Emily Swan was beautiful. I’d known that already, having seen her headshot in the packet from her agency, along with pictures of the other two models who were now off sick (and thus presumably getting a lot of sleep and watching a lot of Netflix in pyjamas; God, I was jealous). What I hadn’t been prepared for was that she was tall. She had a good two inches on me, even with me in heels and her in trainers.

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing she was: wearing casual clothing. Jeans and a tank top. Here I was in a skirt I couldn’t get to reach my knees even if I tugged on it, in a whole outfit that probably cost more than a month’s rent, and the professional model in front of me looked like she was about to interrupt a Game of Thrones marathon for a quick trip to the corner shop for tea bags. My plans to murder Ben, which I’d put on hold in the taxi over after he was so kind, started ticking over again.

She was standing by my desk, leafing through some of our technical documents, and looked up when I marched in. She smiled at me, and raised her eyebrows a little; I wondered what kind of impression I made. Assuming James hadn’t gone out and bought an Armani suit while I was away, I was the most overdressed person in the office by a factor of twenty. And definitely the one with the least comfortable feet.

“Miss Swan,” I said warmly, walking over to meet her. “I’m Alex Brewer.”

“Miss Brewer, hi,” she said, holding out a hand. I shook it and then perched on the back of the next desk over, taking some of the weight off my feet without having to actually sit down and thus feel even shorter compared to her. I deposited my coffee cup on the desk next to me.

“Alex, please,” I said. The phrase ‘Miss Brewer was my father,’ jumped into my head before I could stop it, and I tried to turn the grin into a welcoming smile.

“Call me Emily,” she responded in kind. “Mr McCain was talking me through some of your other projects.” So it was ‘Mr McCain’ was it? I cursed my traitorous brain for picking up on that and making favourable deductions about the level of intimacy they’d reached. “He said you would be best placed to go over the software we’ll be presenting on the show floor tomorrow.”

I nodded. On cue, Mr McCain entered the office, coffees in hand. Emily looked over at him and I took the opportunity to fix him with one of my nastier glares. I didn’t know why he had taken so long to get from the elevator to the door, but I hoped it was because he was kicking himself for being a jerk. For what it was worth, I thought his eyes looked apologetic, but it wasn’t worth much.

“Miss Brewer,” James said to me as he passed Emily her coffee, “Miss Swan and I were just going over the in-development stuff. Most of it you’ve worked on, I know, but I saved one for last because I don’t believe you’re familiar with it. Would you join us?”

I rolled my eyes at being ‘Miss Brewer’ed again, but nodded. He wasn’t usually a super-formal guy so I didn’t know what he was trying to do, throwing all these honorifics around. Possibly he was trying to sound like a proper adult and not a twenty-three year-old running a tech startup with daddy’s money. Hey, if he was going to call me a bitch, I was going to be one. At least in the safety of my own head. “Sure,” I said.

We arranged ourselves around the spare desk they’d been using before I got there. James sat next to me, opposite from Emily, which I thought was a bit unfair on her, like we were ganging up on her or something. He seemed as if he was vibrating with nervous energy, like he was finding the stress of not actively being a jerk hard to handle. I wanted to put a hand out to calm him down but, for a number of reasons, decided against it. With luck Emily, who didn’t know him, wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

He talked us both through the project. It was pretty interesting, I had to admit, although early enough in development that I didn’t see how it could be ready even for next year’s round of trade shows unless we literally doubled our engineer count.

Emily Swan was impressive, though. I could tell she knew her stuff from the questions she was asking, and I wondered why she was on the agency modelling circuit with a brain like hers. On the other hand, what did I know? Maybe modelling was way more fun than coding? I shifted in my uncomfortable underwear and kind of doubted that wearing ridiculous clothing in front of hundreds of people for three days straight could be all that fun, even for someone who didn’t have a nasty pinching sensation in the end of her dick when she sat in a certain way.

“And with that,” James finished, “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Miss Brewer.”

He’d been smarming at me for the last five minutes so I kicked him, under the desk. The boots I was wearing were pretty heavy; I hoped it left a bruise.

“Thanks so much, Mr McCain,” Emily said.

I gave him a tight smile as he left, watching him carefully to check for a limp (nope; damn), but I didn’t let out the breath I’d been holding until his office door was good and closed. I felt my shoulders droop as all the air rushed out of me.

“Is everything okay between the two of you?” Emily asked.

I tried not to groan. I realised I should probably have been trying to be more subtle. It wasn’t especially professional to loudly signal to virtual strangers that I was fighting with my boss. “Everything’s fine,” I said, sounding rather too venomous for that to be believable. “He’s just an arsehole, that’s all.”

I glared at the desk for a few seconds before I noticed Emily hadn’t replied yet. I looked up; she seemed like she was trying to decide whether to ask something, and I replayed what I’d said in my mind. Yeah, especially with the tone of voice I’d used, it sort of sounded like I was implying he was abusive or sexually inappropriate. You idiot, I told myself, for the thirtieth or fortieth time in the last twenty-four hours.

“Is he, uh…?” Emily said, before I could head her off.

“No,” I said, and struggled for a moment as I tried out various ways to phrase what I was trying to say. “He’s not that kind of arsehole. Not the, ah, inappropriate kind. It’s just…” I trailed off, took a breath, and reconsidered my approach. “We’ve known each other a long time, since before he started this company, and he knows how to get under my skin. Which he was kind of doing in the elevator on our way up here. And I’m pretty sure he was being so incredibly formal either as an apology or as a way of needling me further, and the infuriating thing about him is that I can’t work out which he intended.” I sighed. “Or possibly he was just trying to look professional, which would be out of character. He’s not normally like that. He’s always just called me ‘Alex’; I’ve never been ‘Miss Brewer’ before today.” Oh, so accurate. “But yeah, it’s honestly nothing you need to worry about; it’s old friend stuff, not anything worse than that.”

“Got it,” Emily said. “Thanks.”

I wondered if I’d said too much, or said it the wrong way. I felt like Ben had dressed me up as some kind of corporate ice queen — and I suspected the first impression I’d made hadn’t been far off, striding in with my coffee, wearing expensive clothes and a pissed-off look — but that persona really didn’t come naturally to me, so if I was going to babble, best to babble early so as to set appropriate expectations. I wasn’t an ice queen; I was a nervy but friendly idiot. With great legs, my inner Ben added.

“You know what it’s like,” I said, feeling very tired all of a sudden, “when you’ve known someone forever…”

Emily’s eyebrows quirked. “Have you and he…?”

“Have we…? Oh!” It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice in my bra. “No, definitely not. Never ever. Not in a million years.” I winced; this was getting into doth-protest-too-much territory. “I’m, um, not into guys,” I attempted as a clarification.

She laughed. “Does he know that?”

I frowned. “Yeah, he definitely knows that.”

Another laugh. “Poor guy,” she said, and leaned forward, continuing in a conspiratorial whisper, “I think he’s got it bad for you.”

The ice cubes in my bra spread to the rest of my body. “I really don’t think so,” I said quickly. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Ah,” Emily said. “Sorry if I crossed a line, there.”

“No, you’re fine,” I said. “He’s just been very trying, lately. And since it’s usually just us here, he’s hard to escape. He’s sort of exhausting.” I was about to change the subject to the software materials we still had to cover, and then I remembered there was one field in particular in which Emily Swan could be extremely helpful to me. “Actually, before we get into it—” I indicated the materials pack, “—I have some questions for you. About trade show modelling.”

“Oh?” she looked surprised.

“We couldn’t actually book any other models to back you up,” I said, and saw her expression change in response so I continued quickly, “and your boss was very clear that you must not be required to work solo, so I was… volunteered. That’s at least part of why I’m annoyed with him.” I nodded towards James’ office door.

“Ohhhh,” she said, understanding dawning.

“I’m annoyed at myself, as well,” I admitted. “I gave in way too easily.”

“Well, he is your boss,” Emily said.

“I think it’s more like I can’t say no to him when he looks like a kicked puppy,” I said, smiling. “But now I very suddenly have to be a model, on extremely short notice, and I’ve never done anything like it before. And James wanted for me to, I don’t know, get used to being all dressy, so before I know it I’m in nice clothes and getting my hair done and I’m being covered in makeup when the most I’ve ever worn before is a bit of lipstick.” This was true: at school I was in an otherwise all-girl group of friends in drama class, and they’d thought it would be brilliant if I played Juliet in our end-of-year production, opposite my friend Beth as Romeo. Like I said, kernel of truth, etc. Keeping my stories straight would be easier if the only actual lie I was telling was about my gender, and my rusty acting talents would be less stretched if I played the plain-Jane-out-of-her-element rather than the effortless superfemme. “The guy who did my makeup had to spend five minutes lecturing me on not touching my face! I’ve been binge-watching YouTube tutorials by people who seem to own six million infinitesimally-different makeup brushes. I’m not used to all this—” I indicated my entire body with a wave of a hand, “—which is part of why I wish James would lay off.”

Emily looked thoughtful. “Maybe he’s just not used to seeing you like this, like a ‘real’ woman, and that’s why he’s being weird.” She finger-quoted on ‘real’, so I didn’t feel like I had to stand up for unreal women everywhere. “Even though he knows you’re… unavailable.”

I felt like being nasty about him. “I think it’s because he’s had a longer dry patch than usual, with us being so busy, and now all of a sudden he can see my legs. It’s got his small brain all confused.”

She laughed.

“So, like I said,” I continued, “trade show modelling: I’ve never done it before, and I really don’t know what to expect.”

Emily put a hand on mine. “You poor thing,” she said.

“I take it that means it’s not a laugh a minute?”

“I mean, it can be fun, kind of, sometimes. But it’s not exactly what I would have picked as a career.”

“How did you get into it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I got my degree in computer engineering, decided against post-grad, and then failed to get an actual job in engineering. I figured I’d do this while I waited for an opportunity to turn up.”

I couldn’t possibly have missed the question she was asking with her eyes.

“If this weekend goes well for the company,” I said slowly, thinking through what I was going to say as I said it, “then I suspect James will be looking for at least one new engineer. If you can get me some sample code and it looks good, then I can pitch you to him. For a try-out.”

“Really?” she said.

“I mean, he’ll owe me one, after this weekend.” I snorted. “He’ll owe me one thousand.” And I liked Emily; she was nice, and if she was as capable as she appeared she’d be a lifesaver. It’d be nice to have a woman around the office, anyway.

We settled in to our information exchange. About a half-hour in I yelled for James to get us cups of tea; gratifyingly, and to poorly-suppressed giggles from Emily and me, he did.

~

After Emily had gone home for the evening — she’d be meeting us at the hotel we’d booked for the expo late next morning — I sat back in my chair, rested my feet on another chair, and massaged my temples. It had occurred to me, far too late to stop my unhelpful mouth, that I had practically offered Emily a job at the office, which would have been fine except by the time she turned up for the try-out I’d be looking radically different. I sat on it for a minute, but couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t involve breaking my promise to her, which I wasn’t prepared to do, so I put it on the pile of problems to be solved after I survived the weekend.

I stretched, looked down at my legs, remembered what I was wearing, and realised I had another question to answer: what was I going to do about sleeping tonight? Everything had gone by in such a rush that I hadn’t thought to bring men’s clothes with me to work, and that meant either going home as Girl Alex, which would involve navigating my neighbourhood and block of flats without seeing anyone I knew (nope), staying at James’ again (definitely not; I needed some space away from him), or staying at a hotel. And while I knew I could probably, on current form, get James to pay for it, I kind of wanted the comforting, boring familiarity of my own apartment. I also didn’t want to be on the emotional hook for another outlandish expense from James while he was in pursuit of whatever the hell it was he was doing.

I stretched, stood up, and walked over to James’ office.

“Alex!” he said when I opened the door, but I silenced him with a raised finger.

“I’m going out for maybe half an hour,” I said, “but I’ll be back. Don’t leave before then; we have to talk.”

And I turned and left without another word, catching a satisfying glimpse of his expression on the way out.

The office block we leased half a floor in was just down the road from a retail park, and it wasn’t long before I was headed back with a bagful of tracksuit bottoms, a t-shirt, a hoodie, a pair of trainers in size 8, and (crucially) a large woolly hat. I’d gone to the most upscale store in the park, and in deference to the way I was dressed I’d shopped in the women’s department, although the clothes I bought looked unisex enough to my eye. I cheekily paid with the company credit card, which I planned never to give back if I could avoid it. This didn’t count as a favour from James, though; being able to walk home without twisting my ankle in two-inch heels was definitely a work expense.

Back at the office, James was sat by my desk, with two glasses of what was undoubtedly alcohol in front of him. He smiled as I approached. I dumped the bag, sat opposite him, and deliberately pushed away the drink that was meant for me.

He didn’t say anything. Possibly he was getting smarter.

“James,” I started, trying to remain calm. I lost it instantly. “What the fuck, James?”

“Alex—”

“You know what I’m doing for you, and you tease me, you— you—” I had to clamp down on myself for a second because I could feel tears pricking at my eyes. I think perhaps the stress was getting to me a little.

“In the elevator?” he asked. I nodded. “I wasn’t teasing you. I just, I just forgot.” James’ voice was as calm as I wanted mine to be. Aspirational little prick.

“How could you forget?” I managed to stop myself from summoning dogs, but it was an effort. “I can’t forget!”

“I just— I was tired, and I think my blood sugar was kind of low.” Like I said, James was a fitness nut, a.k.a. the only kind of non-diabetic person who talks about their blood sugar. “I wasn’t paying attention. It was too easy to slip into seeing you as, you know, just Alex, and not this other person I’m… I’m making you become.” He looked guilty about turning me into his fun Barbie project. Good.

“I am just Alex!” I insisted, as much to persuade the part of my brain that had other ideas as to persuade James.

“But you’re not,” he said. “It’s not the clothes — or it’s not just the clothes. You’re different. More— more— I don’t know. More something. I can’t describe it.”

“You called me a bitch,” I said flatly.

If he’d looked contrite before, now he looked downright dejected. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said, not looking at me. “It’s just that you looked so good in the lobby — you still do — and then I wasn’t looking at you in the elevator and it was like you were your old self, and then every time I turned round and saw you it was like stubbing my toe.” Just what a girl wants to hear, that seeing her is like injuring your foot. “I got kind of confused and defensive. I didn’t mean to upset you, but then you were upset and I didn’t know why, and…” He looked up at me again. “I’m not that guy, you know? Not any more, not since I was a teenager. But I was. Before you knew me. I was a shit to girls. I was a bastard little kid and I got away with it all the time. It took me years to grow up. I swear I’m not that guy any more. I hate myself for calling you… that. I don’t exactly know why I did, but I did, and it was inexcusable.”

I cooled off a little. I hated to let him off the hook, but it was hard to see him look so sad. I didn’t think he was trying to be manipulative, either: he wasn’t giving me puppy eyes; he just looked really fucking miserable.

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. But you know—” I took a deep breath, wondering if I was was about to go there with my friend; my boss, “—the way to not be ‘that guy’ is to not be him.” I tried to ignore the irony of me, looking like I currently did, saying that. “If you’re not that guy until a woman pisses you off — or someone who currently looks like a woman,” I added, sheepishly, belatedly, “then you pretty much still are that guy.”

He nodded, hanging his head. I didn’t want to push it any more; if he hadn’t got the message now, he never would. But I thought he had.

I gave him a minute to let it all sink in. His hand was on the desk between us, so I reached forward and took it in mine. He didn’t flinch like I expected. I squeezed it, mostly to reassure him that, while he had fucked up, he hadn’t fucked up terminally. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who left her handbag at his place and never came back for it. Well, not yet, anyway.

A neuron fired, and I set a reminder in my head to email one of his old girlfriends and ask if she’d left him merely because they were incompatible and not because he’d lost his temper and hurt her. He’d met two of them through work, so they should still be in our directory; hopefully one of them would reply to me.

“Please just remember how hard this is for me,” I said, shaking my head to dismiss the thought for now. “I get that you didn’t mean to upset me, but I don’t always have the space in my brain to sort through charitable explanations every time it seems like you’re being a jerk.”

“I’ll be more careful,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” I remembered, “and what was with calling me ‘Miss Brewer’ the whole time with Emily?”

“I thought it would help you stay in character,” he said ruefully. “I got a text from Ben that was like, ‘Help her,’ which really added to the guilt, because I’d just been a shit. It was all I could think of.”

“Okay,” I said, “but it was kind of weird. Call me Alex, please?”

I attempted a smile to reinforce the request, but for some reason it made him look away. I let his hand go, but didn’t move mine far from his.

“I will,” he said, and looked back at me. “Alex.” Then he blinked, like someone had just shone a 200-watt bulb in his face. “God, Alex, look at you! How are you doing this?”

“You’re the one who put me up to it,” I said testily. Huh, ‘testily’; I wondered if the word had the same origin as the name for the things that were currently shoved up inside my body, feeling vaguely hot and uncomfortable. I tried not to laugh.

“I know, but I thought you’d just look, you know, good enough.”

“Thanks,” I said. The sarcasm seemed to wound him.

“I mean, good enough to pass, especially with Ben’s help, but, but, you’re gorgeous!” It seemed really important to him that I know this about myself.

“Thank you,” I said, sincerely this time. Whatever the motivation, and whatever the reason, it was a nice thing for him to say. “Look, about that,” I added, “I guess I don’t understand… why.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know why we need a second model for the trade show—” even in my head I didn’t use the term ‘booth babe’ any more, “—and even though it is completely absurd, I know why we picked me, because your cousin Sophie would fucking murder you if you even suggested it, and none of the other women you know will talk to you ever again or you wouldn’t have a drawer of their stuff in your bedroom they’ve never asked to get back.” Unable quite to dispel the thought from earlier, I watched for a reaction from him as I said that; none was apparent. “So I was basically your only choice. Except,” I added, as a thought occurred, “I’m still not sure how you knew I’d turn out to be okay at this.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen your mum’s Facebook page. You’re tagged in photos from some kind of school play.” I groaned. Of course: fucking Facebook. He continued, “You looked good, and in the other photos from back then you look basically like you do now, so… I was pretty sure it would work out.”

“Fine.” Not fine. “But still, me working the trade show is one thing. But the hair? The personal shopper from Harvey Nichols? You’re laying out a lot of money on this, and I don’t understand why you didn’t just allocate that money to modelling in the first place. I’m sure we could have got someone even at short notice if you’d told me you were willing to spend.”

James looked pained. “I think I just got swept up in the panic of it all. Emily Swan called and we were suddenly out of time. Ben suggested hair extensions so you wouldn’t have to deal with a wig all weekend, which sounded like a good idea, so I okayed it. And then he suggested the personal shopper to expedite things, and also to have someone in the loop who really understood women’s fashion, and that sounded like a good idea, so I okayed it.” He sighed, and knocked back the rest of his drink. “It was very easy to agree to it all at the time, in the interest of getting you ready quickly, and making things as safe and comfortable as possible for you. Especially with the real hair instead of the wig. And I checked, you know,” he added, “yesterday afternoon in my apartment, while you were getting ready: even with that kind of money, even for five times that money, there were no models available at that notice. I don’t know what magic you worked to get Hammond’s, but I couldn’t repeat it. Not even bidding over what the contracts were worth. We were just out of time. It was you, or no-one.” He looked away. “It was always you or no-one.”

I felt like I needed some support at that point, so I reached forward and retrieved the glass he’d poured for me. It warmed my throat as I sipped it.

We sat quietly for a moment. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“About the money,” I said, “I seems a little… foolish. To spend that kind of cash, I mean. Especially now, with the company in such a make-or-break state. Especially on someone who isn’t going to have a use for all this stuff inside a week.”

He finally looked at me again. “Alex, you’ve seen the numbers. You know a thousand pounds here or there isn’t going to make a difference to this company. The stakes are so much higher than that; if we fail, it won’t be because the balance sheet has an expense on it that’s less than it costs to set up a desk and computer for a single employee.”

“I suppose,” I said. “It’s… this is all so weird.” I was saying that a lot, but it was true.

“I mean, yeah,” James said. “I didn’t expect— I didn’t think you’d go for it, to be honest.”

“We both know I’m an idiot,” I said. “But I mean…” I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘I feel like your dress-up doll’. “I feel like you’re enjoying this a bit too much. Playing around with me, I mean.”

He grinned sheepishly. “I won’t pretend it hasn’t been fun,” he said. “And watching you come out of your shell has been—” he waved his empty glass in the air as he searched for the right word, “—motivational. You’ve always been so, so buttoned-up. Quiet. Kind of sad? Yesterday, at the restaurant and after, you were like a different person.”

“But I was terrified!”

“Until you weren’t,” he pointed out.

I wanted to tell him I’d been scared the whole time, but it wasn’t true. Yes, my anxiety spiked before I had to do anything I hadn’t done before but then, when I’d gotten over my initial fear of discovery, the fear had sort of evaporated. In the restaurant and today, with Emily. It had been oddly normal, both times, chatting, working; normal enough that I’d been able to relax and get on with it. And a string of other random people — mainly Uber drivers — who had also responded well to me had each added a tiny bit of reinforcement to my confidence. I wasn’t quite at the point where I could walk up to a stranger and know for sure how they would read me, but that level of certainty didn’t seem far off.

With the terror of being found out gone, the times I’d been most scared were when I was alone with James. Not because of him, but because of the way I was responding to him. The way I kept responding to him. Like I was right now. With my anger boiled away, and with the warmth of alcohol settling on my stomach, something of what I’d felt last night was coming back to me. I hadn’t noticed, but I’d leaned forward in my chair — farther forward than I’d needed to just to fetch my drink — and James had leaned in, too. We were closer, sitting on opposite sides of the desk, than we had been in the restaurant, sitting across the table in the booth.

I realised with a shock that the whole time I’d been thinking, I’d been looking at his lips.

“I won’t keep pushing you to do all this if you’re not comfortable with it,” he said. “The hair and the clothes and everything. Like I said before, we can stop at any time.” He smiled. I drank it in. “I just wanted you to have some fun.”

My eyes left his face and tracked down his upper body. God, I really wanted to have some fun. It was all I could do not to lean across the table. I could just reach out and—

God fucking dammit, Alex Brewer! Who the hell are you lately?

I pushed my chair away and stood up, shaking my head to try and clear it.

“I’m going to get changed and go home,” I said.

I think it must have looked to James like I was angry again, or maybe scared. I wasn’t; I was merely giving myself emotional whiplash. He stood up and took a step around the desk, at first looking like he was going to reach out to touch me, and then visibly deciding against it, stepping back again, dropping his hands to his side and carefully standing very neutrally. The expression on his face was difficult for me to read.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

I wanted him to stop apologising, so before I thought about it too hard I walked up and hugged him. It took a moment for him to hug me back, but when he did the pressure of his arms around me was wonderful.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m managing. And you’re going to help me, aren’t you?” I prompted, looking up at him. Even in two-inch heels I still had to look up at him; maddening.

He looked down. Our faces were so close that his breath made my lips tingle. “I promise,” he said, sounding hoarse. “Anything you need.”

He still looked kind of sad, so I kissed him on the cheek. It felt different than when I’d kissed Ben. I lingered for a second and then, quickly, cheeks red, eyes now firmly looking away, I escaped with my carrier bag to the bathroom to get changed for the walk home.

~

I texted James when I was safely out of the building and away from temptation. I’m walking home. I’ll see you in the morning. Where are we meeting again?

The reply came very quickly. Ben will do you up at the office. I’ll drop off everything from my apartment and go on to pick up the stuff from the tailor, and meet you back there. I’ve got a car booked to take us to Birmingham. It’s a long walk home. Are you sure you don’t want to stay at mine tonight?

I’d stripped off all traces of Girl Alex in the bathroom around the corner from our office, swapped skirt and boots for jogging trousers and trainers, and glared at myself in the mirror with my hoodie and woolly hat on, hair extensions hidden, makeup washed off, to try and fix in my mind the idea that she was gone for now, that it was just me. I felt somehow diminished. The vertigo had come back, and I’d had to sit on one of the toilets for a few minutes until I regained my composure.

Now that it was just me again, a proposal from James to stay the night at his place ought to have been significantly less enticing, and it was, kind of. But there was another part of me — the part that was tempted as hell and didn’t see anything wrong with that — that didn’t want James to see me like this. Not yet.

I worried that if he saw me like this, it would break the spell.

It’s fine, I texted. I want to clear my head, get a bit of space. Sleep in a normal bed, not on your sofa or something.

His next reply, his last for the night, took a long time to come. Okay. Be safe. Call me if you need ANYTHING.

I stared at my phone screen for quite a while.

I walked on. It was quite cold, but I liked it. I was still a little warm inside from the alcohol, and I needed a good buffeting from the wind to help me think clearly. I let it pass through me; I unzipped my hoodie and let it chill me to the bone. I’d be like those Scandinavian guys who go out naked in the snow and then leap into a hot bath, although in my case it’d be a shower with a towel around my head because Ben had told me not to wash my hair yet; there was special shampoo for extensions, and I didn’t have any.

I checked to see that there was no-one around, and temporarily switched back to my old voice, just to hear it. Except, just like this morning, it came out as a strangled adolescent warble. I shrugged; it was probably a good thing that it wasn’t so easy for me to switch my voice back. I’d have to practice talking normally again for a day or two when this was all over.

I made it back to my block without incident, nodded at rather than greeted the few people I saw hanging around, and locked my front door gratefully behind me. It’d only been a little more than a day since I’d last been home, but it felt like a lifetime.

My flat was essentially one room to live in and one room to wash in, with a cupboard and bookshelf in the small hall that connected the two. Before I forgot, I extracted the Harvey Nichols outfit from the carrier bags and hung it up in its component pieces in my wardrobe. I didn’t want to imagine how Ben would react to the discovery that I’d just slung it all in the corner in a plastic bag. I peeled the boobs off my chest and wiped them clean with the stuff from the unlabelled spray bottle Ben had put in my bag. I laid the handbag and underwear and boobs out on my table and tried not to look at it all.

The hot shower I’d been dreaming of was calling to me. I undressed and threw my jogging stuff on the bed, but left on the woolly hat, planning to wrap a towel round it so the extensions could have two layers of protection while I washed.

But I got caught in the bathroom mirror. It only showed me from my belly up, and I looked… strange. I shouldn’t have: it was the same old me with the same old scrawny body. I’d never particularly liked it when someone else saw me naked, but I was well used to my own reflection. It shouldn’t have rattled me like this.

I looked like someone had loaded me into Photoshop and fucked around with the proportions. Like I was a long-dead actor being revived with CG for a franchise movie. I was the same as always, just wrong. I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was about me that looked wrong, I just did.

This isn’t me, said a voice in my head. Why would you ever have thought it was me?

Slowly, very, very slowly, I reached up and took off the hat, dropping it carelessly into the empty bath. My hair tumbled out from under it, resting against my shoulders. I finger-combed it a little, gently shaping it until it didn’t look quite so messy.

I still didn’t look right. It wasn’t the hair.

I hesitantly covered my flat chest with my forearm, and as soon as I did it was like my vision cleared. Like I was at the optician trying out lenses and they’d just switched to the right one.

Moving as if in a trance, I left the bathroom and walked over to my kitchen table, rummaged in the handbag until I found the lipstick Ben had stuffed in there, and returned to the mirror, making sure to hide my chest before I looked at myself. I swiped it over my lips, colouring them the just-deeper-than-natural colour Ben had picked out for me, and dropped the lipstick in the sink.

A minute or an hour later, I came back to myself. I met my gaze in the mirror, saw eyes wet and red, saw tear-tracks on my cheeks. I looked down and I was leaning on the sink with both arms, supporting my entire weight on it. Suddenly afraid I’d break the thing, I let go, and in my dizziness and my vertigo I fell backwards onto the bathroom floor.

This stuff was really messing with my head.

I relieved myself, washed my hands and face, brushed my teeth — all without looking in the mirror — and rushed out of the bathroom. I felt like all eyes were on me in my nakedness, even though I was completely alone, so I redressed myself in the tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt I’d bought earlier and dove into bed, pulling the covers over my head, the vision of my broken body burning into me.

In the dark, it was just me and her.

What do I want? I asked myself, for the second time in as many days. It was simple: I wanted the trade show to be over and done with; I wanted everything to go back to normal; I wanted to never feel like that when I looked in the mirror ever again. And I wanted James.

I hugged myself, arms around my belly, waiting to be warm.

There was no denying now that I was attracted to him. Magnetically. In a way that was completely new, not just with James but with anyone. Last week, sharing the office, working together, talking, eating takeout, it had all been completely normal, but now just being near him electrically charged my body. I had to force myself to walk away from him, to not bury myself in his chest. I had a physical need for him that I’d never felt around anyone before.

And the only thing that had changed was the girl stuff.

I didn’t understand how that was possible. As much as I’d tried to think of Girl Alex as a separate personality, she was me, through and through, top to toe, just playing a role; pretending to lock her up in my head until I needed her was nothing more than trying to hide some of my wants and needs from myself, calling them illegitimate, invalid; fake. It didn’t matter that maybe some of those wants and needs were new to me. It didn’t change that they were mine. I had to face her, face myself, and ask honestly, what I was and what I wanted.

What I wanted was James. What I was, seemingly, was bisexual.

So why now? Did the girl stuff just bring something out of me that had always been inside? Had I explained away my feelings for him as admiration, as gratitude? I was starting to wonder if I could trust my own memory.

I wrapped myself in my duvet, luxuriating in the stored body heat that was finally radiating back to me, dizzy with questions, and tried to imagine kissing James. I pictured him in his apartment, lounging on his couch, pictured myself walking over to him, taking him by the hand and kissing him. It was… empty. In my head, he was unresponsive, and I was barely there: a ghostly presence in my own mind.

I thought back to the times I’d been most attracted to him, most aware of him, and suddenly there I was in the office, with him in his smart-casuals and me in the skirt, top and boots Ben had picked out for me. He was in his office and I was walking through the door. He smiled as he saw me, a warm, anticipatory smile that put warmth in my belly and lightning in my spine. We met. We embraced. I stood in front of him, elevated enough by my heels that I only had to stretch a little to reach him, and he had one arm around my shoulder while the other stroked my back. I met his eyes and his hand moved down, pushed against my bottom, gave me the boost I needed to reach him and kiss him. I felt his lips part, felt his tongue against mine. I could feel his body in every point of contact between us.

His hand gripped my bottom harder and he lifted me, turning me so he could place me on his desk, knocking documents and oddments aside so I could sit unimpeded. My hands free, I wriggled them under his t-shirt and raised it up over his chest, letting it linger around his neck so he couldn’t see me but I could see him. I kissed him through the fabric, giggling at his helplessness. He took over from me, pulling the t-shirt over his head and tossing it aside, and then doing the same with my top. We kissed again and I buried my fingers in his hair. He found the waistband of my skirt and slipped his hand under it as I clasped my fingers together behind his head. My legs parted to allow him closer, skirt riding up until it sat on my hips, and he pressed himself to me. I felt my breasts compress against his chest and, finally, we devoured each other.

Alone in my bed, eyes closed, heart racing, I reached down and let him touch me.