I used to scrump apples from the orchard behind my house. The man at the market paid a pretty penny for gleaming apples, be they Pippins or Pink Ladies or undistinguished mongrels. We had an easy arrangement: he got his apples, I got a couple of coins to burn a hole in my pocket.

I never felt bad for stealing the apples. The orchard was, habitually, ignored. Someone must have come along every now and then to gather the harvest and clean the rotting corpses of the fallen apples from the ground, but in eighteen years of semi-regular visits I never saw another soul there.

Sometimes the apples I took never made it to the market. The fruit-seller’s money was nice enough, but I never thought to get rich off coins alone.

Delilah lived at the big farmhouse on Yonderhill. That wasn’t name written on the land deed in her father’s study – rather it had sprung about as a product of the farm’s isolation. It was alone on its little hill, a hill surrounded by oak and brook and empty field, two miles from the closest house. Mister Robinson had moved in about twenty years before I left, young and full of ideas to improve the efficiency of his crop. His love of new-fangled machinery and his wife’s love of other women’s husbands made them locally infamous. Cider-drunk farmers the county across would curse “those damned Robinsons - them ones up on yonder hill”.

On occasion, I’d race up Yonderhill with my pockets still filled to bursting with fresh-picked apples and ask after Delilah. We’d sit together in the setting sun and eat my ill-gotten pickings on her fancy two-person swing set. Why an only child needed a two-person swing set I never knew. I never complained, though. When I was with Delilah, there was nothing to complain about.

For eighteen years that was our life. And then I left home, bound for the big city and university. Delilah stayed behind. Thus ended our friendship.

It would be a lie to say I was never homesick. At home, the dickheads never said a word to your face. They were polite. In the big city people were brusque – and that was before I transitioned. I had a month of that before I figured it couldn’t get any worse.

The university meant well, I’m sure. I emailed student services as a courtesy – and within a week I was dragged to the front of the big lecture hall while all the students in my year were introduced to “Nell, who is a woman and should be treated as such”. I suspect the big brain who cooked up that scheme had never set foot outside campus. The fact that not everybody in life would approve didn’t cross the minds of those university heads – their rules said I was to be accepted, and those were the government’s rules. How could there possibly be any issues?

But the act of announcing my transition to the student body split it right down the middle. Half of my peers gave me the cold shoulder immediately. Some actively despised me. Others, I suspect, just didn’t want to deal with the hassle of associating with somebody controversial. They didn’t know me well enough for that.

And then there was the other half. The ‘good ones’. Clout chasers. One woman – who just a week prior had rebuffed my offer of friendship – turned up outside my flat with binbags full of ill-fitting dresses she insisted on giving me. She wasn’t satisfied until I squeezed into one and hit the town with her. That I had nothing feminine about my frame was irrelevant. She wanted the social rewards for her performative game of dress-up, to check off another box on her checklist of ‘interesting people’.

She got her rewards. I got stares.

How can you focus on an education when the very act of existing casts judgement on you? The answer is I couldn’t.

By Christmas, I was done. I packed up my things and said goodbye to university. To the big city. To being male.

And for six years thereafter I drifted, growing into femininity while I looked in vain for some safe shore to wash upon.

What brought me back home I could not say. Perhaps it was the influence of the supernatural, some heavenly being guiding my step. Perhaps it was just my boomerang of a heart, sick of the wanderlust, desperately craving the sort of solid footing I'd not known since childhood. Since innocence. One morning as the sun through my curtain warmed my face, I made my decision. I packed some things in a bag and hopped on a train, any train, just to see where I'd end up. Golden fields and red-brick high-rises took turns passing by through the train's window. Unfamiliar places. As I ate a pre-packed sandwich I idly thought of what my life might have been if I was one of the people in those high-rises - one of the many people whose body and gender are born aligned, and who know from an early age exactly what the purpose of their life is. Drifting is hard, you see. You're borne on the tide, beholden to its whims as the years numb you and wear away at the parts of you that are unique. When my sandwich was all gone I went into a daydream that only ended when evening fell and the tinny voice of the train announcer said the name of my hometown. A name I had not heard for years.

On a whim, I stepped off.

There’s a certain sense of malign anticipation to your first trip home after taking on a new gender. A disconnect. Everything so familiar, yet every memory coloured by an experience that is fundamentally different. You ask yourself if you’ll be recognised straight away. You know that at any second a wrong ‘un might catch a glimpse of you and put an end to your hopes of a stealthy return.

But it is good to be home.

The pub is just across from the train station. Both buildings are elder statesmen amid a sea of new builds – local lore has it that the train station was built specifically to ferry people from all corners to sample the world’s finest cider. I can attest to the ‘finest cider’ part, at least.

It was my first stop. Trains make me thirsty, nerves make me thirstier, and little things like the lipstick residue left on the rim of a glass are great for affirming my femininity.

Jodie was still behind the bar. She was a straight-talking Scottish lass with whom I had often talked. I couldn’t remember much I’d said to her. Sober I was always reserved, but Jodie always told me I was a ‘pure bletherer’ when I was drunk.

I’d be safe in Jodie’s company. Once, long ago, a pie-eyed patron had called her ‘manly’. She kicked him out of the pub, but not before clocking him twice in the nose – once for insinuating that she was a man, once for acting like it even mattered.

I greeted Jodie politely, and she didn’t go straight for my regular tap. I chose to take that as a good sign. I still ordered the usual tipple, though – I didn’t want too fresh a start.

By the bottom of my second pint, I’d become intrigued by a burly man lingering by the door to the ladies’ toilets. Jodie didn’t seem to mind him being there. None of the regulars did. But he’d been stood there since I arrived. I needed a piss, so I resolved to investigate.

He headed me off as I approached. Up close it became more apparent than ever that he was a giant of a man. Even with heels on and all the height testosterone can give, I barely came up to his shoulders – and he was musclebound to boot. He’d have made an excellent bouncer.

“’Scuse me, Miss.” His was the voice of a pack a day. “Crotch check.”

“Crotch check?”

He nodded. “Council initiative. Can’t have no bloke creeping into the ladies’ room peeping at their whatsits.”

“Imagine having some weird bloke gawking at your bits.”

“Exactly.” He nodded down at the hem of my skirt. I pressed my legs together. “I just need a quick look.”

I made ready to leave. “What happens if I say ‘no’?”

“You go to the toilet,” he said. “I can’t look without consent.”

I nodded along. “Has anybody ever given her consent?”

“Not yet,” he admitted.

I gave him a smile that had nothing in common with my actual feelings. “Then I won’t be the first.” I tried to ignore him as I pushed open the door, tried to forget about the heavy-breathing interlocutor who had prodded at the fortress of my womanhood and who now was leering at my arse. I could feel his eyes on me.

The moment I entered the bathroom I was hit by the stench of stale piss. I beelined for the nearest cubicle and locked the door – breathing out of my mouth.

Hovering an inch or so above the grotty toilet seat, I took the time to read the writing scratched into the inside of the stall door. Bathroom philosophers are a mixed batch; sometimes you get the profound wisdom of a drunkard. Sometimes you get smut.

Today, I got ‘to get to the other side’.

An orphaned punchline to a played out joke. Par for the course, really.

I’d seen the set-up six years previous, scrawled above the middle urinal in the men’s room of this very pub: ‘why did the chicken cross the road?’ I’d been drunk enough at the time that the joke without pay-off read like some deep philosophy. Why did the chicken cross the road? Now I found myself wondering about the author. A woman further down the path I'd walked, perhaps? Did she know even as she was writing the set-up that she would be etching the punchline in a different gender? Was it, perhaps, a sign to every future trans woman who might find themselves in this spit of nowhere? ‘You're not alone on this journey. Another has made it before you.’ What had become of the author now? Had I seen her once on the streets, back when I was still miserable in the shackles of manhood, and not for a second realised that she was just like me?

Had she gone and never looked back?

I wiped and flushed, and touched up my smudged lipstick in front of a filthy mirror. And as I did, the door opened. I stayed focused on my make-up. As a rule I pay no mind to strangers in a bathroom – better just to get my business done and go. The fear of the women’s room has long gone; the anxiety remains. I razor-focused on a micron of pink just above my lip, the kind of minor blemish nobody else would notice – in case a telepath had just entered the bathroom, who would somehow know if I dared give a moment’s thought to them.

It meant I didn’t see her coming up behind me and pulling me into a hug. I yelped, in an involuntary baritone I thought I’d left far behind me.

“I heard you were in town!”

I couldn’t mistake her voice. “Delilah?” It wasn’t a question. I didn’t even need to look behind me to recognise the only best friend I’d ever had.

“I’m hurt,” she said. “Back after all these years and you didn’t think to look me up.”

I turned to see her. She hadn’t changed a bit. Well, that’s not strictly true – she had that impalpable aura of maturity, and a few more bags under her eyes. But she was still Delilah. I couldn’t say the same.

The last time I was home, I was a different person. That’s not a figure of speech – not some commentary on how seeing the world made me grow as a person. Legally speaking, I wasn’t the me who had left home five years ago to study.

Delilah hadn’t been there to witness the in-between days.

‘Nell’ was born in the draughty halls of a Regency building in the heart of a dying Midlands town. The Gender Registry Office was served by a single train a day, every day of the week. Except Sundays, when they did scheduled maintenance on the line.

When you get there, though, it’s a painless process. All you have to do is fill in a form half the length of the Bible and – as long as your answers match what their system tells them you should have written – you’re golden. That means a skirt, if you’re a woman, because women always wear skirts. The lady behind the counter – wearing a smart trouser suit – was very clear on that point.

When she’d processed my form, she looked at me down fogged up spectacles. “And you’re not intending to change your mind?”

Change my mind? I’d only been living as a woman for three full years at that point. But yeah, sure, it was all for a lark. Soon as I’ve got my certificate I’m going to go through the whole process in reverse.

I shook my head. “No.”

And that was that. She typed something on her computer, and off I went down the road having received the first ‘F’ of my life that hadn’t ruined my day.

I’d coasted on the glory of that ‘F’ for a year since, felt vindicated in my womanhood. Stood in the ladies’ room in a slightly-too-short dress, in front of the best friend who knew me as a man, I felt suddenly exposed. I fumbled for something to say.

“It’s been lonely here without you.” Delilah clasped her hand in mine as she spoke. “Dad died the month after you left, so I’ve been pretty much running the farm on my own since then.”

I didn’t know her father had passed away. Absurdly, I tried to apologise – as though by leaving town I had killed Mister Robinson, and by saying sorry I might bring him back. Delilah held a finger to my lips at the moment I opened my mouth.

“I know I could have told you,” she said. “I know you’d have come straight home. That’s not fair. You needed time to fly.”

“I didn’t fly very far,” I told her. “I gave up after one term.”

Delilah only laughed. “That doesn’t matter. Look at you, Nell. You soared like the best of them.” She squeezed my hand. “Come on. It’s coming into apple season.”

I knew what she meant. I wasn’t dressed for scrumping, but I didn’t want to disappoint her.

We got to the orchard just as the sun was setting. Everything looked twice as beautiful shrouded in gold, even Delilah. The rickety old fence from years ago had been replaced with something brand new, a proud structure of whitewashed wood. The trees inside were as beautiful as any I’d seen there as a boy.

Delilah hopped the fence like it wasn’t even there, and helped me clamber over without my skirt hiking up and flashing anybody around. As I adjusted myself, she tossed a gleaming apple into my hand.

“I wish I knew who owned this place,” I said, between mouthfuls of apple. “I’d love to tell them what a wonder they’ve got here.”

Delilah frowned. “You know I own the orchard, right?”

“Eh?”

“It came with the rest of the farm.” I must have looked dumbfounded, because Delilah dissolved into peals of laughter. “Did you never wonder why you never got into trouble?”

“I assumed I was just too stealthy to get caught.”

“A bloody elephant would be more stealthy. Dad always knew you’d come – half the time we’d watch you.” She pointed in the direction of Yonderhill, where her old house poked over the crest of the horizon.

“How come he never said anything?”

Delilah shrugged. “You were my friend. Far as dad was concerned, that made you family. You know, he never thought up a name for them. People get to pick a name for apples. So when all this became mine I figured perhaps I should choose one.” There was an earnest aspect to her face.

I stopped chewing. “So you’ve named them Festering Shitorbs or something?” Delilah’s humour was always vulgar. A rose by any other name and all, but the sort of name she’d have picked would make anybody think twice about enjoying.

But she shook her head. “They’re called Precious Nell.”

I think my heart just about stopped. Did I name myself after my best friend’s apples?

She continued. “They’re sweet, you see. Like you. And to me they’re the most precious things in the world.”

I could tell I was blushing redder than the bloody apples. “That’s nice and all… but how did you know I’m Nell now?”

“You’ve always been Nell, silly,” she said, flicking my nose playfully. “I’m not sure we’d have been such good friends if you hadn’t been. That, and I read your diary. Not all of it, just a few entries – you always called yourself Nell even then. And I always dreamt that my wife would be called Nell, when the time came for me to marry.”

“You like girls?” I was dumbfounded. I'd never known that Delilah was anything other than razor-straight. Truth be told I'd never known anything else could thrive in a place such as this.

Delilah laughed. “I like girls,” she said. “And I like you most of all.”

We kissed then, the first of many, the sweetest of them all, and I thanked providence for drawing me home. For drawing me back to Delilah.

Nothing I ever scrumped tasted half as good as the rest of Delilah’s apple.