love them just as completely, but for me it was an act of will unsupported by any hormonal rush.

I knew that childbirth could alter a woman's brain chemistry so I was kind of ready for it when Lynn transferred some of her affection from me to our daughter and son. I just wasn't ready for how much or what it would mean for me.

In the years since we'd been married, I'd been passed over for promotion at work time and time again. At first Lynn had been supportive and sympathetic, even glad that extra responsibility wasn't keeping me in the office all hours, but as her priority shifted from me to our children, she began to see me as inadequate as a provider. I earned enough to afford us a modest home in a reasonable neighbourhood, but her ambition for our kids grew beyond my means to deliver, with the consequence that she became more critical of me, something which our kids -- our daughter in particular -- picked up on and began to emulate.

Then my parents died. It was a stupid, senseless accident. A fault in their boiler, no carbon dioxide monitors in the house. They'd gone to bed early as usual and not woken up the next day. The neighbours had contacted me when they hadn't seen Mum and Dad for a couple of days. I dropped by after work and found them in bed. As kind a way to go as I could imagine.

We held the funeral several weeks later, after the autopsies – necessary in such cases – followed by a wake in my parents' house, now with a suitably repaired boiler.

I'm not great with crowds, never have been. I could never figure out why, but whenever I spend more than an hour or so in a crowded place, I start to feel all knotted up inside and have to get away. Add my sense of loss to it all, I managed half an hour before needing to escape.

Lynn found me an hour later in my parents room, clinging to one of my mother's dresses.

"Really?" she asked in her dangerous voice. "You leave me to cope with your family and friends on my own, and for this? I thought we were done with this nonsense."

I didn't have words to react. Just looked back at her through tear streaked eyes.

"Well I am," she said, her voice sharp as flint. "Why don't you stay the night here? Among all your mother's things. You disgust me!"

It doesn't seem to matter how broken you get inside. There's always room to become a little more broken.

Aunt Daisy found me some time later. An hour, maybe more, I couldn't say. She sat beside me and put an arm around my shoulders. Maybe it was that she gave me space, but I found my voice.

"It smells of her," I held up the dress, now crumpled and damp from my tears.

My aunt responded by tightening her hold. I folded into her embrace and let the tears flow.

Now

"What do you mean?" Gwen asked.

"Feeling excluded?" I offered in reply, more a question than a statement; an invitation for her to consider rather than a declaration to bulldoze her with.

"I still don't understand."

“Throughout all my life, as a child as much as an adult, I’ve felt a need for close companionship like girls have with each other. Guys don't do it; they have their own way of acting around one another which works for them but never has for me. Women have this way of being together where they let down all the barriers and allow themselves to be vulnerable. The strength you gain from trusting each other and being worthy of that trust is something I’ve been missing all my life.

“Only whenever I’ve found myself in a group of women everyone sort of clams up. The easy going, trusting attitude disappears. Everyone ups draw-bridges and mans – or womans if you prefer – the battlements.”

“Can you blame us when men treat us the way you just described?”

“Not all men are like that, in fact not many are. You’d probably be surprised at how few modern men are that kind of arsehole.”

“Well perhaps, but you can’t blame us for being cautious. I mean when you make yourself vulnerable, you open yourself up to being hurt. I mean, I have that sort of relationship with my husband, but it took a while for me to learn to trust him.”

“I suppose, but can you see how excluding someone like me is as hurtful as having your trust betrayed? Especially when there's no indication that you would ever trust me that much?”

“Trust has to start somewhere though, and since you’re the one looking for it…”

“It should be up to me to make the first move. Not that easy when faced by a phalanx of blank faces.”

“Well I’m sorry, but it’s hard not to be wary when you look like this.”

“Oh, this is a recent development. All my experiences before today have been in male mode as it were. This is… It’s hard to explain.”

“Perhaps you could try.”

She was listening at least. Progress of a sort.

“Alright. My, er, well I’ve always thought of her as an aunt. Not that closely related genealogically, but she’s always been a part of the family. Anyway, my aunt passed away recently.”

Then

Lynn never bothered to ask for an explanation. As far as she was concerned, I’d given her reason enough to leave – something, I eventually admitted to myself, she’d been looking for for some time. She had what she wanted out of our relationship, which is to say our kids. Beyond that, she would take whatever else she could.

Aunt Daisy made sure I had proper legal representation. I hadn’t been that bothered. Between my grief over my parents’ death and the shock of Lynn seeking to leave me, I had slumped into a deeper depression than usual. I didn't really want to fight so left that to my solicitor. Lynn was ready to hang my dirty laundry in public, except there really was no evidence other than the conversation I’d had with her, so my own representative threatened her back with slander should she do so. In the end we reached an agreement where she kept the house and the kids and I kept my income. My parents had lived all their lives in a council house, declining the opportunity to buy it when it was offered, so I had little more than the contents when probate was finally granted a year after their deaths, the inquest returning a verdict of accidental death.

By then I’d found a one bedroom leasehold flat that served my needs. I didn't keep much of my parents’ belongings. A few pieces of furniture that had some value and one or two sentimental items was all. The rest went into a skip and added to the country’s landfill problem.

I kept on with my job and saw my kids on weekends. As they grew into teenagers they began to resent the time they were expected to spend with me and I didn't have the strength to fight them. I asked them if they would prefer not to continue seeing me and let them have their liberty when they asked for it.

“You can always ask your mum if you want to get back in touch,” I told them.

“Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.” Liam’s words, but from the expression on May’s face, he spoke for both of them.

I wanted to blame Lynn, to accuse her of poisoning their minds against me, but there was a part of me that looked at the shrivelled remnant of a person I’d become and could only imagine their disappointment in me.

That was part of my problem. I could see so much that was wrong with me, even come up with reasons for the problems, but somehow there never seemed to be a solution.

One of the reasons I kept being overlooked when it came to promotion at work was my inability to network effectively. Put me in a room with a bunch of people and I was lost. Ask me to talk about what our company had to offer and I could do it till the cows came home – no-one knew our products and services as well as I did – but networking was all about selling yourself, for which you needed confidence and something to talk about. When I looked inside, past my everyday mask, I found nothing. Well, except her, snivelling in some dark corner, and no-one wanted to know about her.

The same applied to the dating scene where the only real difference to networking was the aim of the meeting. Essential, both were about convincing other people to like you, just for different reasons.

Then there were the days when the weight of it all threatened to crush me. On those days, all I could do was endure under the pressure, which left me incapable of applying myself to the tasks I’d been assigned, even the urgent ones with deadlines looming.

I knew my performance was suffering and was even vaguely aware that it had been noticed. No quiet words from my line manager yet, but they couldn't be far off.

Aunt Daisy started visiting more often after that. Like I said, she took her godmothering duties seriously. Instead of one maybe two visits a year she started making up excuses and turned up every other week.

After the first couple of unannounced visits, in which she found me living in an embarrassing level of squalor, I began making an effort to keep the flat tidy. Certain days it was an uphill struggle but, given that the whole flat wasn’t much bigger than the hotel rooms she stayed in, I usually found enough willpower to keep on top of things – dishes in the mini dishwasher, dirty clothes in the washing hamper and a quick hoover every Friday evening at the very least, since her unannounced calls usually happened on the weekends.

I also made Saturday my cooking day. Shopping delivered on Friday evening and transformed into a week’s worth of meals by Saturday lunchtime. It gave me something to do with my weekends and meant I had enough to offer as an alternative to the restaurant meals Daisy kept offering to feed me. The hotel bills had to be adding up, and the sort of places she insisted on taking me for lunch couldn't have left her much change from a hundred quid.

She kept probing after my little secret, but I never quite found the courage to tell her. It had gone wrong for me every time I’d told it to those close to me, most spectacularly with Lynn, and Aunt Daisy was too important a person in my life for me to risk her poor opinion of me.

She held me together over the months and years while the rest of my life fell apart. First mum and dad, then Lynn, then the kids. At least she gave me enough of a boost on the weekends she did visit that I'd be able to go back into work and put in enough effort that I never did have that dreaded conversation with my manager. I mean, it’d probably end up being three similar conversations quite close together so they could satisfy the Protokol Nazis, but once the first verbal warning was given, the written one and the final dismissal wouldn't be far behind.

Then the day came when, instead of the expected visit from my aunt, I had a phone call from a solicitor. A special condition in her will that I should be informed of her passing and invited to come to the reading of her will.

I almost didn't go. She’d been the one good thing holding my life together, and now she was gone too, I could feel it all crumbling around me.

Except she’d anticipated that.

The solicitor who’d called to deliver the news had read out a letter – part of the special conditions.

‘My Dearest Gareth,’ it began. ‘I’ve known for some time now that I was dying. I was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in a part of my body I’d prefer not to speak about. No chance of a cure, so rather than fight it for a few additional months of existence, I decided to accept palliative care to ease the discomfort over the time I have left.

‘I’m sorry I didn't get round to telling you, but you know better than most that some things are just too hard to share, even – perhaps especially – with those you care for most.

‘I imagine you will want to curl up into a ball of misery and will the world away, but I'm not going to let you. Call it a last request from someone who loves and cares for you very much. My funeral will be held on,’ here the solicitor gave a time and date, ‘and I’ve arranged for a car to pick you up at your home and bring you. There are a few things I’d like you to do in preparation for the day. They’re a little unusual, but I’d like you to humour me in this.

‘The car will pick you up in the afternoon before the funeral and deliver you to an establishment where the proprietors have some very specific instructions on how to make you ready for the funeral service. My first request is that you do not argue with them but let them get you ready as I’ve instructed them.

‘My second request is that you pack up any items of sentimental value, anything that you would miss if your house were to burn down for instance, and bring them with you. Also pack any important documents – birth certificate, degree certificate, passport, etc – and any documents of ownership you might have for your flat, car, and any other object of significant value, and bring them with you as well.

‘Lastly, I would like you to prepare a short eulogy to give at the funeral. I know that may be asking a lot, but I would like the congregation to hear from the people I’ve cared most for in my life, and you are most definitely one of those.’

Now and Then

“Her letter was kind of cryptic, plus with it being her last wish, I could hardly say no. The funeral was set for a Friday, but that was no problem. My employers had more difficulty persuading me to take my annual leave than otherwise, so I always had more than enough available to me. I took the Thursday and Friday off and did as my aunt had instructed me, filling a couple of small suitcases with the few memories of my life I wanted to keep. A couple of photo albums, a scrap book, some silly keepsakes from holidays I’d taken as a child, a few things May and Liam had made to give me as Christmas and Birthday presents, some framed photographs of my parents, my kids, even one of Lynn taken during happier times. Mum had a few nice pieces of jewellery which would probably have gone to Lynn had she hung around at all following my parents' deaths. I transferred them from her jewellery box into a silk roll she used when we went on holiday. It wasn't a lot to show for getting on for five decades of life, but in a way it felt good discovering I could travel tonight if I needed to.

“I also packed a sports bag with a change of clothes, a few changes of socks and underwear, my night things and toiletries. I ended up with a couple of hours to kill before my ride was due to turn up. I spent them wandering around the flat looking for memories.

“There were none. With my valuables packed away, the place had no more personality to it than a cheap travel hotel. When my driver rang the doorbell to announce his arrival, I grabbed my bags and left with no desire to return.

“The car must have cost my aunt’s estate a good chunk of change. We must have driven a couple of hundred miles across to the village Daisy had called home. The only words my driver spoke were to direct my attention to the car’s hospitality centre. He assured me that for long distance hires like this one the drinks and snacks were complementary, so I mixed a packet of nuts with a packet of green olives and snacked over a small bottle of Tempranillo which proved to be a better vintage than I’d been expecting.

“I don't usually travel very well so I passed the time watching the English countryside speed by. The ride was smoother than any I’d experienced, but I knew if I spent more than a couple of minutes focusing on a screen, my stomach would rebel. It was a beautiful day though. Blue sky sparsely streaked with mare’s tails, and all the vibrant greens that make our country special flaring in the sunshine. For the first time in a long time I felt the weight lift a little from my shoulders. I sent up a quiet prayer of thanks to my aunt.

“We paused a couple of times to feed the thirsty V8 pulling us along. It also gave me time to use the facilities. I offered the driver a coffee and he took time out to show me how I could make myself one using the car’s facilities. I repeated my offer and he accepted. One flat white for him, one mocha for me. No better drink in my mind, combining coffee and chocolate, two of the world’s finest foodstuffs.

“With the coffee machine discovered, more coffee was made than was perhaps wise, and a couple more comfort stops added to the journey. We still arrived at our destination just five minutes late.

“It was beyond the last thing I would have expected.”

“Oh, stop being such a tease. What was it?”