LADY ANN'S DISGRACE: Chapter One - Part Four

The former maid, Nellie Barrow, opened her eyes knowing exactly who she was now and exactly what had happened to her over the past thirty six hours.

It was impossible not to know. Everything felt different from the life of poverty she had lived for all her born days, from the differing feel to her new body; that of the beautiful lady Harriet Neville, younger daughter to the Earl to the silken sheets surrounding her on the bed.

She hadn’t been deeply asleep. She had been rising up from deep dreams to wakefulness, and the closer she had come to it, the more real those dreams had become, the closer to directed thought. Until they had come together into a pinpoint focus that mirrored the framework they had found themselves in as she drifted off the night before, lying in this exact position.

That was why she was gazing now still at the little partially hidden grille beside the tall chest of drawers there. She lay still, watching it without movement, thinking about what was hidden inside and the terrible potential it held then gave a quick nervous glace toward the bedroom door as someone might march in at any second and take back what was concealed.

Surely that was possible. This was the real Lady Harriet’s bedroom, and though she was presently ensconced within her own father’s body, that wouldn’t stop her entering if she wished to. On the contrary, She seemed to be enjoying his greater authority immensely. She was more likely, if anything, to throw her weight around now.

Nellie had formulated the beginnings of her plan last night as she fell asleep and allowing Hattie to regain control over what was in there would ruin everything.

Feeling suddenly extremely ill-at-ease and panicked, she scrambled out of bed and went down on her knees in front of the grille. She looked again toward the door.

When would Hattie come to retrieve it? Had she already considered the risk of leaving it here? Perhaps she had dwelled overnight on the fact that she had let slip its location to Nellie. Perhaps she would arrive at any second to take it back.

Nellie’s breathing became elevated.

She questioned herself. Did she still plan to go through with her scheme? Did she dare? What of the repercussions when she was inevitably found out? Because she would be. That was all part of it. Being caught was unavoidable. She could only hope to weather out the following storm.

She opened the grille and reached tentatively in; retrieving the jewellery box that Hattie had hidden there sometime the day before. She cracked it open, eyes glittering like a greedy Egyptologist explorer breaking open one of the ancient tombs.

Just as she’d left it, the powerful pendant that had effected every magical exchange of identity lay there, ready to do it all again, or to wreck even further havoc.

It was a fiendish device. Surely it had to be. It had caused nothing but chaos so far. Nellie felt guilty at the idea of stealing away control of the thing from its previous owner but on the other hand... on the other hand, she would be protecting them from potentially worse things to come.

Yes. That was the way she saw it. It was too dangerous an item to be left in play. It needed to be taken away and given to someone who could be trusted to keep it safe; to stop it doing further damage.

It was a weak justification that favoured Nellie in its entirety, but she didn’t allow herself to consider it deeply enough to notice how self-centred she was being. Nellie, like most every human being, liked to think of herself as a good person. More than many, she perceived herself as God-fearing and pious. Having said that, this was just too big an opportunity to pass up. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to her life as a maid or the worse one she had had before that. Becoming Lady Harriet was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She had to cling on to that and fight to keep it, no matter the consequences when her scheme was exposed.

The real Lady Hattie, in the Earl’s body, was planning to swap everybody back that night so she had that much time at least, and that gave her plenty of time to dispose of the pendant.

She closed up the jewellery box and got back to her feet with it in her hand.

One things was clear was that she couldn’t leave it here. She had to carry it with her from now on until she could pass it along to the right person. If the real Hattie came in to look for it before then then she would simply have to deal with it. It was better still to have it on her even then.

She went to the wardrobe and opened it up, wondering what to wear, then paused and smiled to herself. Instead, she went over to the bell pull and rang it.

Why have a dog and bark yourself? she thought to herself.

Lady Harriet had a lady’s maid to help her dress. She was Lady Harriet now. That meant she had the maid.

She grinned, really enjoying the moment.

The more she thought about that, the more she knew she was doing the right thing. She had to hold on to this new body no matter what, even if it meant that everyone who had swapped so far got stuck the way they were forever.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Seventeen

DAHLIA

Melissa had talked about synchronicity up in my room and, on the back foot as much as I was, it had only bewildered me.

But after she had gone, when I simply couldn’t remain in that filthy room anymore; when I had been driven from the hotel building and found myself very suddenly outside on the street, alone, that concept had come back to me... because there was a taxi there waiting as though it were waiting for me; as though the universe had set it there so that I could leave that place quickly and quietly.

When Melissa had left me upstairs it had been a physical relief tantamount to the release of clenched fingers from my throat but it hadn’t been enough. I couldn’t stay there anymore. I had to get away. Truth be told I wanted to leap from the window and sail up into the sky like a bloated balloon. I wanted the air currents to carry me above the clouds and into the jet stream; away to the far north; to England, to the Vale of Nockton, to my home at Summertop; to the downy covers of my bed.

I left so soon after her I might well have run into her diminishing back going down the stairs, but I didn’t. There was no sign of her and then there was the taxi, waiting empty.

I took it.

Now, bumping along on the narrow, rocky road, I considered what Melissa had said about the coincidence of us meeting on the side of the Banbury Way that night.

Was it true that she had been planning to end her life? Had my appearance prevented that? Or... only deferred it?

Was there some force pushing us together; some fate nudging us to go on with this? I didn’t really believe the old stories about the yellow ghost of Nockton Vale and surely in the tales a magical transformation invariably occurred, but was it possible all this was the coerced scheming of that spirit; all p0loanned out and inevitable, no matter how much either one of us might thing we had free will in the matter?

I lowered my eyes and shook my head, chuckling, despite everything; despite the trauma of the past half hour and the awful conversation I had just come from.

When I’d got in the taxi I’d told him to just drive but I spoke up again now. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. “Could you just pull over here please,” I said.

He struggled to catch my meaning so I rephrased feeling slightly ashamed I wasn’t making the slightest attempt to learn the local language. That time he got it and pulled to the side of the road. He left the engine and the clock running. The shopping area wasn’t far ahead. I considered getting out and going there; buying myself some food. That would sweep away this horrible tension. It would make me feel better.

But that wasn’t who I was supposed to be anymore. If my claim was correct, I was supposed to be Dahlia again now; or be ready to be her.

That was the problem though. I didn’t feel like Dahlia anymore, inside or out.

I knew I didn’t look like her, fat as I was, but my habitual thinking was just so far away from the supermodel mode of thought she was supposed to possess.

“She.” Dahlia.

Even the name seemed like somebody else’s. I couldn’t think of her as being myself anymore. How could I hope to take control of the appetite I’d made myself assume while I’d been abroad? How could I ever go back now?

I did want to eat. And I knew it would make me feel better. But maybe I shouldn’t. Surely I shouldn’t.

I sat there, struggling to decide, feeling hot and stressed, then I grumpily asked him to drop me at the colonnade up ahead where the first of the restaurants were. He did so and I paid him the small fair required.

The first restaurant was pleasant enough, open to the sky out front with plenty of meaty dishes with mouth-watering photos on the menu displays. The place was a little bit trashy but it was cheap enough for the money I had on me so I climbed down the steps and found a table.

The waiter who emerged from the back was pleasant enough and very encouraging but I felt uncomfortable being there. I had made my declaration of intent to end this. What was I doing treading the familiar path to gluttony, satiation and even more weight?

He pegged me as British immediately and exuded a slightly creepy Grecian charm. “Hello, hello, my good lady. What can I get for you today?” He laid out the menu and I looked at it guiltily. “A drink perhaps while you wait?”

I nodded and hesitated, faltering between asking for a Coke (fattening) or a cider (fattening and stress-relieving).

“Please can I have some cider?”

He grinned, nodded eagerly and vanished. I continued to sit there, staring at the colourful food photos inside the menu.

It all looked so delicious and my stomach was rumbling. My mouth was a vacuum nozzle nowadays and my belly: the deep and unending catch-bag.

I had told Melissa I wanted to put a stop to this. This was my chance now to throw some actual activity into that proclamation, but when the waiter returned I pointed awkwardly to the picture of two large lamb cutlets swamped by chips and garnished with salad. I felt like I was shrinking inside myself but he smiled warmly as though he felt I’d made the perfect choice. He exchanged the menu for my cider and slipped away into the back.

I took the drink and raised it to my lips, taking a long draught. It was gloriously cool and refreshing and immediately gave me the dull-edged tingling of promised inebriation.

I sat there, and now that I was still and I had this waiting period, my thoughts fell backward to the incident that I’d just escaped from; the time in my room with Melissa.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head to clear the emotion that came with the memory. It was cringe-worthy; all of it; from start to finish. I hated that it had happened. I hated everything about it. My stress level flickered higher and higher in notches the more I considered it, my pulse rate going with it. But I needed to think this through. I needed to lay it out.

It wasn’t enough just to run away from Melissa and that situation; pretend it hadn’t come to a conclusion. As far as she was concerned it clearly had. The threats she had made had been clear enough, shocking and incongruous to the person I thought she was though they were.

Because this wasn’t over. I couldn’t hide from it. We were going to have to meet again and talk again and then, finally, we would have to come to a conclusion. This new conversation might be days away if I tried to delay it, but surely it couldn’t be staved off forever and for all I knew it might Melissa already somehow know where I was and be bearing inexorably down on me even as I sat.

This might be my only time to think and to find my own mind and I had to use it.

I had to come to my own conclusions while I had the head space to do so.

Hand shaking, I lit up a cigarette, hating myself for doing so but needing it all the same.

Then I took another draught of cider and tried to set it out in my mind; work out the way forward; plan for the inevitable confrontation that had to happen between the two of us... a final confrontation that would... that had to decide everything once and for all.

LADY ANN'S DISGRACE: Chapter One - Parts One to Three

To get you back up to speed before posting new story episodes for Lady Ann, here is everything that I've previously posted in one handy location. 

It's the story of what happens in the first two books in brief, followed by the first three episodes of the new book. 

What has Gone on Before

Being the story in brief that is more intricately told in the novels Lady Ann’s Holiday and Lady Ann’s Folly.

Lady Ann’s Holiday

In the spring of 1908, in the Yorkshire village of Griply, Lady Ann Neville, eldest daughter of the Earl, Lord Howard Neville and his wife Elizabeth, found herself being forced to visit London to be paired up with yet another unsuitable suitor. Ann didn’t want to go but as fortune would have it, she obtained the means to avoid the trip when she happened upon a pendant with the mystical power to switch two people’s bodies.

Ann made the dubious decision to trade places with Burt Harper, the dim-witted stable hand who tended her horse. Burt was sent off to London in her place feeling very bewildered and Ann remained in Yorkshire with a note giving her two weeks holiday from Burt’s job and plenty of money to spend.

Burt had long been in love with Ann from afar and he willingly went on with the charade, doing his best to fit in and pretend to be the real Ann. This came easier than he had expected as the pendant continued to work its magic long after the swap. Burt took on more and more of Ann’s ways and mode of speech until there was little to distinguish him from the original lady. He, or rather she, even started thinking of herself as Ann.

Meanwhile in the country, Ann found herself in the opposite position. The more that time passed, the more she found herself acting like a Yorkshire clod. Her accent became base and lowborn and even her intelligence and education slipped away. Soon she had lost all her refinement, carousing with the other peasants and frittering her money away. Her self-image began to shift as well until she, or rather he, saw himself as a lower class oike and identified fully as being Burt.

The new Ann in London met the man the original Ann had been intended for, but rather than pushing him away, this new Ann found herself falling in love. When the original planned two weeks were up, the new Ann decided to extend her stay in the capital so that she could pursue this new courtship, despite feeling guilty about trapping the former Ann in her place.

And in Yorkshire, the new Burt really was trapped. He was forced to work as a stable hand, shovelling dung and grooming the horses as well as numerous other pitiful labouring tasks. Worse, his personality continued to shift and he became fawning and obsequious to his betters, rushing round eager to please them. He even started taking on memories of his new life and, in desperation at his predicament, even started fantasising that he might remain that way – such was the hopelessness of his position.

In desperation, Burt made a gambit to retrieve the pendant from Ann’s bedroom, but was caught in the act by Hattie, Ann’s sister. Exposed, Burt was dragged down to the village square by the Earl and flogged then thrown in gaol. He was put on trial and put at risk of many years imprisonment.

In London, the new Ann’s courtship ended with a proposal of marriage and Ann eagerly accepted. Lord Richard Hurley, her suitor, seemed the ideal husband, but almost immediately he showed signs of being cold and distant now that he had obtained her promise.

Burt’s trial began with dire portents of Burt’s future, but at the last minute, the Earl decided to have him released on advice, via telephone, from the new Ann who was soon to return home. This required a substantial bribe to the magistrate, but though Howard Neville achieved his goal and Burt’s release, it got him in trouble.

Chastised by a local MP and very embarrassed, Howard laid the blame at Hattie’s door, chastising her severely. She, after all, was the one who had accused Burt in the first place. Howard made his daughter’s life miserable, leaving her fuming and wishing she could get back at him.

With Burt released, he gratefully accepted the return to his life as a servant. Even that was better than prison. When Ann returned finally it was in doubt whether he would even accept a return to his former life. Both Ann and Burt deliberated over whether to swap back. Ann had grown accustomed to being a titled lady and Burt was so obsequious now he was willing to do anything to ingratiate himself with his beautiful mistress.

In the end, after some conflict in which Burt professed his love for her, Burt and Ann reached an accord. The former Ann would remain a man and a commoner, ill-educated and dim, while the former Burt would hold onto the life of a cultured lady.

But Ann had been exposed to more of Richard’s coldness and she missed the promiscuity of her old life. As Lady Ann’s Holiday came to a close she was left questioning her decision and fantasising about a different switch – not to become Burt again, but to swap places with Mavis, Burt busty, bar-wench girlfriend. She didn’t want to stay that way forever but she longed to have her wicked way with the virile man and she had inherited the original Ann’s rather reckless behaviour.

Lady Ann’s Folly

With her reckless plan in mind, Lady Ann invited Mavis up to Griply Hall’s nearby holiday cottage. There, she persuaded the girl to a secret short-term trade. Ann became Mavis and spent a lovely couple of hours getting her pleasure from Burt who remained unaware of this new swap.

Things didn’t continue to go as smoothly though because Ann’s mischievous sister, Hattie, discovered Mavis in the holiday cottage and found out the truth. She allowed Mavis to take her sister’s place in the manor and when Ann returned she found herself trapped in the body of a common serving girl.

Richard planned to take his fiancée with him to Nockton Vale to meet his mother and, eager to make the most of her opportunity, Mavis pushed for a rapid departure. Ann tried to prevent the body thief from leaving on the train but was unable to. Mavis escaped in Lady Ann’s body, leaving the former Ann in hers and forced to take on the life of a humble barmaid.

The new Ann and former Mavis arrived in Nockton Vale in the East Midlands and set out to secure her new position, but Lillian, her future mother-in-law seems even colder than her son and more conniving. It seems that Mavis may have a challenge ahead of her if she wants to maintain any kind of power in her potential marriage to Lord Hurley.

Hattie had meanwhile taken possession of the magical pendant and she had plans of her own to take revenge on her parents. The Earl had blamed her for the debacle surrounding Burt’s trial and her mother had supported him. Hattie’s uncle’s family were visiting and they had just employed a new maid named Nellie. These events presented her with some ideas.

Hattie hatched a complicated plan and then set herself the task of carrying it out. By the time she was finished, her father, Howard, was trapped in the body of the new maid, Nellie. Elizabeth, his wife, was stuck as a four year old boy called Reggie, her nephew and son of the domineering Uncle Patrick. Nellie was temporarily using Hattie’s own body and Hattie had taken the place of her father.

Now a pitiful maid, Howard was forced to do his new duties. Hattie had made the body swap while he slept so he had no idea how it had happened. This left him questioning reality and wondering if he had really been a man before, especially as his voice and character started to become more like a servile wench. When he tried to challenge the new Earl, really his daughter in disguise, he was chastised severely and locked in the cellar.

Hattie’s plan had also made her mother be none the wiser to her true identity. Now stuck as a four year old boy, Elizabeth found herself being spanked whenever she tried to explain what had happened to her new parents. Like her former husband, she was forced to keep her head down and pretend that she really was Reggie, just to avoid being punished again!

While that was going on, Reggie had assumed her former place as lady of the manor, but his immaturity posed Hattie a problem and risked exposing her plan to everyone. To resolve this, Hattie made him write a hundred times that he was really the Countess and should behave appropriately. This caused the acceleration of the mental changes and helped him quickly assume many of the manure feminine qualities of the true Elizabeth.

Meanwhile in the stables, Burt was questioning his decision to remain a servant but he decided he had to make the best of it and his entire happiness hinged on his future with Mavis. He begins planning a wedding proposal but when conflict comes between them it makes him question even more the decision he has made in remaining a man.

At the centre of this ever more complicated tangle stands Hattie. She has achieved all her goals but in order to do that she has been forced to take on the identity of her father, the Lord Howard Neville, a man in his late fifties with a bald head and a thick silver moustache. She saw it only as a means to an end but in fact she has come to enjoy the sense of authority she has gained. Being a man is strange but becoming her father has allowed her to start seeing things as he would. The true Earl was a domineering misogynist and with the pendant’s mental changes ticking on, Hattie is seeing life more and more as he would, accepting the inferiority of women and seeing men as the more important sex. She still plans to change back into her own body in twenty four hours but it remains to be seen how much another full day as her father will affect her state of mind. Maybe she will take on his personality a little too much...

But that isn’t the development that threatens to change the course of this tale for everyone. It is the lowly Nellie, now in the body of Lady Hattie, who may prove to be a catalyst to new and shocking developments, for she seems determined to keep her new social position as a titled lady, and she knows where the pendant is hidden!

Griply Valley

Yorkshire

England

1908

Chapter One

1

Lord Howard Neville had always been, to his mind, a fairly perfect specimen of manhood. As the Earl of Griply, a wealthy, titled gentleman, he had possessed all the attributes he could have wished. At fifty seven years of age, this towering well-built man had crafted a life and persona for himself that satisfied every aspiration he had. He was over six feet tall with a proud jutting chin and a stern brow, a thick, silver handlebar moustache and a bald head. With his irascible egocentric character, he dominated every situation he found himself in, perfectly secure in his position and his power, his physicality and, most of all, his masculinity.

But when he opened his eyes from sleep and realised he was still trapped in the cellar of his home, he remembered again how utterly all these qualities had been stripped away.

He wasn’t the lord of the manor anymore. He wasn’t even a man. He was a pitiful wench; a serving girl; the lowly maid-of-all-work. He was still Nellie Barrow.

He raised his skinny arms and hands up where he could see them and moaned. There was almost no light coming from the steep and narrow stair leading up to the house and precious little coming from the tiny windows at the top of the walls at ground level, dirty and obscured as they were by foliage. The arms seemed so weak, so unlike the steely limbs he should have been seeing. The fingers were so tiny.

He felt his body: the thin legs inside the dress (dress!) he had been forced to wear, the round tummy, the oddly shaped breasts. Touching the maid uniform he was trapped in made him want to weep but the idea of that was just as horrifying. He covered his face in his hands and muttered, “Why me? Oh Lor’, why me?”

But even that chilled him further. He could hear the difference in the way he talked now. Even his dialect was being stripped from him. Straight from sleep, without any kind of forethought, his choice of words, the simpering lower class inflexion: they were those of the common maid he had been turned into. Gone were his brash, confident tones and hard well-bred consonants and the weak ignorant sounds stripped him even further of his confidence.

He recalled the terrible events of the previous day: the humiliation of waking up to find himself transformed into the body of one of his own housemaids; being forced to act out the part as though he truly belonged in it despite all his efforts to stand up to the higher servants who were now his “superiors.” And the worst: finally confronting the imposter who had taken his place as the Earl and learning just how complete his doppelganger’s disguise was as he faced the full ire and retribution he would have meted out himself for such impertinence.

He couldn’t believe that this could have happened to him, with still no clue as to how. He couldn’t believe that the fake Earl had been so real. He couldn’t believe the butler, Powell, had made him spend the night down here in the cellar. But more than anything else, he couldn’t believe that he had stayed here, trapped and punished like a snivelling simpleton, even though the door hadn’t been locked. He could have left at any time in the night but he had been too afraid. He had gone on following their terrible ruling out of fear.

Why hadn’t he left in the night? Why hadn’t he gone back to at least his maid’s room in the attic? Why hadn’t he gone up to the first floor and demanded the imposter Earl get out of his bed and give him his life back?

But the answer was obvious.

He was afraid? He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t acting like himself. All that confidence and surety that he could solve any problem for himself had been stripped from him. He wasn’t Lord Howard Neville – not at the moment. He was only Nellie Barrow. And Nellie Barrow couldn’t risk the enmity of the butler, and most certainly not the Earl. Nellie Barrow wouldn’t dare confront anyone, let alone a powerful aristocratic man. Nellie Barrow would be too petrified to go against a direct order to remain in the cellar.

“I’m Nellie Barrow now,” he whimpered forlornly. “I’m Nellie Barrow and there ain’t two ways about it.”

There was a scrape and a rattle from the top of the cellar steps. Howard flinched back into the folds of his maid’s uniform, terribly worried as the door up there opened a crack then pushed open fully. More light spilled down the tatty wooden steps but he couldn’t see who was there. He was terrified it would be the fake Earl but instead the voice of the butler came down, lanced with chill authority.

“Nellie, get yourself up these steps now before I have a mind to lock you down there for good.”

Howard jerked up to his feet and hastened to follow his instructions, rushing up the narrow staircase. Powell stood at the apex glaring down at him and he wilted still further under those merciless eyes.

“Well?” snapped Powell. “What have you got to say for yourself girl?”

Howard stammered. This was the moment when he could stand up for himself; try to explain the truth of this magical exchange or at least attempt to rebuild some of his pride and self confidence. Instead he said, “I’m so sorry Mr Powell. I done wrong. I shouldn’t’a talked to the Earl. I should have done as I was told.”

Powell glared coldly and Howard wilted further.

“I’m so sorry sir. I’m sorry. I should have known my place,” he said, hating himself for saying those things but truly unable to do any different.

“Have you learned your lesson?” asked Powell.

“Yes sir. Certainly. I have,” stammered Howard, eager to please him; to be allowed egress from the cold dankness and be given a chance to remain in Griply Hall long enough to find some way to change back to being himself,

“Then get upstairs and make yourself presentable,” snapped Powell, “and be quick about it. There are chores to be done and the family will be awake soon.”

“Yes sir. Thank you sir,” gushed Howard, rushing past him and heading for the servant’s staircase. “I’m sorry sir. I won’t let you down.”

But inside his throbbing head, Howard knew he had let himself down. He was losing track of everything that made him who he was. If he wasn’t careful he was going to end up living the life of this maid willingly and subserviently.

2

The woman who had been Lady Ann Neville just a few days before opened her eyes and looked up at the dirty bare roof of the hat barn. It was the chill that had woken her, playing across her bare legs and arms that splayed from under the single blanket she and Burt shared.

She didn’t shift. Burt was lying on his side against her, his huge muscular limbs wrapped round her. He was still deeply asleep and snoring gently. Ann turned at the neck to regard his innocent slumbering face and thought about the tangle their lives had become; how confusing it all was now and how unexpected all of this had been.

Only a month or so earlier she had been Burt, dim-witted and simple, just going about her duties as a stablehand, making love with Mavis, the slutty barmaid from the village; admiring the beautiful Lady Ann from afar. In those days her desires had been simple because her intellect was. She had know little doubt or worry, just shovelling the dung, cleaning the stables, grooming the horses. And the nights with Mavis were enough pleasure to mark out the endless drudge, to keep her content. Or content enough. She had known she could never really be with Lady Ann but she still enjoyed her life to a point.

Things had started to go wrong when Lady Ann took her, as Burt, and made them change places.

Suddenly she’d been Lady Ann herself, hurled into a new world of London socialising and trips to the theatre. And no matter how quickly she became used to the whirl and the beauty, the gentility expected of her, she was never truly secure on her feet. Even when she found love and betrayed the new Burt, planning to trap him in his new life as a servant, she had seen cracks in her contentment almost immediately. Richard Hurley, her fiancé as Ann, was not the kind and loving man he had implied he would be.

She had fought for her life as Ann and kept it but it hadn’t made her happy enough and now she’d ruined everything.

Changing places a second time, this time with Mavis herself, had left Ann trapped more fully than ever before. She had been stuck as a commoner as Burt but without anything to compare it to it had just been her life. Becoming Ann had, after a period of acclimatisation, been mostly joyous. Now that she was Mavis she had all the comparisons she needed to comprehend her folly and how low she had sunk.

She had been a lady of the manor! Why couldn’t she have just accepted that and lived that way? She could have broken off the engagement with Lord Hurley – she realised that now. She needn’t have married him. She could have been happy.

And now look at her: curled up on the floor of a hay barn with an dirty, uncouth, country simpleton; nothing but a serving girl at the local watering house with little to no prospect of ever getting her real body back.

And what was her real body now even? Who was she? She still felt, on the whole, like Ann trapped as Mavis, but she knew it wouldn’t be long now before her sense of identity started to shift more fully toward being Mavis for real. Already her voice was mostly that of a Yorkshire clodhopper. She knew the education she had inherited as Ann had been stripped away.

“Is this me now?” she whispered.

Beside her Burt stirred, making a low buzzing in the back of his throat and smacking his lips together. He shifted his arm, gently rubbing her naked stomach under the blanket and giving her a graze of a thrill.

There was nothing left whatsoever in him of the original Lady Ann. That he had been a gentile lady was completely eradicated from him body and soul. He was only the simple man that she had once been now, and more perhaps. She sensed that his own changes had turned him into a simpler creature than even she had been once. All she knew for certain was that this Burt; the only Burt now; loved her and wanted to look after her. He was passionate and kind and doggedly loyal. And he was a titan under the blanket. He was everything she had fantasised about as Ann and everything she fantasised about now.

She let out a brief and shallow sigh.

There was no getting out of this new life of hers. That seemed certain.

Mavis. Barmaid. Lover of Burt. Lower class wench.

And maybe the only way forward was to reconcile with that; explore it; test out each facet of her new role and accept it for what it was.

She had wanted to be loved by a kind and passionate man. She had wanted to be with Burt. She had achieved that, even though she was now trapped in the fantasy.

She snuggled up against him and he mumbled something unintelligible but affectionate. Ann smiled. But a frown passed over her face because she realised there was something sad about all this, if she really was trapped.

Because surely she could never tell Burt about her true identity. He would never understand. He might even be hurt and angry.

It was a shame. She wanted to be open with him. But she was sure she couldn’t.

No. Burt must never find that out; that his Ann was now only a common servant girl. He must never come to understand the disgrace that she now felt to be brought so low and kept there.

3

Lady Harriet Neville, youngest daughter of the Earl and Ann’s sister, gave a gruff, guttural snort and opened her eyes, smacking her lips several times. She had been snoring deeply and the sound of it had woken her up. She brought her hands up to her face and rubbed her eyes and grizzled cheeks. She slowly sat up, scratching the smooth skin of her bald head and absently smoothing down the crescent of silver hair that circled from one ear to the other. She went on making most unladylike smacking sounds with her lips and then smoothed her bushy moustache down, wondering what she should do today. 

Then she stopped and her eyes went wide. 

She whipped her hands up in front of her face, the massive, manly hands, of her father: lined with age, the backs laced with wisps of silver hair. She felt her face; the hard cragginess of it; the thick moustache, the bushy eyebrows and finally her bald pate and crown.

"Good God," she muttered in her father's dusky voice. 

For that first full minute upon waking she had forgotten the body-swapping hijinks she had perpetrated over the last couple of days - but waking up as a man and her own father had not reminded her! Her every sensation upon waking, from the uncouth, guttural noises to the hairy body and hairless head had done nothing to jerk her into a sense of wrongness. She had already grown so used to this new form. 

"Goodness gracious me," she said, but hearing those strange words enunciated in a perfect simulacrum of her father's accent and word choice was deeply chilling. 

She recalled her actions just before dropping off to sleep the night before: underscoring her new identity just as she had forced her little nephew Reggie to do the day before to make him act more like the Countess now that he was spending an extended time in her body. 

What had she said...? 

"My name is Howard Bartholomew Neville, the Earl, Lord Neville. I am a fifty six year old man who owns the better part of this valley.”

"I am Howard Neville. I am a bombastic and confident man who looks down on women and bullies all those around him.”

"I am Lord Howard Neville. I have a wife named Elizabeth and two daughters named Ann and Harriet.” 

“I am Howard Neville, the Earl of Griply Hall. I am a haughty misogynist who looks down on everyone about him; an arrogant and overconfident aristocrat.”

It had seemed only a playful game at the time but with each phrase she had felt the odd tickling sensation at the back of her skull that she was now coming to associate with the effect of the magic working on her, turning her more and more into her father, not just in physical form but in mental attributes and character. 

"My name is Howard Bartholomew Neville, the Earl, Lord Neville." 

Those words alone were chilling enough – that she could actually alter her own sense of self until she saw herself more as man than lady – until she became in her own eyes, a middle-aged man who owned the better part of the valley. 

God, what would that be like? How terrible would it be to assume that identity? To become the man in charge of the estate and all its... all its holdings...? 

"Hmmm." Hattie rubbed her chin thoughtfully and then gave one of her father's chuckles. 

Actually the idea of owning all that land and having everyone in the valley defer to her authority sounded kind of wonderful. It had been fabulous to Lord herself around the house yesterday but there was a whole valley out there of peasants who lived to bow to her newfound authority. It would be so delightful to bask in the adoration and servility from her many subjects. 

And for now they really were her subjects. "After all, I am the Earl," she said, receiving a tingle at the top of her neck. 

But that tingle brought her back to her senses. Enjoyable though this experiment was, she had to maintain a firm control. She had a feeling that the more like her father she became, the more inclined she would be to want to be like him and the less inclined she would feel to return to feminine ways. She was of course slowly becoming a bombastic and confident man who looked down on women and bullied all those around him. That man – that end goal – would not want to sully himself with female traits and would certainly not want to become his own daughter. Hattie was sure of that. 

With the perspective she had already gained she recognised the contrasting virtues of the masculine and feminine life. It was already obvious to her that women were inferior to men in many ways. 

It was actually a shame that she couldn't pick and choose from her father's attributes. She had no particular desire to look down on women (it wasn't their fault that their lives were filled with such pointless trivialities or that they were so weak), but it would be a delight to possess such a high level of confidence that she could be described as bombastic! 

To imagine striding around possessing that irascible sense of purpose and self-importance – and for it to be a physical fact based on her manly body! She relished that and she longed to practice again while she had the chance – perhaps today getting out of the house and interacting with the peasants whose lives she currently owned. That would be spiffing! 

It was the last iteration she was most unsure of: the one cementing her has the husband and father of Elizabeth and the girls. That was not a part of her father's identity she had any wish to absorb. Though... Was it already influencing her, just from that single spoken statement? Had the changes crackled on while she snored in her father's bed, wearing not just his pyjamas but his entire manly body; resting within his masculine brain? 

Elizabeth... and the girls. Surely she should have visualised them as her mother and sister; as herself. 

And there was something else she noticed now. Reggie. She had thought of him as her nephew just moments earlier – not as her cousin. 

"By Jove," she whispered. 

She threw back the covers and put her legs out of the bed. 

Reggie, in the Countess's body, was already up and about. Hattie had the room to herself. She put her hands on her muscular, meaty thighs and stared down at them. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing table mirror and walked tentatively across, seeing her huge masculine frame come more fully into view. 

She was gigantic and not feminine in the least. There wasn't the slightest hint of her true gender in the way she stood or the expression on her face. The words that came from her were not the words of a twenty yer old woman. 

"Am I him already?" she muttered, but the answer seemed obvious. The colour drained from her cheeks and the dome of her white forehead. "Am I... myself? Am I Howard Neville?" 

But no. Surely not. Not by a long way. The real Howard Neville would not be filled with such conflicted emotions. He was in total control. He didn't simper like a silly woman as she was doing now. That proved she was still herself really; still Hattie; and that meant there was still time to see this through. It was, after all, only one more full day she would be spending like this. The return to her own form would take place overnight tonight, once again while everyone was asleep. 

It made her sad that it was going to be cut short so soon, despite the clear dangers. That was all the more reason to take full advantage of her position of authority while she had it. 

Yes. She resolved to make the most of being her father today – to really enjoy every superior aspect of his life and his importance. 

Hattie put her big hands on her cheeks and ran them up over her bald head, then she smiled at herself. 

"I'm Lord Howard Neville," she declared. "I am the most powerful man in the region." 

Her smile turned into a grin. Saying that made her doubts drop clear away. She even considered doing it again and begger the consequences. 

Yes. She puffed up her chest. "I am Howard Bartholemew Neville. I am the Earl of Griply Hall, husband to Elizabeth and father to Ann and Harriet. My brother Patrick is staying at the moment with my niece and nephew." 

His breathing was heavier than normal. He stared at his reflection, feeling the effects of what he'd said tickle at his brain stem. He felt giddy and a little scared, but he pushed that silliness aside. The longer he remained as a man the clearer it became that emotions were the province of weak-minded, simpering females and not worth wasting time on. He was certainly not going to allow himself to be tossed by their whims when he became his daughter again. He was going to act far more like a man! 

The Return of Lady Ann!

What with my illness and everything, for the first time since this website started I've been neglecting the release of my longest standing serial that follows the adventures of Lady Ann and her extended cast of Edwardian body swappers.

This is going to change in the near future as I'll be restarting the serial this Sunday.

I know that will disappoint die-hard Cleaner fans who are desperate to get their next fix but it's very important to me to continue both stories and I also don't want to disappoint the Lady Ann fans. I'll be going back to alternating Lady Ann and Cleaner episodes every three days.

The good news is that I will then have the head-space to finish working on the GREATLY extended final draft of CLeaner II so that I can release the complete book sooner rather than later. That will mean I'll then be able to get back to work on writing the next New You book too so it should be better all round.

If you haven't been following the Griply Valley Saga then now's the perfect time to jump in. So far I've released two books, Lady Ann's Holiday and Lady Ann's Folly. These are magical transformation bodyswap stories set in Edwardian England inspired by a short story released by one of my favourite writers (Eric) on Fictionmania many years ago.

You can click on the pictures below to grab them on Amazon if you want to catch up.

The third book in the series is just starting off. I'll probably republish the first few episodes so we can all get up to speed and then proceed from there with more bodyswapping hijinks to come.

If you have been following the story so far then you'll know that the magical pendant has caused an increasingly complex series of bodyswaps in the Neville family and beyond but that's just the tip of the iceberg on what is to come. In the next books things are going to get even more complicated as our heroes struggle to keep track of who they are and get swept up in the characters of who've they've become.

It's going to be a wild ride so get ready to enjoy that. 

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Sixteen

MELISSA

My heart rate was elevated as I slammed the door shut on Dahlia’s room and hurried down the corridor back toward the stairs. It ramped up even higher as I hastily descended the stairs.

I stopped on the lower corridor, glancing down the passage to see if Dahlia was there. She wasn’t. I went on further down, checking each level. On the ground floor I looked for the British cleaner to ask if she’d seen her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I hesitated, wavering, my body swaying as though I’d just stepped off a dizzying playground roundabout. I eyed the unmanned reception desk and went across.

There was an electronic bell pusher with a cracked top on the counter for garnering attention but when I pressed it it made no audible sound. Most likely it was broken or out of batteries. I waited tensely, then sighed, squinting toward the gloomy back of the building. I checked the time. I went to the outer door and scanned the pool area; across to the bar. There wasn’t a sign of Dahlia.

I went back to the reception desk and waited, pressing the silent buzzer again, then sighed heavily and went to the nearby door leading into the staff only area in back. I paused, unsure of myself, then pressed open the door.

Beyond was a narrow corridor with doors running off it. No one was visible. In the silence I could almost hear the dull, throbbing, thump of my pulse in back of my ears.

Feeling out of place and entirely uncomfortable, I passed this first portal and went to the next door. It looked like the kitchen. I pushed inside. It was dingy as hell: cramped and dirty. This entire building needed to be condemned. It would never have passed a health and safety inspection without some greasing of the wheels. Maybe that was how they did things here. Or maybe Greek health inspectors either didn’t give a shit or didn’t visit this place. There was nothing above board about it.

The room was empty but for one man, a tall skinny native with a thin moustache, bags under his eyes and sallow cheeks. He looked both suspicious and bored by my appearance initially; then came the second wave of reaction as he registered my looks and figure, and despite my tension this helped to sooth me: the acknowledgement that he found me attractive.

But then I got my own second wave and only felt anger, because I knew I was teetering on the brink of losing these looks again. They would start to slide immediately for sure, knowing the steepness of my depression, and be gone completely within a month or two as I squandered the progress I’d made by shovelling food in my gob from morning to night to placate the raging demons in my heart.

The man said something in Greek but the shift in his expression as he saw my reaction illustrated that he could tell I didn’t get it. He shifted to English without waiting for a response to the first hail. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for someone. Uh Dah—“ I stopped myself. “Her name’s Melissa. Chapman.”

His features shifted again and it was this shift that made the penny drop, just as it had when I’d run into the cleaner outside earlier. This wasn’t a random hotel employee. This was him. This was the nasty little shit who had been treating Dahlia so badly all summer.

Hearing her name (my name), he evinced the kind of distaste one might reserve for picking up the soggy, decaying trainers of a teenage boy: that instantaneous combination of tactile and olfactory revulsion. It encapsulated everything he thought of her in a moment of what was, to me, clarity. It made me wonder if she had seen it in him or if he even saw it in himself.

They were still seeing one another as far as I knew but he clearly hated her guts. It was striking in its obviousness. But again, I was sure somehow that he didn’t even acknowledge that himself.

“I haven’t seen her,” he said, keeping his words measured with what seemed to be some effort. “She’ll be here later working. She has the middle of the day off.”

“Thank you,” I said, turning my back on him and cursing to myself.

I considered trying another door and asking around but that seemed pointless. Nevertheless I wavered, pausing at an external door. I pushed that open and checked the little smoking courtyard outside to be sure. She wasn’t there.

I hurried back to the foyer and left the hotel through the front door, going down the bumpy drive to the street.

There was a shopping area with restaurants a walk away. I wondered if I should go down there and look for her or go back up to her room. I’d shut the door now so I couldn’t wait inside.

I was so angry with myself for messing this up. I should have managed it all differently. Today had been a disaster. If only I could have rewound the day and tried again but all I could do now was try and salvage something. Or maybe that was the worst play. Maybe hanging around and trying to find her was the wrong move. Maybe I should have been giving her time and space to think.

But then again, how could that help? The impression she’d been left of me was of a manipulative nutter with childish ideas about forcing her to swap lives with me. I’d blown our “friendship,” such as it was, out of the water with my outburst. All that crap I’d spouted... She must have thought I was crazy! If I left her to herself now then every minute she was just being given more time to dwell on what an idiot I was – how stupid an idea all of this was and ever had been.

And that was the horror of this of course. It was stupid. It had never been sane or sensible to consider, for either of us, the idea of taking on the other’s life. Whenever I thought about it, it always seemed like something that couldn’t really be happening. It was just so preposterous! How did we even get as far as we had already? I had no idea.

But I did know that this wasn’t going to go any further unless I could find her fast and try to mend the damage I’d done. Maybe if I could show her a calmer side and try to work back to persuading her. I knew she’d told me she didn’t want to proceed but just maybe she could be persuaded to give it a bit more thought. If given another week or so to think about it, maybe I could inveigle my way back into her good graces and persuade her to continue after all.

“Oh Christ!” It was hopeless. It was mother-fucking hopeless.

Feeling increasingly frantic, I hurried down the side of the road toward the distant tourist area. The pavement was largely non-existent and I almost hobbled myself in my heels several times within the first three minutes. I was far too tense and uptight. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t coordinated. Half way there I made myself stop and pressed my hands to the sides of my temple.

“Just calm down,” I murmured. “Calm down or you’re going to fuck this up even more.”

That was the real worry: that I was so tense I’d charge on in there and make things worse if I did see her. I was supposed to be a master manipulator, carefully plucking the threads of my web as I drew her in toward my slavering jaws. I wasn’t supposed to be like this: All panic and flap, sweating and panting like a toddler in mid-tantrum.

Why was I saw overwrought? Why couldn’t I calm down?

But the answer was obvious. The question was moot.

I was overwrought because I’d had a winning lottery ticket in my hand (or thought I had) and now, because of my own messed-up actions, that ticket was out of my fingers and fluttering away in a breeze just fast enough to be carrying it further and further from my reach. I was going after it, desperately, chasing it down, but every time I reached for it, the very action; the sweep of my frantic arms; was blowing a wind that pushed it further away. And there was a cliff just ahead. If I didn’t reach that lottery ticker before it got there then I would forever lose my chance and might as well pitch myself over the edge to my watery and rocky doom.

“Just calm the fuck down!” I snapped at myself. “Calm the fuck down!”

I pressed my hands tightly in on my head; hard enough for it to hurt. Then I hurried on, getting more and more frantic, just unable inside me to take hold of my rampant spirit.

I could have had everything. I could have had it all. But I’d ruined things or I'd let her ruin them, and I’d only made things worse.

All was lost and it was my fault.

There was no chance for me to rectify this now. I’d blown it.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Fifteen

MELISSA

How could I describe what I felt as I cracked the door shut to Dahlia’s pathetic, squalid little room and marched away down the dank corridor toward the stairs? How could any single word encapsulate the range of emotions I was feeling?

There was no word? How could there be? If my emotions were represented by a great wheel of fortune then it was spinning and flashing in every segment now, whirling too fast for its mounting perhaps, shuddering with a clumsy vibration set to derail it and send it skittering off. I was well over-excited but there was also a great darkness behind that wheel in my mind that threatened to engulf me if it did lose its mounting and shatter in a maelstrom of sparks and whistles.

I reached the marble staircase and set off down, gripping the handrail far tighter than I needed to.

All these months here in Greece and the weeks before, travelling between my house in Barton and Summertop up in Pinecrest, I had been carefully constructing an impossibly complex four-dimensional jigsaw in time and space, delicately balancing my manipulations of this strange, crazy, mixed-up woman. I had added piece after piece to the puzzle, laboriously... precisely... even gracefully in the hopes that I could lead her to lead herself to reach the conclusion that the change had to be permanent... or at least indefinite. And despite all of those efforts I had failed. My manipulations had not worked and she, in her supposedly well-meaning blundering had refused, destroying all my hard work; threatening to tear down every piece of that meticulously constructed series of half-truths and wiles. And now, in the space of what, five minutes? I had ripped my own construction to shreds. I’d thrown away all conception of quiet, friendly confidence and replaced them with a potent but clumsy and entirely brutal alternative.

I had abandoned all my manipulations and coaxing and resorted to uncontrolled vents of emotion, direct confrontation and threats.

I paused on the next landing and realised as I removed my hand from the rail that it was shaking. They both were. And the more I stared down at them, the more  I realised that that quaking was running up my arms. It was in the centre of my chest making my heart rate erratic. I was sweating underneath my hair line and in the pits of my cheeks, between my shoulder blades and down into my lower back.

I felt awful. I felt sick to my stomach.

I had fucked up. I had really fucked up.

Now that I was out of there I realised that. Of course I had.

“Oh God,” I said. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

Who was I kidding with that crap I had spewed? Not even myself now that I was out of there. The very idea of it was outrageous.

That I could run away to Thailand and have my face altered without Dahlia being complicit? That I could go back to her life in England and hope to infiltrate and absorb it without her support and potentially; obviously inevitably; against her active attempts to stop me? It was a hopeless castle in the air. It was a ridiculous, childish fantasy that only existed in that room because I had been hip-deep in my temper tantrum.

This wasn’t one of those shitty Disney Channel movies or some crap from a late night sci-fi show like the Twilight Zone. This was reality – or at least it was now I was outside that room and able to see the sunlight around me.

I was as crazy as Dahlia was sometimes. I really was. I had been all summer; allowing myself to believe this was going anywhere at all. But to believe it could go anywhere without Dahlia’s total complicity was the worst kind of stupid. It was moronic, laughable and every bit as crazed as she was. I was ashamed of myself that I’d allowed myself to think it.

I gave a single nasty chuckle that went straight to my heart in derision and misery. “Know this,” I’d said. “This is happening. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop it now. The only power you have is in how you capitulate.”

What a crock of shit. It was embarrassing. She was up there now, laughing at me hysterically. I should have been laughing at myself. But tears welled into my eyes in a single flow that trickled and then stopped immediately instead.

I went down two more flights to the ground floor and left the building. I went out to the pool area where the few dispirited guests about were sunning themselves. No one was in the water. There was a fine layer of dust on much of its surface that discouraged any kind of dip. Near the far side was a dishevelled-looking bar that an attempt had been made on to make it look both hip and tropical. Both had failed. I walked over and ordered a vodka martini, wolfed it and ordered a second.

I sat on a tall stool, looking at the pool, just nursing it on my lap for a minute and a half or so, then I knocked it back in one and ordered a third, ignoring the raise of eyebrows that passed between the only other two people sitting there. They could go and fuck themselves as far as I was concerned.

What was Dahlia doing now really? What was she thinking? Because surely that intense little series of moments had passed for her too now. Surely she had snapped out of it as much as I had and realised just how pompous and stupid I must have sounded up there.

So she’d had a good, hard laugh at my expense. She’d imagined out the reality of me trying to actually steal her life: the easily traceable plastic surgery, the mismatched finger prints and DNA, the huge gaps in my knowledge about her life that any kind of determined scrutiny would root out if a breath of doubt was called into question. Had she realised how easy it would actually be for her to get back to England if she needed to, no matter how restricted her finances. It wasn’t that expensive and there was always money to be got... one way or another if you were desperate enough. And back in England, while I was pretending to be her, how eager pretty much any trashy reporter would be to run an exposé, whether it turned out to be true or not.

Cleaner tries to steal life of ex-super model? Someone would grab that up and run with it and with only a tiny amount of digging I would be exposed and ridiculed. I’d doubtless be up on criminal charges.

I shook my head and drank half of my last drink.  

What an idiot.

I’d ruined everything. That puzzle of manipulation I’d been building had been my only chance. Success required Dahlia to go along with it completely and indefinitely. It required her to be so broken that she gave in completely and accepted she was never going to get back. It required something that, frankly, was never going to happen now... because she didn’t want it, and because I’d then gone and ruined any chance of calling it back. Basically I had acted like a childish dick and it was over.

Or... was it?

Was there the slightest chance? Was there any chance left that I could pick up the pieces of my jigsaw and fit them back together?

No. Thinking back at her face; imagining her now, laughing at my tirade and threats. No. There was no way back from this. I had never really had a chance in the first place. And if I ever had, I’d ruined it now with my tantrum.

I looked up at the hotel, through the facade as though I had X-ray vision to see to the back of the building near the top where her room was.

Could I... Should I go back up there?

Was there the slightest chance of healing the breach between us? Was this my last and only chance to have one more go?

I half slipped off my stool as though to start walking but stopped before my buttocks left the hard, split plastic.

No. No. It was over. I had to just accept that. I had to go back to my own hotel and pack my stuff and maybe enjoy one last night of luxury before she came over to kick me out, fire me and start the process of hurling me back into my shitty old life of despair and self-loathing with Robert in Barton.

Except...

Except one of the crackling emotions on my wheel of fortune was a wild, fanatical optimism and another was desperation. And need. And horror of what was coming next. And maybe the tiniest particle of genuine, innocent hope.

I stood up.

I lifted the glass to my lips; held it away, looked at it. Set it down. Walked away. Went back. Drank it down.

Then I set off back toward the hotel entrance.

My hands were shaking again. I gripped them up tightly into fists but that barely helped because the shaking had gone back inside of me again. I could feel it all through my body.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her when I got back up there. I had no idea what I was going to do. In my arrogance, I had counted myself a master strategist while I’d been planning this. That was laughable now obviously. I’d achieved nothing, despite all my best efforts. All I could hope for was some honest-to-God improvised last-minute brilliance now; some instinctual face-to-face persuasion that would turn things around from being made of pig swill to being made of gold.

That sparking, fizz-popping optimism on my emotional wheel was dripping purple with pessimism now. The hope was a gleaming ember with almost no internal incandescence left at all.

I crossed the crowded foyer and made for the stairs.

“Uh, excuse me.”

I went on walking.

“Excuse me please. Miss Western?”

I stopped and turned. There was a member of the cleaning staff on the ground floor holding a dustpan and brush in one hand and a spray bottle of cleaning fluid in the other. She had a coarse British accent and a faintly ugly face that smacked of low-born provincial roots. She was one of the cleaners here and the minute I saw her I knew who she was from Dahlia’s description.

Her face brightened when I looked directly at her and I realised it was because she recognised me, as Dahlia.

“It is you,” she said. “Oh my God.” She grinned, fawning, coming to the foot of the stairs. “I’m sorry to stop you. Oh God, this is amazing. I can’t believe it’s really you. I’d heard you were staying in Greece but I never thought I’d really see you to speak to. I’ve never seen a celebrity up close before.” She blushed brightly.

And suddenly I felt completely different. Suddenly that wildly spinning emotional wheel wasn’t shaking fit to lose its fitting. It was running smoothly. It was damping down on the darker colours.

It was telling me that all wasn’t lost; that this woman – this thick-witted bulldog-faced woman who had been unwittingly tormenting the real Dahlia Western all summer really believed that I was her. For real – even without the surgery. Even this close – five feet apart – though surely there must have been more to the story that I didn’t know for her to pick me out like this. She must have seen me already, perhaps over at the Satine Palace. I had a feeling from her red cheeks and neck that she was hiding something, though I didn’t really care anymore what.

Suddenly everything seemed possible again. Everything. And that confidence was reconstructing the delicate pieces of that manipulative puzzle in my head again, telling me that there wasn’t just a small chance but maybe even a big one that Dahlia could be brought back round.

“I was wondering if I could maybe get an autograph,” said the cleaner. “If it isn’t too much trouble. I wonder if that would be possible.”

She was so sycophantic. It was kind of pathetic. And hilarious compared to the reports I’d been getting on the way she’d treated the real Dahlia.

But I had no time for this now.

“No,” I said,” Sorry. I’m busy. I have someone I have to see.” I started up the stairs.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry for bothering you,” she stammered, falling behind, but I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about her. I was going to do this. I could do this.

I climbed flight after flight, my strong, athletic legs carrying me up to the dingy top of the hotel staff quarters quickly and efficiently, and as I went my confidence only increased.

I could do this.

I could do it.

It wasn’t too late.

I got to that top corridor and paused. I held my breath. I started walking again. Now my confidence faltered. Now the emotional wheel became rickety. That sense of confidence I’d felt downstairs became drained and weak. The boost that talking to Dahlia’s nemesis had given me wore off completely, leaving me more and more tense; more and more edgy.

The closer I came to her door, the more it came back to me in unblurred clarity how outlandish my tirade had been; how preposterous my threats; how little power I ultimately held.

I stopped half way there, breathing heavily, hating myself.

I had to really make myself walk on again, and as soon as I did I realised that something wasn’t right. The corridor wasn’t as I’d left it.

Her door was open.

That made me stop again.

This was it. This was the moment of final confrontation and that instinctive range of iridescent persuasion that I had hoped to summon, ready to coax Dahlia’s resistance away and stroke her doubts smooth was not there. I had no words. My mouth was parched.

I should turn round and go back but maybe she was in there in the shadows and had already seen me. If turned back now she would only laugh the louder at my retreating back.

Surely this was my last chance. My last ever chance to win her round.

I forced myself on until I reached the half-cracked door.

I put my hand on it, pushing it in and almost said the name, “Dahlia,” but glanced behind my down the corridor, thinking how odd that would sound if it was overheard. Instead I said nothing.

The room was as dim inside as it had been. I thought I heard something shuffle but when the door fell fully back I realised I wasn’t sure after all.

I stepped into the doorframe.

Dahlia was nowhere to be seen. The room was as filthy and cluttered as ever. The light was off in the bathroom.

It was empty. She wasn’t there.

And now the emotional fortune wheel did start to shimmy off its frame inside my mind, every aspect of it losing cohesion as its sparks flashed brightly enough to blind. Its mount shattered in a firework burst of inner sensation that was acute enough to give me real physical pain in the real world. The blackness beyond it swept in, blotting out the world around me and extinguishing any final sense of confidence of optimism I might have had.

Dahlia had gone. I had no idea where. She had gone and I had missed my chance to make this right.

She had given me a calm and measured decision; a declaration of intent to chance back to being her true self and in return I had acted like a spoiled child, making ridiculous, incontestably moronic threats that only underlined the absurdity of this entire situation.

And now she had all the time in the world away from me to reflect on what a traitorous ass I was; on just how badly I had let her down and tried to set her up; on how much I clearly hated her and always had, and on just what she was going to do next to ruin my life in return.

It was over. All of it.

And she wasn’t to blame. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She just wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought she was. If anything I maddest. Of course I was.

I had actually believed I would succeed.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Fourteen

MELISSA

I’d fantasised about this – Lord how I had fantasised about it: eight inches of rubbery, quivering ramrod pulsing in my minge as the magical prongs of my vibrator’s perfect little hand worked their wiles with my shuddering clit – but to hear the words come out of my mouth like that and feel my own eyes widen in surprise at the gall of it, even as Dahlia’s did in response to the shock... It was more than I could have imagined; more than I ever thought I would have the courage to do.

She gaped at me and I think that was what I was doing to her too. I couldn’t believe I had said that. I definitely couldn’t believe I was really willing to go through with it. But it was suddenly out there like a bet on a spinning roulette wheel; the number chosen; the ball flicking into the air, already too late to stop; bouncing; bouncing; finding its place between impossible, lucrative success and terrible ruin, but certainly already, with no way to go back.

And I didn’t want to go back. It was ludicrous. But now the words were out there, how could I retract them? All hope of reasoning and friendship was surely gone now. My outburst and insults had seen to that and if they hadn’t then this was a line that could never be recrossed because that threat couldn’t ever be rescinded, however preposterous it was.

“Melissa... You can’t be serious,” stammered Dahlia.

“I’m serious,” I said firmly.

“Melissa...”

I shut her down. “I’m serious. Look at you. You aren’t Dahlia anymore. You’re a grossly obese cleaning lady living in Greece. Nobody would ever believe you were or ever had been a super model. You could tell anyone you like. Nobody would take you seriously. And I look enough like you to use your passport now. I can go to Thailand and get the procedure done whether you’re there or not. After that I’ll be untouchable, especially with all your money.”

She put her hands to her cheeks then half lowered them. “You can’t mean this.”

“Of course I can and I do. Why should you have all the power to decide what happens to us? Why should you have any? You gave up that power to me when we first came here to Greece. You submitted everything. Without the money you used to have you wouldn’t even be able to pay your way home. It would take you weeks and months to even get back there. And then what? How could you prove anything with me way ahead of you, laying the groundwork, telling people all about how crazy you got while we were abroad; how your obsession with me had made you think you used to be me. I bet you might even get locked up in an institution, raving for the rest of your days about being somebody else; about being the beautiful lady you used to work for. And why not? People would nod. Why wouldn’t you fantasise about that? Who would want to be a fat, ignorant cleaner if they could be beautiful like me?”

Tears were welling in her eyes but I sneered and walked away from her. “I can't believe I’m hearing this. From you, I trusted you. Is this... Is this what you’ve been planning all along?”

I didn’t turn to face her. I said nothing.

“Is it? It is, isn’t it? You’ve never been my friend.”

My anger spiked. For some reason I didn’t understand my cheeks flushed and I turned on her. “Of course I have! I...” I glared at her. “You know, fuck you! Don’t fucking look at me like that! Fuck you! Because you can make me feel as bad as you want. We both know that you’re the one whose let me down. You’re the one who made the promises – by implication maybe as much as anything, but still you made them! You led me on; giving me more and more. We both knew where this was going. From almost the start. Certainly from that night in the rain. We both knew. And we both knew you were batshit crazy enough to go through with it if the fucking whim took you.”

Tears were streaming down my own cheeks now and I wiped my nose with the back of my wrist. Dahlia gave a shake of her head but she knew the lie of that as well as I did.

“And ever since then,” I went on, “we’ve been walking a frigging tightrope, or I have, knowing where it went and desperate for it to get there, but knowing that at any time, you could shake the rope, just because you felt like it, and send us both tumbling down. Desperate, I’ve been; and more than desperate. Every day I’ve woken up thinking we were inching closer to it really happening; really going all the way; and now, today, you stand there and start talking this crap about going back and bringing it to an end. So yeah. Why the fuck not? Why not take back control? Why let you have everything? And really; think about it... Who would believe you? There would be ways to prove who you really were, but who would ever take you seriously enough to even go down that route? Especially with the army of lawyers I could hire and the total lack of cash you would have.

“I’ve worked for you for a long time now. I’ve watched you. You never leave that house of yours. You never meet anyone who matters. You've been out of the public eye for years. You don’t have anything like any real friends.”

I paused, seeing the pain that was inflicting on her, and I almost faltered. But I didn’t. I went on.

“Who would ever begin to believe that you weren’t really me?”

She looked down, her face crumpling up, tears running freely round her pathetically distended cheeks. Then in a little whimper I heard a sound that actually chilled me, raising an instinctive reaction of anger and even hatred.

“Katherine.”

“What?” I spat.

“Katherine would believe me. If I told her.”

I glared at Dahlia. I knew that she was right. But another part of me knew that her own shame would never let her tell.

If I pursued this; really saw it through like I was claiming I could; then Dahlia would simply cease to exist. She would crumple up and die inside. She’d stay here, unable to mount any defence. There would be now intercontinental chase; no grand battle of wills or courtroom drama; no scandal or denouncements through the media. She would simply disappear, never to be seen again as I took on and assumed her identity for the rest of my life. Her psyche was that fragile. Her will was that weak.

“You would never tell her,” I said. “You’d be too ashamed. Just look at you.”

She did and her quiet tears became louder, muffled sobs that shook her round shoulders and quivered her broad chest.

My own tears stopped flowing but I hated myself that I could say these things. I did. I hated myself.

“It’s over,” I said, crossing to the door. “I’m leaving. And I’m going to Thailand with or without you. You can please yourself. Come with me and do this together; live out the fantasy you wanted and take on my old life, or get dumped here with nothing and no real lasting identity.”

Her shoulders went on shaking but Dahlia slumped down onto the corner of the bed. She laced her fingers behind her neck.

I opened the door. Outside the corridor was empty. I stepped into it, looking back at her one last time.

“Call me if you change your mind,” I said, "but know this. I’m not going to change mine. This is happening. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop it now. The only power you have is in how you capitulate.”