discussion of abusive families
[collapse]Paige is waiting for them outside Christine’s room, holding her clutch in front of her and tapping her fingers on the leather, leaning against the wall with one foot raised, the skirt of her butterfly-patterned dress flaring out against her elevated thigh. When she hears them approach, she pushes away from the wall, and the spiderwebs of gemstones in her stockings catch the ugly yellow light from the sconces and throw it out in rainbow colours at the walls, the floor, and Christine and Faye themselves.
Christine’s used to Paige, used to her effortless elegance and frankly unfair level of beauty, but Faye’s sharp intake of breath and embarrassed squeak remind her of how she used to be around her, back when Paige was flourishing and Christine was still learning the basics.
Just once, it would be nice to get that kind of reaction out of someone.
“Hey, Paige,” Christine says, taking the hand Paige offers and squeezing it gently. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Paige says quietly. “Nell just set me off. Vicky, Abby, they brought me back.”
“I’m sorry,” Faye says. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” Christine says, “it’s Nell’s. I’m going to talk to Abby about her.” She unlocks her door and kicks it open, wishing she hadn’t left so many of Paige’s dresses in such a messy pile. “Don’t say it, Paige. I know. I’ll take better care of your shit.”
“It’s fine,” Paige says airily, retrieving the dress bags she hung from the light fitting in the corridor and throwing them onto the bed as she marches in. “I have new things for you. For both of you.”
“Me as well?” Christine says.
“Yes, you as well! You need to change; you have sad girl on your dress. No offence, Faye.”
Faye just bites her lip and shakes her head. The reality of Paige — six foot tall, incredible dress sense, Instagram looks and practical attitude — can be overwhelming for people who haven’t yet been exposed to her, and that’s before she dresses them, puts makeup on them, or starts enthusing about her latest hyperfixation. Christine, by contrast, comes in a neat, instantly comprehensible little package. Just add anxiety.
Paige sits at Christine’s vanity and starts sorting through her makeup. “You don’t mind if we give Faye a few things, do you?” she says. “Eyeliner and stuff. You have a lot.”
“As long as they’re not already open, you can do what you like. Aunt Bea added me to the accounts.” Meaning Christine can order as much makeup and as many clothes as she feels she needs, within reason. A privilege Paige never had, which is probably why Dorley Hall is still intact and not, for example, crumbling under an apocalyptic pile of dresses.
Paige nods and continues dividing Christine’s makeup into piles. “How did you get up here, anyway? You didn’t come up the main stairs.”
Christine laughs and pulls off her dress — which, yes, does turn out to have sad girl on it, just under her bust, where she couldn’t see. “We came up the back stairs, the ones that come out by the old pantry.”
“Aren’t those normally locked?”
Damn. Of course Paige knows that. Below the cis floors, most doors are kept locked — Christine and Paige got their biometrics added to the access lists a few months ago — but the stairs from ground to second host four easily broken single-pane unbarred windows that lead to a short drop onto an old water tank in the courtyard, and thus are linked to Aunt Bea and the senior staff only; not even Abby can get in. An uncomfortable reminder that Faye is still a prisoner. Christine and Paige, though they might not have official access to everywhere under Dorley’s roof, can still walk out of the front door. “They were unlocked,” Christine says, smiling and dropping her soiled dress into the hamper by the bed.
Paige turns a sceptical eye on Christine, which only briefly flickers down to her chest. Gotcha, Christine thinks; the old game of near-naked chicken. She doesn’t get to win often.
“They’re never unlocked,” Paige says.
“Ask her,” Christine says, sitting down on the bean bag chair and pulling her legs up under her.
Both of them look at Faye, who is having multiple reactions simultaneously: to the size of the room, possibly — the second-floor rooms are much bigger than the ones Faye and her cohort will recently have moved into, and have their own bathrooms — or perhaps still to Paige, goddess of the second floor.
“Um,” Faye says. “Should I be looking away?”
“Why?”
“You’re naked, Christine,” Paige says, rolling her eyes.
“Underwear means not naked,” Christine protests, twanging a bra strap.
“What were you saying in the kitchen? About bombarding these poor girls with new experiences too quickly?”
“Oh. Sorry, Faye. You’re not used to this?”
“Only when we’re—” Faye starts, but then she looks at Paige and clams up.
“Only when you’re with someone you’re about to be intimate with?” Christine asks, choosing the most tiresomely appropriate phrasing. Must be a latent sponsor gene activating. Faye nods vigorously. “Sorry. Habit. I’m too used to just doing whatever around other girls.”
“But we’re not g—”
“Don’t say it,” Paige says quickly.
“I’m sorry!” Faye blurts out, looking at the floor, her demeanour almost instantly regressing.
“Come here,” Christine says, standing and stepping forward, beckoning the girl into her embrace, and feeling her breasts compressed against her chest by Faye’s; still a slightly novel feeling, after all this time. “It’s okay, Faye. But you need to watch out for that. I know I let it go downstairs, when it was just us, but Paige and me? We’re women. So’s Vicky, so’s Abby, so’s Indira. So’re most people around here.”
“I know,” Faye says, slightly muffled. “It’s just hard to get used to.”
“Then stop letting your brain override your eyes,” Paige suggests, and poses. “You see a man here?”
Christine glances behind her, to see what made Faye’s eyes widen and her breath catch. “Put those away, Paige,” she says, “or you’ll have someone’s eye out.”
Paige pulls the bust of her dress back into place and sticks her tongue out at Christine. “Says the girl running around in her bra.”
“Ignore Paige. She’s a monster.”
“Rude.”
“This is something Aunt Bea will want you to get used to,” Christine says, stepping out of the hug. Paige, modesty restored, unpacks one of the dresses. “It doesn’t come easily to begin with, but she will want you to feel comfortable around women. And, just so you know—” she wags a finger, “—three girls can change clothes in the same room without anything erotic happening.” Paige snorts, amused. “Now, go see the tall lady. She has a dress for you.”
“I do,” Paige says, holding out something in red and black.
While Paige dresses and gilds Faye, Christine carefully removes her makeup and starts reapplying the basics, which after a week of practise is something she can manage well enough without supervision.
“How did you know?” Faye says, in a tone of voice that suggests she’s remaining very still while Paige works on something sensitive, somewhere on her face.
“Know what?” Christine says, rubbing primer into her jawline and idly remembering when, in another life, it felt scratchy under her fingers.
“That you’re a woman?”
“Remember I said it was a choice? I chose. It was either that, or fight Dorley. And that meant fighting Indira, who I already loved, even back then. She was pretty much the first person ever to show me kindness, after all.” Christine dabs under her eyes, grateful that the dark circles from last week have receded. “And what would I be fighting her for? The chance to remain that stupid kid? Nah. Screw that guy.”
“Womanhood is both an identity and a social position,” Paige says, more slowly than usual; she’s concentrating on Faye’s eyes. “I discovered quite quickly that I enjoyed occupying the social position of womanhood. Actually being a woman, in my head, is a little more conditional. But, one day, out on campus, chatting with someone after class, I realised that he was responding to me as a man would to a woman, and that I was fine with that.” She shrugs. “Sometimes you don’t need to actively choose a gender. You can just be you, and accessorise.”
“Ask her again next week,” Christine suggests, “and she’ll have changed her answer.”
“And then there’s Vicky,” Paige continues. “She’s simply a girl.”
“You mean,” Faye says, “she was already trans when she got here?”
“She says she wasn’t,” Christine says. “And I believe her. I’ve shown her every egg meme I can find, and she said none of them were relatable.”
“If you’re looking for a big moment,” Paige says, “where you suddenly realise, ‘Oh, I’m a girl,’ then you may be disappointed. For some of us, it never happens. For others, it happens gradually.”
“And some of us make it happen,” Christine says firmly. “Paige, I think I’ve done all I can without making my face actively worse.”
“Okay,” she says. “Good timing. Stand for me, please, Faye.”
Faye obliges, and looks like she would be biting her lip if it wouldn’t spoil her lipstick. Paige has her in a knee-length black dress with red trim around the bust and the hemline, and has done her face to match.
“Bex is going to love that dress,” Christine says, and enjoys the burn on Faye’s cheeks as Paige guides her away from the vanity and over to the wardrobe, which opens out into two full-length mirrors. Paige, prescient, is supporting Faye by a shoulder, so when the girl staggers a little on her borrowed heels, knocked off her balance by her own reflection, she doesn’t fall.
“Is that… me?” Faye says, waving experimentally at herself.
“What do you think?” Christine says, as Paige grins the smug but enchanting grin she always does when she has successfully inflicted fashion on a fresh victim.
“Incredible,” Faye says slowly, unable to keep a smile from spreading across her face.
“I think we have another girl on our hands, Christine,” Paige says, watching Faye smooth her elegant dress down around her hips.
Christine steps up from the desk chair, grabs Paige’s free hand and pulls her away from Faye. “Now, make me beautiful,” she says.
“Your wish,” Paige says, tightening her grip on Christine’s hand and yanking her over to the sofa, pressing her down into the cushion. “My command.”
Faye says something muffled about needing to pee and shuts herself in the bathroom, leaving Paige and Christine alone, and Christine wants to make a smart comment, but Paige is already frowning, clearly daunted by the sheer amount of work ahead of her. Paige, taller already than Christine and sitting at a higher elevation, leans down over her such that Christine has to look up, and the angle puts their faces rather closer than Christine’s been used to recently. Paige’s slow, steady breath warms her face.
The woman’s skin still has no flaws. Not even a pimple. Unfair.
She does have a long strand of hair falling down across her face, though, and no amount of blowing upwards will tame it, so Christine reaches carefully past Paige’s busy hands and tucks it back behind her ear, where it belongs.
“Thank you,” Paige says, as she paints.
“It was in your way.”
Paige’s mouth twitches, amused. “Not for that.”
“What for, then?”
“For Nell. For making sure I was okay. For helping get Pippa under control.”
Christine tries to smile but Paige puts a warning finger on the edge of her mouth: don’t mess with art. “That was mainly Abby and Vicky, though.”
Paige stops brushing, pulls back. “They wouldn’t have been there if not for you.”
“They would have!” Christine says, confused.
“They’re my friends because they’re your friends, Christine. Abby, especially, would barely know my name without you. People coalesce around you; you must have noticed.”
“Paige? Are you really okay?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding to herself and fetching another palette. “Just feeling like maybe I concentrated on the wrong thing.”
“Paige—”
“It’s okay. Maybe… maybe you have to learn this from me, and I have to learn something from you.”
“I can give you lessons in fucking everything up, if you like.”
“Quiet,” Paige scolds, and leans in to quickly kiss her above her hairline. “I’m working.”
“Yes, boss,” Christine whispers. Why the kiss?
The makeup doesn’t take long, and while Christine inspects her painted face — she’d almost forgotten how good Paige is when she really goes at it; the party the other week was nothing compared to this — Paige retrieves the new dress from the bed and lifts off the protective bag.
“Shit,” Christine says, finally witnessing the dress in all its glory. “No, Paige, I can’t.” The dress is not only more elaborate and brightly coloured than Christine’s old dress, it’s just like Paige’s, with the same cut and butterfly pattern, but in contrasting colours. A robe for a goddess, presented to a commoner. “You want me to wear the same thing as you? Paige, please. Seriously. There’s no way I can pull it off.”
Paige hangs the dress up on the hook by the bathroom door and carefully cups Christine’s cheek in her hand. A forefinger on her jaw, a thumb tucked gently under her chin. Christine’s skin glows hot under the contact.
“You are beautiful,” Paige says, smiling. “How many times must I tell you before you believe me?”
“Maybe a couple of hundred more,” Christine says, eyeing the dress. It’s incredible, she has to admit; it’s just that it requires someone like Paige to pull it off.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Paige says, smiling. “Arms up.”
Christine knows she’s lost. Any real resistance would be token, anyway; no Indira to save her today. She complies, and Paige drops the dress over her head, carefully guides it past her face, smooths the fabric across Christine’s bust and belly, and billows the skirt around her thighs. Wordlessly she hands Christine a pack of jewelled stockings, and when Christine sits on the stool and starts rolling one of them up her left leg, Paige starts work on her right, hooking them in place and pulling out the creases in the nylon, resting a hand for a moment on the inside of Christine’s thigh, but moving it before she can comment. Shoes are next — a low heel, thank God — and Christine slips them on and stands up, her heart already in her chest at the thought of seeing herself in the mirrors, an imitation Paige, next to the real thing.
“Sorry I took so long,” Faye says, ducking around the bathroom door, back into the room. “I’m still not used to redoing my— oh.” She pauses in miming the action of tucking when she sees Christine standing uncertain by the sofa, Paige’s steadying hand on the small of her back.
“Faye?” Paige says. “What do you think?” But Faye’s only response is a sharp breath and a high-pitched noise, and Paige giggles, proud once again.
Maybe Christine can get that reaction out of people, sometimes. With help.
* * *
“Hey,” Faye whispers, as they descend the stairs — the normal stairs, the ones they, bar Faye, are actually allowed to use — to the ground floor, “when we see Bex, you should call her Rebecca.”
“Oh?” Christine says, managing to tear her eyes away from her reflection in the windows; Paige did a really good job.
“Bex is… it’s my name for her.”
“Does she have a name for you?” Paige asks, exchanging looks with Christine.
Faye blushes and says, looking down into the bust of her borrowed dress, “She calls me Effie.”
“That,” Christine says, “is ridiculously adorable.”
They round the corner at the bottom of the stairs into the main foyer, their shoes tap-tap-tapping on the tile, catching glimpses of themselves in the night-dark windows and, in Christine’s case, resisting the urge to pose.
The kitchen comes up all too soon, and while Paige fiddles with the notoriously twitchy biometric lock on the door — it gets weird when it’s had a lot of fingerprints to process, and there are a lot of people in Dorley Hall tonight — Christine takes Faye gently aside.
“How are you feeling, Faye?”
“Good, I think.”
“Confident?”
“Definitely not.”
“Ready to see your sponsor again?”
“Definitely not.”
“Let me text Abby, then, and ask her to ask her to keep away from you for a little bit.”
“All right.”
Christine, a veteran phone operator, texts with one hand and with the other turns Faye towards her reflection in the large glass doors that lead out to campus. Catches the girl smiling at herself, again.
“Feeling like a girl yet?” Christine whispers.
Faye twists, examining herself in the glass. “Maybe.”
“Good enough.”
“Was it Paige?” Faye asks.
“Was it Paige what?”
“Who you used to…”
“Oh. I understand. And I’m not telling you.”
“You seem so close.”
“We are. But we’re also pretty different.”
“But—”
“Ready to go?” Paige says, forcing Faye into silence. Christine nods.
By unspoken agreement, Christine and Paige bracket Faye protectively as they pass through the kitchen and into the brightly lit dining hall. A mere ten seconds or so off from seeing her own reflection in the window and feeling quite good about herself, Christine almost wants everyone instantly to fall silent and gaze at the three of them in awe and wonder, but the desire dissipates the very moment she feels eyes on her. She feels, suddenly, clownishly unfeminine next to Paige — back in her accustomed position — and wants nothing more than to scuttle over to their table and hide from everyone, bury her nerves in wine. Butterflies in her belly, butterflies on her back.
Indira, bless her and curse her equally, wolf whistles, triggering a wave of imitations from the room.
Aunt Bea stands up from her chair at the central table, silencing the hubbub without having to say a word, and approaches them, causing Christine’s heart to cease its embarrassed bounce and switch to a nervous one.
“Christine,” she says quietly. “A quick chat?”
“Yeah,” Christine says. “Oh; give me a second.” She points as subtly as she can to Paige and Faye, splitting off and heading for a group of girls at a table on the other side of the room, sitting with a few sponsors Christine recognises — but no Nell. A girl who can only be Rebecca greets Faye with a gentle kiss on the cheek, and a careful hug that preserves the lines of Faye’s dress. They release each other and Rebecca talks excitedly with Paige while Faye turns brighter and brighter shades of red and glances around the room for something less effusive to look at. She finds Christine, who gives her a small wave and then nods to Aunt Bea that she’s ready for whatever she has to say.
“Sit down, please,” Aunt Bea says, walking Christine over to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. Wordlessly, Christine complies. “You took a second-year out of the permitted area, without consulting her sponsor. And you involved Paige. Why?”
There are several baskets of bread sticks on the table, ready to be delivered to the dining hall when dinner proper commences. Christine fetches a bread stick from the nearest one, turns it over in her fingers, bites off a small piece and chews it. She needs something to do with her hands while she thinks, and she can’t have a cigarette.
“Remember how Francesca was, with Paige?” she says. Francesca, Paige’s sponsor, remained hostile to her charge through most of their second year, for reasons none of them could understand, and it took Paige petitioning Aunt Bea directly to get her removed from duty. Paige hasn’t had an official sponsor for months. “Nell’s worse.”
“The other sponsors have noted that Nell’s approach is somewhat antagonistic,” Aunt Bea says.
“More than somewhat,” Christine says flatly. “She’s triggering Faye. Whether on purpose or by accident, I don’t know, but that makes her either cruel or incompetent. Take your pick as to which is worse.”
“Triggering her how?”
“May I be blunt?”
“For the moment.”
“We fucked up,” Christine says, and breaks her bread stick in half. “And I know I’m not trained in stuff like this, but I know my own life, and my guess is that Faye comes from an abusive family. Assuming she needed to come here at all — which is a decision out of my hands and over my head — she needed a completely different sponsor. Someone capable of dealing with those kinds of triggers. She needed an Indira, someone able to redirect her anger without turning irritation into outburst; she got Nell, who seems like another Francesca. Faye told me stories about Nell, how she ‘helped’ her early on, and yeah, sure, while she conceptualises it that way, I don’t. What she described to me… Look, I know we have to do what we have to do, but there are ways to do it without…” She stumbles over her words, trails off, struggles to express her thoughts without implicating the foundations of the programme, something to which Aunt Bea is rather attached; and so, if she’s honest, is she.
“I thought you were being blunt? Say what you need to say, Christine.”
Fuck it. “I think we took a traumatised girl — or boy, or whoever — and recreated the circumstances of her abuse. Her sponsor, the stand-in for her parents, shouts and yells and locks her up and even knocks her down, seemingly at random! That’s not reform; that’s just… changing the colour of the wallpaper in purgatory. I’m amazed, no, I’m dumbfounded she made it through the first year without washing out. Or worse! And that would have been a tragedy because, Aunt Bea, she is such a sweet kid.”
“Hmm. A degree of hostility, even outright aggression, can be warranted during the early stages of the programme.”
“Can be. Case-by-case assessment, right? You don’t get a Christine out of my, uh, raw material by using the same methods that got you an Edy, yeah? I think Nell went in angry, took it out on Faye, and never stopped. Or maybe she saw something in Faye that made her think acting like that was somehow the right move. Like I said: cruel or incompetent. And, I shouldn’t need to point out, Faye isn’t in the early stages of the programme. She’s two months into her second year and her sponsor, who is supposed to be her friend at this point, is still triggering her. You know what? I think she reformed despite us. Not because of us. Maybe her friendship with Rebecca saved her; maybe Rebecca’s sponsor, too. But not Nell.” Christine throws both halves of her bread stick down on the table. “Look: Paige and I both come from homes that were emotionally abusive. Occasionally physically so. We both responded very poorly to raised voices when we came here, and I think it’s no surprise that of the two of us, it’s me who doesn’t flinch any more when somebody shouts, and Paige who does. Because I got Indira and she got Francesca. And Faye got Nell.”
Bea picks up one of the scattered halves of bread stick and regards it. “Are you done?”
I might well be. “Yes.”
She smiles. “Thank you, Christine,” she says.
Christine, realising she’s stood halfway out of her chair with both palms planted on the table, sits down sharply and says, “Uh?”
“A good sponsor must know how to tailor her approach to her charge,” Aunt Bea says, almost absently. “At the very least, she must know when to withdraw. I will talk to Nell. I’m not sure I agree with your assessments regarding her conduct during the first year — although I will look into it, I promise, and I will be quite thorough — but she does seem overdue for a re-evaluation of her methods.” She sighs. “We’re having staffing problems. Were you aware?”
“Um, no. Not really.”
“It’s hard to assign appropriate sponsors at the best of times, and normally Maria would be taking a more active monitoring role, but with the large intake this year and the amicable departure of several of our more experienced sponsors, and with her research commitments to the university, she simply hasn’t had the time and we haven’t had the people. I can’t solve the latter problem, but I’m going to solve the former.” Aunt Bea nods to herself. “I’m going to assign Indira as monitor.”
“Indira?” Christine says. “My Indira? I mean, obviously, she’s great, but—”
“Do you believe in the programme, Christine?”
Christine, taken aback, says, “Yes,” automatically.
“And you are making progress in the areas we discussed?”
“Yes. Every morning.”
“Then I think you, like Paige, have evolved beyond the need for a sponsor. Don’t you?”
“Oh. Um. Yes?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Bea says, “you haven’t graduated yet. But you have a strong support network, and you will, I imagine, continue to see Indira socially.”
“Yes. Definitely. She’s my sister,” Christine adds defensively. She hates that she’s fallen into exactly the sort of relationship she was supposed to have with her sponsor, that her friend group is composed entirely of people inside Dorley; that she is, as Stef said, a true believer. But she is what they made her. The other choices were always worse. “She’s my family.”
“Of course,” Aunt Bea says, and Christine could swear there’s genuine pride in her voice. It still doesn’t always feel good to please Aunt Bea, but it’s probably better than the alternative.
“Indira’s new role will, of course, come with a pay raise.”
“Good for Dira,” Christine mutters, still coming to terms with the concept: no sponsor. Very nearly free.
“I do hope so,” Bea says, placing the bread stick half carefully on the table. “And I’d be interested in your read on Faye. How is she progressing?”
“She’s a sweet kid,” Christine says again, distracted.
“I mean, how do you think her gender is developing? Out of everyone, bar perhaps her friend, Rebecca, you’ve had the most intimate conversation with her.”
Christine clears her head. Pictures Faye trying to kiss her, talking nervously about Bex, dumbfounded by her reflection. “I think she’s warming to womanhood.”
Aunt Bea nods. “You have an instinct for sponsorship, it seems. You proved quite adept at gaining that girl’s trust.”
“Hey,” Christine says, raising a hand, “I wasn’t trying to gain her trust—”
“I know.”
“I just… She was hurting. I needed to help her.”
Bea smiles. “How much you’ve changed, Christine.”
* * *
Christine doesn’t get to sit down straight away. Indira, not content with announcing her presence by wolf whistle when they first came down, makes Christine stand at the side of the room with Paige, to show off their matching dresses and makeup. Positioning them under one of the more dramatic landscape paintings, Dira busies herself with arranging them both, conveniently too distracted to notice Christine’s nonverbal but increasingly desperate pleas to let her out of this obligation. So Christine acquiesces, but when she and Paige pose with each other — Paige gracefully, Christine awkwardly — it’s not just Indira’s flash that goes off.
“Make sure you edit the pictures before you post them,” Aunt Bea calls out.
Christine catches Hasan asking Dira why that would be necessary, and Dira starts rattling off a practised line about Dorley Hall’s draconian privacy policies. Christine misses the end of it because Vicky starts yelling out suggestions for more elaborate poses and Paige, clearly having enormous fun, shamelessly abuses the leverage granted by her extra height to manoeuvre Christine into position for each one, waiting for everyone to get their photos before moving on to the next.
“Did you plan this?” Christine whispers to Paige, as the taller girl leans down to kiss her on the cheek; thanks, Vicky, for that idea.
“No,” Paige says, her breath flowing lightly across Christine’s face and down her neck, igniting a warmth in Christine’s chest that is only part memory. “But it’s exciting, isn’t it? Being the centre of attention.”
“I want to die.”
“You big baby,” Paige says, and nips her once more on the cheek before straightening up.
Christine’s fingers twitch. She wants to rub her face where Paige kissed her, but almost everyone looking on knows they have a history together and she doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction. There’s almost definitely a betting pool on whether or not they’ll get back together — not that they were necessarily together in the way, say, Vicky and Lorna are — because the sponsors are just like that.
“Now do Charlie’s Angels!” Maria shouts from the next table. Her face is already a little red and she’s being lightly supported by Adam’s sponsor Edy; with her nightly obligations to Aaron discharged, she’s been at the wine.
“What’s that?” Christine yells back, mostly to be annoying. Maria, the oldest sponsor, can be prickly about her age.
Paige says loudly, “We need a third!” and before Christine can protest that a) she genuinely doesn’t know what a Charlie’s Angels pose even is and b) she would quite like to sit down and get a chance to recover from the events of the last twenty minutes, Vicky’s joined them, interposing herself and pointing with finger guns out into the room. Christine follows her lead, but when the flashes of two dozen phone cameras die down she breaks formation and slumps into an open chair before anyone can make her do anything even more embarrassing, although she struggles to imagine what they could possibly pick that would be worse.
You okay? Abby mouths at her from across the table, and Christine nods that, yes, despite everything, she’s fine, or she will be, once her heart retreats from her throat. You look amazing, Abby mouths. Christine smiles and, temporarily too tired to lean forward and talk normally, forms a heart with her fingers, earning a delighted beam from Abby.
She permits herself a moment to close her eyes. She doesn’t know what to conclude about her conversation with Aunt Bea. Sure, Nell’s going to be re-evaluated, whatever that means, and Indira’s going to be assigned to watch over the sponsors, but Christine’s come away with the uncomfortable impression that she’s being recruited. Was this how it was for Pippa? Did she, one day, show concern for someone and suddenly find herself facing down Aunt Bea, congratulating her for her empathy and implying that she may have a productive future in boy acquisition and torture?
Christine’s actually ahead of the game, there: she’s managed to put someone in the basement before she even graduates the programme. Granted, not a boy and, granted, situation normal all fucked up, but still; Christine is already, unofficially, recruiting for Dorley.
A buzz against her hip: her phone. She extracts it from her purse and finds a text from Abby, who is waving her own at Christine with what she probably thinks is an extremely clandestine look on her face.
Abby Meyer: Delete these messages after you’ve read them, please.
Christine Hale: Duh
Abby Meyer: Stef is okay. I mean, he’s struggling. He briefly asked me not to call him ANYTHING, before relenting and reverting to Stef. Dysphoria’s kicking him in the arse, and I felt pretty bad about being all dressed up in front of him. We talked about Melissa, a bit more about Dorley -- he still has ethical concerns -- and we agreed what to tell Pippa: that he’s totally and completely cowed by her threats to tell his sister he’s dead. As long as she has that to hold over him, he’ll do whatever she says.
Christine Hale: Right, good
Christine Hale: There’s still Pippa to think about though
Christine Hale: She’s clearly having a hard time
Abby Meyer: You want to help her, too? Chrissy! You’re so kind!
Abby Meyer: I’m proud of you
Christine Hale: Please don’t
Christine Hale: Kind of don’t want to be praised right now
Christine Hale: Just the act of being nice to the kid, Faye, made Aunt Bea’s eyes light up with little cartoon hearts in them
Christine Hale: Now she wants to recruit me to be a sponsor
Christine Hale: No good deed goes unpunished around here
Abby Meyer: You shouldn’t worry about that. When you’re out of the programme, you’re free to choose. She might put some pressure on you to accept a sponsoring position if she really does want you, but you can say no and she’ll (mostly) back off. Postgrad benefits, freedoms, etc. aren’t conditional on doing what she asks.
Abby Meyer: Don’t forget our stated goals. When you leave, you’re genuinely free, with restrictions only for your own safety and the continued secrecy of the programme.
Christine Hale: To quote Stef, I forget you’re a true believer
Abby Meyer: Oh shush. You are, too.
Christine Hale: I like to think I maintain a healthy dose of scepticism
Abby Meyer: LOL!!!
Christine Hale: Now you’re just being mean
Abby Meyer: Oh, before I forget. Stef’s cohort have their first medical examinations tomorrow.
Christine Hale: Oh shit
Christine Hale: Isn’t that kind of early?
Abby Meyer: It’s not out of spec, but it’s earlier than usual by a couple of weeks, yes. The sponsors, as a group, have some concerns about the wilder elements of this cohort, and have switched to the slightly more alacritous track.
Christine Hale: I’m worried about Stef again now, screw Pippa
Abby Meyer: Maybe you should find a way to go see him soon.
Christine Hale: I don’t know Abs
Christine Hale: It’s way scarier visiting the bedrooms compared to the cells, and there are no hiding spots
Christine Hale: And the locks in the emergency exit take forever to turn over
Abby Meyer: You really do know a lot about the security system here.
Christine Hale: The point is
Christine Hale: If I get stuck
Christine Hale: It’s game over
Christine Hale: I’ll try and hit him up on Consensus tho
Abby Meyer: Okay. He likes you, you know. Goes a bit pink when he says your name
Christine Hale: I mean, I AM a vision.
Abby Meyer: I mean it when I say you look gorgeous tonight, by the way. Have confidence in yourself.
Christine Hale: I refuse.
Abby Meyer: Christine, how many more times do we need to tell you you’re beautiful before you believe us?
Christine Hale: A couple of hundred more
Across the table, Abby grins at her and taps exaggeratedly at her phone, erasing the conversation. Christine resolves to check it later, to make sure she did it properly. Can’t trust anyone’s opsec but her own.
“Christine,” Hasan says, shifting his chair closer to hers now that she’s done with her texting. She gives him her attention; he gives her his broad smile, the one she’s willing to bet Indira fell in love with long before she came to Dorley. “How have you been? Cruel and unusual punishment aside, of course.”
It takes Christine a second to realise he’s talking about the ridiculous poses Indira, Paige and Vicky made her pull and not, for example, the cruel and unusual punishments that are inflicted with some regularity under the dining hall. “I’m doing pretty good, actually,” she says, and nods gratefully at Indira, who is pouring Christine a large glass of white wine. “First year Linguistics is going well. Early days, I know, but so far it’s everything I hoped.”
“I’m glad,” he says. “This one—” he intercepts Indira on her way back to her chair and hefts her onto his lap; she squeals, “—said you were doing a lot better this year.”
The fiction, as far as Hasan is concerned, is that Christine’s first year as a student at Saints — her second at Dorley; first above ground — was a foundation year. Hasan thinks Indira discovered Christine at a support group on campus, struggling with her transition, and took her under her wing. Dira argued for and got Christine a place in Dorley Hall, the residence for women from disadvantaged backgrounds, and essentially adopted her. There she could study for her foundation year in peace, surrounded by supportive friends, and without the abusive family life and dysphoric depression that afflicted her during her A-levels.
It’s not a million miles from the truth. Christine was a mess when Dira first picked her up. The deception, and their particular choice of story, make her uncomfortable, though.
“You look fantastic, by the way,” Hasan’s saying. “Really stunning. That dress is amazing! And I know this isn’t something you’re supposed to say, but you were so worried about it when we met, so I’m just going to say it: I’d never know.”
“Really?” Christine says, unable to stop herself greedily absorbing reassurance from someone outside her Sisterly circle. That she’d been struggling with her womanhood when she first met Hasan is not part of the lie, although she wishes it was: it was her first time off-campus as a woman, and her already shaky confidence took a fatal knock when a drunk man on the train clocked her, shouted at her, and pursued her, Indira, and their friends through two carriages before they could find a member of staff to officially encourage him to please, sir, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Christine arrived in London in tears, and will forever feel a little guilty that the first time Indira’s mother got to see her daughter, alive and well, she was busy comforting a crying, insecure little thing who wasn’t even sure, back then, if she was a woman at all.
Sad girl on her dress.
“Really.” He says it sincerely, kindly, like he knows exactly how much it means to her.
“Thank you!” Christine says, pushing warmth into the words by pitching down and expending a little effort to move her voice from its usual slightly lazy top-of-the-throat position to the front of her mouth. The sort of intonation that can, with enough breath behind it, fill a cathedral (or the large bathrooms attached to the Saints rec centre, where Christine did a lot of her voice training, after hours). “And you do, too. Look great, I mean. Like, really, really good.” He’s dressed semi-formal, but the shirt is fitted and he has a great figure underneath. He’s tall, taller than Indira — who, like most Dorley women, is taller than average — and the way he casually embraces his girlfriend makes Christine’s throat tighten whenever she thinks about it. He probably makes Indira feel so safe.
Hasan gives her a mock-bow, the deepest he can manage without dislodging Dira, who is absorbing their conversation with obvious and slightly tipsy pleasure. Indira considers Christine to be effectively her family and has suggested that if she ever wants to consider the Chetry family officially her own, all she has to do is ask. Aasha, Indira’s mother, asks after Christine weekly, and occasionally shyly forwards memes to her newest daughter’s Sister on WhatsApp, along with local gossip and sincere encouragement.
Christine, who never wants to see her own family again, who doesn't bother checking the info packs on them any more, has considered asking, several times.
After a few minutes of small talk, Dira excuses herself to the bathroom and Hasan leans forward, close enough to Christine to touch her, and says quietly, “Thank you for being there for her. I think she really needed someone like you. Getting to be your big sister, having you be hers—” he glances towards the bathrooms, smiling, “—it’s been healing for her. She never had that, growing up; just a lot of heartache none of us could ever seem to resolve. Siji loves her, of course, but didn’t even know she was still alive, let alone her sister and not her brother, until last year. So, Christine, thank you.”
He stands and holds open his arms, inviting Christine to step into his embrace. She does so, grateful for the excuse not to look at his beautiful, kind face. She hates the lies so much. Can’t imagine ever feeling comfortable about them, for all that they are necessary and, for Indira, freeing: she can be with her childhood crush, she can be a sister to Siji and a daughter to her mother and father; she can be alive, and all it takes is a handful of falsehoods. Indira was always a girl. She ran away out of fear. She chose this. The smallest price to pay for so much happiness.
Christine hugs him more tightly. A silent apology.
“I was lucky she found me,” Christine says, taking refuge from the lies in absolute honesty. “She changed my life. Saved it, probably. And you!” she adds, as they separate and return to their seats. “Look at you! Last time I saw you in the flesh, you were wearing that huge coat and making shy eyes at her across the garden, asking me to ask her if she possibly maybe happens to remember Hasan, the boy from three doors down, who thinks she looks just gorgeous.”
He laughs. “I was lucky, too,” he says. “Lucky she remembered me, lucky she was interested in me. Lucky I didn’t take the overseas job and stayed home, when I heard she was alive, when I heard she was… her.” His smile deepens as, on cue, Indira returns from the bathroom, Abby in tow, and perches herself on Hasan’s knee again, encircling him in her arms.
“What are you two talking about?” she says.
Hasan kisses her. “You. And I really hate to do this—” he places a hand on each of Dira’s hips and lifts her off his lap; Christine’s throat tightens again, “—but now I have to visit the little boys’ room.”
They watch him go.
“Goodness, I love that boy,” Indira says.
“He’s absolutely smitten with you,” Christine says.
Dira can’t stop the giggle from bubbling up. “I know! I’m so lucky.”
“Yeah. We talked about luck. You seem to bring it with you.”
“Glad to be of service,” she says, taking Christine’s first two fingers, the ones that twitch, and gently massaging them. “He’s always been kind, you know,” she continues, looking away, living somewhere in the part of her past Christine carefully doesn’t ask about, “even when we were kids. Even when I wasn’t always so kind in return.” She shakes her head. “Of course, these days he says he must always have known I was a girl, deep down, and that’s why he was so drawn to me.”
“Why do you think he was drawn to you?”
“He’s a lot like you, Christine. He can’t bear to see someone in pain.”
“God. Dira, I hate lying to him.”
Indira reaches for her glass, refilled by Hasan while she was away. “If, knowing everything, I’d go back and do it all again, then are they really lies?”
“I, uh, I’m not sure.”
“I know you’re the same. I know the things you regret all took place before you came here.”
“Mostly,” Christine says. Dira applies gentle pressure to the tips of her fingers, rolls them in her own, draws out from Christine something that’s been lurking inside her since she talked to Faye. “I’d be less of a bitch, if I got to do it all again. Yell at you less. Cooperate a bit more, a bit earlier. I made life so difficult for you, for a while.”
Indira laughs quietly. “That would have been nice. You called me such terrible things.”
Christine leans forward, balls her hand into a fist, gathering Dira’s fingers inside it and squeezing. “I’m really sorry. I was awful to you.”
“I love all the things that make you you, Teenie. Even the things you’d rather forget. I’ve never once been anything other than glad I was chosen to be your sponsor.”
“Actually,” Christine says, “you might want to chat with Aunt Bea soon.”
“Oh?”
“You’re getting new responsibilities. You’re officially relieved of the burden of Christine Hale.”
“Oh, sweetie!” Indira squeals. “I’m so proud of you!” She hooks her free hand around Christine’s shoulder and pulls on the fingers Christine’s still grasping, drawing her up and into her arms. “You’ve become an amazing woman,” she whispers.
“I wouldn’t be here without you,” Christine replies, not knowing if she mean, I wouldn’t be a girl without you, or I wouldn’t be alive without you. Both are Indira’s gifts to her, and she cherishes them.
“And you were never a burden, Christine. Never ever.”
That’s something Christine could stand to hear more often.
Dira gives her a final squeeze. “I’m going to go talk to Aunt Bea before Hasan gets back,” she says. “If they come round with the starters, make sure we both get one. You know what I like; he likes the same.” She pecks Christine lightly, on the back of her jaw. “Kisskiss.”
“Kiss,” Christine whispers back, pressing her cheek hard against her sister’s, blinking her eyes clear.
* * *
“So, Hasan seems like a nice guy,” Paige says quietly to Christine.
“Hmm?” Christine says, mouth full. Unlike Paige, who’s been on a diet since the start of the second year, Christine maintains her usual weight by forgetting to eat some days, so when something gets put in front of her that’s actually pretty good, she’ll generally eat and keep eating until every plate in the local area is clear. She picked the curry for her main course — given the choice, Christine will always pick the curry — and it’s a lot better than she could have made with the same ingredients. Definitely better than what her cohort managed, last year. “Oh, yeah, he’s sweet, right?”
“He likes you a lot,” Paige continues, elbowing her gently in the ribs.
“Hey!” Christine says. “Be careful with the bits of me that have food in! They might burst!”
“Pig,” Paige says with a grin. Christine replies by leaning close and doing her best porcine impression, which causes Paige to respond in kind and the rest of the table to give them an interesting selection of looks.
When eventually she finds her dinner straining against the fabric of her fairly snug dress she sits back and surveys the room. They aren’t the only friend group who’ve staked out one of the smaller tables in the corners. On the far side, Jodie from down the hall — who spots Christine looking at her and exchanges waves — sits in a surprisingly colourful dress with her sponsor, Donna, and some of their friends. At least one of them isn’t a Dorley girl, and thus is probably a vampire enthusiast; looking harder, Christine recognises xem from Jodie’s World of Darkness streams, and catches Jodie leaning over and pointing her out. Another wave. She probably should go say hi, later; ask where xe got xyr vampire teeth.
Most of the other small tables host people Christine doesn’t know, or knows only by face. Graduates, probably, who live upstairs, off-campus, or away from Almsworth, having moved on from Saints as well as Dorley. People who live in the real world. Scary.
Faye and Rebecca catch her sweeping the room and Christine waves again.
In the middle, at the largest table, with Aunt Bea at its head, are most of the sponsors whose charges are unable to participate in the birthday event due to being locked up in the basement. There’s also a scattering of women and nonbinary people who Christine mostly knows, or knows of; the terminally Dorleyed, the ones who haven’t left, can’t bring themselves to leave, or return every chance they get. It’s like Lorna said once: when all your friends are queer, you forget how to relate to cishets. What if all your friends were resocialised in a secret underground facility?
Pippa, sitting near Maria and looking somewhat overwhelmed, catches her eye and makes please come over hand gestures, hidden by her body so only Christine can see. Paige is busy discussing with Abby her plans to start learning self-defence — Christine makes a mental promise to herself to spectate, both to show her support and to enjoy watching the svelte, delicate-seeming Paige kick a succession of unsuspecting men in the face — so Christine just pokes her until she moves her chair out of the way, and gets up to see what Pippa needs her for.
At the central table, Maria is holding court, gesturing with a fork and complaining about her research supervisor. “Every time he pulls me up on something stupid or for being five minutes late I get a little bit tempted to maybe, kinda, possibly, uh, bop him on the head and drag him here.”
“Maria,” Edy says, leaning with both elbows on the table and looking at least as full as Christine feels, “are you saying you want to force-feminise your supervisor just because he’s pissing you off?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“Maria thinks forced feminisation is the solution to all her problems,” Harmony says.
Maria shrugs sheepishly. “When all you have is a hammer…”
“Hi, Christine!” Pippa says brightly, before another of the assembled sponsors can say something disturbing. “You wanted a word, yeah?” She cocks an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Christine says, recognising someone who needs a break, “you want to come over? We have room, and I don’t think Dira and Hasan are going to stick around for dessert, anyway.”
“Oh, Christine?” Aunt Bea says, while Pippa rounds up wine glass and purse. “Could you ask Indira to bring Hasan over, before they retire? I would very much like to meet him.”
“Warn him!” at least three sponsors say, almost in unison, collapsing into giggles at their shared hilarity.
“Hey,” Christine says, pointing at the table, taking advantage of her light drunkenness to be mildly rude to people who still could, technically, order her around and expect to be obeyed, “don’t be rude when he comes over. He’s a lovely man. Don’t scare him.”
Maria sits up from her slouch and drags Edy back up with her. “Best behaviour,” she promises.
“Best behaviour,” Christine repeats, and escorts Pippa back to their significantly less raucous table. “Jesus,” she mutters, when they’re out of earshot, “they’re all so drunk.”
Pippa snorts, and nods. She drops into a spare chair at Christine’s table. “It’s like Christmas with the extended family,” she says, “and that’s the table where all the embarrassing aunts get quarantined. And all they talk about when they’re not being rude is work! Work, work, work.” She glances at Hasan, who is watching with polite interest. “Schoolwork, I mean. I thought tonight was going to be about getting away from all that.”
“I think they’re all a bit institutionalised,” Christine says, sitting back down next to Paige, who immediately leans her head on Christine’s shoulder. Christine playfully pushes her off; Paige pretends to take offence and goes back to talking to Abby.
“They’re the ones who should be able to leave, but don’t,” Vicky says, looking up from her phone. She smirks and adds, “The living failures.”
Paige turns around. “Vick, I know for a fact that that’s a Bloodborne reference. Stop it.”
“Paige—”
“I know you miss your girlfriend.”
“I—”
“But you’re seeing her tomorrow night, so stop texting her and be sociable.”
“Don’t wanna. Oh,” Vicky adds, consenting to lay her phone on the table but not actually turn off the screen, “you’re still coming, right, Tina?”
“Tomorrow?” Christine asks. “Lorna’s thing? Yes. I remember. And, yes, I’m coming.” Pippa, who is suddenly directing all her attention towards playing with her bracelet, prompts Christine to give Vicky a meaningful look.
“Pippa?” Vicky says, picking up on it. “Wanna come? Tomorrow night. Clubbing. Just us Dorley girls. And my girlfriend.”
“Really?” Pippa says. “I’d love to!”
“Come to Vicky’s room on the second floor,” Christine says. “We’ll all be getting ready there. Except Vicky, because she doesn’t actually live in her room any more.”
Pippa nods vigorously, which helps to hide her startled reaction when Hasan leans across the table to talk to her.
“I’m Hasan,” he says. “I’m hers.” He points to the side, where Indira, Paige and Abby are having an animated discussion.
“Pippa,” she says. “I’m a friend of— I know Christine.”
Christine elbows her. “She’s my friend,” she says, and throws in a glare for good measure. Pippa flushes, and Christine wonders how close she is with the others from her intake. Probably not very; most of them fled the nest, choosing to finish their degrees away from the Hall that made them. Hints dropped by one of the other ones who stayed, and who pops down to the kitchen every so often, suggest to Christine that Pippa’s cohort had a rather tense time of it in general. Three washouts; scary stuff.
Exactly how lonely has she been all this time? Christine’s barely seen Pippa talk to anyone who wasn’t Aunt Bea or another sponsor, now that she comes to think about it. And then there’s her bracelet, the one she always wears, the one she’s still wearing tonight even though it clashes with her dress, the one she’s slowly turning around her wrist as she talks to Hasan. Very much like the bracelets she and Indira share, only the owner of the twin to Pippa’s doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead.
God fucking damn it, Christine; why did you have to go and dump a problem like Stef in this girl’s lap?
“I’m studying Philosophy,” Pippa’s saying to Hasan. “It’s not been so bad up until now, but this year, all of a sudden, it’s been confusing, difficult, and I don’t know how to respond to it.” Hasan leans farther forward, bringing Indira’s hand, enmeshed in his own, with him. Dira laughs and disentangles herself, kissing her boyfriend on the cheek as she does so. Pippa, looking inward, doesn’t notice, just continues talking almost to herself. “I wasn’t going to do it this year. Third year uni is hard enough as it is, you know? But she asked me to be on standby, just in case, and when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen I was so relieved. And then, suddenly, all this responsibility just drops in my lap and I’m running around with no idea what I’m doing except that I know I’m doing it all wrong.”
“That sounds rough,” Hasan says. “Which module is this for?”
“It’s a group project,” Abby says, switching chairs to sit next to Pippa and taking her by the hand. “And it’s a hard one. Why don’t you let me help you, Pip? Like I did earlier. All you have to do is ask, and I can talk to… your supervisor. Make it official.”
Pippa closes her eyes, exhausted, and leans gratefully against Abby’s shoulder. “I’m asking,” she whispers.
Yeah. Well fucking done, Christine.
* * *
As predicted, Indira and Hasan make their excuses before dessert, as do several others. The second-years are permitted to stay and enjoy their own cakes — no less delicious for being, probably, quite violently made — but are gently encouraged to leave by some of the more sober sponsors before Aunt Bea’s speciality coffees come out. Faye and Rebecca excuse themselves from the frankly adorable procession of new girls and trot over to where Christine and Paige have been roped into the effort to drag all the remaining tables into the middle of the room.
“I wanted to say hi,” Rebecca says, in a clear, high-pitched voice. More developed than Faye’s. Either her sponsor okayed the voice surgery that Dorley very occasionally hands out, or she’s been training her voice longer than the rest of her cohort. “And thank you. To you, Paige, for making Effie look so beautiful.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Paige says, strangely formal.
“And to you, Christine, for helping her. She told me all about you.”
Lost for platitudes in the face of someone so genuine, Christine resorts to a curtsey. She’s been relying on these too much, lately, but Aunt Bea seems to like them, and Paige’s bloody butterfly dress is so tight around the hips it’s almost the only manoeuvre she can reliably perform.
“Thanks, Christine,” Faye says. “For everything. Um, is it okay if I contact you some time?”
“Any time,” Christine says, more at home with Faye’s nervous stammer than Rebecca’s sincerity. She rattles off her Consensus ID, and starts reciting her phone number until Paige reminds her that second-year girls don’t yet have fully enabled phones. “Aw. I was going to forward you all the terrible memes Dira’s mum sends me.”
“Dira’s… mum?” Faye asks. “She’s allowed to talk to her family?”
“That,” Christine says firmly, “is a long conversation for another day. Ask me on Consensus.”
“Okay. Oh, Paige: when should I give the dress back?”
“Do you like it?” Paige says.
Faye glances shyly at Rebecca before answering: “Yes.”
“Then it’s yours.”
Paige’s reply prompts an excited hug from Faye and a small amount of commotion from Rebecca, which continues until Bella, Rebecca’s sponsor, arrives to drag them up to bed. Bella shoots a smile at Christine and mouths, Thank you, and Christine, unaccustomed to so much gratitude in one night, replies with a hesitant nod.
“God, they’re cute, aren’t they?” Paige says, as they take their seats around the newly enlarged central table, between Pippa on Christine’s left and Abby on Paige’s right.
Christine avoids Aunt Bea’s knowing grin, and replies, “Yeah. They kind of are. Hard to believe we were ever like that.”
“That was only a year ago, for you,” Maria points out, sounding a little more sober.
“Seems like longer,” Christine says.
“I don’t know why we bother with the basement at all,” Abby says. “Just give them to Paige for an hour and they’ll walk out the door the most enthusiastic women you ever saw.”
“Well—” Maria starts, but she’s cut off by Aunt Bea, tapping a coffee spoon on the side of her mug, calling for attention.
“Good evening, ladies,” she says, and smoothly adds, when someone at the other end of the table coughs, “and nonbinary individuals. Thank you all for coming, and thank you all for staying with me, to ride out this long evening to its end. I know some of you had no choice—” she smiles at Maria, sitting at her side, who rolls her eyes and noisily slurps on her coffee, undercutting whatever gravitas Bea is trying to impart to the moment, “—but the rest of you did, and stayed anyway. My special thanks go to those who have returned from far afield—” several people, including the one who coughed, raise glasses and coffee cups, “—and to those who are yet to graduate from our programme.” Surprised murmurs from the far end. Bea points her spoon at Christine. “Christine Hale and Paige Adams. Thank you both for indulging an ageing woman on her birthday.”
Shit. They really are the only non-graduates at the table, aren’t they? “Hey,” she says, pointing around Paige to Abby, “I just go where she goes.”
Polite laughter ripples across the table. “And you, Miss Adams?” Aunt Bea says.
Paige points at Christine. “I go where she goes.”
Christine slaps her ankle against Paige’s, lightly enough to keep from hurting her but hard enough to say, Hey! Paige responds by hooking her ankle around Christine’s. Unexpected. When Christine looks at her, Paige looks back with a somewhat intense and only slightly unsteady expression.
“And an honourable mention, of course,” Aunt Bea says, “to Victoria Robinson, our first two-year graduate in quite some time.”
There are one or two gasps this time. Vicky, much more accustomed to attention than Christine, accepts the smattering of applause and says, “Well, the sales pitch was just so good.”
Has everyone been taking public speaking lessons except Christine? Or is this just something she’s expected to be good at by now? She covers her continued embarrassment by diverting her attention to the coffee in front of her, which is definitely better than the stuff out of the coffeemaker in the kitchen.
Aunt Bea draws all attention back to her when she continues, “As many of you know, this is an important year for me. Not only is it my fifty-fifth birthday, but this year also marks fifteen years since my predecessor officially handed control to me. I know not many of you were raised under Grandmother’s hand—” is it Christine’s imagination, or did Maria just flinch? “—but I like to think that my… modernising touches and adjustments to our recruitment parameters have improved not only our retention rate, but the wellbeing and overall happiness of our girls.” Another cough. “And nonbinary individuals. Thank you, Amethyst, again, for the welcome reminder.”
Across the table, Amethyst, dressed for their name in a dark tuxedo with a purple bowtie, says, “You are quite welcome, Beatrice.”
Christine almost inhales her coffee. She’s never heard Aunt Bea addressed by her full forename before; she wasn’t even sure she had one. Clearly, when one has been away from Dorley for many years, one becomes cheeky.
“And what are your pronouns, my dear?”
“Quite mundane, I promise you: they/them.”
“Wonderful!” Aunt Bea says. “Do we have anyone else here tonight with, shall we say, pronouns other than the traditional?”
Another of Amethyst’s group holds up a hand. “I’m a she/they now, actually.”
“Oh? And how does that work?”
Whether from alcohol, tiredness, or whatever’s in the coffee she can’t stop drinking, Christine’s completely lost the ability to tell whether or not Aunt Bea is being genuine, but Amethyst’s friend continues as if she’s been asked a serious question. “Some days I feel more like a she, other days, a they. If on a particular day I have a strong preference, I’ll tell my friends, but otherwise I’m happy with either pronoun set.” She pauses to listen to Amethyst whisper something in her ear. “That’s just how it works for me, by the way. I know a few she/theys who take a different approach.”
“How fascinating!”
“I know! Gender’s fun, isn’t it?”
“That is not,” Aunt Bea says gravely, “the official position of Dorley Hall.”
"You know what? Back when I lived here, that serious face of yours used to scare me. But I'm worldly, now. I can see the grin you're holding back."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're just a big shitposter, aren't you?"
“Margaret,” Aunt Bea says, dropping into a slightly more severe tone of voice, “please remember there are girls here who are still supposed to be intimidated by me.”
Ah. Still joking, then. Christine, entirely genuinely, says, “Don’t worry. I definitely still am.”
“Bless you, child. And you, Margaret: are you feeling she or they today?”
Standing up to reveal a flowing red dress with crystalline details and twirling around, raising the hem above her knees — dress go spinny, Christine remembers — Margaret says, “Today, I’m emphatically a she.”
This prompts a conversation amongst the half-dozen people at Margaret and Amethyst’s end of the table and Aunt Bea, wisely, decides that her speech has thus concluded. She exchanges a few murmurs with Maria before addressing Christine and Paige as one. “How about you two?” she says. “Will either of you be adopting new pronouns when you graduate?”
“No,” Paige says. “I’ve examined myself thoroughly—” she’s definitely had more alcohol than Christine; she’s stumbling over the multisyllabic words, “—and determined myself to be, socially, rather binary. I don’t expect to change pronouns any time soon.” She frowns. “I don’t like the way I have to have strangers think I’m a cis woman, though, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve already established myself that way; I’m stuck with it.”
“Just say you’re AFAB,” Maria says. “You don’t have to tell them the B stands for ‘basement’.”
Edy, sat on Maria’s other side, delivers a mild tap to the side of Maria’s head. Deserved. Apparently the studious and sensible senior sponsor develops a bit of a mouth when she’s had a drink.
“And you, Christine?” Aunt Bea asks.
Christine shrugs. This, at least, is easy. “I’m a girl,” she says. “Sometimes I’m a tomboy; sometimes I’m a girly girl. Always a girl, though. A she/her.”
In Aunt Bea’s widening smile Christine reads pleasure, possibly relief; not quite as tolerant as you try to be, are you? Newfangled pronouns sticking a little in your gut, are they? Paige, perhaps seeing the same thing, nudges Christine’s foot again, as if to say, At least she’s trying. Christine suddenly has to hold back laughter, imagining the headline: DIVERSITY WIN! KIDNAPPER RESPECTS YOUR PRONOUNS!
Aunt Bea moves on to Pippa next, and Christine feels the girl tense when the questions start. Pippa gives a rough rundown of Stef’s stay in the basement up to this point, and repeats some of her frustrations. She admits to Aunt Bea and the table, as she had obliquely to Hasan, that she’s feeling overwhelmed. Towards the end of her summary, Aunt Bea reaches over to take her hand, and Christine feels Pippa go from tense to completely immobile.
“We are so grateful that you stepped up, Pippa,” Aunt Bea says, “and I’m aware that your plate is… rather full, what with your final year studies as well as your duties as sponsor.” She takes a sip of coffee. “We’ll have Maria assist you, when needed. She is the most experienced, and many of her overall responsibilities have been shifted, as of now, onto Indira.”
“Oh,” Pippa says, “um—”
Abby pipes up. “Actually, Aunt Bea, I was going to offer my support. I’m available to spend a lot more time here, and—”
“Nonsense!” Aunt Bea says. “Your offer is greatly appreciated, Abigail, but you have your career to think of. Maria’s, happily, is based on campus.”
“But—”
“And, might I remind you, your sponsorship methods are… singular. Should young Stefan require a firm hand, could we trust you to administer one? Maria has much more experience in tailoring her approach.”
“She’s saying I’m a bitch,” Maria stage-whispers from behind her hand.
Aunt Bea rolls her eyes. “You young people do persist in putting the most awful words in my mouth.”
“Yeah,” Maria says, pretending misery, “I’m a bitch.” Edy comforts her.
“Pippa, my dear?” Aunt Bea says. “Are you happy with this arrangement?”
“I am,” she says. “Thank you, Aunt Bea.” It can’t only be Christine who hears the tension in her voice, can it? She’s bringing the conversation to the quickest close she can manage. She wants to reach out, reassure her, but she doesn’t know her well enough to predict her reactions.
When conversation resumes around the table, though, Christine feels Pippa relax, and engages her on a deliberately light-hearted topic.
“Hey,” Abby says a little while later, leaning around to speak to Pippa, “where’s Monica? I wanted to talk to her.”
“Oh, uh, it’s her boy, Declan,” Pippa says. “He got to three strikes today, so she left after the main course.”
“Three strikes? Already?”
“A sponsor’s work is never done,” Paige says, and finishes her coffee.
* * *
“My house is your house,” Christine says, pushing open her bedroom door with the flat of her bare foot and throwing her shoes in the rough direction of the wardrobe.
“Are you sure this isn’t a bother?” Vicky says.
“You can still sleep in your room, Vick,” Paige says, closing the door behind them and immediately stepping out of her dress, “if you don’t want to impose.”
“No,” Christine says, leaning against the wall and declining to undress until the room consents to stop slowly rotating. “Her room is cold, it’s lonely, and it’s full of your clothes, Paige.”
Vicky, by the time coffees were polished off and a third round of sherries politely refused, declined from morose to depressed, and had all but outright asked if she could stay in Christine’s room rather than sleep alone. Paige made an acid comment about how she ought to be able to cope for just one more night before Lorna returns from her parents’ place, but Christine insisted; Vicky gets scared sometimes, more so when she’s alone, and the last thing she wants is the girl having a crisis born of alcohol and loneliness, with no-one there to help her. So they agreed: Christine’s room tonight.
When the three of them left the dining hall, arm in arm, Christine glanced back and took in with one glance Aunt Bea’s satisfied expression and Pippa, surrounded by empty chairs, watching them walk away.
“Reminds me,” Christine mutters, and pulls out her phone.
Christine Hale: Hey can you check on Pippa for me?
Christine Hale: It’s dawning on me that she has like no friends and I’d look after her myself but my room is absolutely CHOCK FULL of girls
Abby Meyer: Will do.
Abby Meyer: And chock full of girls, eh? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Christine Hale: You mean sleep?
Christine Hale: Maybe drool a bit?
Christine Hale: That’s the extent of my plans
Abby Meyer: That sounds so hot.
Christine Hale: Horny jail, population: you
Christine Hale: Thanks tho
Christine Hale: You do too much for me
Abby Meyer: I think you’ll find I’m doing this for Pippa.
Abby Meyer: Say goodnight to the girls for me.
“Abby says g’night,” Christine says, throwing her phone back in her bag and her bag onto the desk.
Paige, unsteadily crossing the room in her underwear, leans down and says, “Good night, Abby,” to the phone, before placing a hand on each side of Christine’s waist, turning her round, and unzipping her dress.
“Thanks, Paige,” Christine says. “Oh, Vick,” she adds, as Vicky finishes dropping the component parts of her two-piece outfit onto hangars, “spare toothbrushes are in the cupboard under the sink.”
Vicky flashes her a thumbs up and makes it through the door to the ensuite on her second go. Paige makes impatient motions with her hands that Christine eventually interprets as a request to step out of her unzipped dress. They manage to get both of their dresses back into the garment bags and hung on the wardrobe door before the alcohol in Paige’s bloodstream gets the better of her and she staggers, almost falling.
“Woah, there,” Christine says, looping an arm around her and positioning one of Paige’s around her shoulders. “Let’s get your teeth brushed and then we can all sleep this off. Vick? A little help?”
Between the three of them they manage to pilot Paige from bathroom to bed, and they both fall in next to her, Christine in the middle.
“Thanks, Tina,” Vicky whispers, blowing her a kiss and turning over to face the window. Almost immediately her breathing turns heavy and regular.
“And she’s out like a light,” Christine says. “You okay, Paige?”
“’m fine,” she mutters, shuffling over under the covers and looping one of her legs over Christine’s. They’re both still wearing their sparkly stockings, and the sensation is strange.
“Um,” she says, “Paige?”
“Sleep,” Paige suggests, and folds an arm under Christine’s bosom. It’s not long before her grip goes slack and she starts to snore, the same soft growl Christine remembers.
It takes her a while to fall asleep, but the curtains are open and the stars are out, so Christine counts the lights in the sky and considers, with Paige’s arm around her and Vicky’s cold foot occasionally lightly kicking her in the knee, how little she deserves the bounty she’s been handed, and how lucky she is to be here to receive it.
discussion of abusive families
[collapse]Paige is waiting for them outside Christine’s room, holding her clutch in front of her and tapping her fingers on the leather, leaning against the wall with one foot raised, the skirt of her butterfly-patterned dress flaring out against her elevated thigh. When she hears them approach, she pushes away from the wall, and the spiderwebs of gemstones in her stockings catch the ugly yellow light from the sconces and throw it out in rainbow colours at the walls, the floor, and Christine and Faye themselves.
Christine’s used to Paige, used to her effortless elegance and frankly unfair level of beauty, but Faye’s sharp intake of breath and embarrassed squeak remind her of how she used to be around her, back when Paige was flourishing and Christine was still learning the basics.
Just once, it would be nice to get that kind of reaction out of someone.
“Hey, Paige,” Christine says, taking the hand Paige offers and squeezing it gently. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Paige says quietly. “Nell just set me off. Vicky, Abby, they brought me back.”
“I’m sorry,” Faye says. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” Christine says, “it’s Nell’s. I’m going to talk to Abby about her.” She unlocks her door and kicks it open, wishing she hadn’t left so many of Paige’s dresses in such a messy pile. “Don’t say it, Paige. I know. I’ll take better care of your shit.”
“It’s fine,” Paige says airily, retrieving the dress bags she hung from the light fitting in the corridor and throwing them onto the bed as she marches in. “I have new things for you. For both of you.”
“Me as well?” Christine says.
“Yes, you as well! You need to change; you have sad girl on your dress. No offence, Faye.”
Faye just bites her lip and shakes her head. The reality of Paige — six foot tall, incredible dress sense, Instagram looks and practical attitude — can be overwhelming for people who haven’t yet been exposed to her, and that’s before she dresses them, puts makeup on them, or starts enthusing about her latest hyperfixation. Christine, by contrast, comes in a neat, instantly comprehensible little package. Just add anxiety.
Paige sits at Christine’s vanity and starts sorting through her makeup. “You don’t mind if we give Faye a few things, do you?” she says. “Eyeliner and stuff. You have a lot.”
“As long as they’re not already open, you can do what you like. Aunt Bea added me to the accounts.” Meaning Christine can order as much makeup and as many clothes as she feels she needs, within reason. A privilege Paige never had, which is probably why Dorley Hall is still intact and not, for example, crumbling under an apocalyptic pile of dresses.
Paige nods and continues dividing Christine’s makeup into piles. “How did you get up here, anyway? You didn’t come up the main stairs.”
Christine laughs and pulls off her dress — which, yes, does turn out to have sad girl on it, just under her bust, where she couldn’t see. “We came up the back stairs, the ones that come out by the old pantry.”
“Aren’t those normally locked?”
Damn. Of course Paige knows that. Below the cis floors, most doors are kept locked — Christine and Paige got their biometrics added to the access lists a few months ago — but the stairs from ground to second host four easily broken single-pane unbarred windows that lead to a short drop onto an old water tank in the courtyard, and thus are linked to Aunt Bea and the senior staff only; not even Abby can get in. An uncomfortable reminder that Faye is still a prisoner. Christine and Paige, though they might not have official access to everywhere under Dorley’s roof, can still walk out of the front door. “They were unlocked,” Christine says, smiling and dropping her soiled dress into the hamper by the bed.
Paige turns a sceptical eye on Christine, which only briefly flickers down to her chest. Gotcha, Christine thinks; the old game of near-naked chicken. She doesn’t get to win often.
“They’re never unlocked,” Paige says.
“Ask her,” Christine says, sitting down on the bean bag chair and pulling her legs up under her.
Both of them look at Faye, who is having multiple reactions simultaneously: to the size of the room, possibly — the second-floor rooms are much bigger than the ones Faye and her cohort will recently have moved into, and have their own bathrooms — or perhaps still to Paige, goddess of the second floor.
“Um,” Faye says. “Should I be looking away?”
“Why?”
“You’re naked, Christine,” Paige says, rolling her eyes.
“Underwear means not naked,” Christine protests, twanging a bra strap.
“What were you saying in the kitchen? About bombarding these poor girls with new experiences too quickly?”
“Oh. Sorry, Faye. You’re not used to this?”
“Only when we’re—” Faye starts, but then she looks at Paige and clams up.
“Only when you’re with someone you’re about to be intimate with?” Christine asks, choosing the most tiresomely appropriate phrasing. Must be a latent sponsor gene activating. Faye nods vigorously. “Sorry. Habit. I’m too used to just doing whatever around other girls.”
“But we’re not g—”
“Don’t say it,” Paige says quickly.
“I’m sorry!” Faye blurts out, looking at the floor, her demeanour almost instantly regressing.
“Come here,” Christine says, standing and stepping forward, beckoning the girl into her embrace, and feeling her breasts compressed against her chest by Faye’s; still a slightly novel feeling, after all this time. “It’s okay, Faye. But you need to watch out for that. I know I let it go downstairs, when it was just us, but Paige and me? We’re women. So’s Vicky, so’s Abby, so’s Indira. So’re most people around here.”
“I know,” Faye says, slightly muffled. “It’s just hard to get used to.”
“Then stop letting your brain override your eyes,” Paige suggests, and poses. “You see a man here?”
Christine glances behind her, to see what made Faye’s eyes widen and her breath catch. “Put those away, Paige,” she says, “or you’ll have someone’s eye out.”
Paige pulls the bust of her dress back into place and sticks her tongue out at Christine. “Says the girl running around in her bra.”
“Ignore Paige. She’s a monster.”
“Rude.”
“This is something Aunt Bea will want you to get used to,” Christine says, stepping out of the hug. Paige, modesty restored, unpacks one of the dresses. “It doesn’t come easily to begin with, but she will want you to feel comfortable around women. And, just so you know—” she wags a finger, “—three girls can change clothes in the same room without anything erotic happening.” Paige snorts, amused. “Now, go see the tall lady. She has a dress for you.”
“I do,” Paige says, holding out something in red and black.
While Paige dresses and gilds Faye, Christine carefully removes her makeup and starts reapplying the basics, which after a week of practise is something she can manage well enough without supervision.
“How did you know?” Faye says, in a tone of voice that suggests she’s remaining very still while Paige works on something sensitive, somewhere on her face.
“Know what?” Christine says, rubbing primer into her jawline and idly remembering when, in another life, it felt scratchy under her fingers.
“That you’re a woman?”
“Remember I said it was a choice? I chose. It was either that, or fight Dorley. And that meant fighting Indira, who I already loved, even back then. She was pretty much the first person ever to show me kindness, after all.” Christine dabs under her eyes, grateful that the dark circles from last week have receded. “And what would I be fighting her for? The chance to remain that stupid kid? Nah. Screw that guy.”
“Womanhood is both an identity and a social position,” Paige says, more slowly than usual; she’s concentrating on Faye’s eyes. “I discovered quite quickly that I enjoyed occupying the social position of womanhood. Actually being a woman, in my head, is a little more conditional. But, one day, out on campus, chatting with someone after class, I realised that he was responding to me as a man would to a woman, and that I was fine with that.” She shrugs. “Sometimes you don’t need to actively choose a gender. You can just be you, and accessorise.”
“Ask her again next week,” Christine suggests, “and she’ll have changed her answer.”
“And then there’s Vicky,” Paige continues. “She’s simply a girl.”
“You mean,” Faye says, “she was already trans when she got here?”
“She says she wasn’t,” Christine says. “And I believe her. I’ve shown her every egg meme I can find, and she said none of them were relatable.”
“If you’re looking for a big moment,” Paige says, “where you suddenly realise, ‘Oh, I’m a girl,’ then you may be disappointed. For some of us, it never happens. For others, it happens gradually.”
“And some of us make it happen,” Christine says firmly. “Paige, I think I’ve done all I can without making my face actively worse.”
“Okay,” she says. “Good timing. Stand for me, please, Faye.”
Faye obliges, and looks like she would be biting her lip if it wouldn’t spoil her lipstick. Paige has her in a knee-length black dress with red trim around the bust and the hemline, and has done her face to match.
“Bex is going to love that dress,” Christine says, and enjoys the burn on Faye’s cheeks as Paige guides her away from the vanity and over to the wardrobe, which opens out into two full-length mirrors. Paige, prescient, is supporting Faye by a shoulder, so when the girl staggers a little on her borrowed heels, knocked off her balance by her own reflection, she doesn’t fall.
“Is that… me?” Faye says, waving experimentally at herself.
“What do you think?” Christine says, as Paige grins the smug but enchanting grin she always does when she has successfully inflicted fashion on a fresh victim.
“Incredible,” Faye says slowly, unable to keep a smile from spreading across her face.
“I think we have another girl on our hands, Christine,” Paige says, watching Faye smooth her elegant dress down around her hips.
Christine steps up from the desk chair, grabs Paige’s free hand and pulls her away from Faye. “Now, make me beautiful,” she says.
“Your wish,” Paige says, tightening her grip on Christine’s hand and yanking her over to the sofa, pressing her down into the cushion. “My command.”
Faye says something muffled about needing to pee and shuts herself in the bathroom, leaving Paige and Christine alone, and Christine wants to make a smart comment, but Paige is already frowning, clearly daunted by the sheer amount of work ahead of her. Paige, taller already than Christine and sitting at a higher elevation, leans down over her such that Christine has to look up, and the angle puts their faces rather closer than Christine’s been used to recently. Paige’s slow, steady breath warms her face.
The woman’s skin still has no flaws. Not even a pimple. Unfair.
She does have a long strand of hair falling down across her face, though, and no amount of blowing upwards will tame it, so Christine reaches carefully past Paige’s busy hands and tucks it back behind her ear, where it belongs.
“Thank you,” Paige says, as she paints.
“It was in your way.”
Paige’s mouth twitches, amused. “Not for that.”
“What for, then?”
“For Nell. For making sure I was okay. For helping get Pippa under control.”
Christine tries to smile but Paige puts a warning finger on the edge of her mouth: don’t mess with art. “That was mainly Abby and Vicky, though.”
Paige stops brushing, pulls back. “They wouldn’t have been there if not for you.”
“They would have!” Christine says, confused.
“They’re my friends because they’re your friends, Christine. Abby, especially, would barely know my name without you. People coalesce around you; you must have noticed.”
“Paige? Are you really okay?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding to herself and fetching another palette. “Just feeling like maybe I concentrated on the wrong thing.”
“Paige—”
“It’s okay. Maybe… maybe you have to learn this from me, and I have to learn something from you.”
“I can give you lessons in fucking everything up, if you like.”
“Quiet,” Paige scolds, and leans in to quickly kiss her above her hairline. “I’m working.”
“Yes, boss,” Christine whispers. Why the kiss?
The makeup doesn’t take long, and while Christine inspects her painted face — she’d almost forgotten how good Paige is when she really goes at it; the party the other week was nothing compared to this — Paige retrieves the new dress from the bed and lifts off the protective bag.
“Shit,” Christine says, finally witnessing the dress in all its glory. “No, Paige, I can’t.” The dress is not only more elaborate and brightly coloured than Christine’s old dress, it’s just like Paige’s, with the same cut and butterfly pattern, but in contrasting colours. A robe for a goddess, presented to a commoner. “You want me to wear the same thing as you? Paige, please. Seriously. There’s no way I can pull it off.”
Paige hangs the dress up on the hook by the bathroom door and carefully cups Christine’s cheek in her hand. A forefinger on her jaw, a thumb tucked gently under her chin. Christine’s skin glows hot under the contact.
“You are beautiful,” Paige says, smiling. “How many times must I tell you before you believe me?”
“Maybe a couple of hundred more,” Christine says, eyeing the dress. It’s incredible, she has to admit; it’s just that it requires someone like Paige to pull it off.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Paige says, smiling. “Arms up.”
Christine knows she’s lost. Any real resistance would be token, anyway; no Indira to save her today. She complies, and Paige drops the dress over her head, carefully guides it past her face, smooths the fabric across Christine’s bust and belly, and billows the skirt around her thighs. Wordlessly she hands Christine a pack of jewelled stockings, and when Christine sits on the stool and starts rolling one of them up her left leg, Paige starts work on her right, hooking them in place and pulling out the creases in the nylon, resting a hand for a moment on the inside of Christine’s thigh, but moving it before she can comment. Shoes are next — a low heel, thank God — and Christine slips them on and stands up, her heart already in her chest at the thought of seeing herself in the mirrors, an imitation Paige, next to the real thing.
“Sorry I took so long,” Faye says, ducking around the bathroom door, back into the room. “I’m still not used to redoing my— oh.” She pauses in miming the action of tucking when she sees Christine standing uncertain by the sofa, Paige’s steadying hand on the small of her back.
“Faye?” Paige says. “What do you think?” But Faye’s only response is a sharp breath and a high-pitched noise, and Paige giggles, proud once again.
Maybe Christine can get that reaction out of people, sometimes. With help.
* * *
“Hey,” Faye whispers, as they descend the stairs — the normal stairs, the ones they, bar Faye, are actually allowed to use — to the ground floor, “when we see Bex, you should call her Rebecca.”
“Oh?” Christine says, managing to tear her eyes away from her reflection in the windows; Paige did a really good job.
“Bex is… it’s my name for her.”
“Does she have a name for you?” Paige asks, exchanging looks with Christine.
Faye blushes and says, looking down into the bust of her borrowed dress, “She calls me Effie.”
“That,” Christine says, “is ridiculously adorable.”
They round the corner at the bottom of the stairs into the main foyer, their shoes tap-tap-tapping on the tile, catching glimpses of themselves in the night-dark windows and, in Christine’s case, resisting the urge to pose.
The kitchen comes up all too soon, and while Paige fiddles with the notoriously twitchy biometric lock on the door — it gets weird when it’s had a lot of fingerprints to process, and there are a lot of people in Dorley Hall tonight — Christine takes Faye gently aside.
“How are you feeling, Faye?”
“Good, I think.”
“Confident?”
“Definitely not.”
“Ready to see your sponsor again?”
“Definitely not.”
“Let me text Abby, then, and ask her to ask her to keep away from you for a little bit.”
“All right.”
Christine, a veteran phone operator, texts with one hand and with the other turns Faye towards her reflection in the large glass doors that lead out to campus. Catches the girl smiling at herself, again.
“Feeling like a girl yet?” Christine whispers.
Faye twists, examining herself in the glass. “Maybe.”
“Good enough.”
“Was it Paige?” Faye asks.
“Was it Paige what?”
“Who you used to…”
“Oh. I understand. And I’m not telling you.”
“You seem so close.”
“We are. But we’re also pretty different.”
“But—”
“Ready to go?” Paige says, forcing Faye into silence. Christine nods.
By unspoken agreement, Christine and Paige bracket Faye protectively as they pass through the kitchen and into the brightly lit dining hall. A mere ten seconds or so off from seeing her own reflection in the window and feeling quite good about herself, Christine almost wants everyone instantly to fall silent and gaze at the three of them in awe and wonder, but the desire dissipates the very moment she feels eyes on her. She feels, suddenly, clownishly unfeminine next to Paige — back in her accustomed position — and wants nothing more than to scuttle over to their table and hide from everyone, bury her nerves in wine. Butterflies in her belly, butterflies on her back.
Indira, bless her and curse her equally, wolf whistles, triggering a wave of imitations from the room.
Aunt Bea stands up from her chair at the central table, silencing the hubbub without having to say a word, and approaches them, causing Christine’s heart to cease its embarrassed bounce and switch to a nervous one.
“Christine,” she says quietly. “A quick chat?”
“Yeah,” Christine says. “Oh; give me a second.” She points as subtly as she can to Paige and Faye, splitting off and heading for a group of girls at a table on the other side of the room, sitting with a few sponsors Christine recognises — but no Nell. A girl who can only be Rebecca greets Faye with a gentle kiss on the cheek, and a careful hug that preserves the lines of Faye’s dress. They release each other and Rebecca talks excitedly with Paige while Faye turns brighter and brighter shades of red and glances around the room for something less effusive to look at. She finds Christine, who gives her a small wave and then nods to Aunt Bea that she’s ready for whatever she has to say.
“Sit down, please,” Aunt Bea says, walking Christine over to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. Wordlessly, Christine complies. “You took a second-year out of the permitted area, without consulting her sponsor. And you involved Paige. Why?”
There are several baskets of bread sticks on the table, ready to be delivered to the dining hall when dinner proper commences. Christine fetches a bread stick from the nearest one, turns it over in her fingers, bites off a small piece and chews it. She needs something to do with her hands while she thinks, and she can’t have a cigarette.
“Remember how Francesca was, with Paige?” she says. Francesca, Paige’s sponsor, remained hostile to her charge through most of their second year, for reasons none of them could understand, and it took Paige petitioning Aunt Bea directly to get her removed from duty. Paige hasn’t had an official sponsor for months. “Nell’s worse.”
“The other sponsors have noted that Nell’s approach is somewhat antagonistic,” Aunt Bea says.
“More than somewhat,” Christine says flatly. “She’s triggering Faye. Whether on purpose or by accident, I don’t know, but that makes her either cruel or incompetent. Take your pick as to which is worse.”
“Triggering her how?”
“May I be blunt?”
“For the moment.”
“We fucked up,” Christine says, and breaks her bread stick in half. “And I know I’m not trained in stuff like this, but I know my own life, and my guess is that Faye comes from an abusive family. Assuming she needed to come here at all — which is a decision out of my hands and over my head — she needed a completely different sponsor. Someone capable of dealing with those kinds of triggers. She needed an Indira, someone able to redirect her anger without turning irritation into outburst; she got Nell, who seems like another Francesca. Faye told me stories about Nell, how she ‘helped’ her early on, and yeah, sure, while she conceptualises it that way, I don’t. What she described to me… Look, I know we have to do what we have to do, but there are ways to do it without…” She stumbles over her words, trails off, struggles to express her thoughts without implicating the foundations of the programme, something to which Aunt Bea is rather attached; and so, if she’s honest, is she.
“I thought you were being blunt? Say what you need to say, Christine.”
Fuck it. “I think we took a traumatised girl — or boy, or whoever — and recreated the circumstances of her abuse. Her sponsor, the stand-in for her parents, shouts and yells and locks her up and even knocks her down, seemingly at random! That’s not reform; that’s just… changing the colour of the wallpaper in purgatory. I’m amazed, no, I’m dumbfounded she made it through the first year without washing out. Or worse! And that would have been a tragedy because, Aunt Bea, she is such a sweet kid.”
“Hmm. A degree of hostility, even outright aggression, can be warranted during the early stages of the programme.”
“Can be. Case-by-case assessment, right? You don’t get a Christine out of my, uh, raw material by using the same methods that got you an Edy, yeah? I think Nell went in angry, took it out on Faye, and never stopped. Or maybe she saw something in Faye that made her think acting like that was somehow the right move. Like I said: cruel or incompetent. And, I shouldn’t need to point out, Faye isn’t in the early stages of the programme. She’s two months into her second year and her sponsor, who is supposed to be her friend at this point, is still triggering her. You know what? I think she reformed despite us. Not because of us. Maybe her friendship with Rebecca saved her; maybe Rebecca’s sponsor, too. But not Nell.” Christine throws both halves of her bread stick down on the table. “Look: Paige and I both come from homes that were emotionally abusive. Occasionally physically so. We both responded very poorly to raised voices when we came here, and I think it’s no surprise that of the two of us, it’s me who doesn’t flinch any more when somebody shouts, and Paige who does. Because I got Indira and she got Francesca. And Faye got Nell.”
Bea picks up one of the scattered halves of bread stick and regards it. “Are you done?”
I might well be. “Yes.”
She smiles. “Thank you, Christine,” she says.
Christine, realising she’s stood halfway out of her chair with both palms planted on the table, sits down sharply and says, “Uh?”
“A good sponsor must know how to tailor her approach to her charge,” Aunt Bea says, almost absently. “At the very least, she must know when to withdraw. I will talk to Nell. I’m not sure I agree with your assessments regarding her conduct during the first year — although I will look into it, I promise, and I will be quite thorough — but she does seem overdue for a re-evaluation of her methods.” She sighs. “We’re having staffing problems. Were you aware?”
“Um, no. Not really.”
“It’s hard to assign appropriate sponsors at the best of times, and normally Maria would be taking a more active monitoring role, but with the large intake this year and the amicable departure of several of our more experienced sponsors, and with her research commitments to the university, she simply hasn’t had the time and we haven’t had the people. I can’t solve the latter problem, but I’m going to solve the former.” Aunt Bea nods to herself. “I’m going to assign Indira as monitor.”
“Indira?” Christine says. “My Indira? I mean, obviously, she’s great, but—”
“Do you believe in the programme, Christine?”
Christine, taken aback, says, “Yes,” automatically.
“And you are making progress in the areas we discussed?”
“Yes. Every morning.”
“Then I think you, like Paige, have evolved beyond the need for a sponsor. Don’t you?”
“Oh. Um. Yes?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Bea says, “you haven’t graduated yet. But you have a strong support network, and you will, I imagine, continue to see Indira socially.”
“Yes. Definitely. She’s my sister,” Christine adds defensively. She hates that she’s fallen into exactly the sort of relationship she was supposed to have with her sponsor, that her friend group is composed entirely of people inside Dorley; that she is, as Stef said, a true believer. But she is what they made her. The other choices were always worse. “She’s my family.”
“Of course,” Aunt Bea says, and Christine could swear there’s genuine pride in her voice. It still doesn’t always feel good to please Aunt Bea, but it’s probably better than the alternative.
“Indira’s new role will, of course, come with a pay raise.”
“Good for Dira,” Christine mutters, still coming to terms with the concept: no sponsor. Very nearly free.
“I do hope so,” Bea says, placing the bread stick half carefully on the table. “And I’d be interested in your read on Faye. How is she progressing?”
“She’s a sweet kid,” Christine says again, distracted.
“I mean, how do you think her gender is developing? Out of everyone, bar perhaps her friend, Rebecca, you’ve had the most intimate conversation with her.”
Christine clears her head. Pictures Faye trying to kiss her, talking nervously about Bex, dumbfounded by her reflection. “I think she’s warming to womanhood.”
Aunt Bea nods. “You have an instinct for sponsorship, it seems. You proved quite adept at gaining that girl’s trust.”
“Hey,” Christine says, raising a hand, “I wasn’t trying to gain her trust—”
“I know.”
“I just… She was hurting. I needed to help her.”
Bea smiles. “How much you’ve changed, Christine.”
* * *
Christine doesn’t get to sit down straight away. Indira, not content with announcing her presence by wolf whistle when they first came down, makes Christine stand at the side of the room with Paige, to show off their matching dresses and makeup. Positioning them under one of the more dramatic landscape paintings, Dira busies herself with arranging them both, conveniently too distracted to notice Christine’s nonverbal but increasingly desperate pleas to let her out of this obligation. So Christine acquiesces, but when she and Paige pose with each other — Paige gracefully, Christine awkwardly — it’s not just Indira’s flash that goes off.
“Make sure you edit the pictures before you post them,” Aunt Bea calls out.
Christine catches Hasan asking Dira why that would be necessary, and Dira starts rattling off a practised line about Dorley Hall’s draconian privacy policies. Christine misses the end of it because Vicky starts yelling out suggestions for more elaborate poses and Paige, clearly having enormous fun, shamelessly abuses the leverage granted by her extra height to manoeuvre Christine into position for each one, waiting for everyone to get their photos before moving on to the next.
“Did you plan this?” Christine whispers to Paige, as the taller girl leans down to kiss her on the cheek; thanks, Vicky, for that idea.
“No,” Paige says, her breath flowing lightly across Christine’s face and down her neck, igniting a warmth in Christine’s chest that is only part memory. “But it’s exciting, isn’t it? Being the centre of attention.”
“I want to die.”
“You big baby,” Paige says, and nips her once more on the cheek before straightening up.
Christine’s fingers twitch. She wants to rub her face where Paige kissed her, but almost everyone looking on knows they have a history together and she doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction. There’s almost definitely a betting pool on whether or not they’ll get back together — not that they were necessarily together in the way, say, Vicky and Lorna are — because the sponsors are just like that.
“Now do Charlie’s Angels!” Maria shouts from the next table. Her face is already a little red and she’s being lightly supported by Adam’s sponsor Edy; with her nightly obligations to Aaron discharged, she’s been at the wine.
“What’s that?” Christine yells back, mostly to be annoying. Maria, the oldest sponsor, can be prickly about her age.
Paige says loudly, “We need a third!” and before Christine can protest that a) she genuinely doesn’t know what a Charlie’s Angels pose even is and b) she would quite like to sit down and get a chance to recover from the events of the last twenty minutes, Vicky’s joined them, interposing herself and pointing with finger guns out into the room. Christine follows her lead, but when the flashes of two dozen phone cameras die down she breaks formation and slumps into an open chair before anyone can make her do anything even more embarrassing, although she struggles to imagine what they could possibly pick that would be worse.
You okay? Abby mouths at her from across the table, and Christine nods that, yes, despite everything, she’s fine, or she will be, once her heart retreats from her throat. You look amazing, Abby mouths. Christine smiles and, temporarily too tired to lean forward and talk normally, forms a heart with her fingers, earning a delighted beam from Abby.
She permits herself a moment to close her eyes. She doesn’t know what to conclude about her conversation with Aunt Bea. Sure, Nell’s going to be re-evaluated, whatever that means, and Indira’s going to be assigned to watch over the sponsors, but Christine’s come away with the uncomfortable impression that she’s being recruited. Was this how it was for Pippa? Did she, one day, show concern for someone and suddenly find herself facing down Aunt Bea, congratulating her for her empathy and implying that she may have a productive future in boy acquisition and torture?
Christine’s actually ahead of the game, there: she’s managed to put someone in the basement before she even graduates the programme. Granted, not a boy and, granted, situation normal all fucked up, but still; Christine is already, unofficially, recruiting for Dorley.
A buzz against her hip: her phone. She extracts it from her purse and finds a text from Abby, who is waving her own at Christine with what she probably thinks is an extremely clandestine look on her face.
Abby Meyer: Delete these messages after you’ve read them, please.
Christine Hale: Duh
Abby Meyer: Stef is okay. I mean, he’s struggling. He briefly asked me not to call him ANYTHING, before relenting and reverting to Stef. Dysphoria’s kicking him in the arse, and I felt pretty bad about being all dressed up in front of him. We talked about Melissa, a bit more about Dorley -- he still has ethical concerns -- and we agreed what to tell Pippa: that he’s totally and completely cowed by her threats to tell his sister he’s dead. As long as she has that to hold over him, he’ll do whatever she says.
Christine Hale: Right, good
Christine Hale: There’s still Pippa to think about though
Christine Hale: She’s clearly having a hard time
Abby Meyer: You want to help her, too? Chrissy! You’re so kind!
Abby Meyer: I’m proud of you
Christine Hale: Please don’t
Christine Hale: Kind of don’t want to be praised right now
Christine Hale: Just the act of being nice to the kid, Faye, made Aunt Bea’s eyes light up with little cartoon hearts in them
Christine Hale: Now she wants to recruit me to be a sponsor
Christine Hale: No good deed goes unpunished around here
Abby Meyer: You shouldn’t worry about that. When you’re out of the programme, you’re free to choose. She might put some pressure on you to accept a sponsoring position if she really does want you, but you can say no and she’ll (mostly) back off. Postgrad benefits, freedoms, etc. aren’t conditional on doing what she asks.
Abby Meyer: Don’t forget our stated goals. When you leave, you’re genuinely free, with restrictions only for your own safety and the continued secrecy of the programme.
Christine Hale: To quote Stef, I forget you’re a true believer
Abby Meyer: Oh shush. You are, too.
Christine Hale: I like to think I maintain a healthy dose of scepticism
Abby Meyer: LOL!!!
Christine Hale: Now you’re just being mean
Abby Meyer: Oh, before I forget. Stef’s cohort have their first medical examinations tomorrow.
Christine Hale: Oh shit
Christine Hale: Isn’t that kind of early?
Abby Meyer: It’s not out of spec, but it’s earlier than usual by a couple of weeks, yes. The sponsors, as a group, have some concerns about the wilder elements of this cohort, and have switched to the slightly more alacritous track.
Christine Hale: I’m worried about Stef again now, screw Pippa
Abby Meyer: Maybe you should find a way to go see him soon.
Christine Hale: I don’t know Abs
Christine Hale: It’s way scarier visiting the bedrooms compared to the cells, and there are no hiding spots
Christine Hale: And the locks in the emergency exit take forever to turn over
Abby Meyer: You really do know a lot about the security system here.
Christine Hale: The point is
Christine Hale: If I get stuck
Christine Hale: It’s game over
Christine Hale: I’ll try and hit him up on Consensus tho
Abby Meyer: Okay. He likes you, you know. Goes a bit pink when he says your name
Christine Hale: I mean, I AM a vision.
Abby Meyer: I mean it when I say you look gorgeous tonight, by the way. Have confidence in yourself.
Christine Hale: I refuse.
Abby Meyer: Christine, how many more times do we need to tell you you’re beautiful before you believe us?
Christine Hale: A couple of hundred more
Across the table, Abby grins at her and taps exaggeratedly at her phone, erasing the conversation. Christine resolves to check it later, to make sure she did it properly. Can’t trust anyone’s opsec but her own.
“Christine,” Hasan says, shifting his chair closer to hers now that she’s done with her texting. She gives him her attention; he gives her his broad smile, the one she’s willing to bet Indira fell in love with long before she came to Dorley. “How have you been? Cruel and unusual punishment aside, of course.”
It takes Christine a second to realise he’s talking about the ridiculous poses Indira, Paige and Vicky made her pull and not, for example, the cruel and unusual punishments that are inflicted with some regularity under the dining hall. “I’m doing pretty good, actually,” she says, and nods gratefully at Indira, who is pouring Christine a large glass of white wine. “First year Linguistics is going well. Early days, I know, but so far it’s everything I hoped.”
“I’m glad,” he says. “This one—” he intercepts Indira on her way back to her chair and hefts her onto his lap; she squeals, “—said you were doing a lot better this year.”
The fiction, as far as Hasan is concerned, is that Christine’s first year as a student at Saints — her second at Dorley; first above ground — was a foundation year. Hasan thinks Indira discovered Christine at a support group on campus, struggling with her transition, and took her under her wing. Dira argued for and got Christine a place in Dorley Hall, the residence for women from disadvantaged backgrounds, and essentially adopted her. There she could study for her foundation year in peace, surrounded by supportive friends, and without the abusive family life and dysphoric depression that afflicted her during her A-levels.
It’s not a million miles from the truth. Christine was a mess when Dira first picked her up. The deception, and their particular choice of story, make her uncomfortable, though.
“You look fantastic, by the way,” Hasan’s saying. “Really stunning. That dress is amazing! And I know this isn’t something you’re supposed to say, but you were so worried about it when we met, so I’m just going to say it: I’d never know.”
“Really?” Christine says, unable to stop herself greedily absorbing reassurance from someone outside her Sisterly circle. That she’d been struggling with her womanhood when she first met Hasan is not part of the lie, although she wishes it was: it was her first time off-campus as a woman, and her already shaky confidence took a fatal knock when a drunk man on the train clocked her, shouted at her, and pursued her, Indira, and their friends through two carriages before they could find a member of staff to officially encourage him to please, sir, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Christine arrived in London in tears, and will forever feel a little guilty that the first time Indira’s mother got to see her daughter, alive and well, she was busy comforting a crying, insecure little thing who wasn’t even sure, back then, if she was a woman at all.
Sad girl on her dress.
“Really.” He says it sincerely, kindly, like he knows exactly how much it means to her.
“Thank you!” Christine says, pushing warmth into the words by pitching down and expending a little effort to move her voice from its usual slightly lazy top-of-the-throat position to the front of her mouth. The sort of intonation that can, with enough breath behind it, fill a cathedral (or the large bathrooms attached to the Saints rec centre, where Christine did a lot of her voice training, after hours). “And you do, too. Look great, I mean. Like, really, really good.” He’s dressed semi-formal, but the shirt is fitted and he has a great figure underneath. He’s tall, taller than Indira — who, like most Dorley women, is taller than average — and the way he casually embraces his girlfriend makes Christine’s throat tighten whenever she thinks about it. He probably makes Indira feel so safe.
Hasan gives her a mock-bow, the deepest he can manage without dislodging Dira, who is absorbing their conversation with obvious and slightly tipsy pleasure. Indira considers Christine to be effectively her family and has suggested that if she ever wants to consider the Chetry family officially her own, all she has to do is ask. Aasha, Indira’s mother, asks after Christine weekly, and occasionally shyly forwards memes to her newest daughter’s Sister on WhatsApp, along with local gossip and sincere encouragement.
Christine, who never wants to see her own family again, who doesn't bother checking the info packs on them any more, has considered asking, several times.
After a few minutes of small talk, Dira excuses herself to the bathroom and Hasan leans forward, close enough to Christine to touch her, and says quietly, “Thank you for being there for her. I think she really needed someone like you. Getting to be your big sister, having you be hers—” he glances towards the bathrooms, smiling, “—it’s been healing for her. She never had that, growing up; just a lot of heartache none of us could ever seem to resolve. Siji loves her, of course, but didn’t even know she was still alive, let alone her sister and not her brother, until last year. So, Christine, thank you.”
He stands and holds open his arms, inviting Christine to step into his embrace. She does so, grateful for the excuse not to look at his beautiful, kind face. She hates the lies so much. Can’t imagine ever feeling comfortable about them, for all that they are necessary and, for Indira, freeing: she can be with her childhood crush, she can be a sister to Siji and a daughter to her mother and father; she can be alive, and all it takes is a handful of falsehoods. Indira was always a girl. She ran away out of fear. She chose this. The smallest price to pay for so much happiness.
Christine hugs him more tightly. A silent apology.
“I was lucky she found me,” Christine says, taking refuge from the lies in absolute honesty. “She changed my life. Saved it, probably. And you!” she adds, as they separate and return to their seats. “Look at you! Last time I saw you in the flesh, you were wearing that huge coat and making shy eyes at her across the garden, asking me to ask her if she possibly maybe happens to remember Hasan, the boy from three doors down, who thinks she looks just gorgeous.”
He laughs. “I was lucky, too,” he says. “Lucky she remembered me, lucky she was interested in me. Lucky I didn’t take the overseas job and stayed home, when I heard she was alive, when I heard she was… her.” His smile deepens as, on cue, Indira returns from the bathroom, Abby in tow, and perches herself on Hasan’s knee again, encircling him in her arms.
“What are you two talking about?” she says.
Hasan kisses her. “You. And I really hate to do this—” he places a hand on each of Dira’s hips and lifts her off his lap; Christine’s throat tightens again, “—but now I have to visit the little boys’ room.”
They watch him go.
“Goodness, I love that boy,” Indira says.
“He’s absolutely smitten with you,” Christine says.
Dira can’t stop the giggle from bubbling up. “I know! I’m so lucky.”
“Yeah. We talked about luck. You seem to bring it with you.”
“Glad to be of service,” she says, taking Christine’s first two fingers, the ones that twitch, and gently massaging them. “He’s always been kind, you know,” she continues, looking away, living somewhere in the part of her past Christine carefully doesn’t ask about, “even when we were kids. Even when I wasn’t always so kind in return.” She shakes her head. “Of course, these days he says he must always have known I was a girl, deep down, and that’s why he was so drawn to me.”
“Why do you think he was drawn to you?”
“He’s a lot like you, Christine. He can’t bear to see someone in pain.”
“God. Dira, I hate lying to him.”
Indira reaches for her glass, refilled by Hasan while she was away. “If, knowing everything, I’d go back and do it all again, then are they really lies?”
“I, uh, I’m not sure.”
“I know you’re the same. I know the things you regret all took place before you came here.”
“Mostly,” Christine says. Dira applies gentle pressure to the tips of her fingers, rolls them in her own, draws out from Christine something that’s been lurking inside her since she talked to Faye. “I’d be less of a bitch, if I got to do it all again. Yell at you less. Cooperate a bit more, a bit earlier. I made life so difficult for you, for a while.”
Indira laughs quietly. “That would have been nice. You called me such terrible things.”
Christine leans forward, balls her hand into a fist, gathering Dira’s fingers inside it and squeezing. “I’m really sorry. I was awful to you.”
“I love all the things that make you you, Teenie. Even the things you’d rather forget. I’ve never once been anything other than glad I was chosen to be your sponsor.”
“Actually,” Christine says, “you might want to chat with Aunt Bea soon.”
“Oh?”
“You’re getting new responsibilities. You’re officially relieved of the burden of Christine Hale.”
“Oh, sweetie!” Indira squeals. “I’m so proud of you!” She hooks her free hand around Christine’s shoulder and pulls on the fingers Christine’s still grasping, drawing her up and into her arms. “You’ve become an amazing woman,” she whispers.
“I wouldn’t be here without you,” Christine replies, not knowing if she mean, I wouldn’t be a girl without you, or I wouldn’t be alive without you. Both are Indira’s gifts to her, and she cherishes them.
“And you were never a burden, Christine. Never ever.”
That’s something Christine could stand to hear more often.
Dira gives her a final squeeze. “I’m going to go talk to Aunt Bea before Hasan gets back,” she says. “If they come round with the starters, make sure we both get one. You know what I like; he likes the same.” She pecks Christine lightly, on the back of her jaw. “Kisskiss.”
“Kiss,” Christine whispers back, pressing her cheek hard against her sister’s, blinking her eyes clear.
* * *
“So, Hasan seems like a nice guy,” Paige says quietly to Christine.
“Hmm?” Christine says, mouth full. Unlike Paige, who’s been on a diet since the start of the second year, Christine maintains her usual weight by forgetting to eat some days, so when something gets put in front of her that’s actually pretty good, she’ll generally eat and keep eating until every plate in the local area is clear. She picked the curry for her main course — given the choice, Christine will always pick the curry — and it’s a lot better than she could have made with the same ingredients. Definitely better than what her cohort managed, last year. “Oh, yeah, he’s sweet, right?”
“He likes you a lot,” Paige continues, elbowing her gently in the ribs.
“Hey!” Christine says. “Be careful with the bits of me that have food in! They might burst!”
“Pig,” Paige says with a grin. Christine replies by leaning close and doing her best porcine impression, which causes Paige to respond in kind and the rest of the table to give them an interesting selection of looks.
When eventually she finds her dinner straining against the fabric of her fairly snug dress she sits back and surveys the room. They aren’t the only friend group who’ve staked out one of the smaller tables in the corners. On the far side, Jodie from down the hall — who spots Christine looking at her and exchanges waves — sits in a surprisingly colourful dress with her sponsor, Donna, and some of their friends. At least one of them isn’t a Dorley girl, and thus is probably a vampire enthusiast; looking harder, Christine recognises xem from Jodie’s World of Darkness streams, and catches Jodie leaning over and pointing her out. Another wave. She probably should go say hi, later; ask where xe got xyr vampire teeth.
Most of the other small tables host people Christine doesn’t know, or knows only by face. Graduates, probably, who live upstairs, off-campus, or away from Almsworth, having moved on from Saints as well as Dorley. People who live in the real world. Scary.
Faye and Rebecca catch her sweeping the room and Christine waves again.
In the middle, at the largest table, with Aunt Bea at its head, are most of the sponsors whose charges are unable to participate in the birthday event due to being locked up in the basement. There’s also a scattering of women and nonbinary people who Christine mostly knows, or knows of; the terminally Dorleyed, the ones who haven’t left, can’t bring themselves to leave, or return every chance they get. It’s like Lorna said once: when all your friends are queer, you forget how to relate to cishets. What if all your friends were resocialised in a secret underground facility?
Pippa, sitting near Maria and looking somewhat overwhelmed, catches her eye and makes please come over hand gestures, hidden by her body so only Christine can see. Paige is busy discussing with Abby her plans to start learning self-defence — Christine makes a mental promise to herself to spectate, both to show her support and to enjoy watching the svelte, delicate-seeming Paige kick a succession of unsuspecting men in the face — so Christine just pokes her until she moves her chair out of the way, and gets up to see what Pippa needs her for.
At the central table, Maria is holding court, gesturing with a fork and complaining about her research supervisor. “Every time he pulls me up on something stupid or for being five minutes late I get a little bit tempted to maybe, kinda, possibly, uh, bop him on the head and drag him here.”
“Maria,” Edy says, leaning with both elbows on the table and looking at least as full as Christine feels, “are you saying you want to force-feminise your supervisor just because he’s pissing you off?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“Maria thinks forced feminisation is the solution to all her problems,” Harmony says.
Maria shrugs sheepishly. “When all you have is a hammer…”
“Hi, Christine!” Pippa says brightly, before another of the assembled sponsors can say something disturbing. “You wanted a word, yeah?” She cocks an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Christine says, recognising someone who needs a break, “you want to come over? We have room, and I don’t think Dira and Hasan are going to stick around for dessert, anyway.”
“Oh, Christine?” Aunt Bea says, while Pippa rounds up wine glass and purse. “Could you ask Indira to bring Hasan over, before they retire? I would very much like to meet him.”
“Warn him!” at least three sponsors say, almost in unison, collapsing into giggles at their shared hilarity.
“Hey,” Christine says, pointing at the table, taking advantage of her light drunkenness to be mildly rude to people who still could, technically, order her around and expect to be obeyed, “don’t be rude when he comes over. He’s a lovely man. Don’t scare him.”
Maria sits up from her slouch and drags Edy back up with her. “Best behaviour,” she promises.
“Best behaviour,” Christine repeats, and escorts Pippa back to their significantly less raucous table. “Jesus,” she mutters, when they’re out of earshot, “they’re all so drunk.”
Pippa snorts, and nods. She drops into a spare chair at Christine’s table. “It’s like Christmas with the extended family,” she says, “and that’s the table where all the embarrassing aunts get quarantined. And all they talk about when they’re not being rude is work! Work, work, work.” She glances at Hasan, who is watching with polite interest. “Schoolwork, I mean. I thought tonight was going to be about getting away from all that.”
“I think they’re all a bit institutionalised,” Christine says, sitting back down next to Paige, who immediately leans her head on Christine’s shoulder. Christine playfully pushes her off; Paige pretends to take offence and goes back to talking to Abby.
“They’re the ones who should be able to leave, but don’t,” Vicky says, looking up from her phone. She smirks and adds, “The living failures.”
Paige turns around. “Vick, I know for a fact that that’s a Bloodborne reference. Stop it.”
“Paige—”
“I know you miss your girlfriend.”
“I—”
“But you’re seeing her tomorrow night, so stop texting her and be sociable.”
“Don’t wanna. Oh,” Vicky adds, consenting to lay her phone on the table but not actually turn off the screen, “you’re still coming, right, Tina?”
“Tomorrow?” Christine asks. “Lorna’s thing? Yes. I remember. And, yes, I’m coming.” Pippa, who is suddenly directing all her attention towards playing with her bracelet, prompts Christine to give Vicky a meaningful look.
“Pippa?” Vicky says, picking up on it. “Wanna come? Tomorrow night. Clubbing. Just us Dorley girls. And my girlfriend.”
“Really?” Pippa says. “I’d love to!”
“Come to Vicky’s room on the second floor,” Christine says. “We’ll all be getting ready there. Except Vicky, because she doesn’t actually live in her room any more.”
Pippa nods vigorously, which helps to hide her startled reaction when Hasan leans across the table to talk to her.
“I’m Hasan,” he says. “I’m hers.” He points to the side, where Indira, Paige and Abby are having an animated discussion.
“Pippa,” she says. “I’m a friend of— I know Christine.”
Christine elbows her. “She’s my friend,” she says, and throws in a glare for good measure. Pippa flushes, and Christine wonders how close she is with the others from her intake. Probably not very; most of them fled the nest, choosing to finish their degrees away from the Hall that made them. Hints dropped by one of the other ones who stayed, and who pops down to the kitchen every so often, suggest to Christine that Pippa’s cohort had a rather tense time of it in general. Three washouts; scary stuff.
Exactly how lonely has she been all this time? Christine’s barely seen Pippa talk to anyone who wasn’t Aunt Bea or another sponsor, now that she comes to think about it. And then there’s her bracelet, the one she always wears, the one she’s still wearing tonight even though it clashes with her dress, the one she’s slowly turning around her wrist as she talks to Hasan. Very much like the bracelets she and Indira share, only the owner of the twin to Pippa’s doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead.
God fucking damn it, Christine; why did you have to go and dump a problem like Stef in this girl’s lap?
“I’m studying Philosophy,” Pippa’s saying to Hasan. “It’s not been so bad up until now, but this year, all of a sudden, it’s been confusing, difficult, and I don’t know how to respond to it.” Hasan leans farther forward, bringing Indira’s hand, enmeshed in his own, with him. Dira laughs and disentangles herself, kissing her boyfriend on the cheek as she does so. Pippa, looking inward, doesn’t notice, just continues talking almost to herself. “I wasn’t going to do it this year. Third year uni is hard enough as it is, you know? But she asked me to be on standby, just in case, and when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen I was so relieved. And then, suddenly, all this responsibility just drops in my lap and I’m running around with no idea what I’m doing except that I know I’m doing it all wrong.”
“That sounds rough,” Hasan says. “Which module is this for?”
“It’s a group project,” Abby says, switching chairs to sit next to Pippa and taking her by the hand. “And it’s a hard one. Why don’t you let me help you, Pip? Like I did earlier. All you have to do is ask, and I can talk to… your supervisor. Make it official.”
Pippa closes her eyes, exhausted, and leans gratefully against Abby’s shoulder. “I’m asking,” she whispers.
Yeah. Well fucking done, Christine.
* * *
As predicted, Indira and Hasan make their excuses before dessert, as do several others. The second-years are permitted to stay and enjoy their own cakes — no less delicious for being, probably, quite violently made — but are gently encouraged to leave by some of the more sober sponsors before Aunt Bea’s speciality coffees come out. Faye and Rebecca excuse themselves from the frankly adorable procession of new girls and trot over to where Christine and Paige have been roped into the effort to drag all the remaining tables into the middle of the room.
“I wanted to say hi,” Rebecca says, in a clear, high-pitched voice. More developed than Faye’s. Either her sponsor okayed the voice surgery that Dorley very occasionally hands out, or she’s been training her voice longer than the rest of her cohort. “And thank you. To you, Paige, for making Effie look so beautiful.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Paige says, strangely formal.
“And to you, Christine, for helping her. She told me all about you.”
Lost for platitudes in the face of someone so genuine, Christine resorts to a curtsey. She’s been relying on these too much, lately, but Aunt Bea seems to like them, and Paige’s bloody butterfly dress is so tight around the hips it’s almost the only manoeuvre she can reliably perform.
“Thanks, Christine,” Faye says. “For everything. Um, is it okay if I contact you some time?”
“Any time,” Christine says, more at home with Faye’s nervous stammer than Rebecca’s sincerity. She rattles off her Consensus ID, and starts reciting her phone number until Paige reminds her that second-year girls don’t yet have fully enabled phones. “Aw. I was going to forward you all the terrible memes Dira’s mum sends me.”
“Dira’s… mum?” Faye asks. “She’s allowed to talk to her family?”
“That,” Christine says firmly, “is a long conversation for another day. Ask me on Consensus.”
“Okay. Oh, Paige: when should I give the dress back?”
“Do you like it?” Paige says.
Faye glances shyly at Rebecca before answering: “Yes.”
“Then it’s yours.”
Paige’s reply prompts an excited hug from Faye and a small amount of commotion from Rebecca, which continues until Bella, Rebecca’s sponsor, arrives to drag them up to bed. Bella shoots a smile at Christine and mouths, Thank you, and Christine, unaccustomed to so much gratitude in one night, replies with a hesitant nod.
“God, they’re cute, aren’t they?” Paige says, as they take their seats around the newly enlarged central table, between Pippa on Christine’s left and Abby on Paige’s right.
Christine avoids Aunt Bea’s knowing grin, and replies, “Yeah. They kind of are. Hard to believe we were ever like that.”
“That was only a year ago, for you,” Maria points out, sounding a little more sober.
“Seems like longer,” Christine says.
“I don’t know why we bother with the basement at all,” Abby says. “Just give them to Paige for an hour and they’ll walk out the door the most enthusiastic women you ever saw.”
“Well—” Maria starts, but she’s cut off by Aunt Bea, tapping a coffee spoon on the side of her mug, calling for attention.
“Good evening, ladies,” she says, and smoothly adds, when someone at the other end of the table coughs, “and nonbinary individuals. Thank you all for coming, and thank you all for staying with me, to ride out this long evening to its end. I know some of you had no choice—” she smiles at Maria, sitting at her side, who rolls her eyes and noisily slurps on her coffee, undercutting whatever gravitas Bea is trying to impart to the moment, “—but the rest of you did, and stayed anyway. My special thanks go to those who have returned from far afield—” several people, including the one who coughed, raise glasses and coffee cups, “—and to those who are yet to graduate from our programme.” Surprised murmurs from the far end. Bea points her spoon at Christine. “Christine Hale and Paige Adams. Thank you both for indulging an ageing woman on her birthday.”
Shit. They really are the only non-graduates at the table, aren’t they? “Hey,” she says, pointing around Paige to Abby, “I just go where she goes.”
Polite laughter ripples across the table. “And you, Miss Adams?” Aunt Bea says.
Paige points at Christine. “I go where she goes.”
Christine slaps her ankle against Paige’s, lightly enough to keep from hurting her but hard enough to say, Hey! Paige responds by hooking her ankle around Christine’s. Unexpected. When Christine looks at her, Paige looks back with a somewhat intense and only slightly unsteady expression.
“And an honourable mention, of course,” Aunt Bea says, “to Victoria Robinson, our first two-year graduate in quite some time.”
There are one or two gasps this time. Vicky, much more accustomed to attention than Christine, accepts the smattering of applause and says, “Well, the sales pitch was just so good.”
Has everyone been taking public speaking lessons except Christine? Or is this just something she’s expected to be good at by now? She covers her continued embarrassment by diverting her attention to the coffee in front of her, which is definitely better than the stuff out of the coffeemaker in the kitchen.
Aunt Bea draws all attention back to her when she continues, “As many of you know, this is an important year for me. Not only is it my fifty-fifth birthday, but this year also marks fifteen years since my predecessor officially handed control to me. I know not many of you were raised under Grandmother’s hand—” is it Christine’s imagination, or did Maria just flinch? “—but I like to think that my… modernising touches and adjustments to our recruitment parameters have improved not only our retention rate, but the wellbeing and overall happiness of our girls.” Another cough. “And nonbinary individuals. Thank you, Amethyst, again, for the welcome reminder.”
Across the table, Amethyst, dressed for their name in a dark tuxedo with a purple bowtie, says, “You are quite welcome, Beatrice.”
Christine almost inhales her coffee. She’s never heard Aunt Bea addressed by her full forename before; she wasn’t even sure she had one. Clearly, when one has been away from Dorley for many years, one becomes cheeky.
“And what are your pronouns, my dear?”
“Quite mundane, I promise you: they/them.”
“Wonderful!” Aunt Bea says. “Do we have anyone else here tonight with, shall we say, pronouns other than the traditional?”
Another of Amethyst’s group holds up a hand. “I’m a she/they now, actually.”
“Oh? And how does that work?”
Whether from alcohol, tiredness, or whatever’s in the coffee she can’t stop drinking, Christine’s completely lost the ability to tell whether or not Aunt Bea is being genuine, but Amethyst’s friend continues as if she’s been asked a serious question. “Some days I feel more like a she, other days, a they. If on a particular day I have a strong preference, I’ll tell my friends, but otherwise I’m happy with either pronoun set.” She pauses to listen to Amethyst whisper something in her ear. “That’s just how it works for me, by the way. I know a few she/theys who take a different approach.”
“How fascinating!”
“I know! Gender’s fun, isn’t it?”
“That is not,” Aunt Bea says gravely, “the official position of Dorley Hall.”
"You know what? Back when I lived here, that serious face of yours used to scare me. But I'm worldly, now. I can see the grin you're holding back."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're just a big shitposter, aren't you?"
“Margaret,” Aunt Bea says, dropping into a slightly more severe tone of voice, “please remember there are girls here who are still supposed to be intimidated by me.”
Ah. Still joking, then. Christine, entirely genuinely, says, “Don’t worry. I definitely still am.”
“Bless you, child. And you, Margaret: are you feeling she or they today?”
Standing up to reveal a flowing red dress with crystalline details and twirling around, raising the hem above her knees — dress go spinny, Christine remembers — Margaret says, “Today, I’m emphatically a she.”
This prompts a conversation amongst the half-dozen people at Margaret and Amethyst’s end of the table and Aunt Bea, wisely, decides that her speech has thus concluded. She exchanges a few murmurs with Maria before addressing Christine and Paige as one. “How about you two?” she says. “Will either of you be adopting new pronouns when you graduate?”
“No,” Paige says. “I’ve examined myself thoroughly—” she’s definitely had more alcohol than Christine; she’s stumbling over the multisyllabic words, “—and determined myself to be, socially, rather binary. I don’t expect to change pronouns any time soon.” She frowns. “I don’t like the way I have to have strangers think I’m a cis woman, though, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve already established myself that way; I’m stuck with it.”
“Just say you’re AFAB,” Maria says. “You don’t have to tell them the B stands for ‘basement’.”
Edy, sat on Maria’s other side, delivers a mild tap to the side of Maria’s head. Deserved. Apparently the studious and sensible senior sponsor develops a bit of a mouth when she’s had a drink.
“And you, Christine?” Aunt Bea asks.
Christine shrugs. This, at least, is easy. “I’m a girl,” she says. “Sometimes I’m a tomboy; sometimes I’m a girly girl. Always a girl, though. A she/her.”
In Aunt Bea’s widening smile Christine reads pleasure, possibly relief; not quite as tolerant as you try to be, are you? Newfangled pronouns sticking a little in your gut, are they? Paige, perhaps seeing the same thing, nudges Christine’s foot again, as if to say, At least she’s trying. Christine suddenly has to hold back laughter, imagining the headline: DIVERSITY WIN! KIDNAPPER RESPECTS YOUR PRONOUNS!
Aunt Bea moves on to Pippa next, and Christine feels the girl tense when the questions start. Pippa gives a rough rundown of Stef’s stay in the basement up to this point, and repeats some of her frustrations. She admits to Aunt Bea and the table, as she had obliquely to Hasan, that she’s feeling overwhelmed. Towards the end of her summary, Aunt Bea reaches over to take her hand, and Christine feels Pippa go from tense to completely immobile.
“We are so grateful that you stepped up, Pippa,” Aunt Bea says, “and I’m aware that your plate is… rather full, what with your final year studies as well as your duties as sponsor.” She takes a sip of coffee. “We’ll have Maria assist you, when needed. She is the most experienced, and many of her overall responsibilities have been shifted, as of now, onto Indira.”
“Oh,” Pippa says, “um—”
Abby pipes up. “Actually, Aunt Bea, I was going to offer my support. I’m available to spend a lot more time here, and—”
“Nonsense!” Aunt Bea says. “Your offer is greatly appreciated, Abigail, but you have your career to think of. Maria’s, happily, is based on campus.”
“But—”
“And, might I remind you, your sponsorship methods are… singular. Should young Stefan require a firm hand, could we trust you to administer one? Maria has much more experience in tailoring her approach.”
“She’s saying I’m a bitch,” Maria stage-whispers from behind her hand.
Aunt Bea rolls her eyes. “You young people do persist in putting the most awful words in my mouth.”
“Yeah,” Maria says, pretending misery, “I’m a bitch.” Edy comforts her.
“Pippa, my dear?” Aunt Bea says. “Are you happy with this arrangement?”
“I am,” she says. “Thank you, Aunt Bea.” It can’t only be Christine who hears the tension in her voice, can it? She’s bringing the conversation to the quickest close she can manage. She wants to reach out, reassure her, but she doesn’t know her well enough to predict her reactions.
When conversation resumes around the table, though, Christine feels Pippa relax, and engages her on a deliberately light-hearted topic.
“Hey,” Abby says a little while later, leaning around to speak to Pippa, “where’s Monica? I wanted to talk to her.”
“Oh, uh, it’s her boy, Declan,” Pippa says. “He got to three strikes today, so she left after the main course.”
“Three strikes? Already?”
“A sponsor’s work is never done,” Paige says, and finishes her coffee.
* * *
“My house is your house,” Christine says, pushing open her bedroom door with the flat of her bare foot and throwing her shoes in the rough direction of the wardrobe.
“Are you sure this isn’t a bother?” Vicky says.
“You can still sleep in your room, Vick,” Paige says, closing the door behind them and immediately stepping out of her dress, “if you don’t want to impose.”
“No,” Christine says, leaning against the wall and declining to undress until the room consents to stop slowly rotating. “Her room is cold, it’s lonely, and it’s full of your clothes, Paige.”
Vicky, by the time coffees were polished off and a third round of sherries politely refused, declined from morose to depressed, and had all but outright asked if she could stay in Christine’s room rather than sleep alone. Paige made an acid comment about how she ought to be able to cope for just one more night before Lorna returns from her parents’ place, but Christine insisted; Vicky gets scared sometimes, more so when she’s alone, and the last thing she wants is the girl having a crisis born of alcohol and loneliness, with no-one there to help her. So they agreed: Christine’s room tonight.
When the three of them left the dining hall, arm in arm, Christine glanced back and took in with one glance Aunt Bea’s satisfied expression and Pippa, surrounded by empty chairs, watching them walk away.
“Reminds me,” Christine mutters, and pulls out her phone.
Christine Hale: Hey can you check on Pippa for me?
Christine Hale: It’s dawning on me that she has like no friends and I’d look after her myself but my room is absolutely CHOCK FULL of girls
Abby Meyer: Will do.
Abby Meyer: And chock full of girls, eh? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Christine Hale: You mean sleep?
Christine Hale: Maybe drool a bit?
Christine Hale: That’s the extent of my plans
Abby Meyer: That sounds so hot.
Christine Hale: Horny jail, population: you
Christine Hale: Thanks tho
Christine Hale: You do too much for me
Abby Meyer: I think you’ll find I’m doing this for Pippa.
Abby Meyer: Say goodnight to the girls for me.
“Abby says g’night,” Christine says, throwing her phone back in her bag and her bag onto the desk.
Paige, unsteadily crossing the room in her underwear, leans down and says, “Good night, Abby,” to the phone, before placing a hand on each side of Christine’s waist, turning her round, and unzipping her dress.
“Thanks, Paige,” Christine says. “Oh, Vick,” she adds, as Vicky finishes dropping the component parts of her two-piece outfit onto hangars, “spare toothbrushes are in the cupboard under the sink.”
Vicky flashes her a thumbs up and makes it through the door to the ensuite on her second go. Paige makes impatient motions with her hands that Christine eventually interprets as a request to step out of her unzipped dress. They manage to get both of their dresses back into the garment bags and hung on the wardrobe door before the alcohol in Paige’s bloodstream gets the better of her and she staggers, almost falling.
“Woah, there,” Christine says, looping an arm around her and positioning one of Paige’s around her shoulders. “Let’s get your teeth brushed and then we can all sleep this off. Vick? A little help?”
Between the three of them they manage to pilot Paige from bathroom to bed, and they both fall in next to her, Christine in the middle.
“Thanks, Tina,” Vicky whispers, blowing her a kiss and turning over to face the window. Almost immediately her breathing turns heavy and regular.
“And she’s out like a light,” Christine says. “You okay, Paige?”
“’m fine,” she mutters, shuffling over under the covers and looping one of her legs over Christine’s. They’re both still wearing their sparkly stockings, and the sensation is strange.
“Um,” she says, “Paige?”
“Sleep,” Paige suggests, and folds an arm under Christine’s bosom. It’s not long before her grip goes slack and she starts to snore, the same soft growl Christine remembers.
It takes her a while to fall asleep, but the curtains are open and the stars are out, so Christine counts the lights in the sky and considers, with Paige’s arm around her and Vicky’s cold foot occasionally lightly kicking her in the knee, how little she deserves the bounty she’s been handed, and how lucky she is to be here to receive it.
