Read Sex and Other Changes for Free Online Page B

apparently, that the paint which caused the sex change might be banned from the bottom of boats. Good. She hoped so. Fervently, she hoped so.
    The good news about the whelks didn’t cheer her up as much as she had hoped. She had to get out of the house. There was a tightness across her head, which was throbbing. She understood, for the first time, just what it must feel like to be claustrophobic.
    She went up to the master bedroom, which felt cold and starved of sex. She changed into a pair of jeans, a sweater and a thick anorak. Autumn nights in Throdnall could be sneaky.
    He was in the kitchen, sipping a mug of cocoa. When he saw her he ran his hand across his cheek where she had slapped him. She knew that he had no idea that he was doing it.
    â€˜I’m popping out,’ she said.
    â€˜Out?’ he repeated incredulously.
    â€˜Out.’
    â€˜It’s gone ten.’
    â€˜I need to clear my head, Nick. I’ve had a shock. You must realise that.’
    â€˜Yes, but it’s not safe.’
    â€˜This is Throdnall, not New York.’
    â€˜Nowhere’s safe these days.’
    â€˜Nobody’s going to attack me, Nick.’
    â€˜I don’t want you to go.’
    â€˜I don’t want you to change sex, which I’d have thought was a bit more important than a nocturnal walk.’
    She opened the back door and drank in the air greedily.
    She walked down Orchard View Close and turned right into Badger Glade Rise, where no badger had risen from a glade since it had been built. Nature had been swept away, and commemorated in the street names to make the area sound attractive. Nobody would buy the houses if the addresses were Bovis Home Prospect and Bungalow Tedium Drive. How ingeniously our world fools itself, thought Alison with healthy contempt.
    At the end of Badger Glade Rise she turned left into Spinney View, where there had been no view of … well, you get the idea.
    At the end of Spinney View stood the Coach, trim with hanging baskets, cheery with subdued lighting, humming with idle talk, throttled by parked cars.
    She walked towards it. She was gagging for a pint. What? ‘Gagging for a pint’? She was a mother of two. Mothers of two don’t gag for pints.
    She hesitated. Dare she go in? If she was a man … when she was a man … oh God, would she ever be a man after tonight? … she would walk in, cheerfully order a pint, sit in a cosy corner, chew a peaceful and wide-ranging cud, take her glass back and say, ‘Goodnight.’
    â€˜Goodnight, Alan.’
    Alan!
    If she went in now, people would turn and stare. They would speculate. ‘Had a bit of a bust up with the old man, do you think?’, ‘A pint! Good Lord!’, ‘Looks tense. Something’s wrong’, ‘Not too bad a looker. I suppose a fuck’s out of the question.’
    No, she wouldn’t go in.
    Oh Alison Heather Divot, née Kettlewell (39), of no fixed gender, has your youthful bravery descended into this?
    But it wasn’t for lack of courage that she wouldn’t go in … Oh, Alison, is this what you’ve become – the Queen of the Double Negatives, the ‘Is Unselfishness Impossible?’ girl? … It was because there was no point in going in. Since she would get no peace, her visit would not avail her.
    She retraced her steps down Spinney View, continued into Elm Copse Crescent, and went down the ginnel to the back end of the golf course. She saw no other human beings, and all the while her mind was racing.
    Should she have told Nick straightaway that she was planning a sex change? Had she wasted her best opportunity? Had she already condemned herself to silence and long suffering?
    But what could she have said? How could she have put it without sounding pathetic? She couldn’t have said, ‘Hang on a minute, I thought of it first.’ She didn’t even know if she had thought of it first. She had no idea how long his