early evening that they finally got there, to a house which felt curiously empty after all the crowds and excitement of the wedding. And yet little was changed. The household staff were all there, Millie's father was still there(though he, too, was to leave in a day or two) and, most disturbing Millie was still there. "What can have happened?" wondered Ian, "Why haven't I changed back? Why am I still Millie?" There didn't seem to be any answer to that, and all he could think of was to have a light supper in his room (his father was very under- standing - Millie must be very distressed at this early separa- tion from her husband) and see whether he'd wake up in the morning as Ian. To him the only thing which was not in anyway distressing was the fact that he was now separated by something like four hundred miles from his loathed husband and, curiously, he discovered that this ardent appreciation of the situation was shared by Millie herself for she had offered up several anguished prayers since leaving Malcolm at the Depot that she might never see him again.

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But as the early dawn bathed the unfamiliar room in its pale light lan's hopes of returning to 1978 were again denied. All he could see was femininity about him - the pretty chintz curtains and cushions, the frilled skirt round the legs of the dressing table, the lace edged sheets and pillows on the bed and he had no need to investigate to know that he was still female.

It shouldn't be thought that Ian was anxious about his situation for he'd wakened as Millie once before after a session, but he was puzzled why this time his transformation was lasting so long. But as the days passed even this small query lessened. A week after the wedding he was completely accustomed to being Millie and,

although he knew perfectly well that he was Ian and male and had been born in 1955 yet he knew equally well that he was Millie and female and born in 1893. To him who had SO longed throughout his life for the unobtainable, and to whom the series of dressing sessions had been such a delight, this full time living as a beautiful woman was not something to worry about, but something to receive as unbelievably wonder- ful.

On the Tuesday ten days after the wedding he was sit- ting at the bureau in the win- dow of his bedroom writing letters. As he finished each let- ter he ticked off names on a list - a very long list - of people who had sent wedding gifts. Millie knew everybody on the list, of course, and there were no problems for him in that way but the continual writing began to cramp his fingers and, after a while, he stopped for a rest and just sat and gazed through the open window at the garden and parkland as they basked in the mid-morning sunshine. A movement on the driveway in the distance caught his eye and idly he watched. Someone on a bicycle. Someone, as the figure drew nearer, in a blue uniform. A telegraph boy. As the cyclist disappeared round the back of the house Ian wondered vaguely who was sending tele- grams, and to whom, before he once more turned to his letters. When, ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door and Mc Kay, the butler, appeared with the little orange envelope on a silver tray he had already forgotten the incident and turned with curiosity to dis- cover who had been the sender.

McKay had been warned of the telegram's contents by the telegraph boy who had him- self been instructed to reveal them to him by the village postmistress and as Ian extracted the single sheet from the envelope and began to to read

he quietly put down his tray and stood ready. Suddenly Ian, hand to his throat, rose to his feet and then collapsed in a faint into McKay's arms. That loyal man lifted his feather- weight mistress gently and laid her carefully on the bed before ringing for Susan. Only then did he pick up the telegram form and read the brief mes- sage: "The War Office regrets to inform you that your hus- band, Malcolm Andrew Fulton, of the 51st Battery, Royal Artillery, has been killed in active service......::

"Poor kid" he murmured to himself" and her only ten days married."

It was some days before Ian and Millie could come to terms with the situation. They had gone from being single to married to widowed in the space of ten days, and although neither felt any real sense of loss for Malcolm yet the news had come as a severe shock and, in any

case, the formalities

of death and widowhood had to be observed the black dresses and veils, black edged writing paper, acknowledged letters of sympathy, the drawn blinds at all the windows.

One thing the shock of Malcolm's death did do it made them much more a single person and not two minds in one body, and it taught them to talk to each other. Not aloud, of course, but their minds began to com- municate, and Ian learned a lot.

"You'll see-" Millie told

him "-the wedding dress session really should have been like any of the others we've done and you should have wakened up on the Sunday morning afterwards, back as yourself again. But it seems that the shock and horror of what Malcolm did to us that night in the hotel was so awful that it has made us cling tightly together in my body and now we can't get apart."

"What never?"

"I don't know. My memory