Raising one delicately booted foot, she kicked the door, which splintered and crumbled with the impact. The wood was old and rotten; it had been a very long time since this door was last opened.
Taking one cautious step into the outer courtyard, her breath caught in her throat.
“You!”
…….
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Please switch off all laptops and portable electronic devices. We shall be landing at London’s Heathrow Airport in a few minutes. Please place your seats to the upright position and stow all food trays in the seat-back in front of you.
“It is eleven minutes past seven in the morning in London, and the weather is cloudy with some rain expected, with a maximum of twenty-one degrees forecast. We should be landing on time at seven-thirty.”
Allun Tanner awoke from his strange, but very vivid dream and returned to the real world, reluctantly shutting down his laptop and stretching his legs in the confined airline seat. He was a large man, obese, with a pale, unhealthy complexion on what had been a handsome face some time ago. He eased his bulk uncomfortably in a vain attempt to find a comfortable position. He was grateful the flight was almost over. Although unable to connect to the internet, but before going to sleep, Allun had been able to scroll through the latest developments in the game that occurred prior to his departure from America.
His wife, Miriam, was asleep and snoring in the window seat next to him. She was fifty years old, so two years his junior. She too, was grossly overweight, but as she was only five-four, she wasn’t as restricted as his six-four bulk.
Newark, New Jersey to London is a long way. Eight hours in a small space was almost more than Allun could bear. However, as it was his idea to come to England in the first place, he decided not to complain too much. Besides, Miriam could whine for New Jersey when she got going.
Indeed, she had complained bitterly about coming to England at all. Her idea of a vacation was to sit on the settee, eat cookies and watch TV soaps for eight hours at a stretch. The problem was that she spent most of her time doing this anyway, so a vacation usually meant doing it somewhere other than their apartment in Jersey City. She liked a condo in Florida, or at a push - Mexico, where her favourite TV stations were readily available.
She had been a receptionist at a busy medical centre when they’d first met, some twenty-eight years ago. He’d been the IT consultant responsible for putting in place their new IT system with databases for patients, medications and treatments. She’d laughed at his lame jokes and one thing led to another. Neither was blessed with enormous social grace, good looks or slim physiques, so it seemed natural that they gravitated towards a relationship based on mutual need rather than love or affection.
They’d had children almost immediately, but after the fourth, she’d stopped wanting sex, affection or even to share the same bed as her husband.
Allun wasn’t that perturbed, as sex for him was rather a chore. His only sexual experience was either with his wife, who was hardly the most effusive lover, or by himself. Latterly, any sexual encounter with his wife was bereft of either communication or emotion. Lacking any form of desire, either for his wif, or the sexual act itself, their relationship had taken a turn for the worse.
The children were blessed, or cursed, with a similar lack of social grace, but all four reached adulthood unscathed and disappeared as soon as they could, to seek their fortunes. Contact with each of them was brief and restricted to holidays, and even then, for the most part, none bothered.
To Allun’s personal and very private shame, he knew he’d not been the best father he could have been, spending more time than was healthy working or locked away in his den with his computer. His deepest shame related to his certain knowledge that inside his excessive masculine frame there existed a sensitive and delicate female, who by a quirk of nature and genetics was denied a proper existence.
His feminine alter ego, known simply as Tamsyn, was allowed out only when Allun played RP games on the Internet or in his dreams, whether awake or asleep. The Lady Tamsyn was everything Allun wasn’t. She was beautiful, raven haired, athletic, incredibly feminine and yet powerful within the constraints of her more delicate physique. She was intelligent and funny, with a quick analytical brain.
Allun’s transsexuality was his hidden secret. Aware only he had this powerful urge to be something he clearly wasn’t, he managed the only way he could, by losing himself in the games and by engrossing himself in his work. He had never received counselling or even spoken about it to another soul. He had never cross-dressed, simply allowing his RP fantasies to cross over into his sexual fantasies during his regular masturbation sessions. He was aware of the potential for change, deciding that it was too expensive and too hard for him. Besides, he knew that a man his size would only become a freak in a dress.
He didn’t know it, but the dozen or so faceless fanatics he regularly played with on the Internet were all convinced that Tamsyn was a female in real life.
There was nothing he didn’t know about computers. However, there was a vast amount he didn’t know about either being a woman or of the real world outside his restricted life. Of his secret, Miriam knew nothing. Allun wouldn’t give her the satisfaction to use it as an excuse to divorce him. He knew the marriage had died some time ago, but as he supported her in her slug-like lifestyle, he wasn’t going to lose the apartment and a shed-load of his cash just so she could continue in that lifestyle while he had nothing. Besides, the relationship suited him, as he could partake in these RP games for nearly all of his free time.
He’d once considered suicide when very depressed, but when he realised he was worth more to Miriam dead than alive, he stayed his hand and became more involved in RP games. His insurance was one luxury he’d taken out when the children were small. He felt it was ironic that he was now worth quite a bit, but only if dead.
Sleeping rarely and for short periods only, these games had come to dominate his existence. A minor heart murmur caused him to rethink his own lifestyle; so, on his doctor’s advice, he had booked this holiday to have a change of scenery and pace. He had time enough to lose weight and start getting into shape when he returned home.
Originally of Cornish descent, Allun wanted to trace his great-grandfather who shared the same name, Allun Tanner. That Allun had been born in Penryn in 1864. Signing on as a seaman in 1880, he shipped out from Falmouth, ending up in New Jersey in 1887. There he met a young lady called Helen Trounce, also of Cornish descent. They married and he left the sea to work in the growing port.
The tales that had been handed down about that part of the world fascinated Allun. He was determined to visit it and find out as much as he could before it was too late. It was natural, therefore, that he took this opportunity to come and do just that. He glanced at his wife. Reluctantly, he had to wake her, as her seat was still back, and he knew that she'd give the cabin crew a hard time if they woke her.
Predictably, with consciousness came complaints. He switched off to her unpleasant whine, pretending to be listening to the in-flight music channel.
By the time he pushed the baggage cart through the NOTHING TO DECLARE channel at Heathrow Terminal Three, he was ready to kill her.
First, it was the distance she had to walk; then, it was the smell of the airport; next was the fact that the Immigration officer was an Indian girl in a sari. Allun went from mild irritation to outright embarrassment, as Miriam seemed oblivious that her very loud New Jersey voice highlighted her ignorant and generally bigoted opinion of everything.
For one wonderful moment, he hoped that the Immigration officer might refuse her entry on the grounds she was so awful, but unfortunately she let her in, stamping her passport with a vindictive ‘thump!’ Allun felt that the thought of having to deal with her for another moment made the officer baulk at any desire to attempt to bar her entry.