Rain was pouring down as Vienna and Diana dashed out of their rented house and into the waiting car. The overcast skies and the approaching dusk hid their activities very well.

“Get in the back,” said the driver, who had identified himself as Bob Harrington.

“There are some disguises to try on for when we are through French Passport control at the Channel Tunnel. They are only for the journey through the tunnel.”

“What time are we booked on the shuttle?” asked Vienna.

“Just after midnight. I’m to take you as far as Rheims. We have plenty of time, and I’m not going to risk speeding. Please sit back and relax. We have a lot of miles to cover before you can breathe easily.”

“What happens in Rheims?” asked Diana as Bob drove away from the house.

“I am to meet another driver at an E-LeClerc supermarket. He’ll take you to your final destination. I have no idea where it is or if he will hand you over to another driver somewhere else. I didn’t need to know, and I don’t want to know.”

“Thanks, Bob,” said Vienna as she began investigating the disguises.

The disguises were two pieces of Islamic dress known as a niqab. It would hide much of the wearer’s face from prying eyes.
“Aren’t these illegal in France?” asked Vienna.

“The Abaya is banned in state schools, but you should take them off as soon as we leave the shuttle train. They are to stop other travellers on the shuttle from recognising you while you are on the train. It is a small chance, but Mark gave the orders.”

“Thanks, Bob,” said Vienna.

Bob and the girls arrived at the shuttle terminal just before 23:00. The rain had stopped earlier, but was now back with a vengeance. The check-in operator saw that there were three people and three passports. That was good enough for them.

The operator said to Bob that there was space on an earlier shuttle if they wanted it.

“Yes, please,” he replied.

With the requisite marker hanging from the rearview mirror, he drove past the terminal building and straight for UK Customs and Immigration.

A cursory glance at their passport and their faces, and they were through.

The French border control was a bit more thorough. The guard checked their faces and the pictures on the passport at least three times before stamping their passport. They had 90 days of ‘freedom’ in the Schengen area.

Bob drove into the holding area for the shuttle and said,
“Ladies, time to get wrapped up!”

They didn’t need to be told. They are already putting on their hijabs.

The crossing was uneventful. Hardly anyone got out of their vehicles other than to stretch their legs. The shuttle gently came to a halt at the Calais terminal 35 minutes after leaving Folkestone. The girls had already removed their disguises and were ready to go. While Vienna had been through the tunnel many times, it was a new experience for Diana.

Bob stopped the car at a rest area about 50km from Calais.
He said,
“We are a bit early, so stretch your legs and use the toilets. We should leave in 20 minutes or so.”

The girls didn’t need to be asked again. Even though the previous day's rain had abated, a chill wind from the Northeast didn’t make it a pleasant experience out of the warmth of the car.

Right on time, at 04:30 local time, Bob pulled into the deserted car park of the E-LeClerc store on the southern side of Rheims. As he entered, another car flashed its lights. Bob drove his car towards the other one and parked next to it.

“Right, ladies, this is where I say goodbye and safe journey to wherever it is that you are going.”

“Thanks, Bob,” said Vienna.

Another figure appeared out of the darkness.
“Bonjour. I’m Henri. Please get in the car. We have a long way to travel tonight.”

Once the car that Henri was driving was back on the A-26 Autoroute, Vienna asked,
“Where are we going, Henri?”

“Switzerland. A place in the hills north of Lausanne. Please settle back. There is some food and drink in the bag between the seats. We’ll stop every couple of hours for a break. Ok?”

“Sounds good, Henri,” said Vienna.

Both girls fell asleep as the kilometres rolled by.

Henri pulled into the clinic just before 11:30 that morning. He delivered two sleepy passengers. His job was done, and the five thousand euros in cash that he’d earned would be very useful. He had recognised Ellie, but the money was more than enough to ensure his silence.

Once all the formalities were completed, both girls were shown to their rooms, and after a nice lunch, the preparations for their medical adventure began.

[84 days later, Berne, Switzerland]

Vienna and Diana held hands as they left the British Consulate in Berne, with their new temporary passports. These were the same types of documents that are issued to people who have had their original documents destroyed or stolen. They would be good for a single trip home.
Both of them had a document from the Embassy with the details of their old passports. This was to be given to the officials at their point of exit and should satisfy the exit requirements from the Schengen areas.

Both looked quite different from the Mk 1 versions. Vienna’s jawline had been quite radically changed, and there were still some visible scars healing, but time was of the essence, and they needed to return to the UK in the next few days.

They had already decided to return by train. Berne to Geneva, Geneva to Paris and Paris to London, where Mark would meet them. After that, they had to trust him.

Their stay in Switzerland had allowed them to become very close. Vienna felt safe around Diana. The Mk 1 version of her had never allowed herself to get even remotely close to another person. With the absence of cameras and the threat of them, they relaxed. They’d even begun to talk about the future.

Diana was slightly shocked to hear Vienna say,
“I want to buy a smallish house away from London and get a job. Become a normal person for once. If that sounds boring, then boring is what I want.”

Then she smiled.
“Naturally, the house has to be big enough for us, and a couple of children…”

Diana had been given the chance to have some sperm collected and then complete her transition, but after a long discussion with Vienna, she had turned that offer down. It was one thing that Vienna had said that had swayed her.

“I want to feel you inside me before… You know what? I want it to be memorable for both of us, not like the mess we got into last time.”

“I would love that. But first, we should make ourselves official.”

“You mean get married?”

“Why not? I told Mark that I’d sign any form he wanted concerning your money. I don’t want it. You are the one that I want!”

Vienna laughed.
“You sound like a Disco song from way back?”

“If we could last as long as that song, then we’d be good, wouldn’t we?”

“We would,” agreed Vienna.

Once they were back in Lincolnshire, they had a meeting with Mark to discuss the future.

“I have some news. Yesterday, I was able to secure a High Court order freezing the reward money. The scumbags who claimed to be administering the account even tried to stiff us for their costs. The judge was having none of that. His words didn’t say these exact words, but he very politely told them to ‘suck it’. They had, as they say in the movies, previous form with him.”

“Is this out there on Social Media?” asked Vienna.

“Let’s just say that I hope that some influencers are going to mention that the bounty has been cancelled. How that will be taken is another issue entirely.”

Mark let that sink in for a few seconds.
“I guess that you want to move on to somewhere a little more permanent?”

“Yeah,” said Dianna.
“We have no idea where, though,” added Vienna.

Mark laughed.
“You two really are an item, aren’t you?”

They looked at each other and answered him with a brief kiss. One of them on each of his cheeks.

He sighed before saying,
“I guess that I need to put Ellie’s place up for sale?”

“After everything of hers is removed and destroyed. Do it in full view of the media.”

“Vienna, did you mean to talk about yourself in the third person?”

Diana laughed.
“She’s done that before.”

“I did it this time because Ellie is dead as far as the world goes. I can send you a letter instructing you to sell the house and destroy everything. That can be given to the media in advance of the event. It will make great TV. Besides, it would be a huge giveaway to talk about Ellie in the first person. From now on, Ellie is an ‘ex-person’.”

Mark smiled.
“You are going to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

“I am, especially if the letter comes from somewhere like Paris or Rome or a small village that no one has ever heard of. Give them the idea that I’m not in the country.”

“Now… that is a good idea,” said Mark.
“But…” he added,
“Why don’t the two of you go to wherever and mail it yourself?”

The grin on Mark’s face told them everything that they needed to know.
“While you are away… wherever that may be, you can have a long and serious think about what you are going to do next. You know, for jobs or careers and the like?”

Vienna was about to speak when Mark put up his hand.
“Yes, Ellie’s money makes it that you don’t have to work again. You can live off the interest alone, but I also know that neither of you wants to sit around doing nothing. Both of you have gotten a taste for working, but that was all short-term. Think about the longer term. Do what is right for the two of you. I’m not going anywhere, but it is your life to live, not mine.”

Vienna gave Mark a big hug. Diana joined in.

Then they got down to the realities of modern life. Things like credit cards and other trappings of normality. Now that they had passports in their new names, the rest of it was possible, but it would take time.

“On the subject of credit cards. You will need a fixed address to apply for them. Ellie and your good selves have no credit record.”

“How come?” asked Diana.

“Ellie never paid for a thing. When she went shopping, it was all done on account that I settled in full. Groceries were paid from her general account via electronic funds transfer. She never carried more than a couple of quid in cash,” said Mark.

“Yeah. With people recording my every move, you don’t know how many times I just wanted to go for a quiet cup of tea, but that was impossible. Even with minders, any respite was temporary. The first time I went to a burger van and bought a mug of tea without half a dozen people shoving cameras in my face was very liberating.”

“That sets out our three most immediate goals, then,” said Diana.
“Formally bury Ellie, find somewhere to live and get 100% legal, and that means having and using credit cards.”

“I agree. We’ll start with those cards that charge stupidly high interest rates and are aimed at people like us who have no credit.”

Diana laughed for a second or so. Then she grew serious.
“Just like normal people.”

She looked at Vienna and said,
“Which we want to be.”

Mark smiled and said,
“Which I have to remind you includes paying Income Tax. I’ve been doing Ellie’s taxes since the accident. I will make representations to the HMRC about settling up her account and opening one for Vienna. Diana is different in that she has never paid tax or national insurance. Being on the streets is going to have some explaining, but it is possible, and it won’t happen in a few days.”

“Just do your thing, Mark, to the best of your ability. Can you book us some train tickets to… Perugia?” said Vienna.

“But for when our new passports arrive,” added Diana.

“Perugia? Where the hell is that?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Italy. Sort of between Florence and Rome. We can travel on from there using cash if Mark can give us a load of Euros.”

“One-way or return tickets?” asked a smiling Mark.
He was in his element. Seeing the two women interacting so well was way beyond his expectations for this stage in their lives.

Vienna thought.
“Perhaps two returns to Milan. We need to investigate the trains to Florence and beyond when we get there. Somewhere on our travels, we’ll post the letter.”

“How are we going to find a new place to live?” asked Diana.

“First off, how much money will we have to play with? What is my old home worth?”

“Because of the land, about five million. There may be a bit of Capital Gains tax, but as it was your primary residence, the tax liability will be minimal.”

“Then we have a budget of five hundred thousand,” said Vienna firmly.
“I’m not going to broadcast to the world that we are anything other than two lesbians with a tatty 10-year-old Fiesta. Normality is the name of the game.”

Vienna looked at Diana, who smiled. Being a normal woman was just what she had wanted to happen ever since she had left home.

As the saying goes, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. It took Mark almost six weeks to get ready for the girls to take the trip to Florence. He’d had the cleaners and decorators into Ellie’s house. A fresh coat of paint was noticed by the social media addicts. The next day, six drones were hovering over the property, live-streaming the comings and goings at the property to the world. The previously quiet ‘Where is Ellie’ team suddenly came back to life.

Vienna and Diana looked on from the house in Lincolnshire with interest.
“Those numpties need to get a life…” said Vienna.
“Ellie is not coming back.”

When the house had been sold, apart from the paperwork, Mark produced the letter instructing him to destroy all of Ellie’s things in public. Several YouTube personalities were invited to the property to witness the event.

The burning of everything was streamed on the major social media platforms. The message that ‘Ellie is not coming back’ was loud and clear. It remained to be seen if the hounds would get called off. At least with the sale of the house, there would no longer be a focal point for the ‘Ellie watchers’ to work from.

[one week later]

“We made it,” said Vienna as they settled down into their seats for the journey to Paris.

They’d taken a Taxi to Newark Station that morning, carrying only a shoulder bag and a rucksack. A train had taken them south to King’s Cross, where it was only a short walk to St Pancras, where their Eurostar train waited for them.

“It is going to be a long day, but I don’t think that there is anyone I’d rather spend it with than you,” said Diana.

The previous night, they’d made love for the first time since their aborted ‘sex in the shower’ disaster. They’d both taken it slow, and it had felt good for them both at the end. It had also sealed their love for each other.

The advent of Vienna’s period later that day had spared any rush into getting tested, but it was a sign that in the future, they had to be careful and take precautions until it was the right time to want to have children.

Their trip to Paris went well, but typical French bureaucracy meant that they only just made their connection at the Gare de Lyon. That train took them to Marseille, where they took a local train to Cannes. Ellie had been there once before, but had been hounded by the media. They got in the way so badly that the host of the event that she was attending had to ask her to leave. Ellie gladly did that and was followed by more than 80% of the journalists assigned to attend it, much to the annoyance of the organisers. She had gone back to her hotel, out the back door, jumped into a Taxi and left the town. This was her first time back since those crazy days.

After checking into their hotel, they walked along the seafront holding hands. After a meal in a small backstreet restaurant, they went to bed pleased with their day.

The next day, they travelled to Florence via Turin and Milan. After a walk around the city carrying their backpacks, a visit to the Uffizi Gallery, they pronounced themselves done with the place. Vienna booked a Hotel in Sienna, which was just another short train ride away.

They stayed there for two nights while they investigated bus routes going southeast. Perugia was reached late on their fifth day.

Diana visited the post office and posted the letter to Mark. The text made it clear that she wasn’t going to return to the UK any time soon and that the simple life on a hill farm was preferable to being followed everywhere she went.

After Perugia, they headed north to Venice and then to Vienna. Only then did they even begin to think about going home.

Mark released the letter to the media a week after it was posted. There was a frenzy of conspiracy theories about what had happened to Ellie. Some even went as far as hinting that she had been abducted and was being held to ransom. He let them stew. By now, the couple were in Berlin and about to head home via Amsterdam. It had been a very different trip when compared to their lives on the road. Even though it was not summer, the main tourist spots seemed to be busy.

The media turned their attention to Mark once Perugia had turned up a blank. They accused him of sending the letter himself or, even worse, holding Ellie prisoner.

Mark went to the Police and showed them a video of the old Ellie clearly stating that she was going travelling in Europe and that the media could take a jump off a very tall building as far as she was concerned.

He texted a message to her phone. This was all in the plan. Vienna called him back while sitting in the main waiting area of Berlin Hbf station. Announcements in German could be heard when she called Mark while sitting in the Police station. The police soon realised that Ellie was alive, and she told them that she was travelling and not to try to track her phone.

After the call, she left the phone minus its SIM card in a waste basket at the station. Vienna and Diana boarded an ICE train to Koln, with a connection to Brussels and a very welcoming hotel.

They returned to the UK via Eurostar the next day and headed back to the rented house in Lincolnshire.

Thanks to all the media attention, it wasn’t safe for Mark to visit, so they got on with life. Vienna bought a car on a trip to Nottingham. It wasn’t a Fiesta but a ten-year-old Toyota Prius that came with all the kit for carrying a baby. That enabled them to start looking for a new home in earnest.

Many so-called ‘experts’ denied the origins of the letter. Its authorship was widely questioned, which didn’t die down much when Mark sent copies of the letter to several handwriting experts who confirmed that it was genuine.

With permission of the Met Police, he also played the recording of his call to ‘Ellie’ when she was in Berlin. The Internet took it apart every which way they could, but failed to come up with any evidence that it was a fake.

Mark countered by suing all the social media platforms and the main conspiracy theorists who weren’t in the USA for threatening Ellie’s life with their persistent ‘Where is she’ posts. The message started to get through that she didn’t want to be found anytime soon and that her right to privacy was essential to life, her life.

A truce of some sort was declared when the threats against Ellie’s life were made public by a Sunday Newspaper in the UK. They asked, ‘What did she do that was so wrong that people want to kill her?’ Nothing was the answer.

From their base in Lincolnshire, the two travelled around the country looking for suitable areas. Nothing too touristy or densely populated, but within easy reach of a major city. Diana should have been attending a clinic to monitor her health after being prescribed hormones to aid her transition, but after a long talk over a walk through the Peak District, they’d decided to try to start a family the natural way before Diana completed her transition.

Four months into their search, and quite by accident, they ended up in the small Northumberland town of Rothbury. There, they found a nice and fairly conventional 3-bed detached house that had been built in the early 1960s. The rooms were a decent size and already had solar panels on the roof.

Vienna commissioned a full survey and instructed the surveyor to examine the suitability of having a ‘Ground Source Heat Pump’ installed that would replace the fairly ancient Gas Heater.

The report came back positive, so the place was purchased for cash. Once their offer had been accepted, they moved north to Berwick-upon-Tweed and rented a house as a base until the sale was completed. It was there that Vienna discovered that she was pregnant.

Six weeks later, Vienna and Diana were married in Berwick. The recently redecorated and updated house was theirs upon return from a brief honeymoon in Paris. Mark had joined them for a day in Paris. He was overjoyed when Vienna told him about the pregnancy.

Diana returned to being a part-time student once it had been proved that her parents had lied to the Police about the items stolen when Diana fled from the home. The pawn shop had photographic evidence proving that it was mostly silver plate and not solid silver. Because of that, all charges were dropped. The threat of charges for ‘Insurance Fraud’ against her parents made sure of that. They even had to pay back the money they’d received from the Insurance Company for their fake claim.

Diana was studying Horticulture at a local college. One of the local estates needed a qualified gardener, so more out of hope than anything, and with a lot of encouragement from Vienna, she applied. To her amazement, she got the job provided that she spent at least a day at college. She, much to Vienna’s amusement, went on a crash course in driving and managed to pass both her theory and practical test at the first attempt.

Vienna’s pregnancy went without any major problems. Her morning sickness was minimal. They went to the prenatal classes together. That allowed them to start to get to know the other expectant mothers in the area. All very boring and normal, but perfect for both of them. Normality was the rule of the day, and every day.

Diana was at Vienna’s side for the birth of their son, Philip. He was named after Ellie’s father.

Vienna proved to be a natural mother and never complained about the sore breasts from feeding his voracious appetite.

She became just another mother with a fairly ancient car and a pushchair bought from a charity shop. That made her very proud and even prouder of Diana, who turned out to have green fingers. Being able to do those basic things was what both of them had been searching for, but from very different starting points.

They started a small vegetable plot in their garden. Many other houses had well-established plots, and two neighbours even had allotments on a nearby bit of land. They made mistakes galore, but it was fun and allowed them to become even more integrated into the local community. Being able to pick some fresh veggies in summer was, in their minds, a luxury.

The Northumbrian coast outside the tourist season became a place for them to go and relax. Walking together along the sandy beaches was a million miles away from a wet doorway in Evesham, but neither of them would have it any other way.

Their version of dropping out might not fit all the rules, but for them, their bog-standard and even slightly boring suburban life was perfect.

The End