Chapter Four: Just Another DayIt’s only just gone eight, but Alex isn’t the first to arrive.

  Moving with the familiarity of routine, he drops his ptop and handbag by the reception desk and heads straight to the tiny kitchenette. Fluorescent lights flicker to life as he fills and puts the kettle on, measures out coffee grounds into the coffee maker. He grabs three mugs and lines them up on the counter, opens the fridge, pulls out the milk, nudges the door shut with his bum, spoons sugar into one of the mugs. Leaving the kettle to boil, the coffee maker to brew, he returns to the reception desk. He sits, stifling a groan as the gaff pinches. The work ptop boots up with a low whirl. He logs in, nails fshing across the keyboard. First week with these nails, his typing speed dropped dramatically. Now, he's almost back to full speed. It’s not like they’re that long. But still. An adjustment.

  He removes his fts and tucks them to one side. Reaching beneath the desk, he retrieves a pair of shoes. They’re bck, patent leather Kurt Geiger pumps with a pointed toe and detailed eagle head. Little ebony crystals sparkle in the eyes. He was totally against wearing heels, or at least anything over an inch and blocky. But Ms. St- Cir dropped a few disapproving comments and Amber urged him, too: you’ve got such sexy legs, she told him, shame not to show them off. He mentioned it after work, and Sophie took him shopping that same night. The shoes were one-fifty, discounted to forty, and fit—a find like that, his sister insisted with a grin, you were destined to wear these shoes.

  But Christ, the three-and-a-half-inch stiletto heel sits very firmly at the limit of what he can handle, even after weeks of practice. He wiggles his toes, feels a twinge of anticipatory discomfort. He slips his feet into one, then the other and stands, feeling the immediate shift in his posture, the pinch in the toes and pressure at the balls of his feet. A few steps, and he finds his stride. He can survive them for the working day, just. After all, he spends most of it sitting down.

  There’s a tall, narrow mirror between two leather sofas in the reception area, and just as he does every morning, he examines his appearance in it, twisting to see himself in profile, smoothing down a few wrinkles, tucking a stray hair back into pce. A diffuse nausea settles in his belly, a sense of guilt. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation. Shoes are just another part of the costume. Besides, he looks good in them. The shoes are undeniably hot. Alex just wishes he wasn’t the one wearing them.

  This early, the office air conditioner hasn’t kicked in yet. He notes the humid sheen across his upper lip and where his foundation’s started to slip. Blot, powder, lipstick refresh and then the short walk down the dark-panelled corridor, out the rear door. It leads to a tiny courtyard. The courtyard is formed by the back-ends of the surrounding buildings, with grimy windows looking out over the small space, a few holding circur vents zily turning. A pair of pstic chairs for smokers and a potted pnt, scraggly weeds poking through uneven paving stones, and a drain capturing runoff. The door opposite leads into the rear entrance of a narrow 1960s office block where most of the real work happens. Lockwood and Carmichael present old-London style out front, aged men holding court in offices heavy with wood wax and age. But most of the young staff, including the junior associates, work out back.

  The air here barely stirs. Out of direct sunlight, the shaded space feels cool against his thighs and arms. The sky above cuts a silhouette of brilliant blue. Alex stands there, blinking into the bright sky. He feels as though he could stand there forever.

  Instead, he forces himself forward and soon stands outside the junior offices. Oluwatobi’s there, dark face glowing with soft monitor blue, and Mo. And Harry, too. Alex’s stomach twists itself in a knot.

  These three are always in early. Oluwatobi’s working on an energy merger in Dubai for a client offloading his third-generation company before retirement. Mo’s poring over fund performance metrics, tweaking a client’s quarterly report to make a tariff-induced ftline look like a gentle incline. And Harry has his nose buried in a cap table. He knows what they’re working on because he’s helped all three these past few weeks. Alex’s proofed Tobi’s deck, and it’s his Orwellian spin on Mo’s quarterly losses report creating opportunity events.

  Tobi fshes a smile at Alex, and Mo waves without looking away from his screen. Harry grunts, gnces up from his computer, then double takes. He licks his lips, smiles in a way that makes Alex’s skin crawl, the way those eyes track over him, sliding slowly down his body, lingering over his thighs, then calves, heels. Alex suppresses a shudder, forces a bright smile and greets the boys: coffee, tea? They ask for the usual. He feels their eyes follow him out the room.

  On paper, they’re not that different: junior associates recently harvested from LSE or Oxbridge, no older than Alex. But he’s the one wearing the check mini. He heads back to the kitchenette, pours out coffee for Harry, tea for the other two, slips the three drinks onto a tray. Strictly speaking, this isn’t his responsibility, it’s not in the job description. He walks slowly and carefully, drinks banced on the tray. Curls of steam rise from the tea as he crosses the courtyard. He’s spilled a drink before, heel wobble in a distracted moment. Harry shouted at him, patting down the stain on his suit, called him names. Alex nearly cried, nearly hit him.

  But no problem this morning, he’s had lots of practice. At the door, he pauses for a moment, watching these three guys at work. Harry’s blue suit, Mo’s tangle of dark hair, Tobi’s heavy watch. A heavy feeling pulls at him, and he wants nothing more than to follow it down, through the floor, to simply thaw and melt away, and disappear. Alex gnaws on his lip, and the tray grows heavy.

  Tobi gnces up, grins and calls him a godsend. Mo breaks away from the screen long enough to smile gratefully. Alex brings the men their drinks. Mo’s looking more stressed than usual this morning, eyes red as though he’s already been at it for a couple of hours, skin pale, beard unkempt as though he’s slept here. Most likely, he did, there’s a cot in the back room. Harry holds eye contact this time, watches as Alex approaches and pces the coffee in front of him, says thanks sweetheart and when Alex turns away, he knows what’s coming, it’s not the first time. He barely suppresses the flinch as the other man pats his bum but stiffens nonetheless and freezes involuntarily. Harry’s touch lengthens into a lingering fondle. Alex finally unlocks, limbs moving again. Ignoring the unwanted touch but still feeling that masculine pressure against his backside, he walks away, hearing the rapid tap of heels against hardwood floor.

  He avoids conflict. The risk is too great: his voice might slip, he’d draw attention he can’t deflect and pounding that fucking cunt into his desk wouldn’t look good on his monthly progress review ter today.

  Besides, it’s just Harry being Harry, as Amber once said, he’s a twat, everybody knows that. Of course, when Harry tried it on with Amber, that night out in Shoreditch, her boyfriend Jacob was there to put him in his pce. But still. Every time it happens—and it’s happened more than once—Alex wonders if the other guys see it. C’mon, hashtag be an ally, MeToo this bullshit, he thinks. Do something, call Harry on his bullshit. But nothing ever happens, and Alex’s face fmes red as he walks away, trembling.

  Once he returns to his desk and sits, the trembling amplifies into shakes that only slowly work themselves out. It isn’t just anger, and it’s more than disgust. Alex focuses on how he feels, tries to articute with precision: humiliated and disrespected; inferior. With no one else about, he squeezes his eyes shut. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes, and he forces his fists into his stomach, hard, to distract from the hollowness left by Harry’s touch. He doesn’t want to cry. It’ll ruin all that effort he put into his makeup this morning. Besides, crying’s unmanly. Back straight, shoulders back. He bloody well needs to toughen up.

  I’m okay, he tells himself, I’ve got this.

  He opens the top drawer a little too quickly, grabs his Graze bar, bangs the drawer shut and tears open that packet and stuffs his mouth with it, swallows it down. It helps, a little. Then he turns to his computer. Pulls up the day’s schedule. There’s an important client coming in, a French hedge-fund princeling with a yacht in Antibes, a family home in Kensington: so, meeting room to be set up accordingly, food ordered in, the correct flowers on dispy, drinks ready, Courvoisier, Scottish Highnds distilled water.

  But there’s also a half-dozen requests for room bookings to coordinate. Mr. Wilson’s flying back from Tokyo tomorrow, so a pickup at Heathrow to arrange. Dry cleaning to collect for Ms. St-Cir. She’s also put him down to sit in on a meeting; the mentorship program won’t start until after the probation period, but she wants him involved. Previously, she’s has him sit there, taking notes and looking pretty. At least, that’s how it feels. There’s a stack of handwritten notes that need transcribing, some comms work, too, nudging a few colleagues who avoid talking to each other. Then there’s that research Sarah wants him to take on, mostly ctrl-C, ctrl-Ving anything he finds online reted to some West African oligarch; she’s prepping a briefing doc and has him doing the grunt work. And of course, the one-to-one with her this afternoon, his one-month progress review. He feels hot, a little sweat gathering in his armpits. He rolls his neck, scratches at his bra line.

  Right. Best get into it, then, especially as he’s doing this against a backdrop of normal reception duties, assisting clients and the steady trickle of visitors to L&C, deliveries, greeting staff as they arrive, smiling, always smiling. Factor in all the little, unnoticed tasks, clearing up after people, turning the decorative vase this way, watering the flowers and facing them that way, keeping carafes topped up, fetching, delivering drinks, taking the occasional call, answering or redirecting emails, sorting the post, scheduling, tidying—and just being there, sat behind his heavy desk, looking pretty, professional, the first thing visitors see, the immacutely made-up face of the firm.

  He draws a mental pathway through the workload, and in this way leaves behind the memory of Harry’s unwanted touch. This, he’s good at, he’s methodical and practiced. He owes this to his father. When he was younger, his studies drove him to distraction. Sleepless nights, nail-chewing, and worse. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work. Academically, he did well, he understood Maths, English, the rest of it. But wanting to do his work perfectly, he often did nothing at all. GCSEs nearly undid him, especially those final two weeks of Easter revision in which he barely ate, didn’t sleep and nearly drove himself mad.

  His father saved him. It’s one of the most vivid memories he has of his dad. It’s a painfully mundane memory. Sitting at the kitchen table. Triple science textbook open, fingers digging into his thighs and staring in despair at something he knows he knows, but it’s too much, he’s got twelve GCSEs, nearly twice as many exams coming and doesn’t know where to start. Every time he grabs onto a formu, it wiggles and slips away. But that night, rather unusually, his father was home from one of his work trips and rather than exhausted or in a bad mood, seemed cheerful, rexed. His father sat with him, flicked through a few pages of the revision guide, and his fingertip rested over a formu, the refractive index.

  What’s this then, son? his father asked, what’s this all about?

  Alex tried expining it, and Morgan shook his head, smiling ruefully. It’s too much, son. Way beyond me. Break it down, so a man like me can understand. What’s this ‘c’? The speed of light? Ah, just a number. And ‘v’, that’s just another number? Pop the one on top of the other, it gives you—ah; okay then, that’s ‘n’, is it? How light changes as it passes through different spaces? Well, that’s obvious enough, isn’t it, everything changes according to where it’s at. Even I get that, he said, and tapped his chest with one finger. This here, this is constant, too. But this—and he waved his hand to take in the kitchen, the house—it changes this—and he indicated the rest of himself. Here, I’m me, I’m your father: and his hand rested heavily on Alex’s shoulder. Out there—he jerked a thumb towards the window, where it was growing dark and wet outside—I’m someone else, I move differently.

  That week, it was his dad who taught him the trick of breaking everything down to manageable chunks. At first, Alex drew out eborate pns that had more to do with procrastination than work. His first study pn was meticulous, rigorous and impossible. The next one, with Morgan’s help, comprehensive but actually doable. Every hour, he switched to a different subject, and within each subject, a different topic. Taken granurly, nearly every subject became less daunting.

  When May rolled around, he aced his GCSE, 8s and 9s across the board. A-levels felt almost easy after that, especially at that posh private school, two more years and three top grades. He had offers from Oxford, Imperial. But Bristol was closer to home. Undergrad was a lot of work, but the same methodical approach earned him to a first, not any special brilliance. He’d be the first to admit that. But his Masters was a different story.

  Still. Even Sophie was taken aback at how he’s thrown himself into his most recent studies. Having left home at nineteen, she’d never seen the intensity of his focus. Makeup, movement, voice and fashion; broad categories broken down to atomic specifics he could practice, one by one. Lips-nails-hair; gaff-eyes-shoes; voice-walk-earrings. Femininity as fragmentation: that’s how Alex experiences his enforced womanhood. At times, he feels himself as such: an amalgamation barely held together by lip gloss and tights.

  Alex loses himself in his work. Occasionally, he’s dragged back to reality. He crosses smooth legs at the thigh and the whisper of tights distracts. A typo, caused by a slip of the nail. Bangs, falling across his eyes, and the sway of earrings when he sweeps the hair back with a delicate pass of the fingers. But otherwise, he stays focused and even enjoys the work. A sort of dull contentment settles over him, and he’s happy. By the time Amber and Ms. St-Cir arrive together on the dot of nine, he’s arranged the pickup from Heathrow, sorted a half-dozen scheduling nightmares, and emailed the caterer.

  The two women glow from their swift walk from Charing Cross. They don’t usually arrive together, chatting like this. Both women look good: St-Cir, stern and a little sexy in a slim skirt suit, patent leather heels, short hair styled back; Amber’s look is a step closer to his own, a hint of schoolgirl, all grown up. The pain in his gaff’s a pointed reminder to focus on something else. He stands to greet them, smoothing down his skirt. He exchanges air kisses with Amber; St. Cir looks him over and nods her approval.

  After that, it’s back to work and the morning fshes by. First week on the job, he shadowed Amber’s receptionist duties. By the end of the week, he ‘manned’ the desk—the irony not lost on him—on his own. Week two, St-Cir started yering in the administrative duties. A full month into the job, he almost yearns for the simplicity of that first week, where the main task was to sit at Amber’s side and smile for arriving clients, take their coat, lead them to one of the meeting rooms, or the partners’ offices upstairs. But he likes grappling with the administrative tasks, especially when it involves writing, twisting words to suit both the client’s and the firm’s desires.

  Ten o’clock, his stomach growls. Amber takes the reception desk, and he takes his break. First, he heads to the loo. The building had originally served as a rich merchant’s home, then some legal offices, and finally the offices of Lockwood and Carmichael, acquired in the early 1800s. He knows this because he’s read the slim ‘History of Lockwood and Carmichael’ book sitting on the reception mantlepiece. Amber ughed at him. Nobody, anywhere, has ever read that book, she told him.

  When plumbing moved indoors, there were no women working at L&C. Consequently, the only female toilet was installed quite te, post-War and in a reluctant, dusty corner of the building. Three floors up, the room had originally been the gentleman’s smoking room. Later, it found new purpose as archival storage filled with yellowed ledgers and faded contracts. A thin plywood wall now separated the old from the new, the smell of mouldering documents lingering just beyond the cramped space that now served as the women’s loo.

  He could just cross the courtyard over to the office block; it has proper modern toilets. But he rarely does. Instead, he clicks up the steps, walking through the winding, creaky upper hallways of the old building, and locks himself into the cramped toilet. It’s got a good view, at least, smudged round window peering out over the winding nes of Holborn. Sitting on the shitter, he can see the back of old buildings, and the green space of gardens.

  With the door locked, he lifts his skirt, drops his tights and gaff, and breathes a sigh of relief that borders on a groan of pain as he releases his cock and balls. Elbows on knees, he holds his head between his hands and takes a long overdue piss. Afterwards, he just sits there, giving his bollocks breathing time.

  Eventually, he reaches into his handbag. It’s kind of gross doing it in the loo, but whatever. He finds his apple, biting into it as he scrolls through his Alex phone. He checks in on friends back home, mainly Luca, and a few guys from St. Oswald’s. He sees summer holiday pics, sweaty nights out, gap year adventures. One guy he knows, Tyrone, a right plonker, stands awkwardly in an ill-fitting suit out front of a pebble-dashed office block in Slough. New job. Tyrone grins, happy against a backdrop of grey skies and traffic. Next, Alex checks in on Beth, sees her standing with her fiancé, Dave, on some beach in France. She looks good. Really good. After that, a few other girls he knows: Jenny, he dated her in sixth form; Darcie, from year 10, he kissed her at a house party at Luca’s house. Then back to Luca. He scrolls through his friend’s timeline for a bit. Then he checks LinkedIn. But there’s not much happening there.

  Ever since Bke came along, his phone’s a mess, and social media has no idea who he is anymore. Instagram feeds him exotic locations, lipstick reviews, gaming updates and glow-up tutorials. TikTok seems to think he’s a closeted bisexual with Daddy issues, but with a thing for tutorials on walking in heels. Adverts pop up for Monsoon dresses, the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and pastel nail kits. But it’s the BookTok feed he finds especially offensive, all mushy romantasy bullshit he’d never touch with a bargepole despite Amber forcing Thorn Season on him.

  Still. He’s gradually dragging his socials back in line with—his real self, he supposes, but what does the algorithm know? He quickly recognized the need for a separate online life. Sophie sorted him out with a second phone, his Bke phone, cheaper, pink and running pay-as-you-go. He turns off the Alex phone, buries it back at the bottom of his bag, and digs out Bke’s phone and taps into her digital self.

  She’s only been around for a couple of weeks, but she’s been pretty damned active in that time. He posts at least once a day. Still sitting on the bog, he takes the opportunity to post a picture of st night’s meal at Margot, a Negroni from the bar afterwards, and a blurry background closeup of his painted nails curled around his half-eaten apple, adding to the curated gallery of images defining a life that doesn’t really exist. Though in some ways, online at least, Bke’s more real than he is, now.

  After that, he can’t postpone reality any further. He tugs the gaff back into pce, then the tights and finally the skirt. Washes his hands, checks himself in the mirror, fixes his makeup. Stares into himself, tucks back his hair. Takes a deep breath. Tells himself, you’ve got this. He stands straight, shoulders back. Sees himself in the tiny bathroom mirror and grins. And tits out.

  He heads downstairs, joins Amber. The client is due to arrive any minute. Amber pronounces his name with a mock French accent. Je suis Julien Bellême, she jokes, drops the accent and ughs. Sounds like ‘bell end,’ she says. Alex giggles behind his fingers. A moment ter he arrives, Julien de Bellême. He exudes wealth—but then, they all do—but he’s younger than Alex expected, only a year or two older than he is, really, short dark hair, fashionably unshaven, slim and handsome in a pale suit that probably costs more than Alex’s university education. His walk is ridiculously confident, and his eyes sparkle with amusement as Alex and Amber rise to meet him. They take his jacket, offer him tea, coffee, water, something stronger?

  And in that initial meeting, though his instinct is to hate the rich bastard, Alex grudgingly admits the guy seems alright. Jerome has an easy, self-deprecating ugh and affable charm. Amber takes the lead, the perfect bance of coquettish professionalism, sycophantic fttery banced against British exceptionalism. She normally tones it down, but with these younger male foreign clients she cranks it to 11, the posh cut-gss received pronunciation, as if to remind the client: yes, you’re stupidly wealthy and I’m just a receptionist, but you’re French, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be English, you poor boy.

  Julien loves it, but Alex is thrown off by how often the young man’s eyes drift his way, the curiously knowing half-smile. Does he suspect? Or is he just checking out the new girl behind the front desk? His stomach twists for fear of being caught out until Amber sweeps the man away, her tinkling ugh leading him to the room set up to the exacting standards the client expects, and Alex breathes a sigh of relief.

  It does mean he alone, however, when Harry swings by. Nominally, the junior analyst’s bringing a stack of work, which he drops on the desk with a ‘babe’ and a ‘sweetheart’. But it’s obvious he’s there to chat up Bke. Alex swallows the urge to tell him to fuck off. Harry’s American, both in temperament and smile: too bold, too bright, unnaturally white. Alex forces a smile, tries to get on with his work. With Harry hovering over him, rambling on about some new movie he’s seen, Him, it’s not easy. Alex hesitates over a formu in the spreadsheet. It’d be a lot easier without some pillock discoursing in his ear. He curses softly under his breath, but Harry hears it, he steps in closer, leans over his shoulder and offers to helps. The man’s hand suddenly rests at his waist, entirely too confidently. Alex tenses, tries to shift out from beneath the other man, murmuring diffidently. Harry’s hand follows. His touch slides along Alex’s fnk. Alex feels his fingers curl into his skin, just beneath the bra line, holding him.

  Ms. St-Cir sweeps into the room. Harry steps back. She raises an eyebrow. He grins. Her expression hardens, lips pursing in a disapproving, dark red line. He tugs at his bzer, turns and saunters off back to the junior offices. They both watch him leave. St-Cir frowns. Alex remains silent.

  After a short pause, she asks about the dry cleaning. He doesn’t offer an excuse, because she’s not interested in excuses. Instead, he tells her he’ll collect it immediately, as soon as Amber can take the desk. When she returns, having left Julien with one of the senior partners, Alex hurries out the door. He’d pnned on doing this at lunch, but he’s happy to take the opportunity to step outside and clear his head. He needs to walk, and fresh air.

  It’s only after he’s left the building that he realises he forgot to swap his shoes back over. He maps out the route to the dry cleaners and back. Ten minutes, in normal shoes. How long in stilettos? He leans against the wall, feels the tingle in his toes and at the back of his ankles that he knows will grow to first a burn, then a sharp itch, then a dull throb punctuated by spikes of pain—a new blister, maybe, another to add to the collection. Alex squeezes his eyes shut against the daylight, blinking back tears. The day’s heat curls around him and sweat clings his shiny blouse to his frame almost instantly. It’s too hot for tights. And the light’s painfully bright, and he forgot his sungsses. He can see them, sitting on the shelf by the entrance. And his comfortable shoes, left beneath the desk. Fucking Harry. That twat has all flustered. He wills himself to walk. But instead, he remains standing, gripping the wall next to him, just breathing. And just like that, the morning’s docile contentment is shattered, and it suddenly feels as though the ground is giving way beneath him, a great gaping dark hole ready to swallow him.

  And he thinks, I can’t do this, it’s just too much. The job’s fine. I like the job. But the rest of it is just too much. And it would be so easy to just—walk away despite the heels, back to Sophie’s apartment, and colpse on the sofa and admit to his sister, yes, you were right, no, I couldn’t hack it. So easy to just pack up, catch the coach to Bristol and—go home.

  But he feels the rough brick beneath his palm, sharp edges digging into his skin. He grinds his palms deeper into the sharp edge of the building, nearly drawing blood. The pain focuses him, and he considers yesterday; he got through yesterday. And the day before that. Today’s just another day. He can survive another day. And if not the whole day—after all, a whole day sts fucking forever—then maybe just the next hour? It’d be a shame to waste all the effort he’s put into the day already. Just one more hour. Then it’s lunch. More or less. And he’s been looking forward to lunch at Kastner’s all week, on Thursday’s menu they do this amazing broccoli and butterbean croustade. Though truth be told, he’d rather have the Cajun pulled pork, and thinking of food, he takes his first step, and the next, dreaming of homemade sausage rolls, and the next, spinach & feta quiche, and another, bang bang chicken.

  Then he’s there, at the dry cleaners. He collects St-Cir’s clothes, a gorgeous navy-blue dress sparkling with Swarovski crystals, and on the way back imagines what she looks like in it, dreams of her perched on the side of her desk, dress slit up to her thigh, watching him through those heavy-framed gsses. It looks good on me, she says in his fantasy, but I bet it'd look even better on you. What? and the daydream’s broken, repced by one in which he’s wearing it, wondering how he’d look like in that slinky blue dress, and he suspects: good. Now his groin throbs with pain, his feet too and he’s walking funny, short, awkward clopping steps in that way of girls who can’t quite handle their footwear, and then he’s back at his offices and breathes a sigh of relief.

  On his return, he finds St-Cir and Amber in the reception room, talking with Julien de Bellême. Alex sidles past them silently, mouths a silent ‘thank you’ to Amber. He sits behind his desk, logs back into work. When he gnces up, Jerome is leaning nonchantly against the wall, hands in his pockets, as the two women speak to him. He winks at Alex over St-Cir’s shoulder. Alex blushes, and the other man grins. The women walk him out of the office.

  Then he finds an envelope on his desk. It’s addressed to ‘Chère Bke’. He opens it. It’s an invitation to a party in a week’s time. The invite promises ‘elegance and decadence’. The address is in Putney, by the river. It’s signed, Julien. Beneath his name, he’s scrawled: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Beneath that, a deftly drawn face with a winking eye.

  Alex’s face feels hot, he takes the letter and slides it into his handbag, into the inner pocket so it sits alongside the photograph of his father. Amber and Ms. St-Cir return, pleased with how the meeting with the client went. Then, they leave him alone at the desk, though with a reminder by his boss of the meeting in the afternoon, and then the performance afterwards. He barely hears her. He’s staring at the door. His hand is still inside his handbag, fingers resting against the envelope. Eventually, he gives his head a shake and returns to work.

  The rest of the morning flies by. Though he’s desperate for the loo—and a little weak from hunger—he ignores both urges and focuses on his work. He fgs a few revisions for Tobi’s deck, makes a start on Ms. St-Cir’s research. This he really enjoys, it reminds him of being at school. He makes an initial pass with AI assistance to track down relevant articles before dismissing the obvious junk, then scans for details relevant to the firm interests. Forty-five minutes of skimming English nguage foreign newspapers, and he’s got something he can start condensing for Ms. St-Cir. He’s so into it, he hardly notices it’s gone twelve until Amber passes by his desk, taps him on the shoulder. He blinks, smiles up at her. Her hand on his shoulder slides down his side and sit easily at his hip as she leans in close, checking his work. Sexy and smart, Amber smiles, and her voice and smell and presence send a little thrill down his spine.

  Then it’s lunch, past lunch really and remembering to swap shoes this time, he heads out into the heat and the light. The streets are busy. He cuts across the Kingsway, walks up Drury Lane, heads towards Seven Dials and then he’s there, and hardly the first, there’s always a queue at Kastner’s. Alex waits patiently, breathing in the scent of cumin and hot oil. There’s a girl his age standing in front of him, cute, hair in a ponytail, simple white dress with decorative ce on the sleeves, bare legs, flicking her screen with one finger. Two ds behind, chatting shit about the football, Liverpool’s chances of another win, van Dijk’s the man—nah, it’s Arsenal’s year—Arsenal? You mad?—the girl in front’s phone rings, she sounds worried as she answers, yes, yes, what is it?—and the man behind the counter: what you after, love? boss?—and the city speaks with a susurrations of steps, burst of passing ughter, a shout from the kitchen, delivery bike roar, the murmur of distant crowds. A man walks past, filming, narrating his walk. Music bres from a passing rickshaw. A bck cab. Tourists, talking animatedly. Two teenage girls, shopping bags and short skirts. Alex tugs at his check mini. The queue shuffles forward. He tilts his head up into the sun, closing his eyes against the light, and smiles.

  He takes his lunch and returns to the office. He finds an empty room, turns on his personal ptop and does a little writing as he eats. In between bursts of typing, he takes a little time to redo his nails, digging out the bottle of varnish he nabbed this morning. Soon, his nails match his lips. Then he resumes his early work for Ms. St-Cir. He works through the rest of his lunch break. He enjoys the research. When he’s got enough done, he takes a short break to head upstairs, another five minutes in which he lets his balls breathe. Then back to the reception desk. He’s barely sat down before Ms St-Cir sweeps through and leads him to one of the conference rooms.

  She sits him in the corner with a ptop. Two partners arrive first from upstairs: Mr. Betrand Sandford, white-haired and heavy set, as well as Quentin Langham, also white-haired, but rail-thin and long-limbed, a Victorian coatrack brought to life. A handful of junior and middle assistants soon fill out the rest of the table. Ms. St-Cir is the only woman in the room – and Alex, of course, and the air feels hot and stifling as he feels the men’s eyes graze on his appearance. St-Cir dims the lights and begins, and Alex takes notes. He’s helped her with this deck: Changing World, Changing Markets: Investing in the New Economy.

  At a brisk pace, she guides the gathered men through the ongoing concerns facing the firm. Diversifying investments, tariff-induced losses, instability. Climate impacts and risk assessments. Navigating DEI tensions between European and American expectations, potential contract and opportunity losses. St-Cir succinctly ys out the challenges ahead. This isn’t the first time Alex watches her work. But it’s the first time he’s observed her out front of a room full of her peers and superiors. At first, he feels nervous for her. But she speaks firmly and with utter conviction, even when referencing a sequence of slides he knows were dropped in st minute. In talking to the two senior partners, her tone subtly shifts. They ask several questions, one or two striking Alex as penetratingly perceptive, and St-Cir concedes the point, admits it may be an area worth exploring more.

  But when any other men in the room pushes her, she ruthlessly exposes their ignorance or refers them back to a previously made point. One particurly obtuse question, she simply refuses to answer, an awkward silence stretching out between her and the man. The man balks first, mutters an apology. The presentation continues as though he hadn’t spoken. The meeting ends, Alex turns up the lights, and there’s a round of gentle appuse. There’s a tedious fifteen minutes of round-table discussion, in which St-Cir subtly directs the conversation in the direction she wants. He watches her control the narrative, namely, the need for the firm to change and adapt.

  There’s some pushback. Nobody argues the need to shift assets out of the US, or to divest clients’ fossil fuel holdings – even their petrochemical oligarchs want out, funding lobby groups and disinformation campaigns to maintain shareholder value even as they dump stock. But Christ, enough of the identity politics, enough of the DEI crap. Who gives a shit what some Gen-Z influencers think or say?

  St-Cir smiles, and her smile is dangerous. She turns to Alex. His heart seizes in his chest. All eyes in the room are now on him. He feels sweat break out on his brow and is suddenly very painfully aware of the fact that he’s a man in makeup, wearing a skirt and heels. Identity? We have an expert on the subject, she tells the table, Bke here wrote her master’s thesis on it. Bke?

  He gapes at her—for a moment, but only a moment. You bitch, he thinks. Springing something like this on him. For a moment, he thinks she’s making a fool of him: look at the silly receptionist, she’s got nothing to say. But—no; he does have something to say. Over the past month, she’s built him up to this, surreptitious conversations touching on his thesis, on branding, on the importance of inclusion, St-Cir’s personal mission to diversify not only the firm’s image, but the firm’s boards. It’s the reason he’s there, after all; it’s the reason Bke exists. He licks his lips nervously as he stands, brushes down his skirt. All eyes are on him, and in those watching male faces he sees expressed: boredom, annoyance, amusement, curiosity, sciviousness, disdain and contempt—yes, especially the st two. Heat crawls down his neck and chest but it’s no longer with embarrassment.

  Mirrors, he begins, facing the full table, in early modern drama were used to signal vanity or vice. Alex knows he’s got about thirty seconds to make a point before the respect St-Cir’s authority compels in the audience runs thin. He speaks quickly, tries to mimic her tone and conviction. In Richard II, he expins, this changes. At the climax of the py, the king calls for a mirror: Give me that gss, and therein will I read. Alex quotes from memory. He shifts his focus towards the senior partners, performs the line to these two old men. He is trying to summarise the final year of higher education and a month of feminine performance and a limited understanding of Lockwood and Carmichael into an impromptu presentation. Dimly conceived ideas swirl through him, and he feels on the cusp of grasping something he failed to understand in the writing of his dissertation, something important.

  For the first time on stage, he continues, identity was conceived as both socially defined externality, and emergent interiority. Richard is both King and Man. Both are performance. Alex mimes throwing a mirror to the floor. The king throws the mirror to the floor to shatter “in a hundred shivers.” The rejected identity reveals a multiplicity of lost possibilities. In the py, the medieval concept of social definition is abandoned in favour of self-conception; the early modern self is the performed self. Hamlet’s antic disposition. Macbeth’s borrowed robes. Iago—and Vio, he adds with a smile, especially Vio.

  There’s some restless movement. Nobody came for a lecture on Shakespeare. Alex licks his lips, swallows against a dry throat, and forges on. What ‘self’ is L&C performing? he asks. He’s rushing it and knows it doesn’t quite make sense and elides all kinds of subtleties, but now he sees a sparkle of amusement in the old men’s eyes and that’s something. He feels sweat trickle down his back, and his cheeks glow beneath his makeup, but he fshes a glossy smile and continues. L&C is at a strategic crossroads. Richard’s abdication mirrors L&C’s own existential moment. The world is changing, and old robes of fossil fuel wealth and white-male power no longer command the same respect. This is not a reflection on the firm, Alex is keen to point out, the old ways were systemic, they worked, they worked for centuries. But just as the king believed in divine right, L&C believes in their immutable market dominance through command of old power structures. But times change. The old king couldn’t adapt, identity wrapped up in an inflexible conception of himself as King. Consequently, that identity shattered and he lost his throne. But the firm’s identity remains malleable. Shatter the mirror; rebrand: if the firm’s reflection doesn’t work, break it. Even the performance of breaking the old identity makes for good optics, it’s a marketable narrative.

  There’s a heavy silence when he stops. He’s trembling slightly. A chair creaks as Mr. Sandford leans forward. He speaks over interced fingers and his voice is ponderous but unexpectedly kind. He asks whether she’d use L&C to manage her money. The question is unexpected. Alex ughs, a little too loudly. On my wages? Mr. Sandford ughs as well. If you had the money? Alex shrugs. No.

  He’s shaking after he leaves the room but also giddy. He needs to talk to someone about what just happened. But when he relieves Amber at the front desk, she mouths an apology and rushes off on her break, girl problems, she says, talk ter. For a moment, he’s tempted to call his sister. But he doesn’t Instead, left alone, he recalls his short lecture. He shakes his head in disbelief. What the fuck was he on about? Now dread creeps into his belly, and he feels sick. The giddiness disappears and, in its wake, painful emptiness. He’s got his one-month review coming up in about fifteen minutes. An hour ago, he wasn’t worried. Now, he feels he fucked it up. Why did St-Cir put him in that position? Shit. She wants to get rid of him, that’s why. It’s not fair. He’s worked so hard, literally re-invented himself for a job he never wanted.

  Alex stands, steps over to the mirror. Bke in reflection looks back at him. He studies himself in detail. If St-Cir dismisses him, that’s a good thing, right? He can tell his sister he did his best. She’ll give him another chance to find a job. She has to. He tugs at the hem of his skirt, smooths down his top. Meanwhile, no more of this shit: no more makeup, no more tights; that’s a good thing.

  But he doesn’t want another job. He likes this job, he’s good at this job. Yeah, sure, some parts of it suck. Getting up at 5.30am, for one. Shaving his legs. And dressing like a woman. Christ, the effort. But even that’s getting easier, he’s getter better at it—no, he’s good at some of it, now, he looks in the mirror and sees the skill with which he presents himself and feels, for the first time, a flutter of not just pride, but actual pleasure at what he’s achieved in such a short time. Yeah, he compins—with good reason, the whole situation is insane—but some of it’s not that bad, really, what’s another two months?

  And—he enjoys the work, some parts more than others. He’d rather be writing decks than delivering tea to the guys, but fuck, even that, it’s not so bad, really. Other than Harry. But Harry’s a twat, everybody knows that. And in that meeting room, there was a moment when he felt—excited? and on the cusp of teasing out something real and concrete from the academic abstraction of literary studies, as though all those years of interpreting other peoples’ narratives might coalesce under pressure into an understanding of his own story.

  He sighs. Desperate sadness settles over his shoulders. After that performance in the meeting room, it doesn’t matter what he wants. Sarah’s going to sack him. He just knows it, and the past month will have been an utter waste. There won’t be a second chance. By next week, he’ll be on a coach heading home. In some imagined future family get-together, he can imagine sitting at the dinner table with his sister—the successful one—mocking his attempts at holding down a job in London. By dressing as woman! What a fucking farce.

  He returns to his desk and sits. He retrieves his little makeup bag. His face needs fixing in anticipation of the meeting with Sarah. The stress and sweat of his short talk did a right job on his makeup. He blots the shine of sweat from his brow, the bridge of his nose. Dusts his face. Dabs a little concealer beneath the eyes. His lips are dry; only now he realised how he’s gnawed his lower lip, licked colour away with anxiety. He reapplies lipstick, then gloss. He’s procrastinating, escaping into the ritual of self-care to avoid thinking about what’s coming. A half-dozen different points he could’ve made comes to him as he brushes his brows into shape. Christ. What was he thinking, a receptionist with a month’s experience lecturing a room of experts?

  When Amber returns, she smiles and compliments him on how good he looks. Alex forces a smile as he surrenders the desk. She smooths down her pleated skirt and sits with effortless grace. He realizes then how ludicrous his efforts have been: no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never move like that, never present that degree of natural femininity. Not that he wants to. But still. There’s only two more months to go. This is a blessing in disguise, crashing out like this. He can bow out with some dignity, and leave without the humiliation of being caught. Yet he feels tears sting the corners of his eyes. He grips the side of the desk, unwilling to let go. He stares at the ceiling, blinks and tells himself to man up. He’s not going to cry, for fuck’s sake. Stand straight, shoulders—

  Amber’s hand on his arm brings him back. She’s concerned, asks what’s wrong. He forces a watery smile, shrugs. She nods sympathetically, without knowing the cause of his distress. But she’s there for him, draws him into a light hug. It nearly pushes him over the edge. But when she lets go, he feels better. We’ve all been there, Amber expins, and he realised that ‘we’ means ‘women’ and this does something funny to his stomach.

  Then Sarah St-Cir arrives and asks him for join her in her office for his monthly review.

  It’s te by the time he returns home, gone ten-thirty. The door closes loudly behind him. He kicks off his shoes and half-sighs with relief, half-winces in pain. His sister welcomes him home. He finds her lounging on the sofa, white wine and Britain’s Got Talent on the telly. Normally, first thing he does coming through the door is yank off the bra and free himself from shapewear. Most nights, he can’t get out of his women’s clothes fast enough. Tonight, more than a little drunk, he instead joins his sister on the sofa.

  His sister eyes him specutively, a hint of a smile pying across her lips.

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  And he wants to tell her: great. And he wants to tell her: awful. The fullness of a single day sits at the tip of his tongue, and he yearns to share the complexity of every experience. How he woke up, did his makeup and dressed. The walk along the canal and the ride on the Tube, the woman and the coffee enjoyed afterwards. His enjoyment of the work, the daily challenges, his colleagues. A meeting with a French aristocrat and an invitation sitting in his handbag.

  And he wants to expin how he had to work te, and tell her about the celebratory drinks, afterwards. The way Amber did his makeup in the bathroom before they went out and his painful arousal at her proximity, the smell of her hair and the confident stroke of the pencil as she did his eyes. Against his better judgment, and at her urging, wearing his heels out to the bar. And the fun he had there. How he promised to be sensible with the drinking: only two, he insisted, arriving at the narrow little pub at Borough Market, but two became four, though he only bought the one, various men the others.

  Mostly, he wants to share with his sister how his meeting with Ms. St-Cir went.

  But—it’s too much, how can any brother possibly share so much with his sister?

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  He answers with a shrug, “Fine,” he says. “Just another day.”

  apter Four: Just Another DayIt’s only just gone eight, but Alex isn’t the first to arrive.

  Moving with the familiarity of routine, he drops his ptop and handbag by the reception desk and heads straight to the tiny kitchenette. Fluorescent lights flicker to life as he fills and puts the kettle on, measures out coffee grounds into the coffee maker. He grabs three mugs and lines them up on the counter, opens the fridge, pulls out the milk, nudges the door shut with his bum, spoons sugar into one of the mugs. Leaving the kettle to boil, the coffee maker to brew, he returns to the reception desk. He sits, stifling a groan as the gaff pinches. The work ptop boots up with a low whirl. He logs in, nails fshing across the keyboard. First week with these nails, his typing speed dropped dramatically. Now, he's almost back to full speed. It’s not like they’re that long. But still. An adjustment.

  He removes his fts and tucks them to one side. Reaching beneath the desk, he retrieves a pair of shoes. They’re bck, patent leather Kurt Geiger pumps with a pointed toe and detailed eagle head. Little ebony crystals sparkle in the eyes. He was totally against wearing heels, or at least anything over an inch and blocky. But Ms. St- Cir dropped a few disapproving comments and Amber urged him, too: you’ve got such sexy legs, she told him, shame not to show them off. He mentioned it after work, and Sophie took him shopping that same night. The shoes were one-fifty, discounted to forty, and fit—a find like that, his sister insisted with a grin, you were destined to wear these shoes.

  But Christ, the three-and-a-half-inch stiletto heel sits very firmly at the limit of what he can handle, even after weeks of practice. He wiggles his toes, feels a twinge of anticipatory discomfort. He slips his feet into one, then the other and stands, feeling the immediate shift in his posture, the pinch in the toes and pressure at the balls of his feet. A few steps, and he finds his stride. He can survive them for the working day, just. After all, he spends most of it sitting down.

  There’s a tall, narrow mirror between two leather sofas in the reception area, and just as he does every morning, he examines his appearance in it, twisting to see himself in profile, smoothing down a few wrinkles, tucking a stray hair back into pce. A diffuse nausea settles in his belly, a sense of guilt. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation. Shoes are just another part of the costume. Besides, he looks good in them. The shoes are undeniably hot. Alex just wishes he wasn’t the one wearing them.

  This early, the office air conditioner hasn’t kicked in yet. He notes the humid sheen across his upper lip and where his foundation’s started to slip. Blot, powder, lipstick refresh and then the short walk down the dark-panelled corridor, out the rear door. It leads to a tiny courtyard. The courtyard is formed by the back-ends of the surrounding buildings, with grimy windows looking out over the small space, a few holding circur vents zily turning. A pair of pstic chairs for smokers and a potted pnt, scraggly weeds poking through uneven paving stones, and a drain capturing runoff. The door opposite leads into the rear entrance of a narrow 1960s office block where most of the real work happens. Lockwood and Carmichael present old-London style out front, aged men holding court in offices heavy with wood wax and age. But most of the young staff, including the junior associates, work out back.

  The air here barely stirs. Out of direct sunlight, the shaded space feels cool against his thighs and arms. The sky above cuts a silhouette of brilliant blue. Alex stands there, blinking into the bright sky. He feels as though he could stand there forever.

  Instead, he forces himself forward and soon stands outside the junior offices. Oluwatobi’s there, dark face glowing with soft monitor blue, and Mo. And Harry, too. Alex’s stomach twists itself in a knot.

  These three are always in early. Oluwatobi’s working on an energy merger in Dubai for a client offloading his third-generation company before retirement. Mo’s poring over fund performance metrics, tweaking a client’s quarterly report to make a tariff-induced ftline look like a gentle incline. And Harry has his nose buried in a cap table. He knows what they’re working on because he’s helped all three these past few weeks. Alex’s proofed Tobi’s deck, and it’s his Orwellian spin on Mo’s quarterly losses report creating opportunity events.

  Tobi fshes a smile at Alex, and Mo waves without looking away from his screen. Harry grunts, gnces up from his computer, then double takes. He licks his lips, smiles in a way that makes Alex’s skin crawl, the way those eyes track over him, sliding slowly down his body, lingering over his thighs, then calves, heels. Alex suppresses a shudder, forces a bright smile and greets the boys: coffee, tea? They ask for the usual. He feels their eyes follow him out the room.

  On paper, they’re not that different: junior associates recently harvested from LSE or Oxbridge, no older than Alex. But he’s the one wearing the check mini. He heads back to the kitchenette, pours out coffee for Harry, tea for the other two, slips the three drinks onto a tray. Strictly speaking, this isn’t his responsibility, it’s not in the job description. He walks slowly and carefully, drinks banced on the tray. Curls of steam rise from the tea as he crosses the courtyard. He’s spilled a drink before, heel wobble in a distracted moment. Harry shouted at him, patting down the stain on his suit, called him names. Alex nearly cried, nearly hit him.

  But no problem this morning, he’s had lots of practice. At the door, he pauses for a moment, watching these three guys at work. Harry’s blue suit, Mo’s tangle of dark hair, Tobi’s heavy watch. A heavy feeling pulls at him, and he wants nothing more than to follow it down, through the floor, to simply thaw and melt away, and disappear. Alex gnaws on his lip, and the tray grows heavy.

  Tobi gnces up, grins and calls him a godsend. Mo breaks away from the screen long enough to smile gratefully. Alex brings the men their drinks. Mo’s looking more stressed than usual this morning, eyes red as though he’s already been at it for a couple of hours, skin pale, beard unkempt as though he’s slept here. Most likely, he did, there’s a cot in the back room. Harry holds eye contact this time, watches as Alex approaches and pces the coffee in front of him, says thanks sweetheart and when Alex turns away, he knows what’s coming, it’s not the first time. He barely suppresses the flinch as the other man pats his bum but stiffens nonetheless and freezes involuntarily. Harry’s touch lengthens into a lingering fondle. Alex finally unlocks, limbs moving again. Ignoring the unwanted touch but still feeling that masculine pressure against his backside, he walks away, hearing the rapid tap of heels against hardwood floor.

  He avoids conflict. The risk is too great: his voice might slip, he’d draw attention he can’t deflect and pounding that fucking cunt into his desk wouldn’t look good on his monthly progress review ter today.

  Besides, it’s just Harry being Harry, as Amber once said, he’s a twat, everybody knows that. Of course, when Harry tried it on with Amber, that night out in Shoreditch, her boyfriend Jacob was there to put him in his pce. But still. Every time it happens—and it’s happened more than once—Alex wonders if the other guys see it. C’mon, hashtag be an ally, MeToo this bullshit, he thinks. Do something, call Harry on his bullshit. But nothing ever happens, and Alex’s face fmes red as he walks away, trembling.

  Once he returns to his desk and sits, the trembling amplifies into shakes that only slowly work themselves out. It isn’t just anger, and it’s more than disgust. Alex focuses on how he feels, tries to articute with precision: humiliated and disrespected; inferior. With no one else about, he squeezes his eyes shut. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes, and he forces his fists into his stomach, hard, to distract from the hollowness left by Harry’s touch. He doesn’t want to cry. It’ll ruin all that effort he put into his makeup this morning. Besides, crying’s unmanly. Back straight, shoulders back. He bloody well needs to toughen up.

  I’m okay, he tells himself, I’ve got this.

  He opens the top drawer a little too quickly, grabs his Graze bar, bangs the drawer shut and tears open that packet and stuffs his mouth with it, swallows it down. It helps, a little. Then he turns to his computer. Pulls up the day’s schedule. There’s an important client coming in, a French hedge-fund princeling with a yacht in Antibes, a family home in Kensington: so, meeting room to be set up accordingly, food ordered in, the correct flowers on dispy, drinks ready, Courvoisier, Scottish Highnds distilled water.

  But there’s also a half-dozen requests for room bookings to coordinate. Mr. Wilson’s flying back from Tokyo tomorrow, so a pickup at Heathrow to arrange. Dry cleaning to collect for Ms. St-Cir. She’s also put him down to sit in on a meeting; the mentorship program won’t start until after the probation period, but she wants him involved. Previously, she’s has him sit there, taking notes and looking pretty. At least, that’s how it feels. There’s a stack of handwritten notes that need transcribing, some comms work, too, nudging a few colleagues who avoid talking to each other. Then there’s that research Sarah wants him to take on, mostly ctrl-C, ctrl-Ving anything he finds online reted to some West African oligarch; she’s prepping a briefing doc and has him doing the grunt work. And of course, the one-to-one with her this afternoon, his one-month progress review. He feels hot, a little sweat gathering in his armpits. He rolls his neck, scratches at his bra line.

  Right. Best get into it, then, especially as he’s doing this against a backdrop of normal reception duties, assisting clients and the steady trickle of visitors to L&C, deliveries, greeting staff as they arrive, smiling, always smiling. Factor in all the little, unnoticed tasks, clearing up after people, turning the decorative vase this way, watering the flowers and facing them that way, keeping carafes topped up, fetching, delivering drinks, taking the occasional call, answering or redirecting emails, sorting the post, scheduling, tidying—and just being there, sat behind his heavy desk, looking pretty, professional, the first thing visitors see, the immacutely made-up face of the firm.

  He draws a mental pathway through the workload, and in this way leaves behind the memory of Harry’s unwanted touch. This, he’s good at, he’s methodical and practiced. He owes this to his father. When he was younger, his studies drove him to distraction. Sleepless nights, nail-chewing, and worse. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work. Academically, he did well, he understood Maths, English, the rest of it. But wanting to do his work perfectly, he often did nothing at all. GCSEs nearly undid him, especially those final two weeks of Easter revision in which he barely ate, didn’t sleep and nearly drove himself mad.

  His father saved him. It’s one of the most vivid memories he has of his dad. It’s a painfully mundane memory. Sitting at the kitchen table. Triple science textbook open, fingers digging into his thighs and staring in despair at something he knows he knows, but it’s too much, he’s got twelve GCSEs, nearly twice as many exams coming and doesn’t know where to start. Every time he grabs onto a formu, it wiggles and slips away. But that night, rather unusually, his father was home from one of his work trips and rather than exhausted or in a bad mood, seemed cheerful, rexed. His father sat with him, flicked through a few pages of the revision guide, and his fingertip rested over a formu, the refractive index.

  What’s this then, son? his father asked, what’s this all about?

  Alex tried expining it, and Morgan shook his head, smiling ruefully. It’s too much, son. Way beyond me. Break it down, so a man like me can understand. What’s this ‘c’? The speed of light? Ah, just a number. And ‘v’, that’s just another number? Pop the one on top of the other, it gives you—ah; okay then, that’s ‘n’, is it? How light changes as it passes through different spaces? Well, that’s obvious enough, isn’t it, everything changes according to where it’s at. Even I get that, he said, and tapped his chest with one finger. This here, this is constant, too. But this—and he waved his hand to take in the kitchen, the house—it changes this—and he indicated the rest of himself. Here, I’m me, I’m your father: and his hand rested heavily on Alex’s shoulder. Out there—he jerked a thumb towards the window, where it was growing dark and wet outside—I’m someone else, I move differently.

  That week, it was his dad who taught him the trick of breaking everything down to manageable chunks. At first, Alex drew out eborate pns that had more to do with procrastination than work. His first study pn was meticulous, rigorous and impossible. The next one, with Morgan’s help, comprehensive but actually doable. Every hour, he switched to a different subject, and within each subject, a different topic. Taken granurly, nearly every subject became less daunting.

  When May rolled around, he aced his GCSE, 8s and 9s across the board. A-levels felt almost easy after that, especially at that posh private school, two more years and three top grades. He had offers from Oxford, Imperial. But Bristol was closer to home. Undergrad was a lot of work, but the same methodical approach earned him to a first, not any special brilliance. He’d be the first to admit that. But his Masters was a different story.

  Still. Even Sophie was taken aback at how he’s thrown himself into his most recent studies. Having left home at nineteen, she’d never seen the intensity of his focus. Makeup, movement, voice and fashion; broad categories broken down to atomic specifics he could practice, one by one. Lips-nails-hair; gaff-eyes-shoes; voice-walk-earrings. Femininity as fragmentation: that’s how Alex experiences his enforced womanhood. At times, he feels himself as such: an amalgamation barely held together by lip gloss and tights.

  Alex loses himself in his work. Occasionally, he’s dragged back to reality. He crosses smooth legs at the thigh and the whisper of tights distracts. A typo, caused by a slip of the nail. Bangs, falling across his eyes, and the sway of earrings when he sweeps the hair back with a delicate pass of the fingers. But otherwise, he stays focused and even enjoys the work. A sort of dull contentment settles over him, and he’s happy. By the time Amber and Ms. St-Cir arrive together on the dot of nine, he’s arranged the pickup from Heathrow, sorted a half-dozen scheduling nightmares, and emailed the caterer.

  The two women glow from their swift walk from Charing Cross. They don’t usually arrive together, chatting like this. Both women look good: St-Cir, stern and a little sexy in a slim skirt suit, patent leather heels, short hair styled back; Amber’s look is a step closer to his own, a hint of schoolgirl, all grown up. The pain in his gaff’s a pointed reminder to focus on something else. He stands to greet them, smoothing down his skirt. He exchanges air kisses with Amber; St. Cir looks him over and nods her approval.

  After that, it’s back to work and the morning fshes by. First week on the job, he shadowed Amber’s receptionist duties. By the end of the week, he ‘manned’ the desk—the irony not lost on him—on his own. Week two, St-Cir started yering in the administrative duties. A full month into the job, he almost yearns for the simplicity of that first week, where the main task was to sit at Amber’s side and smile for arriving clients, take their coat, lead them to one of the meeting rooms, or the partners’ offices upstairs. But he likes grappling with the administrative tasks, especially when it involves writing, twisting words to suit both the client’s and the firm’s desires.

  Ten o’clock, his stomach growls. Amber takes the reception desk, and he takes his break. First, he heads to the loo. The building had originally served as a rich merchant’s home, then some legal offices, and finally the offices of Lockwood and Carmichael, acquired in the early 1800s. He knows this because he’s read the slim ‘History of Lockwood and Carmichael’ book sitting on the reception mantlepiece. Amber ughed at him. Nobody, anywhere, has ever read that book, she told him.

  When plumbing moved indoors, there were no women working at L&C. Consequently, the only female toilet was installed quite te, post-War and in a reluctant, dusty corner of the building. Three floors up, the room had originally been the gentleman’s smoking room. Later, it found new purpose as archival storage filled with yellowed ledgers and faded contracts. A thin plywood wall now separated the old from the new, the smell of mouldering documents lingering just beyond the cramped space that now served as the women’s loo.

  He could just cross the courtyard over to the office block; it has proper modern toilets. But he rarely does. Instead, he clicks up the steps, walking through the winding, creaky upper hallways of the old building, and locks himself into the cramped toilet. It’s got a good view, at least, smudged round window peering out over the winding nes of Holborn. Sitting on the shitter, he can see the back of old buildings, and the green space of gardens.

  With the door locked, he lifts his skirt, drops his tights and gaff, and breathes a sigh of relief that borders on a groan of pain as he releases his cock and balls. Elbows on knees, he holds his head between his hands and takes a long overdue piss. Afterwards, he just sits there, giving his bollocks breathing time.

  Eventually, he reaches into his handbag. It’s kind of gross doing it in the loo, but whatever. He finds his apple, biting into it as he scrolls through his Alex phone. He checks in on friends back home, mainly Luca, and a few guys from St. Oswald’s. He sees summer holiday pics, sweaty nights out, gap year adventures. One guy he knows, Tyrone, a right plonker, stands awkwardly in an ill-fitting suit out front of a pebble-dashed office block in Slough. New job. Tyrone grins, happy against a backdrop of grey skies and traffic. Next, Alex checks in on Beth, sees her standing with her fiancé, Dave, on some beach in France. She looks good. Really good. After that, a few other girls he knows: Jenny, he dated her in sixth form; Darcie, from year 10, he kissed her at a house party at Luca’s house. Then back to Luca. He scrolls through his friend’s timeline for a bit. Then he checks LinkedIn. But there’s not much happening there.

  Ever since Bke came along, his phone’s a mess, and social media has no idea who he is anymore. Instagram feeds him exotic locations, lipstick reviews, gaming updates and glow-up tutorials. TikTok seems to think he’s a closeted bisexual with Daddy issues, but with a thing for tutorials on walking in heels. Adverts pop up for Monsoon dresses, the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and pastel nail kits. But it’s the BookTok feed he finds especially offensive, all mushy romantasy bullshit he’d never touch with a bargepole despite Amber forcing Thorn Season on him.

  Still. He’s gradually dragging his socials back in line with—his real self, he supposes, but what does the algorithm know? He quickly recognized the need for a separate online life. Sophie sorted him out with a second phone, his Bke phone, cheaper, pink and running pay-as-you-go. He turns off the Alex phone, buries it back at the bottom of his bag, and digs out Bke’s phone and taps into her digital self.

  She’s only been around for a couple of weeks, but she’s been pretty damned active in that time. He posts at least once a day. Still sitting on the bog, he takes the opportunity to post a picture of st night’s meal at Margot, a Negroni from the bar afterwards, and a blurry background closeup of his painted nails curled around his half-eaten apple, adding to the curated gallery of images defining a life that doesn’t really exist. Though in some ways, online at least, Bke’s more real than he is, now.

  After that, he can’t postpone reality any further. He tugs the gaff back into pce, then the tights and finally the skirt. Washes his hands, checks himself in the mirror, fixes his makeup. Stares into himself, tucks back his hair. Takes a deep breath. Tells himself, you’ve got this. He stands straight, shoulders back. Sees himself in the tiny bathroom mirror and grins. And tits out.

  He heads downstairs, joins Amber. The client is due to arrive any minute. Amber pronounces his name with a mock French accent. Je suis Julien Bellême, she jokes, drops the accent and ughs. Sounds like ‘bell end,’ she says. Alex giggles behind his fingers. A moment ter he arrives, Julien de Bellême. He exudes wealth—but then, they all do—but he’s younger than Alex expected, only a year or two older than he is, really, short dark hair, fashionably unshaven, slim and handsome in a pale suit that probably costs more than Alex’s university education. His walk is ridiculously confident, and his eyes sparkle with amusement as Alex and Amber rise to meet him. They take his jacket, offer him tea, coffee, water, something stronger?

  And in that initial meeting, though his instinct is to hate the rich bastard, Alex grudgingly admits the guy seems alright. Jerome has an easy, self-deprecating ugh and affable charm. Amber takes the lead, the perfect bance of coquettish professionalism, sycophantic fttery banced against British exceptionalism. She normally tones it down, but with these younger male foreign clients she cranks it to 11, the posh cut-gss received pronunciation, as if to remind the client: yes, you’re stupidly wealthy and I’m just a receptionist, but you’re French, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be English, you poor boy.

  Julien loves it, but Alex is thrown off by how often the young man’s eyes drift his way, the curiously knowing half-smile. Does he suspect? Or is he just checking out the new girl behind the front desk? His stomach twists for fear of being caught out until Amber sweeps the man away, her tinkling ugh leading him to the room set up to the exacting standards the client expects, and Alex breathes a sigh of relief.

  It does mean he alone, however, when Harry swings by. Nominally, the junior analyst’s bringing a stack of work, which he drops on the desk with a ‘babe’ and a ‘sweetheart’. But it’s obvious he’s there to chat up Bke. Alex swallows the urge to tell him to fuck off. Harry’s American, both in temperament and smile: too bold, too bright, unnaturally white. Alex forces a smile, tries to get on with his work. With Harry hovering over him, rambling on about some new movie he’s seen, Him, it’s not easy. Alex hesitates over a formu in the spreadsheet. It’d be a lot easier without some pillock discoursing in his ear. He curses softly under his breath, but Harry hears it, he steps in closer, leans over his shoulder and offers to helps. The man’s hand suddenly rests at his waist, entirely too confidently. Alex tenses, tries to shift out from beneath the other man, murmuring diffidently. Harry’s hand follows. His touch slides along Alex’s fnk. Alex feels his fingers curl into his skin, just beneath the bra line, holding him.

  Ms. St-Cir sweeps into the room. Harry steps back. She raises an eyebrow. He grins. Her expression hardens, lips pursing in a disapproving, dark red line. He tugs at his bzer, turns and saunters off back to the junior offices. They both watch him leave. St-Cir frowns. Alex remains silent.

  After a short pause, she asks about the dry cleaning. He doesn’t offer an excuse, because she’s not interested in excuses. Instead, he tells her he’ll collect it immediately, as soon as Amber can take the desk. When she returns, having left Julien with one of the senior partners, Alex hurries out the door. He’d pnned on doing this at lunch, but he’s happy to take the opportunity to step outside and clear his head. He needs to walk, and fresh air.

  It’s only after he’s left the building that he realises he forgot to swap his shoes back over. He maps out the route to the dry cleaners and back. Ten minutes, in normal shoes. How long in stilettos? He leans against the wall, feels the tingle in his toes and at the back of his ankles that he knows will grow to first a burn, then a sharp itch, then a dull throb punctuated by spikes of pain—a new blister, maybe, another to add to the collection. Alex squeezes his eyes shut against the daylight, blinking back tears. The day’s heat curls around him and sweat clings his shiny blouse to his frame almost instantly. It’s too hot for tights. And the light’s painfully bright, and he forgot his sungsses. He can see them, sitting on the shelf by the entrance. And his comfortable shoes, left beneath the desk. Fucking Harry. That twat has all flustered. He wills himself to walk. But instead, he remains standing, gripping the wall next to him, just breathing. And just like that, the morning’s docile contentment is shattered, and it suddenly feels as though the ground is giving way beneath him, a great gaping dark hole ready to swallow him.

  And he thinks, I can’t do this, it’s just too much. The job’s fine. I like the job. But the rest of it is just too much. And it would be so easy to just—walk away despite the heels, back to Sophie’s apartment, and colpse on the sofa and admit to his sister, yes, you were right, no, I couldn’t hack it. So easy to just pack up, catch the coach to Bristol and—go home.

  But he feels the rough brick beneath his palm, sharp edges digging into his skin. He grinds his palms deeper into the sharp edge of the building, nearly drawing blood. The pain focuses him, and he considers yesterday; he got through yesterday. And the day before that. Today’s just another day. He can survive another day. And if not the whole day—after all, a whole day sts fucking forever—then maybe just the next hour? It’d be a shame to waste all the effort he’s put into the day already. Just one more hour. Then it’s lunch. More or less. And he’s been looking forward to lunch at Kastner’s all week, on Thursday’s menu they do this amazing broccoli and butterbean croustade. Though truth be told, he’d rather have the Cajun pulled pork, and thinking of food, he takes his first step, and the next, dreaming of homemade sausage rolls, and the next, spinach & feta quiche, and another, bang bang chicken.

  Then he’s there, at the dry cleaners. He collects St-Cir’s clothes, a gorgeous navy-blue dress sparkling with Swarovski crystals, and on the way back imagines what she looks like in it, dreams of her perched on the side of her desk, dress slit up to her thigh, watching him through those heavy-framed gsses. It looks good on me, she says in his fantasy, but I bet it'd look even better on you. What? and the daydream’s broken, repced by one in which he’s wearing it, wondering how he’d look like in that slinky blue dress, and he suspects: good. Now his groin throbs with pain, his feet too and he’s walking funny, short, awkward clopping steps in that way of girls who can’t quite handle their footwear, and then he’s back at his offices and breathes a sigh of relief.

  On his return, he finds St-Cir and Amber in the reception room, talking with Julien de Bellême. Alex sidles past them silently, mouths a silent ‘thank you’ to Amber. He sits behind his desk, logs back into work. When he gnces up, Jerome is leaning nonchantly against the wall, hands in his pockets, as the two women speak to him. He winks at Alex over St-Cir’s shoulder. Alex blushes, and the other man grins. The women walk him out of the office.

  Then he finds an envelope on his desk. It’s addressed to ‘Chère Bke’. He opens it. It’s an invitation to a party in a week’s time. The invite promises ‘elegance and decadence’. The address is in Putney, by the river. It’s signed, Julien. Beneath his name, he’s scrawled: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Beneath that, a deftly drawn face with a winking eye.

  Alex’s face feels hot, he takes the letter and slides it into his handbag, into the inner pocket so it sits alongside the photograph of his father. Amber and Ms. St-Cir return, pleased with how the meeting with the client went. Then, they leave him alone at the desk, though with a reminder by his boss of the meeting in the afternoon, and then the performance afterwards. He barely hears her. He’s staring at the door. His hand is still inside his handbag, fingers resting against the envelope. Eventually, he gives his head a shake and returns to work.

  The rest of the morning flies by. Though he’s desperate for the loo—and a little weak from hunger—he ignores both urges and focuses on his work. He fgs a few revisions for Tobi’s deck, makes a start on Ms. St-Cir’s research. This he really enjoys, it reminds him of being at school. He makes an initial pass with AI assistance to track down relevant articles before dismissing the obvious junk, then scans for details relevant to the firm interests. Forty-five minutes of skimming English nguage foreign newspapers, and he’s got something he can start condensing for Ms. St-Cir. He’s so into it, he hardly notices it’s gone twelve until Amber passes by his desk, taps him on the shoulder. He blinks, smiles up at her. Her hand on his shoulder slides down his side and sit easily at his hip as she leans in close, checking his work. Sexy and smart, Amber smiles, and her voice and smell and presence send a little thrill down his spine.

  Then it’s lunch, past lunch really and remembering to swap shoes this time, he heads out into the heat and the light. The streets are busy. He cuts across the Kingsway, walks up Drury Lane, heads towards Seven Dials and then he’s there, and hardly the first, there’s always a queue at Kastner’s. Alex waits patiently, breathing in the scent of cumin and hot oil. There’s a girl his age standing in front of him, cute, hair in a ponytail, simple white dress with decorative ce on the sleeves, bare legs, flicking her screen with one finger. Two ds behind, chatting shit about the football, Liverpool’s chances of another win, van Dijk’s the man—nah, it’s Arsenal’s year—Arsenal? You mad?—the girl in front’s phone rings, she sounds worried as she answers, yes, yes, what is it?—and the man behind the counter: what you after, love? boss?—and the city speaks with a susurrations of steps, burst of passing ughter, a shout from the kitchen, delivery bike roar, the murmur of distant crowds. A man walks past, filming, narrating his walk. Music bres from a passing rickshaw. A bck cab. Tourists, talking animatedly. Two teenage girls, shopping bags and short skirts. Alex tugs at his check mini. The queue shuffles forward. He tilts his head up into the sun, closing his eyes against the light, and smiles.

  He takes his lunch and returns to the office. He finds an empty room, turns on his personal ptop and does a little writing as he eats. In between bursts of typing, he takes a little time to redo his nails, digging out the bottle of varnish he nabbed this morning. Soon, his nails match his lips. Then he resumes his early work for Ms. St-Cir. He works through the rest of his lunch break. He enjoys the research. When he’s got enough done, he takes a short break to head upstairs, another five minutes in which he lets his balls breathe. Then back to the reception desk. He’s barely sat down before Ms St-Cir sweeps through and leads him to one of the conference rooms.

  She sits him in the corner with a ptop. Two partners arrive first from upstairs: Mr. Betrand Sandford, white-haired and heavy set, as well as Quentin Langham, also white-haired, but rail-thin and long-limbed, a Victorian coatrack brought to life. A handful of junior and middle assistants soon fill out the rest of the table. Ms. St-Cir is the only woman in the room – and Alex, of course, and the air feels hot and stifling as he feels the men’s eyes graze on his appearance. St-Cir dims the lights and begins, and Alex takes notes. He’s helped her with this deck: Changing World, Changing Markets: Investing in the New Economy.

  At a brisk pace, she guides the gathered men through the ongoing concerns facing the firm. Diversifying investments, tariff-induced losses, instability. Climate impacts and risk assessments. Navigating DEI tensions between European and American expectations, potential contract and opportunity losses. St-Cir succinctly ys out the challenges ahead. This isn’t the first time Alex watches her work. But it’s the first time he’s observed her out front of a room full of her peers and superiors. At first, he feels nervous for her. But she speaks firmly and with utter conviction, even when referencing a sequence of slides he knows were dropped in st minute. In talking to the two senior partners, her tone subtly shifts. They ask several questions, one or two striking Alex as penetratingly perceptive, and St-Cir concedes the point, admits it may be an area worth exploring more.

  But when any other men in the room pushes her, she ruthlessly exposes their ignorance or refers them back to a previously made point. One particurly obtuse question, she simply refuses to answer, an awkward silence stretching out between her and the man. The man balks first, mutters an apology. The presentation continues as though he hadn’t spoken. The meeting ends, Alex turns up the lights, and there’s a round of gentle appuse. There’s a tedious fifteen minutes of round-table discussion, in which St-Cir subtly directs the conversation in the direction she wants. He watches her control the narrative, namely, the need for the firm to change and adapt.

  There’s some pushback. Nobody argues the need to shift assets out of the US, or to divest clients’ fossil fuel holdings – even their petrochemical oligarchs want out, funding lobby groups and disinformation campaigns to maintain shareholder value even as they dump stock. But Christ, enough of the identity politics, enough of the DEI crap. Who gives a shit what some Gen-Z influencers think or say?

  St-Cir smiles, and her smile is dangerous. She turns to Alex. His heart seizes in his chest. All eyes in the room are now on him. He feels sweat break out on his brow and is suddenly very painfully aware of the fact that he’s a man in makeup, wearing a skirt and heels. Identity? We have an expert on the subject, she tells the table, Bke here wrote her master’s thesis on it. Bke?

  He gapes at her—for a moment, but only a moment. You bitch, he thinks. Springing something like this on him. For a moment, he thinks she’s making a fool of him: look at the silly receptionist, she’s got nothing to say. But—no; he does have something to say. Over the past month, she’s built him up to this, surreptitious conversations touching on his thesis, on branding, on the importance of inclusion, St-Cir’s personal mission to diversify not only the firm’s image, but the firm’s boards. It’s the reason he’s there, after all; it’s the reason Bke exists. He licks his lips nervously as he stands, brushes down his skirt. All eyes are on him, and in those watching male faces he sees expressed: boredom, annoyance, amusement, curiosity, sciviousness, disdain and contempt—yes, especially the st two. Heat crawls down his neck and chest but it’s no longer with embarrassment.

  Mirrors, he begins, facing the full table, in early modern drama were used to signal vanity or vice. Alex knows he’s got about thirty seconds to make a point before the respect St-Cir’s authority compels in the audience runs thin. He speaks quickly, tries to mimic her tone and conviction. In Richard II, he expins, this changes. At the climax of the py, the king calls for a mirror: Give me that gss, and therein will I read. Alex quotes from memory. He shifts his focus towards the senior partners, performs the line to these two old men. He is trying to summarise the final year of higher education and a month of feminine performance and a limited understanding of Lockwood and Carmichael into an impromptu presentation. Dimly conceived ideas swirl through him, and he feels on the cusp of grasping something he failed to understand in the writing of his dissertation, something important.

  For the first time on stage, he continues, identity was conceived as both socially defined externality, and emergent interiority. Richard is both King and Man. Both are performance. Alex mimes throwing a mirror to the floor. The king throws the mirror to the floor to shatter “in a hundred shivers.” The rejected identity reveals a multiplicity of lost possibilities. In the py, the medieval concept of social definition is abandoned in favour of self-conception; the early modern self is the performed self. Hamlet’s antic disposition. Macbeth’s borrowed robes. Iago—and Vio, he adds with a smile, especially Vio.

  There’s some restless movement. Nobody came for a lecture on Shakespeare. Alex licks his lips, swallows against a dry throat, and forges on. What ‘self’ is L&C performing? he asks. He’s rushing it and knows it doesn’t quite make sense and elides all kinds of subtleties, but now he sees a sparkle of amusement in the old men’s eyes and that’s something. He feels sweat trickle down his back, and his cheeks glow beneath his makeup, but he fshes a glossy smile and continues. L&C is at a strategic crossroads. Richard’s abdication mirrors L&C’s own existential moment. The world is changing, and old robes of fossil fuel wealth and white-male power no longer command the same respect. This is not a reflection on the firm, Alex is keen to point out, the old ways were systemic, they worked, they worked for centuries. But just as the king believed in divine right, L&C believes in their immutable market dominance through command of old power structures. But times change. The old king couldn’t adapt, identity wrapped up in an inflexible conception of himself as King. Consequently, that identity shattered and he lost his throne. But the firm’s identity remains malleable. Shatter the mirror; rebrand: if the firm’s reflection doesn’t work, break it. Even the performance of breaking the old identity makes for good optics, it’s a marketable narrative.

  There’s a heavy silence when he stops. He’s trembling slightly. A chair creaks as Mr. Sandford leans forward. He speaks over interced fingers and his voice is ponderous but unexpectedly kind. He asks whether she’d use L&C to manage her money. The question is unexpected. Alex ughs, a little too loudly. On my wages? Mr. Sandford ughs as well. If you had the money? Alex shrugs. No.

  He’s shaking after he leaves the room but also giddy. He needs to talk to someone about what just happened. But when he relieves Amber at the front desk, she mouths an apology and rushes off on her break, girl problems, she says, talk ter. For a moment, he’s tempted to call his sister. But he doesn’t Instead, left alone, he recalls his short lecture. He shakes his head in disbelief. What the fuck was he on about? Now dread creeps into his belly, and he feels sick. The giddiness disappears and, in its wake, painful emptiness. He’s got his one-month review coming up in about fifteen minutes. An hour ago, he wasn’t worried. Now, he feels he fucked it up. Why did St-Cir put him in that position? Shit. She wants to get rid of him, that’s why. It’s not fair. He’s worked so hard, literally re-invented himself for a job he never wanted.

  Alex stands, steps over to the mirror. Bke in reflection looks back at him. He studies himself in detail. If St-Cir dismisses him, that’s a good thing, right? He can tell his sister he did his best. She’ll give him another chance to find a job. She has to. He tugs at the hem of his skirt, smooths down his top. Meanwhile, no more of this shit: no more makeup, no more tights; that’s a good thing.

  But he doesn’t want another job. He likes this job, he’s good at this job. Yeah, sure, some parts of it suck. Getting up at 5.30am, for one. Shaving his legs. And dressing like a woman. Christ, the effort. But even that’s getting easier, he’s getter better at it—no, he’s good at some of it, now, he looks in the mirror and sees the skill with which he presents himself and feels, for the first time, a flutter of not just pride, but actual pleasure at what he’s achieved in such a short time. Yeah, he compins—with good reason, the whole situation is insane—but some of it’s not that bad, really, what’s another two months?

  And—he enjoys the work, some parts more than others. He’d rather be writing decks than delivering tea to the guys, but fuck, even that, it’s not so bad, really. Other than Harry. But Harry’s a twat, everybody knows that. And in that meeting room, there was a moment when he felt—excited? and on the cusp of teasing out something real and concrete from the academic abstraction of literary studies, as though all those years of interpreting other peoples’ narratives might coalesce under pressure into an understanding of his own story.

  He sighs. Desperate sadness settles over his shoulders. After that performance in the meeting room, it doesn’t matter what he wants. Sarah’s going to sack him. He just knows it, and the past month will have been an utter waste. There won’t be a second chance. By next week, he’ll be on a coach heading home. In some imagined future family get-together, he can imagine sitting at the dinner table with his sister—the successful one—mocking his attempts at holding down a job in London. By dressing as woman! What a fucking farce.

  He returns to his desk and sits. He retrieves his little makeup bag. His face needs fixing in anticipation of the meeting with Sarah. The stress and sweat of his short talk did a right job on his makeup. He blots the shine of sweat from his brow, the bridge of his nose. Dusts his face. Dabs a little concealer beneath the eyes. His lips are dry; only now he realised how he’s gnawed his lower lip, licked colour away with anxiety. He reapplies lipstick, then gloss. He’s procrastinating, escaping into the ritual of self-care to avoid thinking about what’s coming. A half-dozen different points he could’ve made comes to him as he brushes his brows into shape. Christ. What was he thinking, a receptionist with a month’s experience lecturing a room of experts?

  When Amber returns, she smiles and compliments him on how good he looks. Alex forces a smile as he surrenders the desk. She smooths down her pleated skirt and sits with effortless grace. He realizes then how ludicrous his efforts have been: no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never move like that, never present that degree of natural femininity. Not that he wants to. But still. There’s only two more months to go. This is a blessing in disguise, crashing out like this. He can bow out with some dignity, and leave without the humiliation of being caught. Yet he feels tears sting the corners of his eyes. He grips the side of the desk, unwilling to let go. He stares at the ceiling, blinks and tells himself to man up. He’s not going to cry, for fuck’s sake. Stand straight, shoulders—

  Amber’s hand on his arm brings him back. She’s concerned, asks what’s wrong. He forces a watery smile, shrugs. She nods sympathetically, without knowing the cause of his distress. But she’s there for him, draws him into a light hug. It nearly pushes him over the edge. But when she lets go, he feels better. We’ve all been there, Amber expins, and he realised that ‘we’ means ‘women’ and this does something funny to his stomach.

  Then Sarah St-Cir arrives and asks him for join her in her office for his monthly review.

  It’s te by the time he returns home, gone ten-thirty. The door closes loudly behind him. He kicks off his shoes and half-sighs with relief, half-winces in pain. His sister welcomes him home. He finds her lounging on the sofa, white wine and Britain’s Got Talent on the telly. Normally, first thing he does coming through the door is yank off the bra and free himself from shapewear. Most nights, he can’t get out of his women’s clothes fast enough. Tonight, more than a little drunk, he instead joins his sister on the sofa.

  His sister eyes him specutively, a hint of a smile pying across her lips.

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  And he wants to tell her: great. And he wants to tell her: awful. The fullness of a single day sits at the tip of his tongue, and he yearns to share the complexity of every experience. How he woke up, did his makeup and dressed. The walk along the canal and the ride on the Tube, the woman and the coffee enjoyed afterwards. His enjoyment of the work, the daily challenges, his colleagues. A meeting with a French aristocrat and an invitation sitting in his handbag.

  And he wants to expin how he had to work te, and tell her about the celebratory drinks, afterwards. The way Amber did his makeup in the bathroom before they went out and his painful arousal at her proximity, the smell of her hair and the confident stroke of the pencil as she did his eyes. Against his better judgment, and at her urging, wearing his heels out to the bar. And the fun he had there. How he promised to be sensible with the drinking: only two, he insisted, arriving at the narrow little pub at Borough Market, but two became four, though he only bought the one, various men the others.

  Mostly, he wants to share with his sister how his meeting with Ms. St-Cir went.

  But—it’s too much, how can any brother possibly share so much with his sister?

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  He answers with a shrug, “Fine,” he says. “Just another day.”

  Chapter Four: Just Another DayIt’s only just gone eight, but Alex isn’t the first to arrive.

  Moving with the familiarity of routine, he drops his ptop and handbag by the reception desk and heads straight to the tiny kitchenette. Fluorescent lights flicker to life as he fills and puts the kettle on, measures out coffee grounds into the coffee maker. He grabs three mugs and lines them up on the counter, opens the fridge, pulls out the milk, nudges the door shut with his bum, spoons sugar into one of the mugs. Leaving the kettle to boil, the coffee maker to brew, he returns to the reception desk. He sits, stifling a groan as the gaff pinches. The work ptop boots up with a low whirl. He logs in, nails fshing across the keyboard. First week with these nails, his typing speed dropped dramatically. Now, he's almost back to full speed. It’s not like they’re that long. But still. An adjustment.

  He removes his fts and tucks them to one side. Reaching beneath the desk, he retrieves a pair of shoes. They’re bck, patent leather Kurt Geiger pumps with a pointed toe and detailed eagle head. Little ebony crystals sparkle in the eyes. He was totally against wearing heels, or at least anything over an inch and blocky. But Ms. St- Cir dropped a few disapproving comments and Amber urged him, too: you’ve got such sexy legs, she told him, shame not to show them off. He mentioned it after work, and Sophie took him shopping that same night. The shoes were one-fifty, discounted to forty, and fit—a find like that, his sister insisted with a grin, you were destined to wear these shoes.

  But Christ, the three-and-a-half-inch stiletto heel sits very firmly at the limit of what he can handle, even after weeks of practice. He wiggles his toes, feels a twinge of anticipatory discomfort. He slips his feet into one, then the other and stands, feeling the immediate shift in his posture, the pinch in the toes and pressure at the balls of his feet. A few steps, and he finds his stride. He can survive them for the working day, just. After all, he spends most of it sitting down.

  There’s a tall, narrow mirror between two leather sofas in the reception area, and just as he does every morning, he examines his appearance in it, twisting to see himself in profile, smoothing down a few wrinkles, tucking a stray hair back into pce. A diffuse nausea settles in his belly, a sense of guilt. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation. Shoes are just another part of the costume. Besides, he looks good in them. The shoes are undeniably hot. Alex just wishes he wasn’t the one wearing them.

  This early, the office air conditioner hasn’t kicked in yet. He notes the humid sheen across his upper lip and where his foundation’s started to slip. Blot, powder, lipstick refresh and then the short walk down the dark-panelled corridor, out the rear door. It leads to a tiny courtyard. The courtyard is formed by the back-ends of the surrounding buildings, with grimy windows looking out over the small space, a few holding circur vents zily turning. A pair of pstic chairs for smokers and a potted pnt, scraggly weeds poking through uneven paving stones, and a drain capturing runoff. The door opposite leads into the rear entrance of a narrow 1960s office block where most of the real work happens. Lockwood and Carmichael present old-London style out front, aged men holding court in offices heavy with wood wax and age. But most of the young staff, including the junior associates, work out back.

  The air here barely stirs. Out of direct sunlight, the shaded space feels cool against his thighs and arms. The sky above cuts a silhouette of brilliant blue. Alex stands there, blinking into the bright sky. He feels as though he could stand there forever.

  Instead, he forces himself forward and soon stands outside the junior offices. Oluwatobi’s there, dark face glowing with soft monitor blue, and Mo. And Harry, too. Alex’s stomach twists itself in a knot.

  These three are always in early. Oluwatobi’s working on an energy merger in Dubai for a client offloading his third-generation company before retirement. Mo’s poring over fund performance metrics, tweaking a client’s quarterly report to make a tariff-induced ftline look like a gentle incline. And Harry has his nose buried in a cap table. He knows what they’re working on because he’s helped all three these past few weeks. Alex’s proofed Tobi’s deck, and it’s his Orwellian spin on Mo’s quarterly losses report creating opportunity events.

  Tobi fshes a smile at Alex, and Mo waves without looking away from his screen. Harry grunts, gnces up from his computer, then double takes. He licks his lips, smiles in a way that makes Alex’s skin crawl, the way those eyes track over him, sliding slowly down his body, lingering over his thighs, then calves, heels. Alex suppresses a shudder, forces a bright smile and greets the boys: coffee, tea? They ask for the usual. He feels their eyes follow him out the room.

  On paper, they’re not that different: junior associates recently harvested from LSE or Oxbridge, no older than Alex. But he’s the one wearing the check mini. He heads back to the kitchenette, pours out coffee for Harry, tea for the other two, slips the three drinks onto a tray. Strictly speaking, this isn’t his responsibility, it’s not in the job description. He walks slowly and carefully, drinks banced on the tray. Curls of steam rise from the tea as he crosses the courtyard. He’s spilled a drink before, heel wobble in a distracted moment. Harry shouted at him, patting down the stain on his suit, called him names. Alex nearly cried, nearly hit him.

  But no problem this morning, he’s had lots of practice. At the door, he pauses for a moment, watching these three guys at work. Harry’s blue suit, Mo’s tangle of dark hair, Tobi’s heavy watch. A heavy feeling pulls at him, and he wants nothing more than to follow it down, through the floor, to simply thaw and melt away, and disappear. Alex gnaws on his lip, and the tray grows heavy.

  Tobi gnces up, grins and calls him a godsend. Mo breaks away from the screen long enough to smile gratefully. Alex brings the men their drinks. Mo’s looking more stressed than usual this morning, eyes red as though he’s already been at it for a couple of hours, skin pale, beard unkempt as though he’s slept here. Most likely, he did, there’s a cot in the back room. Harry holds eye contact this time, watches as Alex approaches and pces the coffee in front of him, says thanks sweetheart and when Alex turns away, he knows what’s coming, it’s not the first time. He barely suppresses the flinch as the other man pats his bum but stiffens nonetheless and freezes involuntarily. Harry’s touch lengthens into a lingering fondle. Alex finally unlocks, limbs moving again. Ignoring the unwanted touch but still feeling that masculine pressure against his backside, he walks away, hearing the rapid tap of heels against hardwood floor.

  He avoids conflict. The risk is too great: his voice might slip, he’d draw attention he can’t deflect and pounding that fucking cunt into his desk wouldn’t look good on his monthly progress review ter today.

  Besides, it’s just Harry being Harry, as Amber once said, he’s a twat, everybody knows that. Of course, when Harry tried it on with Amber, that night out in Shoreditch, her boyfriend Jacob was there to put him in his pce. But still. Every time it happens—and it’s happened more than once—Alex wonders if the other guys see it. C’mon, hashtag be an ally, MeToo this bullshit, he thinks. Do something, call Harry on his bullshit. But nothing ever happens, and Alex’s face fmes red as he walks away, trembling.

  Once he returns to his desk and sits, the trembling amplifies into shakes that only slowly work themselves out. It isn’t just anger, and it’s more than disgust. Alex focuses on how he feels, tries to articute with precision: humiliated and disrespected; inferior. With no one else about, he squeezes his eyes shut. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes, and he forces his fists into his stomach, hard, to distract from the hollowness left by Harry’s touch. He doesn’t want to cry. It’ll ruin all that effort he put into his makeup this morning. Besides, crying’s unmanly. Back straight, shoulders back. He bloody well needs to toughen up.

  I’m okay, he tells himself, I’ve got this.

  He opens the top drawer a little too quickly, grabs his Graze bar, bangs the drawer shut and tears open that packet and stuffs his mouth with it, swallows it down. It helps, a little. Then he turns to his computer. Pulls up the day’s schedule. There’s an important client coming in, a French hedge-fund princeling with a yacht in Antibes, a family home in Kensington: so, meeting room to be set up accordingly, food ordered in, the correct flowers on dispy, drinks ready, Courvoisier, Scottish Highnds distilled water.

  But there’s also a half-dozen requests for room bookings to coordinate. Mr. Wilson’s flying back from Tokyo tomorrow, so a pickup at Heathrow to arrange. Dry cleaning to collect for Ms. St-Cir. She’s also put him down to sit in on a meeting; the mentorship program won’t start until after the probation period, but she wants him involved. Previously, she’s has him sit there, taking notes and looking pretty. At least, that’s how it feels. There’s a stack of handwritten notes that need transcribing, some comms work, too, nudging a few colleagues who avoid talking to each other. Then there’s that research Sarah wants him to take on, mostly ctrl-C, ctrl-Ving anything he finds online reted to some West African oligarch; she’s prepping a briefing doc and has him doing the grunt work. And of course, the one-to-one with her this afternoon, his one-month progress review. He feels hot, a little sweat gathering in his armpits. He rolls his neck, scratches at his bra line.

  Right. Best get into it, then, especially as he’s doing this against a backdrop of normal reception duties, assisting clients and the steady trickle of visitors to L&C, deliveries, greeting staff as they arrive, smiling, always smiling. Factor in all the little, unnoticed tasks, clearing up after people, turning the decorative vase this way, watering the flowers and facing them that way, keeping carafes topped up, fetching, delivering drinks, taking the occasional call, answering or redirecting emails, sorting the post, scheduling, tidying—and just being there, sat behind his heavy desk, looking pretty, professional, the first thing visitors see, the immacutely made-up face of the firm.

  He draws a mental pathway through the workload, and in this way leaves behind the memory of Harry’s unwanted touch. This, he’s good at, he’s methodical and practiced. He owes this to his father. When he was younger, his studies drove him to distraction. Sleepless nights, nail-chewing, and worse. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work. Academically, he did well, he understood Maths, English, the rest of it. But wanting to do his work perfectly, he often did nothing at all. GCSEs nearly undid him, especially those final two weeks of Easter revision in which he barely ate, didn’t sleep and nearly drove himself mad.

  His father saved him. It’s one of the most vivid memories he has of his dad. It’s a painfully mundane memory. Sitting at the kitchen table. Triple science textbook open, fingers digging into his thighs and staring in despair at something he knows he knows, but it’s too much, he’s got twelve GCSEs, nearly twice as many exams coming and doesn’t know where to start. Every time he grabs onto a formu, it wiggles and slips away. But that night, rather unusually, his father was home from one of his work trips and rather than exhausted or in a bad mood, seemed cheerful, rexed. His father sat with him, flicked through a few pages of the revision guide, and his fingertip rested over a formu, the refractive index.

  What’s this then, son? his father asked, what’s this all about?

  Alex tried expining it, and Morgan shook his head, smiling ruefully. It’s too much, son. Way beyond me. Break it down, so a man like me can understand. What’s this ‘c’? The speed of light? Ah, just a number. And ‘v’, that’s just another number? Pop the one on top of the other, it gives you—ah; okay then, that’s ‘n’, is it? How light changes as it passes through different spaces? Well, that’s obvious enough, isn’t it, everything changes according to where it’s at. Even I get that, he said, and tapped his chest with one finger. This here, this is constant, too. But this—and he waved his hand to take in the kitchen, the house—it changes this—and he indicated the rest of himself. Here, I’m me, I’m your father: and his hand rested heavily on Alex’s shoulder. Out there—he jerked a thumb towards the window, where it was growing dark and wet outside—I’m someone else, I move differently.

  That week, it was his dad who taught him the trick of breaking everything down to manageable chunks. At first, Alex drew out eborate pns that had more to do with procrastination than work. His first study pn was meticulous, rigorous and impossible. The next one, with Morgan’s help, comprehensive but actually doable. Every hour, he switched to a different subject, and within each subject, a different topic. Taken granurly, nearly every subject became less daunting.

  When May rolled around, he aced his GCSE, 8s and 9s across the board. A-levels felt almost easy after that, especially at that posh private school, two more years and three top grades. He had offers from Oxford, Imperial. But Bristol was closer to home. Undergrad was a lot of work, but the same methodical approach earned him to a first, not any special brilliance. He’d be the first to admit that. But his Masters was a different story.

  Still. Even Sophie was taken aback at how he’s thrown himself into his most recent studies. Having left home at nineteen, she’d never seen the intensity of his focus. Makeup, movement, voice and fashion; broad categories broken down to atomic specifics he could practice, one by one. Lips-nails-hair; gaff-eyes-shoes; voice-walk-earrings. Femininity as fragmentation: that’s how Alex experiences his enforced womanhood. At times, he feels himself as such: an amalgamation barely held together by lip gloss and tights.

  Alex loses himself in his work. Occasionally, he’s dragged back to reality. He crosses smooth legs at the thigh and the whisper of tights distracts. A typo, caused by a slip of the nail. Bangs, falling across his eyes, and the sway of earrings when he sweeps the hair back with a delicate pass of the fingers. But otherwise, he stays focused and even enjoys the work. A sort of dull contentment settles over him, and he’s happy. By the time Amber and Ms. St-Cir arrive together on the dot of nine, he’s arranged the pickup from Heathrow, sorted a half-dozen scheduling nightmares, and emailed the caterer.

  The two women glow from their swift walk from Charing Cross. They don’t usually arrive together, chatting like this. Both women look good: St-Cir, stern and a little sexy in a slim skirt suit, patent leather heels, short hair styled back; Amber’s look is a step closer to his own, a hint of schoolgirl, all grown up. The pain in his gaff’s a pointed reminder to focus on something else. He stands to greet them, smoothing down his skirt. He exchanges air kisses with Amber; St. Cir looks him over and nods her approval.

  After that, it’s back to work and the morning fshes by. First week on the job, he shadowed Amber’s receptionist duties. By the end of the week, he ‘manned’ the desk—the irony not lost on him—on his own. Week two, St-Cir started yering in the administrative duties. A full month into the job, he almost yearns for the simplicity of that first week, where the main task was to sit at Amber’s side and smile for arriving clients, take their coat, lead them to one of the meeting rooms, or the partners’ offices upstairs. But he likes grappling with the administrative tasks, especially when it involves writing, twisting words to suit both the client’s and the firm’s desires.

  Ten o’clock, his stomach growls. Amber takes the reception desk, and he takes his break. First, he heads to the loo. The building had originally served as a rich merchant’s home, then some legal offices, and finally the offices of Lockwood and Carmichael, acquired in the early 1800s. He knows this because he’s read the slim ‘History of Lockwood and Carmichael’ book sitting on the reception mantlepiece. Amber ughed at him. Nobody, anywhere, has ever read that book, she told him.

  When plumbing moved indoors, there were no women working at L&C. Consequently, the only female toilet was installed quite te, post-War and in a reluctant, dusty corner of the building. Three floors up, the room had originally been the gentleman’s smoking room. Later, it found new purpose as archival storage filled with yellowed ledgers and faded contracts. A thin plywood wall now separated the old from the new, the smell of mouldering documents lingering just beyond the cramped space that now served as the women’s loo.

  He could just cross the courtyard over to the office block; it has proper modern toilets. But he rarely does. Instead, he clicks up the steps, walking through the winding, creaky upper hallways of the old building, and locks himself into the cramped toilet. It’s got a good view, at least, smudged round window peering out over the winding nes of Holborn. Sitting on the shitter, he can see the back of old buildings, and the green space of gardens.

  With the door locked, he lifts his skirt, drops his tights and gaff, and breathes a sigh of relief that borders on a groan of pain as he releases his cock and balls. Elbows on knees, he holds his head between his hands and takes a long overdue piss. Afterwards, he just sits there, giving his bollocks breathing time.

  Eventually, he reaches into his handbag. It’s kind of gross doing it in the loo, but whatever. He finds his apple, biting into it as he scrolls through his Alex phone. He checks in on friends back home, mainly Luca, and a few guys from St. Oswald’s. He sees summer holiday pics, sweaty nights out, gap year adventures. One guy he knows, Tyrone, a right plonker, stands awkwardly in an ill-fitting suit out front of a pebble-dashed office block in Slough. New job. Tyrone grins, happy against a backdrop of grey skies and traffic. Next, Alex checks in on Beth, sees her standing with her fiancé, Dave, on some beach in France. She looks good. Really good. After that, a few other girls he knows: Jenny, he dated her in sixth form; Darcie, from year 10, he kissed her at a house party at Luca’s house. Then back to Luca. He scrolls through his friend’s timeline for a bit. Then he checks LinkedIn. But there’s not much happening there.

  Ever since Bke came along, his phone’s a mess, and social media has no idea who he is anymore. Instagram feeds him exotic locations, lipstick reviews, gaming updates and glow-up tutorials. TikTok seems to think he’s a closeted bisexual with Daddy issues, but with a thing for tutorials on walking in heels. Adverts pop up for Monsoon dresses, the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and pastel nail kits. But it’s the BookTok feed he finds especially offensive, all mushy romantasy bullshit he’d never touch with a bargepole despite Amber forcing Thorn Season on him.

  Still. He’s gradually dragging his socials back in line with—his real self, he supposes, but what does the algorithm know? He quickly recognized the need for a separate online life. Sophie sorted him out with a second phone, his Bke phone, cheaper, pink and running pay-as-you-go. He turns off the Alex phone, buries it back at the bottom of his bag, and digs out Bke’s phone and taps into her digital self.

  She’s only been around for a couple of weeks, but she’s been pretty damned active in that time. He posts at least once a day. Still sitting on the bog, he takes the opportunity to post a picture of st night’s meal at Margot, a Negroni from the bar afterwards, and a blurry background closeup of his painted nails curled around his half-eaten apple, adding to the curated gallery of images defining a life that doesn’t really exist. Though in some ways, online at least, Bke’s more real than he is, now.

  After that, he can’t postpone reality any further. He tugs the gaff back into pce, then the tights and finally the skirt. Washes his hands, checks himself in the mirror, fixes his makeup. Stares into himself, tucks back his hair. Takes a deep breath. Tells himself, you’ve got this. He stands straight, shoulders back. Sees himself in the tiny bathroom mirror and grins. And tits out.

  He heads downstairs, joins Amber. The client is due to arrive any minute. Amber pronounces his name with a mock French accent. Je suis Julien Bellême, she jokes, drops the accent and ughs. Sounds like ‘bell end,’ she says. Alex giggles behind his fingers. A moment ter he arrives, Julien de Bellême. He exudes wealth—but then, they all do—but he’s younger than Alex expected, only a year or two older than he is, really, short dark hair, fashionably unshaven, slim and handsome in a pale suit that probably costs more than Alex’s university education. His walk is ridiculously confident, and his eyes sparkle with amusement as Alex and Amber rise to meet him. They take his jacket, offer him tea, coffee, water, something stronger?

  And in that initial meeting, though his instinct is to hate the rich bastard, Alex grudgingly admits the guy seems alright. Jerome has an easy, self-deprecating ugh and affable charm. Amber takes the lead, the perfect bance of coquettish professionalism, sycophantic fttery banced against British exceptionalism. She normally tones it down, but with these younger male foreign clients she cranks it to 11, the posh cut-gss received pronunciation, as if to remind the client: yes, you’re stupidly wealthy and I’m just a receptionist, but you’re French, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be English, you poor boy.

  Julien loves it, but Alex is thrown off by how often the young man’s eyes drift his way, the curiously knowing half-smile. Does he suspect? Or is he just checking out the new girl behind the front desk? His stomach twists for fear of being caught out until Amber sweeps the man away, her tinkling ugh leading him to the room set up to the exacting standards the client expects, and Alex breathes a sigh of relief.

  It does mean he alone, however, when Harry swings by. Nominally, the junior analyst’s bringing a stack of work, which he drops on the desk with a ‘babe’ and a ‘sweetheart’. But it’s obvious he’s there to chat up Bke. Alex swallows the urge to tell him to fuck off. Harry’s American, both in temperament and smile: too bold, too bright, unnaturally white. Alex forces a smile, tries to get on with his work. With Harry hovering over him, rambling on about some new movie he’s seen, Him, it’s not easy. Alex hesitates over a formu in the spreadsheet. It’d be a lot easier without some pillock discoursing in his ear. He curses softly under his breath, but Harry hears it, he steps in closer, leans over his shoulder and offers to helps. The man’s hand suddenly rests at his waist, entirely too confidently. Alex tenses, tries to shift out from beneath the other man, murmuring diffidently. Harry’s hand follows. His touch slides along Alex’s fnk. Alex feels his fingers curl into his skin, just beneath the bra line, holding him.

  Ms. St-Cir sweeps into the room. Harry steps back. She raises an eyebrow. He grins. Her expression hardens, lips pursing in a disapproving, dark red line. He tugs at his bzer, turns and saunters off back to the junior offices. They both watch him leave. St-Cir frowns. Alex remains silent.

  After a short pause, she asks about the dry cleaning. He doesn’t offer an excuse, because she’s not interested in excuses. Instead, he tells her he’ll collect it immediately, as soon as Amber can take the desk. When she returns, having left Julien with one of the senior partners, Alex hurries out the door. He’d pnned on doing this at lunch, but he’s happy to take the opportunity to step outside and clear his head. He needs to walk, and fresh air.

  It’s only after he’s left the building that he realises he forgot to swap his shoes back over. He maps out the route to the dry cleaners and back. Ten minutes, in normal shoes. How long in stilettos? He leans against the wall, feels the tingle in his toes and at the back of his ankles that he knows will grow to first a burn, then a sharp itch, then a dull throb punctuated by spikes of pain—a new blister, maybe, another to add to the collection. Alex squeezes his eyes shut against the daylight, blinking back tears. The day’s heat curls around him and sweat clings his shiny blouse to his frame almost instantly. It’s too hot for tights. And the light’s painfully bright, and he forgot his sungsses. He can see them, sitting on the shelf by the entrance. And his comfortable shoes, left beneath the desk. Fucking Harry. That twat has all flustered. He wills himself to walk. But instead, he remains standing, gripping the wall next to him, just breathing. And just like that, the morning’s docile contentment is shattered, and it suddenly feels as though the ground is giving way beneath him, a great gaping dark hole ready to swallow him.

  And he thinks, I can’t do this, it’s just too much. The job’s fine. I like the job. But the rest of it is just too much. And it would be so easy to just—walk away despite the heels, back to Sophie’s apartment, and colpse on the sofa and admit to his sister, yes, you were right, no, I couldn’t hack it. So easy to just pack up, catch the coach to Bristol and—go home.

  But he feels the rough brick beneath his palm, sharp edges digging into his skin. He grinds his palms deeper into the sharp edge of the building, nearly drawing blood. The pain focuses him, and he considers yesterday; he got through yesterday. And the day before that. Today’s just another day. He can survive another day. And if not the whole day—after all, a whole day sts fucking forever—then maybe just the next hour? It’d be a shame to waste all the effort he’s put into the day already. Just one more hour. Then it’s lunch. More or less. And he’s been looking forward to lunch at Kastner’s all week, on Thursday’s menu they do this amazing broccoli and butterbean croustade. Though truth be told, he’d rather have the Cajun pulled pork, and thinking of food, he takes his first step, and the next, dreaming of homemade sausage rolls, and the next, spinach & feta quiche, and another, bang bang chicken.

  Then he’s there, at the dry cleaners. He collects St-Cir’s clothes, a gorgeous navy-blue dress sparkling with Swarovski crystals, and on the way back imagines what she looks like in it, dreams of her perched on the side of her desk, dress slit up to her thigh, watching him through those heavy-framed gsses. It looks good on me, she says in his fantasy, but I bet it'd look even better on you. What? and the daydream’s broken, repced by one in which he’s wearing it, wondering how he’d look like in that slinky blue dress, and he suspects: good. Now his groin throbs with pain, his feet too and he’s walking funny, short, awkward clopping steps in that way of girls who can’t quite handle their footwear, and then he’s back at his offices and breathes a sigh of relief.

  On his return, he finds St-Cir and Amber in the reception room, talking with Julien de Bellême. Alex sidles past them silently, mouths a silent ‘thank you’ to Amber. He sits behind his desk, logs back into work. When he gnces up, Jerome is leaning nonchantly against the wall, hands in his pockets, as the two women speak to him. He winks at Alex over St-Cir’s shoulder. Alex blushes, and the other man grins. The women walk him out of the office.

  Then he finds an envelope on his desk. It’s addressed to ‘Chère Bke’. He opens it. It’s an invitation to a party in a week’s time. The invite promises ‘elegance and decadence’. The address is in Putney, by the river. It’s signed, Julien. Beneath his name, he’s scrawled: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Beneath that, a deftly drawn face with a winking eye.

  Alex’s face feels hot, he takes the letter and slides it into his handbag, into the inner pocket so it sits alongside the photograph of his father. Amber and Ms. St-Cir return, pleased with how the meeting with the client went. Then, they leave him alone at the desk, though with a reminder by his boss of the meeting in the afternoon, and then the performance afterwards. He barely hears her. He’s staring at the door. His hand is still inside his handbag, fingers resting against the envelope. Eventually, he gives his head a shake and returns to work.

  The rest of the morning flies by. Though he’s desperate for the loo—and a little weak from hunger—he ignores both urges and focuses on his work. He fgs a few revisions for Tobi’s deck, makes a start on Ms. St-Cir’s research. This he really enjoys, it reminds him of being at school. He makes an initial pass with AI assistance to track down relevant articles before dismissing the obvious junk, then scans for details relevant to the firm interests. Forty-five minutes of skimming English nguage foreign newspapers, and he’s got something he can start condensing for Ms. St-Cir. He’s so into it, he hardly notices it’s gone twelve until Amber passes by his desk, taps him on the shoulder. He blinks, smiles up at her. Her hand on his shoulder slides down his side and sit easily at his hip as she leans in close, checking his work. Sexy and smart, Amber smiles, and her voice and smell and presence send a little thrill down his spine.

  Then it’s lunch, past lunch really and remembering to swap shoes this time, he heads out into the heat and the light. The streets are busy. He cuts across the Kingsway, walks up Drury Lane, heads towards Seven Dials and then he’s there, and hardly the first, there’s always a queue at Kastner’s. Alex waits patiently, breathing in the scent of cumin and hot oil. There’s a girl his age standing in front of him, cute, hair in a ponytail, simple white dress with decorative ce on the sleeves, bare legs, flicking her screen with one finger. Two ds behind, chatting shit about the football, Liverpool’s chances of another win, van Dijk’s the man—nah, it’s Arsenal’s year—Arsenal? You mad?—the girl in front’s phone rings, she sounds worried as she answers, yes, yes, what is it?—and the man behind the counter: what you after, love? boss?—and the city speaks with a susurrations of steps, burst of passing ughter, a shout from the kitchen, delivery bike roar, the murmur of distant crowds. A man walks past, filming, narrating his walk. Music bres from a passing rickshaw. A bck cab. Tourists, talking animatedly. Two teenage girls, shopping bags and short skirts. Alex tugs at his check mini. The queue shuffles forward. He tilts his head up into the sun, closing his eyes against the light, and smiles.

  He takes his lunch and returns to the office. He finds an empty room, turns on his personal ptop and does a little writing as he eats. In between bursts of typing, he takes a little time to redo his nails, digging out the bottle of varnish he nabbed this morning. Soon, his nails match his lips. Then he resumes his early work for Ms. St-Cir. He works through the rest of his lunch break. He enjoys the research. When he’s got enough done, he takes a short break to head upstairs, another five minutes in which he lets his balls breathe. Then back to the reception desk. He’s barely sat down before Ms St-Cir sweeps through and leads him to one of the conference rooms.

  She sits him in the corner with a ptop. Two partners arrive first from upstairs: Mr. Betrand Sandford, white-haired and heavy set, as well as Quentin Langham, also white-haired, but rail-thin and long-limbed, a Victorian coatrack brought to life. A handful of junior and middle assistants soon fill out the rest of the table. Ms. St-Cir is the only woman in the room – and Alex, of course, and the air feels hot and stifling as he feels the men’s eyes graze on his appearance. St-Cir dims the lights and begins, and Alex takes notes. He’s helped her with this deck: Changing World, Changing Markets: Investing in the New Economy.

  At a brisk pace, she guides the gathered men through the ongoing concerns facing the firm. Diversifying investments, tariff-induced losses, instability. Climate impacts and risk assessments. Navigating DEI tensions between European and American expectations, potential contract and opportunity losses. St-Cir succinctly ys out the challenges ahead. This isn’t the first time Alex watches her work. But it’s the first time he’s observed her out front of a room full of her peers and superiors. At first, he feels nervous for her. But she speaks firmly and with utter conviction, even when referencing a sequence of slides he knows were dropped in st minute. In talking to the two senior partners, her tone subtly shifts. They ask several questions, one or two striking Alex as penetratingly perceptive, and St-Cir concedes the point, admits it may be an area worth exploring more.

  But when any other men in the room pushes her, she ruthlessly exposes their ignorance or refers them back to a previously made point. One particurly obtuse question, she simply refuses to answer, an awkward silence stretching out between her and the man. The man balks first, mutters an apology. The presentation continues as though he hadn’t spoken. The meeting ends, Alex turns up the lights, and there’s a round of gentle appuse. There’s a tedious fifteen minutes of round-table discussion, in which St-Cir subtly directs the conversation in the direction she wants. He watches her control the narrative, namely, the need for the firm to change and adapt.

  There’s some pushback. Nobody argues the need to shift assets out of the US, or to divest clients’ fossil fuel holdings – even their petrochemical oligarchs want out, funding lobby groups and disinformation campaigns to maintain shareholder value even as they dump stock. But Christ, enough of the identity politics, enough of the DEI crap. Who gives a shit what some Gen-Z influencers think or say?

  St-Cir smiles, and her smile is dangerous. She turns to Alex. His heart seizes in his chest. All eyes in the room are now on him. He feels sweat break out on his brow and is suddenly very painfully aware of the fact that he’s a man in makeup, wearing a skirt and heels. Identity? We have an expert on the subject, she tells the table, Bke here wrote her master’s thesis on it. Bke?

  He gapes at her—for a moment, but only a moment. You bitch, he thinks. Springing something like this on him. For a moment, he thinks she’s making a fool of him: look at the silly receptionist, she’s got nothing to say. But—no; he does have something to say. Over the past month, she’s built him up to this, surreptitious conversations touching on his thesis, on branding, on the importance of inclusion, St-Cir’s personal mission to diversify not only the firm’s image, but the firm’s boards. It’s the reason he’s there, after all; it’s the reason Bke exists. He licks his lips nervously as he stands, brushes down his skirt. All eyes are on him, and in those watching male faces he sees expressed: boredom, annoyance, amusement, curiosity, sciviousness, disdain and contempt—yes, especially the st two. Heat crawls down his neck and chest but it’s no longer with embarrassment.

  Mirrors, he begins, facing the full table, in early modern drama were used to signal vanity or vice. Alex knows he’s got about thirty seconds to make a point before the respect St-Cir’s authority compels in the audience runs thin. He speaks quickly, tries to mimic her tone and conviction. In Richard II, he expins, this changes. At the climax of the py, the king calls for a mirror: Give me that gss, and therein will I read. Alex quotes from memory. He shifts his focus towards the senior partners, performs the line to these two old men. He is trying to summarise the final year of higher education and a month of feminine performance and a limited understanding of Lockwood and Carmichael into an impromptu presentation. Dimly conceived ideas swirl through him, and he feels on the cusp of grasping something he failed to understand in the writing of his dissertation, something important.

  For the first time on stage, he continues, identity was conceived as both socially defined externality, and emergent interiority. Richard is both King and Man. Both are performance. Alex mimes throwing a mirror to the floor. The king throws the mirror to the floor to shatter “in a hundred shivers.” The rejected identity reveals a multiplicity of lost possibilities. In the py, the medieval concept of social definition is abandoned in favour of self-conception; the early modern self is the performed self. Hamlet’s antic disposition. Macbeth’s borrowed robes. Iago—and Vio, he adds with a smile, especially Vio.

  There’s some restless movement. Nobody came for a lecture on Shakespeare. Alex licks his lips, swallows against a dry throat, and forges on. What ‘self’ is L&C performing? he asks. He’s rushing it and knows it doesn’t quite make sense and elides all kinds of subtleties, but now he sees a sparkle of amusement in the old men’s eyes and that’s something. He feels sweat trickle down his back, and his cheeks glow beneath his makeup, but he fshes a glossy smile and continues. L&C is at a strategic crossroads. Richard’s abdication mirrors L&C’s own existential moment. The world is changing, and old robes of fossil fuel wealth and white-male power no longer command the same respect. This is not a reflection on the firm, Alex is keen to point out, the old ways were systemic, they worked, they worked for centuries. But just as the king believed in divine right, L&C believes in their immutable market dominance through command of old power structures. But times change. The old king couldn’t adapt, identity wrapped up in an inflexible conception of himself as King. Consequently, that identity shattered and he lost his throne. But the firm’s identity remains malleable. Shatter the mirror; rebrand: if the firm’s reflection doesn’t work, break it. Even the performance of breaking the old identity makes for good optics, it’s a marketable narrative.

  There’s a heavy silence when he stops. He’s trembling slightly. A chair creaks as Mr. Sandford leans forward. He speaks over interced fingers and his voice is ponderous but unexpectedly kind. He asks whether she’d use L&C to manage her money. The question is unexpected. Alex ughs, a little too loudly. On my wages? Mr. Sandford ughs as well. If you had the money? Alex shrugs. No.

  He’s shaking after he leaves the room but also giddy. He needs to talk to someone about what just happened. But when he relieves Amber at the front desk, she mouths an apology and rushes off on her break, girl problems, she says, talk ter. For a moment, he’s tempted to call his sister. But he doesn’t Instead, left alone, he recalls his short lecture. He shakes his head in disbelief. What the fuck was he on about? Now dread creeps into his belly, and he feels sick. The giddiness disappears and, in its wake, painful emptiness. He’s got his one-month review coming up in about fifteen minutes. An hour ago, he wasn’t worried. Now, he feels he fucked it up. Why did St-Cir put him in that position? Shit. She wants to get rid of him, that’s why. It’s not fair. He’s worked so hard, literally re-invented himself for a job he never wanted.

  Alex stands, steps over to the mirror. Bke in reflection looks back at him. He studies himself in detail. If St-Cir dismisses him, that’s a good thing, right? He can tell his sister he did his best. She’ll give him another chance to find a job. She has to. He tugs at the hem of his skirt, smooths down his top. Meanwhile, no more of this shit: no more makeup, no more tights; that’s a good thing.

  But he doesn’t want another job. He likes this job, he’s good at this job. Yeah, sure, some parts of it suck. Getting up at 5.30am, for one. Shaving his legs. And dressing like a woman. Christ, the effort. But even that’s getting easier, he’s getter better at it—no, he’s good at some of it, now, he looks in the mirror and sees the skill with which he presents himself and feels, for the first time, a flutter of not just pride, but actual pleasure at what he’s achieved in such a short time. Yeah, he compins—with good reason, the whole situation is insane—but some of it’s not that bad, really, what’s another two months?

  And—he enjoys the work, some parts more than others. He’d rather be writing decks than delivering tea to the guys, but fuck, even that, it’s not so bad, really. Other than Harry. But Harry’s a twat, everybody knows that. And in that meeting room, there was a moment when he felt—excited? and on the cusp of teasing out something real and concrete from the academic abstraction of literary studies, as though all those years of interpreting other peoples’ narratives might coalesce under pressure into an understanding of his own story.

  He sighs. Desperate sadness settles over his shoulders. After that performance in the meeting room, it doesn’t matter what he wants. Sarah’s going to sack him. He just knows it, and the past month will have been an utter waste. There won’t be a second chance. By next week, he’ll be on a coach heading home. In some imagined future family get-together, he can imagine sitting at the dinner table with his sister—the successful one—mocking his attempts at holding down a job in London. By dressing as woman! What a fucking farce.

  He returns to his desk and sits. He retrieves his little makeup bag. His face needs fixing in anticipation of the meeting with Sarah. The stress and sweat of his short talk did a right job on his makeup. He blots the shine of sweat from his brow, the bridge of his nose. Dusts his face. Dabs a little concealer beneath the eyes. His lips are dry; only now he realised how he’s gnawed his lower lip, licked colour away with anxiety. He reapplies lipstick, then gloss. He’s procrastinating, escaping into the ritual of self-care to avoid thinking about what’s coming. A half-dozen different points he could’ve made comes to him as he brushes his brows into shape. Christ. What was he thinking, a receptionist with a month’s experience lecturing a room of experts?

  When Amber returns, she smiles and compliments him on how good he looks. Alex forces a smile as he surrenders the desk. She smooths down her pleated skirt and sits with effortless grace. He realizes then how ludicrous his efforts have been: no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never move like that, never present that degree of natural femininity. Not that he wants to. But still. There’s only two more months to go. This is a blessing in disguise, crashing out like this. He can bow out with some dignity, and leave without the humiliation of being caught. Yet he feels tears sting the corners of his eyes. He grips the side of the desk, unwilling to let go. He stares at the ceiling, blinks and tells himself to man up. He’s not going to cry, for fuck’s sake. Stand straight, shoulders—

  Amber’s hand on his arm brings him back. She’s concerned, asks what’s wrong. He forces a watery smile, shrugs. She nods sympathetically, without knowing the cause of his distress. But she’s there for him, draws him into a light hug. It nearly pushes him over the edge. But when she lets go, he feels better. We’ve all been there, Amber expins, and he realised that ‘we’ means ‘women’ and this does something funny to his stomach.

  Then Sarah St-Cir arrives and asks him for join her in her office for his monthly review.

  It’s te by the time he returns home, gone ten-thirty. The door closes loudly behind him. He kicks off his shoes and half-sighs with relief, half-winces in pain. His sister welcomes him home. He finds her lounging on the sofa, white wine and Britain’s Got Talent on the telly. Normally, first thing he does coming through the door is yank off the bra and free himself from shapewear. Most nights, he can’t get out of his women’s clothes fast enough. Tonight, more than a little drunk, he instead joins his sister on the sofa.

  His sister eyes him specutively, a hint of a smile pying across her lips.

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  And he wants to tell her: great. And he wants to tell her: awful. The fullness of a single day sits at the tip of his tongue, and he yearns to share the complexity of every experience. How he woke up, did his makeup and dressed. The walk along the canal and the ride on the Tube, the woman and the coffee enjoyed afterwards. His enjoyment of the work, the daily challenges, his colleagues. A meeting with a French aristocrat and an invitation sitting in his handbag.

  And he wants to expin how he had to work te, and tell her about the celebratory drinks, afterwards. The way Amber did his makeup in the bathroom before they went out and his painful arousal at her proximity, the smell of her hair and the confident stroke of the pencil as she did his eyes. Against his better judgment, and at her urging, wearing his heels out to the bar. And the fun he had there. How he promised to be sensible with the drinking: only two, he insisted, arriving at the narrow little pub at Borough Market, but two became four, though he only bought the one, various men the others.

  Mostly, he wants to share with his sister how his meeting with Ms. St-Cir went.

  But—it’s too much, how can any brother possibly share so much with his sister?

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  He answers with a shrug, “Fine,” he says. “Just another day.”

  Chapter Four: Just Another DayIt’s only just gone eight, but Alex isn’t the first to arrive.

  Moving with the familiarity of routine, he drops his ptop and handbag by the reception desk and heads straight to the tiny kitchenette. Fluorescent lights flicker to life as he fills and puts the kettle on, measures out coffee grounds into the coffee maker. He grabs three mugs and lines them up on the counter, opens the fridge, pulls out the milk, nudges the door shut with his bum, spoons sugar into one of the mugs. Leaving the kettle to boil, the coffee maker to brew, he returns to the reception desk. He sits, stifling a groan as the gaff pinches. The work ptop boots up with a low whirl. He logs in, nails fshing across the keyboard. First week with these nails, his typing speed dropped dramatically. Now, he's almost back to full speed. It’s not like they’re that long. But still. An adjustment.

  He removes his fts and tucks them to one side. Reaching beneath the desk, he retrieves a pair of shoes. They’re bck, patent leather Kurt Geiger pumps with a pointed toe and detailed eagle head. Little ebony crystals sparkle in the eyes. He was totally against wearing heels, or at least anything over an inch and blocky. But Ms. St- Cir dropped a few disapproving comments and Amber urged him, too: you’ve got such sexy legs, she told him, shame not to show them off. He mentioned it after work, and Sophie took him shopping that same night. The shoes were one-fifty, discounted to forty, and fit—a find like that, his sister insisted with a grin, you were destined to wear these shoes.

  But Christ, the three-and-a-half-inch stiletto heel sits very firmly at the limit of what he can handle, even after weeks of practice. He wiggles his toes, feels a twinge of anticipatory discomfort. He slips his feet into one, then the other and stands, feeling the immediate shift in his posture, the pinch in the toes and pressure at the balls of his feet. A few steps, and he finds his stride. He can survive them for the working day, just. After all, he spends most of it sitting down.

  There’s a tall, narrow mirror between two leather sofas in the reception area, and just as he does every morning, he examines his appearance in it, twisting to see himself in profile, smoothing down a few wrinkles, tucking a stray hair back into pce. A diffuse nausea settles in his belly, a sense of guilt. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation. Shoes are just another part of the costume. Besides, he looks good in them. The shoes are undeniably hot. Alex just wishes he wasn’t the one wearing them.

  This early, the office air conditioner hasn’t kicked in yet. He notes the humid sheen across his upper lip and where his foundation’s started to slip. Blot, powder, lipstick refresh and then the short walk down the dark-panelled corridor, out the rear door. It leads to a tiny courtyard. The courtyard is formed by the back-ends of the surrounding buildings, with grimy windows looking out over the small space, a few holding circur vents zily turning. A pair of pstic chairs for smokers and a potted pnt, scraggly weeds poking through uneven paving stones, and a drain capturing runoff. The door opposite leads into the rear entrance of a narrow 1960s office block where most of the real work happens. Lockwood and Carmichael present old-London style out front, aged men holding court in offices heavy with wood wax and age. But most of the young staff, including the junior associates, work out back.

  The air here barely stirs. Out of direct sunlight, the shaded space feels cool against his thighs and arms. The sky above cuts a silhouette of brilliant blue. Alex stands there, blinking into the bright sky. He feels as though he could stand there forever.

  Instead, he forces himself forward and soon stands outside the junior offices. Oluwatobi’s there, dark face glowing with soft monitor blue, and Mo. And Harry, too. Alex’s stomach twists itself in a knot.

  These three are always in early. Oluwatobi’s working on an energy merger in Dubai for a client offloading his third-generation company before retirement. Mo’s poring over fund performance metrics, tweaking a client’s quarterly report to make a tariff-induced ftline look like a gentle incline. And Harry has his nose buried in a cap table. He knows what they’re working on because he’s helped all three these past few weeks. Alex’s proofed Tobi’s deck, and it’s his Orwellian spin on Mo’s quarterly losses report creating opportunity events.

  Tobi fshes a smile at Alex, and Mo waves without looking away from his screen. Harry grunts, gnces up from his computer, then double takes. He licks his lips, smiles in a way that makes Alex’s skin crawl, the way those eyes track over him, sliding slowly down his body, lingering over his thighs, then calves, heels. Alex suppresses a shudder, forces a bright smile and greets the boys: coffee, tea? They ask for the usual. He feels their eyes follow him out the room.

  On paper, they’re not that different: junior associates recently harvested from LSE or Oxbridge, no older than Alex. But he’s the one wearing the check mini. He heads back to the kitchenette, pours out coffee for Harry, tea for the other two, slips the three drinks onto a tray. Strictly speaking, this isn’t his responsibility, it’s not in the job description. He walks slowly and carefully, drinks banced on the tray. Curls of steam rise from the tea as he crosses the courtyard. He’s spilled a drink before, heel wobble in a distracted moment. Harry shouted at him, patting down the stain on his suit, called him names. Alex nearly cried, nearly hit him.

  But no problem this morning, he’s had lots of practice. At the door, he pauses for a moment, watching these three guys at work. Harry’s blue suit, Mo’s tangle of dark hair, Tobi’s heavy watch. A heavy feeling pulls at him, and he wants nothing more than to follow it down, through the floor, to simply thaw and melt away, and disappear. Alex gnaws on his lip, and the tray grows heavy.

  Tobi gnces up, grins and calls him a godsend. Mo breaks away from the screen long enough to smile gratefully. Alex brings the men their drinks. Mo’s looking more stressed than usual this morning, eyes red as though he’s already been at it for a couple of hours, skin pale, beard unkempt as though he’s slept here. Most likely, he did, there’s a cot in the back room. Harry holds eye contact this time, watches as Alex approaches and pces the coffee in front of him, says thanks sweetheart and when Alex turns away, he knows what’s coming, it’s not the first time. He barely suppresses the flinch as the other man pats his bum but stiffens nonetheless and freezes involuntarily. Harry’s touch lengthens into a lingering fondle. Alex finally unlocks, limbs moving again. Ignoring the unwanted touch but still feeling that masculine pressure against his backside, he walks away, hearing the rapid tap of heels against hardwood floor.

  He avoids conflict. The risk is too great: his voice might slip, he’d draw attention he can’t deflect and pounding that fucking cunt into his desk wouldn’t look good on his monthly progress review ter today.

  Besides, it’s just Harry being Harry, as Amber once said, he’s a twat, everybody knows that. Of course, when Harry tried it on with Amber, that night out in Shoreditch, her boyfriend Jacob was there to put him in his pce. But still. Every time it happens—and it’s happened more than once—Alex wonders if the other guys see it. C’mon, hashtag be an ally, MeToo this bullshit, he thinks. Do something, call Harry on his bullshit. But nothing ever happens, and Alex’s face fmes red as he walks away, trembling.

  Once he returns to his desk and sits, the trembling amplifies into shakes that only slowly work themselves out. It isn’t just anger, and it’s more than disgust. Alex focuses on how he feels, tries to articute with precision: humiliated and disrespected; inferior. With no one else about, he squeezes his eyes shut. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes, and he forces his fists into his stomach, hard, to distract from the hollowness left by Harry’s touch. He doesn’t want to cry. It’ll ruin all that effort he put into his makeup this morning. Besides, crying’s unmanly. Back straight, shoulders back. He bloody well needs to toughen up.

  I’m okay, he tells himself, I’ve got this.

  He opens the top drawer a little too quickly, grabs his Graze bar, bangs the drawer shut and tears open that packet and stuffs his mouth with it, swallows it down. It helps, a little. Then he turns to his computer. Pulls up the day’s schedule. There’s an important client coming in, a French hedge-fund princeling with a yacht in Antibes, a family home in Kensington: so, meeting room to be set up accordingly, food ordered in, the correct flowers on dispy, drinks ready, Courvoisier, Scottish Highnds distilled water.

  But there’s also a half-dozen requests for room bookings to coordinate. Mr. Wilson’s flying back from Tokyo tomorrow, so a pickup at Heathrow to arrange. Dry cleaning to collect for Ms. St-Cir. She’s also put him down to sit in on a meeting; the mentorship program won’t start until after the probation period, but she wants him involved. Previously, she’s has him sit there, taking notes and looking pretty. At least, that’s how it feels. There’s a stack of handwritten notes that need transcribing, some comms work, too, nudging a few colleagues who avoid talking to each other. Then there’s that research Sarah wants him to take on, mostly ctrl-C, ctrl-Ving anything he finds online reted to some West African oligarch; she’s prepping a briefing doc and has him doing the grunt work. And of course, the one-to-one with her this afternoon, his one-month progress review. He feels hot, a little sweat gathering in his armpits. He rolls his neck, scratches at his bra line.

  Right. Best get into it, then, especially as he’s doing this against a backdrop of normal reception duties, assisting clients and the steady trickle of visitors to L&C, deliveries, greeting staff as they arrive, smiling, always smiling. Factor in all the little, unnoticed tasks, clearing up after people, turning the decorative vase this way, watering the flowers and facing them that way, keeping carafes topped up, fetching, delivering drinks, taking the occasional call, answering or redirecting emails, sorting the post, scheduling, tidying—and just being there, sat behind his heavy desk, looking pretty, professional, the first thing visitors see, the immacutely made-up face of the firm.

  He draws a mental pathway through the workload, and in this way leaves behind the memory of Harry’s unwanted touch. This, he’s good at, he’s methodical and practiced. He owes this to his father. When he was younger, his studies drove him to distraction. Sleepless nights, nail-chewing, and worse. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work. Academically, he did well, he understood Maths, English, the rest of it. But wanting to do his work perfectly, he often did nothing at all. GCSEs nearly undid him, especially those final two weeks of Easter revision in which he barely ate, didn’t sleep and nearly drove himself mad.

  His father saved him. It’s one of the most vivid memories he has of his dad. It’s a painfully mundane memory. Sitting at the kitchen table. Triple science textbook open, fingers digging into his thighs and staring in despair at something he knows he knows, but it’s too much, he’s got twelve GCSEs, nearly twice as many exams coming and doesn’t know where to start. Every time he grabs onto a formu, it wiggles and slips away. But that night, rather unusually, his father was home from one of his work trips and rather than exhausted or in a bad mood, seemed cheerful, rexed. His father sat with him, flicked through a few pages of the revision guide, and his fingertip rested over a formu, the refractive index.

  What’s this then, son? his father asked, what’s this all about?

  Alex tried expining it, and Morgan shook his head, smiling ruefully. It’s too much, son. Way beyond me. Break it down, so a man like me can understand. What’s this ‘c’? The speed of light? Ah, just a number. And ‘v’, that’s just another number? Pop the one on top of the other, it gives you—ah; okay then, that’s ‘n’, is it? How light changes as it passes through different spaces? Well, that’s obvious enough, isn’t it, everything changes according to where it’s at. Even I get that, he said, and tapped his chest with one finger. This here, this is constant, too. But this—and he waved his hand to take in the kitchen, the house—it changes this—and he indicated the rest of himself. Here, I’m me, I’m your father: and his hand rested heavily on Alex’s shoulder. Out there—he jerked a thumb towards the window, where it was growing dark and wet outside—I’m someone else, I move differently.

  That week, it was his dad who taught him the trick of breaking everything down to manageable chunks. At first, Alex drew out eborate pns that had more to do with procrastination than work. His first study pn was meticulous, rigorous and impossible. The next one, with Morgan’s help, comprehensive but actually doable. Every hour, he switched to a different subject, and within each subject, a different topic. Taken granurly, nearly every subject became less daunting.

  When May rolled around, he aced his GCSE, 8s and 9s across the board. A-levels felt almost easy after that, especially at that posh private school, two more years and three top grades. He had offers from Oxford, Imperial. But Bristol was closer to home. Undergrad was a lot of work, but the same methodical approach earned him to a first, not any special brilliance. He’d be the first to admit that. But his Masters was a different story.

  Still. Even Sophie was taken aback at how he’s thrown himself into his most recent studies. Having left home at nineteen, she’d never seen the intensity of his focus. Makeup, movement, voice and fashion; broad categories broken down to atomic specifics he could practice, one by one. Lips-nails-hair; gaff-eyes-shoes; voice-walk-earrings. Femininity as fragmentation: that’s how Alex experiences his enforced womanhood. At times, he feels himself as such: an amalgamation barely held together by lip gloss and tights.

  Alex loses himself in his work. Occasionally, he’s dragged back to reality. He crosses smooth legs at the thigh and the whisper of tights distracts. A typo, caused by a slip of the nail. Bangs, falling across his eyes, and the sway of earrings when he sweeps the hair back with a delicate pass of the fingers. But otherwise, he stays focused and even enjoys the work. A sort of dull contentment settles over him, and he’s happy. By the time Amber and Ms. St-Cir arrive together on the dot of nine, he’s arranged the pickup from Heathrow, sorted a half-dozen scheduling nightmares, and emailed the caterer.

  The two women glow from their swift walk from Charing Cross. They don’t usually arrive together, chatting like this. Both women look good: St-Cir, stern and a little sexy in a slim skirt suit, patent leather heels, short hair styled back; Amber’s look is a step closer to his own, a hint of schoolgirl, all grown up. The pain in his gaff’s a pointed reminder to focus on something else. He stands to greet them, smoothing down his skirt. He exchanges air kisses with Amber; St. Cir looks him over and nods her approval.

  After that, it’s back to work and the morning fshes by. First week on the job, he shadowed Amber’s receptionist duties. By the end of the week, he ‘manned’ the desk—the irony not lost on him—on his own. Week two, St-Cir started yering in the administrative duties. A full month into the job, he almost yearns for the simplicity of that first week, where the main task was to sit at Amber’s side and smile for arriving clients, take their coat, lead them to one of the meeting rooms, or the partners’ offices upstairs. But he likes grappling with the administrative tasks, especially when it involves writing, twisting words to suit both the client’s and the firm’s desires.

  Ten o’clock, his stomach growls. Amber takes the reception desk, and he takes his break. First, he heads to the loo. The building had originally served as a rich merchant’s home, then some legal offices, and finally the offices of Lockwood and Carmichael, acquired in the early 1800s. He knows this because he’s read the slim ‘History of Lockwood and Carmichael’ book sitting on the reception mantlepiece. Amber ughed at him. Nobody, anywhere, has ever read that book, she told him.

  When plumbing moved indoors, there were no women working at L&C. Consequently, the only female toilet was installed quite te, post-War and in a reluctant, dusty corner of the building. Three floors up, the room had originally been the gentleman’s smoking room. Later, it found new purpose as archival storage filled with yellowed ledgers and faded contracts. A thin plywood wall now separated the old from the new, the smell of mouldering documents lingering just beyond the cramped space that now served as the women’s loo.

  He could just cross the courtyard over to the office block; it has proper modern toilets. But he rarely does. Instead, he clicks up the steps, walking through the winding, creaky upper hallways of the old building, and locks himself into the cramped toilet. It’s got a good view, at least, smudged round window peering out over the winding nes of Holborn. Sitting on the shitter, he can see the back of old buildings, and the green space of gardens.

  With the door locked, he lifts his skirt, drops his tights and gaff, and breathes a sigh of relief that borders on a groan of pain as he releases his cock and balls. Elbows on knees, he holds his head between his hands and takes a long overdue piss. Afterwards, he just sits there, giving his bollocks breathing time.

  Eventually, he reaches into his handbag. It’s kind of gross doing it in the loo, but whatever. He finds his apple, biting into it as he scrolls through his Alex phone. He checks in on friends back home, mainly Luca, and a few guys from St. Oswald’s. He sees summer holiday pics, sweaty nights out, gap year adventures. One guy he knows, Tyrone, a right plonker, stands awkwardly in an ill-fitting suit out front of a pebble-dashed office block in Slough. New job. Tyrone grins, happy against a backdrop of grey skies and traffic. Next, Alex checks in on Beth, sees her standing with her fiancé, Dave, on some beach in France. She looks good. Really good. After that, a few other girls he knows: Jenny, he dated her in sixth form; Darcie, from year 10, he kissed her at a house party at Luca’s house. Then back to Luca. He scrolls through his friend’s timeline for a bit. Then he checks LinkedIn. But there’s not much happening there.

  Ever since Bke came along, his phone’s a mess, and social media has no idea who he is anymore. Instagram feeds him exotic locations, lipstick reviews, gaming updates and glow-up tutorials. TikTok seems to think he’s a closeted bisexual with Daddy issues, but with a thing for tutorials on walking in heels. Adverts pop up for Monsoon dresses, the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and pastel nail kits. But it’s the BookTok feed he finds especially offensive, all mushy romantasy bullshit he’d never touch with a bargepole despite Amber forcing Thorn Season on him.

  Still. He’s gradually dragging his socials back in line with—his real self, he supposes, but what does the algorithm know? He quickly recognized the need for a separate online life. Sophie sorted him out with a second phone, his Bke phone, cheaper, pink and running pay-as-you-go. He turns off the Alex phone, buries it back at the bottom of his bag, and digs out Bke’s phone and taps into her digital self.

  She’s only been around for a couple of weeks, but she’s been pretty damned active in that time. He posts at least once a day. Still sitting on the bog, he takes the opportunity to post a picture of st night’s meal at Margot, a Negroni from the bar afterwards, and a blurry background closeup of his painted nails curled around his half-eaten apple, adding to the curated gallery of images defining a life that doesn’t really exist. Though in some ways, online at least, Bke’s more real than he is, now.

  After that, he can’t postpone reality any further. He tugs the gaff back into pce, then the tights and finally the skirt. Washes his hands, checks himself in the mirror, fixes his makeup. Stares into himself, tucks back his hair. Takes a deep breath. Tells himself, you’ve got this. He stands straight, shoulders back. Sees himself in the tiny bathroom mirror and grins. And tits out.

  He heads downstairs, joins Amber. The client is due to arrive any minute. Amber pronounces his name with a mock French accent. Je suis Julien Bellême, she jokes, drops the accent and ughs. Sounds like ‘bell end,’ she says. Alex giggles behind his fingers. A moment ter he arrives, Julien de Bellême. He exudes wealth—but then, they all do—but he’s younger than Alex expected, only a year or two older than he is, really, short dark hair, fashionably unshaven, slim and handsome in a pale suit that probably costs more than Alex’s university education. His walk is ridiculously confident, and his eyes sparkle with amusement as Alex and Amber rise to meet him. They take his jacket, offer him tea, coffee, water, something stronger?

  And in that initial meeting, though his instinct is to hate the rich bastard, Alex grudgingly admits the guy seems alright. Jerome has an easy, self-deprecating ugh and affable charm. Amber takes the lead, the perfect bance of coquettish professionalism, sycophantic fttery banced against British exceptionalism. She normally tones it down, but with these younger male foreign clients she cranks it to 11, the posh cut-gss received pronunciation, as if to remind the client: yes, you’re stupidly wealthy and I’m just a receptionist, but you’re French, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be English, you poor boy.

  Julien loves it, but Alex is thrown off by how often the young man’s eyes drift his way, the curiously knowing half-smile. Does he suspect? Or is he just checking out the new girl behind the front desk? His stomach twists for fear of being caught out until Amber sweeps the man away, her tinkling ugh leading him to the room set up to the exacting standards the client expects, and Alex breathes a sigh of relief.

  It does mean he alone, however, when Harry swings by. Nominally, the junior analyst’s bringing a stack of work, which he drops on the desk with a ‘babe’ and a ‘sweetheart’. But it’s obvious he’s there to chat up Bke. Alex swallows the urge to tell him to fuck off. Harry’s American, both in temperament and smile: too bold, too bright, unnaturally white. Alex forces a smile, tries to get on with his work. With Harry hovering over him, rambling on about some new movie he’s seen, Him, it’s not easy. Alex hesitates over a formu in the spreadsheet. It’d be a lot easier without some pillock discoursing in his ear. He curses softly under his breath, but Harry hears it, he steps in closer, leans over his shoulder and offers to helps. The man’s hand suddenly rests at his waist, entirely too confidently. Alex tenses, tries to shift out from beneath the other man, murmuring diffidently. Harry’s hand follows. His touch slides along Alex’s fnk. Alex feels his fingers curl into his skin, just beneath the bra line, holding him.

  Ms. St-Cir sweeps into the room. Harry steps back. She raises an eyebrow. He grins. Her expression hardens, lips pursing in a disapproving, dark red line. He tugs at his bzer, turns and saunters off back to the junior offices. They both watch him leave. St-Cir frowns. Alex remains silent.

  After a short pause, she asks about the dry cleaning. He doesn’t offer an excuse, because she’s not interested in excuses. Instead, he tells her he’ll collect it immediately, as soon as Amber can take the desk. When she returns, having left Julien with one of the senior partners, Alex hurries out the door. He’d pnned on doing this at lunch, but he’s happy to take the opportunity to step outside and clear his head. He needs to walk, and fresh air.

  It’s only after he’s left the building that he realises he forgot to swap his shoes back over. He maps out the route to the dry cleaners and back. Ten minutes, in normal shoes. How long in stilettos? He leans against the wall, feels the tingle in his toes and at the back of his ankles that he knows will grow to first a burn, then a sharp itch, then a dull throb punctuated by spikes of pain—a new blister, maybe, another to add to the collection. Alex squeezes his eyes shut against the daylight, blinking back tears. The day’s heat curls around him and sweat clings his shiny blouse to his frame almost instantly. It’s too hot for tights. And the light’s painfully bright, and he forgot his sungsses. He can see them, sitting on the shelf by the entrance. And his comfortable shoes, left beneath the desk. Fucking Harry. That twat has all flustered. He wills himself to walk. But instead, he remains standing, gripping the wall next to him, just breathing. And just like that, the morning’s docile contentment is shattered, and it suddenly feels as though the ground is giving way beneath him, a great gaping dark hole ready to swallow him.

  And he thinks, I can’t do this, it’s just too much. The job’s fine. I like the job. But the rest of it is just too much. And it would be so easy to just—walk away despite the heels, back to Sophie’s apartment, and colpse on the sofa and admit to his sister, yes, you were right, no, I couldn’t hack it. So easy to just pack up, catch the coach to Bristol and—go home.

  But he feels the rough brick beneath his palm, sharp edges digging into his skin. He grinds his palms deeper into the sharp edge of the building, nearly drawing blood. The pain focuses him, and he considers yesterday; he got through yesterday. And the day before that. Today’s just another day. He can survive another day. And if not the whole day—after all, a whole day sts fucking forever—then maybe just the next hour? It’d be a shame to waste all the effort he’s put into the day already. Just one more hour. Then it’s lunch. More or less. And he’s been looking forward to lunch at Kastner’s all week, on Thursday’s menu they do this amazing broccoli and butterbean croustade. Though truth be told, he’d rather have the Cajun pulled pork, and thinking of food, he takes his first step, and the next, dreaming of homemade sausage rolls, and the next, spinach & feta quiche, and another, bang bang chicken.

  Then he’s there, at the dry cleaners. He collects St-Cir’s clothes, a gorgeous navy-blue dress sparkling with Swarovski crystals, and on the way back imagines what she looks like in it, dreams of her perched on the side of her desk, dress slit up to her thigh, watching him through those heavy-framed gsses. It looks good on me, she says in his fantasy, but I bet it'd look even better on you. What? and the daydream’s broken, repced by one in which he’s wearing it, wondering how he’d look like in that slinky blue dress, and he suspects: good. Now his groin throbs with pain, his feet too and he’s walking funny, short, awkward clopping steps in that way of girls who can’t quite handle their footwear, and then he’s back at his offices and breathes a sigh of relief.

  On his return, he finds St-Cir and Amber in the reception room, talking with Julien de Bellême. Alex sidles past them silently, mouths a silent ‘thank you’ to Amber. He sits behind his desk, logs back into work. When he gnces up, Jerome is leaning nonchantly against the wall, hands in his pockets, as the two women speak to him. He winks at Alex over St-Cir’s shoulder. Alex blushes, and the other man grins. The women walk him out of the office.

  Then he finds an envelope on his desk. It’s addressed to ‘Chère Bke’. He opens it. It’s an invitation to a party in a week’s time. The invite promises ‘elegance and decadence’. The address is in Putney, by the river. It’s signed, Julien. Beneath his name, he’s scrawled: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Beneath that, a deftly drawn face with a winking eye.

  Alex’s face feels hot, he takes the letter and slides it into his handbag, into the inner pocket so it sits alongside the photograph of his father. Amber and Ms. St-Cir return, pleased with how the meeting with the client went. Then, they leave him alone at the desk, though with a reminder by his boss of the meeting in the afternoon, and then the performance afterwards. He barely hears her. He’s staring at the door. His hand is still inside his handbag, fingers resting against the envelope. Eventually, he gives his head a shake and returns to work.

  The rest of the morning flies by. Though he’s desperate for the loo—and a little weak from hunger—he ignores both urges and focuses on his work. He fgs a few revisions for Tobi’s deck, makes a start on Ms. St-Cir’s research. This he really enjoys, it reminds him of being at school. He makes an initial pass with AI assistance to track down relevant articles before dismissing the obvious junk, then scans for details relevant to the firm interests. Forty-five minutes of skimming English nguage foreign newspapers, and he’s got something he can start condensing for Ms. St-Cir. He’s so into it, he hardly notices it’s gone twelve until Amber passes by his desk, taps him on the shoulder. He blinks, smiles up at her. Her hand on his shoulder slides down his side and sit easily at his hip as she leans in close, checking his work. Sexy and smart, Amber smiles, and her voice and smell and presence send a little thrill down his spine.

  Then it’s lunch, past lunch really and remembering to swap shoes this time, he heads out into the heat and the light. The streets are busy. He cuts across the Kingsway, walks up Drury Lane, heads towards Seven Dials and then he’s there, and hardly the first, there’s always a queue at Kastner’s. Alex waits patiently, breathing in the scent of cumin and hot oil. There’s a girl his age standing in front of him, cute, hair in a ponytail, simple white dress with decorative ce on the sleeves, bare legs, flicking her screen with one finger. Two ds behind, chatting shit about the football, Liverpool’s chances of another win, van Dijk’s the man—nah, it’s Arsenal’s year—Arsenal? You mad?—the girl in front’s phone rings, she sounds worried as she answers, yes, yes, what is it?—and the man behind the counter: what you after, love? boss?—and the city speaks with a susurrations of steps, burst of passing ughter, a shout from the kitchen, delivery bike roar, the murmur of distant crowds. A man walks past, filming, narrating his walk. Music bres from a passing rickshaw. A bck cab. Tourists, talking animatedly. Two teenage girls, shopping bags and short skirts. Alex tugs at his check mini. The queue shuffles forward. He tilts his head up into the sun, closing his eyes against the light, and smiles.

  He takes his lunch and returns to the office. He finds an empty room, turns on his personal ptop and does a little writing as he eats. In between bursts of typing, he takes a little time to redo his nails, digging out the bottle of varnish he nabbed this morning. Soon, his nails match his lips. Then he resumes his early work for Ms. St-Cir. He works through the rest of his lunch break. He enjoys the research. When he’s got enough done, he takes a short break to head upstairs, another five minutes in which he lets his balls breathe. Then back to the reception desk. He’s barely sat down before Ms St-Cir sweeps through and leads him to one of the conference rooms.

  She sits him in the corner with a ptop. Two partners arrive first from upstairs: Mr. Betrand Sandford, white-haired and heavy set, as well as Quentin Langham, also white-haired, but rail-thin and long-limbed, a Victorian coatrack brought to life. A handful of junior and middle assistants soon fill out the rest of the table. Ms. St-Cir is the only woman in the room – and Alex, of course, and the air feels hot and stifling as he feels the men’s eyes graze on his appearance. St-Cir dims the lights and begins, and Alex takes notes. He’s helped her with this deck: Changing World, Changing Markets: Investing in the New Economy.

  At a brisk pace, she guides the gathered men through the ongoing concerns facing the firm. Diversifying investments, tariff-induced losses, instability. Climate impacts and risk assessments. Navigating DEI tensions between European and American expectations, potential contract and opportunity losses. St-Cir succinctly ys out the challenges ahead. This isn’t the first time Alex watches her work. But it’s the first time he’s observed her out front of a room full of her peers and superiors. At first, he feels nervous for her. But she speaks firmly and with utter conviction, even when referencing a sequence of slides he knows were dropped in st minute. In talking to the two senior partners, her tone subtly shifts. They ask several questions, one or two striking Alex as penetratingly perceptive, and St-Cir concedes the point, admits it may be an area worth exploring more.

  But when any other men in the room pushes her, she ruthlessly exposes their ignorance or refers them back to a previously made point. One particurly obtuse question, she simply refuses to answer, an awkward silence stretching out between her and the man. The man balks first, mutters an apology. The presentation continues as though he hadn’t spoken. The meeting ends, Alex turns up the lights, and there’s a round of gentle appuse. There’s a tedious fifteen minutes of round-table discussion, in which St-Cir subtly directs the conversation in the direction she wants. He watches her control the narrative, namely, the need for the firm to change and adapt.

  There’s some pushback. Nobody argues the need to shift assets out of the US, or to divest clients’ fossil fuel holdings – even their petrochemical oligarchs want out, funding lobby groups and disinformation campaigns to maintain shareholder value even as they dump stock. But Christ, enough of the identity politics, enough of the DEI crap. Who gives a shit what some Gen-Z influencers think or say?

  St-Cir smiles, and her smile is dangerous. She turns to Alex. His heart seizes in his chest. All eyes in the room are now on him. He feels sweat break out on his brow and is suddenly very painfully aware of the fact that he’s a man in makeup, wearing a skirt and heels. Identity? We have an expert on the subject, she tells the table, Bke here wrote her master’s thesis on it. Bke?

  He gapes at her—for a moment, but only a moment. You bitch, he thinks. Springing something like this on him. For a moment, he thinks she’s making a fool of him: look at the silly receptionist, she’s got nothing to say. But—no; he does have something to say. Over the past month, she’s built him up to this, surreptitious conversations touching on his thesis, on branding, on the importance of inclusion, St-Cir’s personal mission to diversify not only the firm’s image, but the firm’s boards. It’s the reason he’s there, after all; it’s the reason Bke exists. He licks his lips nervously as he stands, brushes down his skirt. All eyes are on him, and in those watching male faces he sees expressed: boredom, annoyance, amusement, curiosity, sciviousness, disdain and contempt—yes, especially the st two. Heat crawls down his neck and chest but it’s no longer with embarrassment.

  Mirrors, he begins, facing the full table, in early modern drama were used to signal vanity or vice. Alex knows he’s got about thirty seconds to make a point before the respect St-Cir’s authority compels in the audience runs thin. He speaks quickly, tries to mimic her tone and conviction. In Richard II, he expins, this changes. At the climax of the py, the king calls for a mirror: Give me that gss, and therein will I read. Alex quotes from memory. He shifts his focus towards the senior partners, performs the line to these two old men. He is trying to summarise the final year of higher education and a month of feminine performance and a limited understanding of Lockwood and Carmichael into an impromptu presentation. Dimly conceived ideas swirl through him, and he feels on the cusp of grasping something he failed to understand in the writing of his dissertation, something important.

  For the first time on stage, he continues, identity was conceived as both socially defined externality, and emergent interiority. Richard is both King and Man. Both are performance. Alex mimes throwing a mirror to the floor. The king throws the mirror to the floor to shatter “in a hundred shivers.” The rejected identity reveals a multiplicity of lost possibilities. In the py, the medieval concept of social definition is abandoned in favour of self-conception; the early modern self is the performed self. Hamlet’s antic disposition. Macbeth’s borrowed robes. Iago—and Vio, he adds with a smile, especially Vio.

  There’s some restless movement. Nobody came for a lecture on Shakespeare. Alex licks his lips, swallows against a dry throat, and forges on. What ‘self’ is L&C performing? he asks. He’s rushing it and knows it doesn’t quite make sense and elides all kinds of subtleties, but now he sees a sparkle of amusement in the old men’s eyes and that’s something. He feels sweat trickle down his back, and his cheeks glow beneath his makeup, but he fshes a glossy smile and continues. L&C is at a strategic crossroads. Richard’s abdication mirrors L&C’s own existential moment. The world is changing, and old robes of fossil fuel wealth and white-male power no longer command the same respect. This is not a reflection on the firm, Alex is keen to point out, the old ways were systemic, they worked, they worked for centuries. But just as the king believed in divine right, L&C believes in their immutable market dominance through command of old power structures. But times change. The old king couldn’t adapt, identity wrapped up in an inflexible conception of himself as King. Consequently, that identity shattered and he lost his throne. But the firm’s identity remains malleable. Shatter the mirror; rebrand: if the firm’s reflection doesn’t work, break it. Even the performance of breaking the old identity makes for good optics, it’s a marketable narrative.

  There’s a heavy silence when he stops. He’s trembling slightly. A chair creaks as Mr. Sandford leans forward. He speaks over interced fingers and his voice is ponderous but unexpectedly kind. He asks whether she’d use L&C to manage her money. The question is unexpected. Alex ughs, a little too loudly. On my wages? Mr. Sandford ughs as well. If you had the money? Alex shrugs. No.

  He’s shaking after he leaves the room but also giddy. He needs to talk to someone about what just happened. But when he relieves Amber at the front desk, she mouths an apology and rushes off on her break, girl problems, she says, talk ter. For a moment, he’s tempted to call his sister. But he doesn’t Instead, left alone, he recalls his short lecture. He shakes his head in disbelief. What the fuck was he on about? Now dread creeps into his belly, and he feels sick. The giddiness disappears and, in its wake, painful emptiness. He’s got his one-month review coming up in about fifteen minutes. An hour ago, he wasn’t worried. Now, he feels he fucked it up. Why did St-Cir put him in that position? Shit. She wants to get rid of him, that’s why. It’s not fair. He’s worked so hard, literally re-invented himself for a job he never wanted.

  Alex stands, steps over to the mirror. Bke in reflection looks back at him. He studies himself in detail. If St-Cir dismisses him, that’s a good thing, right? He can tell his sister he did his best. She’ll give him another chance to find a job. She has to. He tugs at the hem of his skirt, smooths down his top. Meanwhile, no more of this shit: no more makeup, no more tights; that’s a good thing.

  But he doesn’t want another job. He likes this job, he’s good at this job. Yeah, sure, some parts of it suck. Getting up at 5.30am, for one. Shaving his legs. And dressing like a woman. Christ, the effort. But even that’s getting easier, he’s getter better at it—no, he’s good at some of it, now, he looks in the mirror and sees the skill with which he presents himself and feels, for the first time, a flutter of not just pride, but actual pleasure at what he’s achieved in such a short time. Yeah, he compins—with good reason, the whole situation is insane—but some of it’s not that bad, really, what’s another two months?

  And—he enjoys the work, some parts more than others. He’d rather be writing decks than delivering tea to the guys, but fuck, even that, it’s not so bad, really. Other than Harry. But Harry’s a twat, everybody knows that. And in that meeting room, there was a moment when he felt—excited? and on the cusp of teasing out something real and concrete from the academic abstraction of literary studies, as though all those years of interpreting other peoples’ narratives might coalesce under pressure into an understanding of his own story.

  He sighs. Desperate sadness settles over his shoulders. After that performance in the meeting room, it doesn’t matter what he wants. Sarah’s going to sack him. He just knows it, and the past month will have been an utter waste. There won’t be a second chance. By next week, he’ll be on a coach heading home. In some imagined future family get-together, he can imagine sitting at the dinner table with his sister—the successful one—mocking his attempts at holding down a job in London. By dressing as woman! What a fucking farce.

  He returns to his desk and sits. He retrieves his little makeup bag. His face needs fixing in anticipation of the meeting with Sarah. The stress and sweat of his short talk did a right job on his makeup. He blots the shine of sweat from his brow, the bridge of his nose. Dusts his face. Dabs a little concealer beneath the eyes. His lips are dry; only now he realised how he’s gnawed his lower lip, licked colour away with anxiety. He reapplies lipstick, then gloss. He’s procrastinating, escaping into the ritual of self-care to avoid thinking about what’s coming. A half-dozen different points he could’ve made comes to him as he brushes his brows into shape. Christ. What was he thinking, a receptionist with a month’s experience lecturing a room of experts?

  When Amber returns, she smiles and compliments him on how good he looks. Alex forces a smile as he surrenders the desk. She smooths down her pleated skirt and sits with effortless grace. He realizes then how ludicrous his efforts have been: no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never move like that, never present that degree of natural femininity. Not that he wants to. But still. There’s only two more months to go. This is a blessing in disguise, crashing out like this. He can bow out with some dignity, and leave without the humiliation of being caught. Yet he feels tears sting the corners of his eyes. He grips the side of the desk, unwilling to let go. He stares at the ceiling, blinks and tells himself to man up. He’s not going to cry, for fuck’s sake. Stand straight, shoulders—

  Amber’s hand on his arm brings him back. She’s concerned, asks what’s wrong. He forces a watery smile, shrugs. She nods sympathetically, without knowing the cause of his distress. But she’s there for him, draws him into a light hug. It nearly pushes him over the edge. But when she lets go, he feels better. We’ve all been there, Amber expins, and he realised that ‘we’ means ‘women’ and this does something funny to his stomach.

  Then Sarah St-Cir arrives and asks him for join her in her office for his monthly review.

  It’s te by the time he returns home, gone ten-thirty. The door closes loudly behind him. He kicks off his shoes and half-sighs with relief, half-winces in pain. His sister welcomes him home. He finds her lounging on the sofa, white wine and Britain’s Got Talent on the telly. Normally, first thing he does coming through the door is yank off the bra and free himself from shapewear. Most nights, he can’t get out of his women’s clothes fast enough. Tonight, more than a little drunk, he instead joins his sister on the sofa.

  His sister eyes him specutively, a hint of a smile pying across her lips.

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  And he wants to tell her: great. And he wants to tell her: awful. The fullness of a single day sits at the tip of his tongue, and he yearns to share the complexity of every experience. How he woke up, did his makeup and dressed. The walk along the canal and the ride on the Tube, the woman and the coffee enjoyed afterwards. His enjoyment of the work, the daily challenges, his colleagues. A meeting with a French aristocrat and an invitation sitting in his handbag.

  And he wants to expin how he had to work te, and tell her about the celebratory drinks, afterwards. The way Amber did his makeup in the bathroom before they went out and his painful arousal at her proximity, the smell of her hair and the confident stroke of the pencil as she did his eyes. Against his better judgment, and at her urging, wearing his heels out to the bar. And the fun he had there. How he promised to be sensible with the drinking: only two, he insisted, arriving at the narrow little pub at Borough Market, but two became four, though he only bought the one, various men the others.

  Mostly, he wants to share with his sister how his meeting with Ms. St-Cir went.

  But—it’s too much, how can any brother possibly share so much with his sister?

  “How was your day, little brother?”

  He answers with a shrug. “Fine,” he says. “Just another day.”

  Author's Notes:

  Chapters three and four were originally intended as a single, long chapter but grew too long - hopefully, it still works as two separate chapters in capturing the feeling of a single, mundane day.

  The yout of Lockwood and Carmichael, with its old-London regency elegance front, the small courtyard, and the bnd 1960s office block was cribbed from The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde.

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