Part of them getting to know each other was talking about how they looked and what style of clothes they liked.

It turned out that Diana was just half a size larger than Vienna, so she was able to wear at least some of the latter’s clothes. They both agreed that it would be fun to dress up in the evenings.

Before that, though, the house needed a thorough cleansing from top to bottom. The previous renters had left a lot of nasty reminders in the cupboards including a load of dirty nappies.

Mark had supplied them with some cleaning materials, but it didn’t take long before a proper shopping list was created. Vienna added a selection of herbs and spices to the shopping list, and during one phone call with him, she dictated it to him.

At the end, Vienna said,
“We need to go online.”

Mark didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he replied,
“Ok, I’ll bring something with me. Just be careful, ok?”

Vienna looked at Diana before saying,
“That is a given. Neither of us wants our location revealed to the world.”

Mark told Diana to be ready to go to the dentist when he visited in a couple of days. Her reaction was partially good, but with a bit of reluctance.

Later, Vienna asked,
“Nervous about going to the dentist?”

“Yeah. It has been more than three years since my last visit.”

“Get it over and done with, and you will be fine.”

“What if it takes more than one visit?”

“Then Mark will handle it.”

“You trust him, don’t you?”

“I do. I had to after… after my parents died, it was hard, but he lost a sister as well so we bonded. He was well looked after in their will. He never has to work again, if you get my meaning.”

“What if he runs off with your inheritance?”

Vienna chuckled and shook her head.
“Dad had a will that put everything into a trust that is managed by a board of people he trusted in London. Any movement of funds over a certain limit or frequency that is not in the plan has to be authorised by them. That’s a lot of why I never ‘flashed the cash’ before. I was brought up to value money. Many of the outfits that I wore to events were obtained from charity shops and altered by a dressmaker who looked after my mother and her mother before her.”

“But you were seen… I saw the photos of you getting out of fancy cars at those events.”

Vienna smiled.
“It was all for show. Let them think that I was flashing the cash. Sure, I’d pay my way and even buy a bottle or two of expensive bubbly, but I would never get drunk or put myself into a position where my drink could be spiked. God knows how many times the gutter press tried it. It got so bad that I’d often go to an event and only stay for a short while. When it was not an insult to leave, I’d do so and not have any of the food or drink on offer. The risk of my food or drink being spiked was just too high. Several people who took drinks that had been offered to me ended up in the hospital. One woman was raped and later left for dead along the side of the river. That was when I started talking to Mark about dropping out. I didn’t want a death on my hands.”

Vienna laughed.
“That was noticed by the media. They ran headlines for weeks about how I was starving myself and that I looked very anorexic. At twenty-five, I was the same weight as when I was sixteen, 58kg. Mark insisted that I had to eat a meal and be well hydrated before leaving for those events. Those flashy cars were mostly rented. Dad had a BMW 7-series. It was delivered just before he died. I used it a lot until a couple of years ago with a former London Cabbie driving. It is… or was in the garage at home along with Mum’s Aston Martin DB7.”

“Oh… I think I see,” remarked Diana.

“It was mostly an act. Yes, Dad was wealthy, but was asset-rich and cash-poor. Over 90% of his wealth was tied up. Most of it still is. The old me has money, but honestly, after a year of living on very little, I don’t miss it. Even my infrequent trips to the supermarket were almost instantly reported on social media. There would be endless comments about how much weight I’d put on or lost because of my diet. That is very mentally tiring.”

“And all that combined to make you want to say, ‘stop the world, I wanna get off’?”

“It did. Believe me, Mark tried his hardest to get me to do something different, but my shrink saw what it was doing to my mental health. Like a junkie, I needed to go into rehab or, in my case, drop out of society and become invisible. Eventually, he agreed with me and came up with safeguards and an escape route. One of those safeguards was always having a place like this rented. It, as you have seen, provided me… us with a place to crash and take stock.”

“Now… Diana, do you fancy cooking tonight?”

“How are you feeling?” asked Vienna after Diana had returned from her trip to the dentist.

“Like I’ve been through a boxing match. She gave me three fillings and descaled and polished my teeth. I was in the chair for almost an hour.”

“But does it feel better? Are you still in pain?”

“No pain, but my jaw aches.”
“Then soup for you tonight,” said Vienna, half joking.

“That would be good. I don’t feel like chewing much at the moment.”

Diana was still very quiet the next day, so Vienna asked,
“You seem subdued again today. Did something happen yesterday?”

“Mark… He wanted to know what my intentions towards you were.”

Vienna laughed.
“That’s just him being protective.”

“That’s what I thought at first, but he wanted to know if I was prepared for all your baggage to get in the way of a relationship.”

“My baggage? Don’t worry, Diana, I think I have a plan to consign it to landfill.”

Those words got Diana very interested.
“I’m all ears.”

“While you were undergoing the torture of the dentists, I was working on the kitchen floor. It gave me time to think about what’s next.”

The expression on Diana’s face looked a bit worried.

“By next, I mean for both of us. If you are interested in becoming the person you have dreamed about for years, then it applies to you as well.”

“Are you talking about me transitioning?”

Vienna smiled and nodded.
“That and more.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about what would happen if I were to put on some of Ellie Charlton’s finery and a dark brown wig and walk into Oxford City Centre?”

“You’d be trending on social media like it was going out of fashion.”

“Correct. Now think about what would happen if you glammed up and went to your old stomping ground?”

“And met my family?”

“Exactly?”

“They’d not be very happy with me.”

“Good. Now imagine what would happen if you didn’t look like you or I didn’t look like me?”

“Err… No one would bat an eyelid.”

“So?” said Vienna.

“Are you suggesting that you are willing to change your face so much that no one would know that it was you?”

“If this past year has taught me one thing, it is that looking different allows you to live among other people invisibly. My ugly mug is far too well-known. It has to change.”

“Could you not just go in disguise?”

“Like I have been this past year? Or are you suggesting that I live wearing something akin to Islamic dress that includes a veil? Something like a niqab?”

“That is one option.”

“And severely limiting in what I could and could not do. Perhaps while my face is healing, but not for the long term.”

“It sounds like you have decided that this is what you are going to do?”

“I have. I had plenty of time to think about this in the past year. It is not all about me, though. You want to transition and be able to pass as a woman. Correct?”

“You know that it is.”

“Then you will need some attention to your face.”

“I suppose so,” replied Diana.
“But it all costs money. For that, I’d need a job and plenty of time.”

“I’m guessing that while you call yourself Diana, you don’t have any formal identification in that name? That would preclude you from taking a permanent job in society?”

“You got that right. Doesn’t the same apply to Vienna?”

Vienna laughed.
“Before I started on this venture, I changed my name via deed poll to Vienna Makepeace. Makepeace was the name of a six-time great-great-grandmother who was hanged for murder in York in the early nineteenth century. Mark has a driving licence in my Vienna name. He’s been slowly moving my funds, or almost all of my funds, from Ellie Charlton to Vienna Makepeace accounts. That money is just the interest on the capital and totals over two hundred grand. So far, that process has not been made public. It is our intent to keep a little in the Ellie Charlton world, but it will be virtually dormant. My life from here on out is as Vienna. As I said before, Ellie Charlton is dead to the world.”

“So, you were only going to be on the road for a short amount of time?”

Vienna shook her head.
“I have to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to another winter, but there was no time limit to my time on the road. That was… until I met you.”

“No pressure on me then?”

“Meeting you did something to me that caused me to change my plans. That thing is that I’m attracted to you. I’ve never felt like that before, and no, it does not matter what you want to do with your gender. It is the person inside that got me all messed up.”

Diana remained silent for several minutes.
“Are you sure you want to do this? You are a beautiful woman, Vienna. I could never in a million years get even close to your natural beauty, and now, you want to mess it all up?”

“It is not a case of wanting to but more like having to. Deep down, I want to be a normal person who can live a boring life out of the public eye.”

“Even after being on the road for almost a year, you seem determined to change how you look to the world?”

“If anything, I’m more determined. For the first time in ten years, I have been just like 99.99999% of the population, just another person in a crowd. Very few people have even a clue just how good that was mentally after what went before it…”

Diana didn’t say anything.

“The day I took my driving test, there were people on almost every street corner live-streaming it to the world. The trolls went mad with joy when I failed. Someone in the DVLA or the driving test people must have blabbed. I passed it the second time. I got a cancellation with two days’ notice, and the event was almost ignored. That’s how my life has been since my parents died.”

“But why you? Did something trigger the media into going after you like that?”

“Inheriting a hundred million was only part of it. Mum was something of a porn star before she met my father on a flight from New York to London. She gave it up that day. Her reputation didn’t die, and all sorts of stories were made up about them. Gold digger was the most popular one. The thing was, she fell in love with him before she knew about his money. Money wasn’t a thing with her once she was with him. She wasn’t a shopaholic or a ‘lady who lunched’. Her parents used to run a farm until foot and mouth hit them. Mum was perfectly happy driving a tractor or her Aston Martin. That was about her only luxury.”

“I still don’t understand why they went after you?”

“I was, as they say, ‘spotted’ by a Hollywood Agent when I was fourteen. He was in the adult film industry. He got both barrels from Mum because he’d molested her not long after her first film came out. The bastard put it out that I was a bitch, a diva and was always jacked up when on set. The truth was that I’d only ever done one test in front of the camera, and I froze solid, but he’d already sold the rights to a soft porn film using my Mum’s name as a seller. He was sued for almost everything he had and went bankrupt. He turned to making up stories about all my family from his one-bed condo in LA. That’s how the worst of the gutter press got their teeth into me. After I went on the road, he started this rumour that I was pregnant and was lying low in a rehab clinic to get rid of my £200-a-day crack habit. It is no use suing him as he has nothing left to lose.”

“You poor thing. It all starts to make sense now.”

They were both woken up early the next morning by Mark. The look on his face told them that he was the bearer of bad news.

“What’s the problem?”

“This. This is the problem,” he said, showing a social media post to Vienna.

“Diana or, in reality, Patrick O’Connor. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Diana looked at the image on the screen.
“Yes. That’s me, but…”

She took a deep breath and said,
“My real name is indeed Patrick O’Connor. I am from County Armagh, and yes, I left home after selling the family silver on a day trip to Dublin. My family want me arrested for theft. I used the money from the sale to get almost as far away from them as I could. I took the ferry to Holyhead and then a train to York and began living as Diana. Like you, I got temporary work picking ‘Sprouts’ for Christmas. Luckily, my few run-ins with the police never resulted in my fingerprints being taken. According to my family, I stole around five grand. That is bollocks. Most of the family silver was just silver plate. The pawn shop gave me two hundred and thirty euros for it all.”

“Diana, you recognised Ellie right away? How was that?”

Diana sighed.
“The day before, I’d been reading an old gossip rag article on her. It was the one that showed a load of different disguises. Ellie’s beauty shone through their attempts. When I saw her, I knew right away who it was.”

“Why didn’t you turn her in and collect all that lovely money?” asked Mark.

This time, Vienna interrupted.
“Mark, Diana had plenty of opportunity to duck out and find a phone and let the cat out of the bag. She didn’t. Then she could have used the phone that you supplied us. She didn’t. I, for one, don’t want her to go anywhere unless I’m with her. I have feelings for Diana, or whatever her name is. I’ve never felt like that towards anyone before. Naturally, it may come to nothing, but I think that I’d like to try.”

She swallowed hard.
“We do have a problem, and that is the people who want to make lots of money from my supposed mental issues. I know that seeing me fail miserably in full view of the public would sell a lot of adverts, even though I have done nothing to warrant even a second glance. I think my reluctance to even begin to play their stupid game is a big part of the problem they have with me. I could not see that before. Now… Mark, how should we move forward and hit them hard while preserving our relative anonymity? Whatever we decide, I want to move forward with changing my appearance. I would not put it beyond some of the internet scumbag influencers to start printing ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive, Ellie Taylor’. I want to rub their noses in the dirt, but I don’t know how to do it.”

Then Vienna stood up.
“All this talk is depressing me. I’m going to take a shower and get dressed up. I fancy looking decent again, and that includes make-up and everything.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, let alone approval from the other two, and left them to it.

When she’d gone, Mark asked,
“Why haven’t you legged it? The main road is only half a mile away, and there are buses into Banbury from there.”

“I know. I saw them yesterday. I haven’t legged it, as you put it, for three reasons. One, I fancy the hell out of Vienna. Two, she needs female companionship. I guess that you have been the only one around for her since the death of her parents. There is a lot of women’s stuff that she might have talked to her mother about, but can’t because you are a man.”

“But, so, are you? A man that is?”

“Physically, yes, I am. My brain has been telling me since I started school that I should have been born female. Even aged five or six, I wanted to wear a skirt to school. Vienna treated me as a woman even after she clocked me. You have no idea how good that feels.”

“You said that there was another reason?” asked Mark.

Diana smiled.
“Vienna talked at length to me about getting her appearance changed to keep the leeches at bay. She also talked about me getting some work done to make my appearance more feminine. That is very important to me. She will need female company while she recovers.”

Diana took a deep breath.
“If, and this is a big if, we could come out the other end as a couple, then I would be happy… And Mark, to keep your protective lawyer vibes at rest, I’d be willing to sign any document you like stating that I don’t want her money. It is her that I want, not her fortune.”

“Diana, you are a sharp cookie.”

“I had to grow up fast, being thrown out on my bum the night I told my family that I was trans. Yes, I went back and stole the family silver… I figured that they at least owed me that. I’m here for as long as Vienna wants me to be here.”

The regular bouts of swearing coming from upstairs were getting too much for Mark. He moved to go and see what Vienna was doing.
Diana stopped him.

“She’s trying to get back into wearing makeup. After wearing it almost every day, it becomes second nature. Take that away for a year, and putting eyeliner on the bottom half of your eye becomes hard. Mascara is possibly even worse.”

Mark thought for a few seconds.
“You didn’t ask me to buy any make-up for you, did you?”

Diana shook her head.
“No. I’ll get some, but it can wait. I know from seeing the Vienna window shop in Evesham that she does miss it. I’d offer to help, but I know that at the moment, she is too proud to ask for it.”

Mark smiled.
“Yes, she is like that, proud.”

“Mark, I meant what I said earlier about her money. I don’t want it. If she hadn’t been left a small fortune, do you think that she’d be such a draw for the media? I don’t think so.”

“That, Diana, is very true. Her parents never flaunted their wealth, and Vienna is the same, but with her obvious beauty and brains, envy goes a long way to explain at least some of their behaviour.”

Then he asked,
“What about you? What do you want from her?”

“Friendship, at least. If there is more, then great, but I am only too aware that my being with Vienna could be very toxic for some parts of the media, online or conventional. While many enjoy shows like Rue Paul’s Drag Show, having someone mainstream like me would be… Well, while we are in the closet or on the sidelines, we can be ignored, but as the partner of Vienna? That would bring the crazies out by the truckload.”

He smiled.
“Life is a risk, but you do seem to have a good deal of common sense. Thank you for being honest with me. Now, Diana, I think that it might be time for you to help her with her makeup before she starts throwing stuff at the wall.”

Mark, or one of his staff, monitored social media and the Gossip Rag pages every day. The girls had been off the road for just over a week when an article appeared on one of the Gossip Rag sites hinting that Ellie had been seen begging in Oxford.

While this was 100% fake news, it was close enough for a moment of panic. Mark travelled into the city and saw first-hand the social media ‘hopefuls’ annoy the hell out of anyone who looked homeless. That went on until they got too close to one person, who pulled a knife on the ‘hopeful’ who had stuck their phone right in their face and kicked them hard. The homeless man, who had a long bushy beard, snapped. The hopeful ran away only to return a few minutes later with the Police.

After a discussion with the homeless man, the Officer went into a nearby shop. He returned a few minutes later and arrested the ‘hopeful’ for assault. He ignored the knife. Many homeless people carried one for self-defence. Most police forces tolerated that unless they were the aggressor. Prime begging spots could often end in violence. In this case, the knife or, more accurately, a sharpened piece of metal with a load of tape for a handle was used defensively.

After this episode, the ‘hopefuls’ were told to get lost, and peace returned to the city of spires.

The episode confirmed to him that Ellie was still a hot target. With Oxford being so close, a legal associate of Mark’s rented another property for the women. This one was in the Lincolnshire Wolds, miles from where either of them had been seen while on the road. They moved location late one night to avoid discovery as the Gossip Rag that had broken the Oxford ‘fake news’ story upped their bounty on Ellie’s head, or rather information leading to the discovery of her whereabouts, to £10,000.

Mark filed a lawsuit against the Gossip Rag, citing their bounty as being a danger to her life wherever she was. He knew that they’d moved, but this time, he had no idea where they were. This was to make sure that he could not be accused of lying should he be interviewed by the mainstream media or worse by the lawyers for the Gossip Rag. It was all organised by an associate who owed him big time for sorting a business-ending legal problem. Now they were even.

Some of the more responsible parts of the media toned down their coverage. The gutter press ignored the lawsuit and sent out their unpaid army to follow Mark wherever he went.

Mark was onto their little game and spent a week touring the Highlands of Scotland with a gradually dwindling posse of followers behind him. The final straw was his arriving at Mallaig just in time to catch a ferry that had space for just one vehicle. He went to ground near Portree until the last of them was seen heading over the Skye bridge back to the mainland.

The media frenzy about Ellie lasted almost two weeks before another celeb was caught cheating on his heavily pregnant wife with a former prostitute. While that drove speculation about Ellie’s whereabouts and supposed pregnancy, drug and alcohol problems off the social media front pages, they’d never truly go away. A longer-term solution was needed.

It soon became apparent that neither of them could get the changes they wanted in their appearance in the UK; both of them needed a passport. Just doing that was a risk. Someone at the Passport Agency might leak Ellie’s new name to the media, but it had to be done. The applications were sent off independently. Thanks to the time of year, their documents came back in just over a week. So far, social media and the celebrity gossip rags have been quiet. A case of no news is good news.

“Mark,” said Vienna a week after that during a video call.
“I think that it is time to get moving.”

Mark nodded. He knew that this time would come sooner or later.

“I wondered how long it would be before you got itchy feet. I have things set up for you. A few phone calls, and stage 1 can begin. It is time to think long and hard about this. This is the point of no return.”

Vienna looked at Diana and nodded.
“We know, and we will talk things over.”

“Good,” said Mark.
“Take your time, and please try to consider your future both together and apart. Just look at all the options available to you both.”

He turned to Vienna.

“If you think that staying out of the limelight for longer is going to work, a journalist that I know from our days at university asked the editor of two of the most prominent gossip rags about you. Like some of the Royal family, any news about them and Ellie will always sell copies. Even after death, they won’t let go, as is evidenced by the regular stories about people like Michael Jackson, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. Then, with everyone and their dogs carrying a camera, stories can go viral in minutes.”

His words had the desired effect on both Diana and Vienna.

The following day, both of them were a bit subdued. It wasn’t until after they’d eaten dinner that Diana said,

“Do you want children?”

Her question took Vienna a bit by surprise. After some thought, she said,

“Do you mean by you?”

Diana nodded.

“It is a big responsibility for both of us, but more so for you, having to carry the baby.”

Vienna nodded.
“I… I never really thought about that bit of the future. Everything I’ve done for years has been aimed at getting the paparazzi out of my life for good.”

“The media would explode if they found out that you were pregnant.”

Vienna smiled.
“Only if this ugly mug remained the same.”

“Darling, ugly is not a word that should be used to describe that beautiful face,” said Diana.

“That’s why I spent a year with a dirty face.”

“So, we get your face fixed. That doesn’t answer the question about having a child.”

“I know that it affects you in a big way.”

Diana shook her head.
“I always dreamed about having a family, but using my sperm that I donated before… before I had the operation wasn’t part of the equation until now.”

They slept on it overnight.

Diana said the following morning,
“If I can donate some sperm, then I’ll do it, but my transformation is secondary to yours. Let’s face it, darling, the social media hopefuls are after your face in the hope of having their few seconds of fame.”

Vienna gave Diana a big kiss.
“Then we shall get ourselves fixed visually. I’ll get Mark to close one of my accounts. It has more than enough funds to cover everything for both of us.”

“How much is more than enough?”

“Two hundred and sixty-five thousand at the last count, a year ago. This is just the interest on the capital. I have an agreement with Mark that the capital, which is tied up in long-term investments and property, would be left alone, and I’d live off the interest. I never spent anywhere near that, and for the past year, I have spent nothing. I think that it is time to dig into that.”

“Is that in your Ellie name? Won’t the leeches know about it?”

Vienna laughed.
“Good point, and no, it isn’t. I had one bank account in my old name for day-to-day expenses. The account with the money is in the name of a company that Mark set up for me. I am… or rather was an employee of that company, which is registered in the Cayman Islands. I was paid monthly, and yes, I paid tax and everything on it. The dividends and profits from the capital investments went into the company. Could it be money laundering? Only if no tax, etc, had been paid on those dividends and profits, which is not true. The money went to the Cayman account clean. It was just a device to keep the bloodhounds off the scent. To be honest, I’m surprised that it has lasted this long before being exposed. The account for day-to-day expenses had lain dormant for a year.”

“How will you pay for the transformation then?”

“I’ll get Mark to legally open a bank account in the company name wherever it is that we go for the work. A simple transfer of money, and there will be funds available in the local currency to pay for the work.”

“It sounds like this was all planned?”

“Mark and I talked about doing this before I went on the road. It was the backup if I was exposed. Now is the time to put the plan into action, but for two people instead of one.”

While they waited for instructions from Mark, the pair got back into the habit of wearing makeup every day. Vienna gave Diana a lot of help with her look. The result was that she looked more than passable.

Eleven days after the last call from Mark, he called again.

Vienna listened to him. As the call progressed, a smile appeared on her face.

“It is on. A car will pick us up tomorrow evening. Mark will text me the registration number and the name of the driver. He will take us to France.”

[to be continued]