Transvestia

Soon Elaine announced coffee was ready and they sat before the fire sipping the hot drink and carry- ing on a quiet conversation, Jim found himself tell- ing her the story of his life and she sat listening intently, with her feet stretched out towards the flames, occasionally wriggling her toes with their painted nails. Again he went over the events of the events of the day, explaining how when the girl had stolen his car she had taken almost everything he possessed, apart from some old clothes back in the flat he had nothing in the world. When he reached the point where Elaine had picked him up, she broke in,

"I nearly left you there. At first I thought you were a young girl with short hair. In the dress and high heels you walked like one, then when I saw you were a man I was going to leave you but when it started to rain and you made your pathetic cry, 'Don't leave me', I changed my mind."

Outside the storm still raged unabated and when it began to get dark, Elaine told him he would have to stay the night as she was not prepared to take the car out on the mountain roads during darkness, she was willing to make a bed up for him in the spare room and would take him to report his loss, first thing in the morning. She prepared a meal for them and while they ate she told him about the cottage, it was hers an uncle having left it to her when he died two years before. Since she liked solitude she had kept it as a weekend and holiday home. Her uncle had owned it for many years and had done all the im- provements himself. He had dammed a small stream further up the mountain for a water supply and in- stalled a small generator for electric light, she even had a kind of ice-box kept cool by the overflow from the dam running through it and it was good enough to keep food fresh for several days.

Jim volunteered to wash up while she made the bed up for him and when she came from the bedroom

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