Sex and Other Changes by David Nobbs Page B

speak. ‘It does. It makes my flesh crawl. I feel …’ He searched for some impressive description. Even at this tense moment Nick and Alison longed,as they always longed, to hear him say something impressive, clever, imaginative, poetic. ‘… all goose-pimply all over.’
    â€˜It’ll kill her,’ said Bernie, and he slunk back off to watch Marge sleep.
    Nick looked across at Alison and gave a weary half-smile.
    â€˜Thank you for your support,’ he said. ‘I shall always wear it.’
    Oh God, Nick, you’re a pain, thought Alison. The sooner you become a woman, the better.

7 The Die is Cast
    Nick went to bed, after he’d told them all, feeling that he’d climbed a mountain. He awoke feeling that he’d barely reached base camp. The whole terrifying enormity of it swept over him in wave after wave of panic.
    He could hardly eat a thing at breakfast.
    â€˜Gray?’ he said, as Gray pulled bits of his shirt out over his trousers so as to look cool as he waited for the school bus in Badger Glade Rise. ‘Gray? About last night. Keep it under your hat, eh?’
    Why did he use such a silly phrase?
    â€˜You don’t think I’d tell anybody, do you?’ said Gray. ‘I’d be laughed out of town.’
    Em swept through. She was dressed in combat gear and defiantly unfeminine in every respect, aggressive in her denial of being interested in men in the aftermath of the Sam fiasco (as Nick realised later. At the time he thought, So that’s how they dress on the
Advertiser.)
.
    â€˜Em,’ he said, ‘not a word about … you know.’
    â€˜But Dad,’ she moaned. ‘It’s my first ever scoop. “Leading Throdnall Hotelier in Sex Change Shock.” ’
    â€˜Em, don’t you dare! You can have the story, of course, but in the right way at the right time.’
    She was out of the door before he’d finished. She was in ‘Real Journalists Are Always In A Rush’ mode.
    As he drove to work, Nick reflected on the events of the previous evening. He had plenty of time for reflection. They were installing speed humps throughout Badger Glade Rise, and there were two sets of temporary traffic lights. He was caught by them both.
    On the whole he thought the family had taken it pretty well. Gray had been quite cool about it really, but then he was so determined to be cool about everything that you never knew what he was thinking.
    Em might become quite proud of him in the end. She’d find that he wasn’t quite as boringly middle-class as she thought. She’d done a work experience at Throdnall General and had been delighted to discover entries on several forms saying ‘NFT’. ‘Surely all these people can’t be working for the National Film Theatre?’ she’d asked. Everybody had laughed. ‘No, it means “normal for Throdnall”,’ somebody had explained. Em had the maturity to tell the story even though the laugh was against her.
    Ever since then she’d delighted in using the phrase, ‘Oh, Dad, you’re so bloody NFT.’ Well now she could never say he was NFT again. (The work experience put her right off the whole idea of medicine, incidentally.)
    Poor old Bernie. Nick had almost let slip that they knew that Marge was sinking. His aim in life was simply to protect her. His quiet love was wonderful to behold. Nick would have liked to have waited till she’d gone, but who knew how long that would be, and time wasn’t on his side. His next birthday would be the big four-oh.
    At last he got into Clarion Road. The traffic ran freely for a while before coming to a complete halt outside the cake factory. Fancy living at the side of that, with its permanent, sickly smell of sponge and hot jam. He thought about how wonderful Alison was. He’d hardly been able to believe his ears when she’d come out with that statistic about transsexuals. She must