IN NOCKTON VALE - Man: Wanted - Final Chapter - Part Two

Making up my mind and actually going down there were two different things but I'd made the decision now and only time and distance lay between us.

Now that I was Alison again, strangely, I didn’t feel any of the usual masculine hangover. As before it was entirely non-existent. I wondered why, but I had a feeling that I knew the answer; that it was obvious.

Becoming Geoff had been an escape from my dead end life and my personal problems. It had been an escape from my own weakness, and it had been an escape from the one problem I had repressed above all others: my longing for Billy.

Retaining the masculine traits had given me a lure to go back; an excuse to not mind running away from my femininity. But I didn’t need to run away anymore.

Billy was back now and he wanted me again. I was going to regain everything I'd ever desired.

But I was worried; afraid after so long that I would mess it up somehow. I was reluctant to rush straight down there. What if I said the wrong thing and drove him away? I didn’t want to appear too needy or desperate, but at the same time I was desperate.

I didn’t know what to do.

But I had to do something. I couldn’t stay up on the ridgeline forever. Billy was waiting for me.

It was decided. I went round to the driver’s door and clambered in with difficulty; started up the gravelly engine and backed round and onto the lane. Then I hit the accelerator and darted off.

It didn’t take too long for me to get back down into the houses and onto the upper ring road. I worked my way back west, imagining what it would be like to see him again; to maybe touch him and cling onto him.

I got to the outskirts of Breton and worked my way in. I had a vague idea where the Old Squire was but nothing too specific. It took me quarter of an hour driving round to spot it. It was close to the edge of the narrows, only a stone’s throw from the market stall that had sold me the ring. It was an old timbre-framed building at least twice the age of every other building in sight. I imagined it standing alone on the hill in days gone by as the town emerged from the ground about it.

The lights inside were dim, the colours dark and muted – exposed beams criss-crossed the ceiling – but they had still managed to ruin the atmosphere somehow with the modern admission desk and glass doorway leading through to the bar restaurant. The words, Dining at the Old Squire were stencilled on the glass. And it had showed such promise...

It was fairly spacious through there, an area clearly used to lay on breakfasts for overnight guests. There was a bar and clusters of tables. The menus were ostentatious; clearly pricing themselves high. I didn’t need to look inside. A sprinkling of diners were present but I couldn’t see Billy among them. I fingered the ring in my handbag nervously.

Then I saw him, sitting at the bar alone on a high stool and my body became absolutely wracked by nerves. And even as I saw his handsome profile with a woman’s eyes for the first time in months, he glanced toward the door and caught sight of me. Immediately, his posture changed and his face brightened, eyes capturing what dim light there was and shining with it. He smiled and beckoned, but I didn’t go to him; not yet. This close to him I couldn’t. I wanted it too much. My mind was blazing with images of our imagined reunion; the fantasies I'd played out in my mind hundreds of times after he left. I'd pictured it so many different ways that now that I was here and he really did want me again, I didn’t know which route to take.

Billy didn’t wait for me. He climbed down off his stool, standing there for a moment. We locked eyes and he looked so beautiful to me. He had always had an elven charm to him, a litheness, totally different from the brawny Geoff. My eyes drew tears along their edges, blurring the lights into stars and drawing the darkness about him to that only he was visible to me.

I beamed with delight, mouthing his name and stepping forward. Billy raised his arms from his sides a little and opened them, palms toward me. I stepped closer again, laughing a little, I was so happy.

Then I was running suddenly, tears streaming down my cheeks and he raised his arms as I crashed into him.