Chapter 2 : A Return to Earth? - August

CAFE NERO

Cathy Corbin reaches the Café Nero in Brook Street at just after a quarter past twelve. She is out of breath and anxious. She said she would meet her friend Jenny half an hour ago and she hates being late.

It's a bright day. As she enters the café, it takes a moment or two for her eye to adjust to the dimmer light. She glances round and her heart sinks. No Jenny. She knows that Jenny had to see her research supervisor. It looks as if she had to leave and get ready for the meeting.

Cathy looks around one more time for Jenny's spiky dark drown bobbed hair but all she can see is a young man with a shaven head. Or at least she thinks it's a young man. She looks closer, puzzled by the androgynous figure and sees that it's not a man, it's a girl? The more she looks, the more familiar the figure seems. Cathy approaches her as the woman turns her head. It is Jenny!

"Jenny! Is this actually you?" Cathy laughs: in relief that she has still managed to keep her appointment and in disbelief. What has her friend been up to?

"Cathy! Yes, it's me!" Jenny gets up to hug her friend. "I organised my own coffee. Can I get you something?'

"No, no look. I'll just go to the bar and get something for myself but ... Jenny! Just look at you! I like it!"

Cathy soon returns. She sits, smiles and gazes once more at her friend; at her face (happy); her head (gleaming) and the ring through her nasal septum (cheeky)!

"Surprised?" asks Jenny

"Stunned!"

"Stunned?"

"Well, OK surprised. Actually, you look bloody brilliant it's just ... just..."

"A radical make-over?"

"You could say that!"

"Well, research can change lives."

"Yes, I know but the sort of stuff we do, well it usually is not quite so visible and err, I would have to say, dramatic."

"So do you like it?"

"Er, yes — yes I do. It really does suit you. Your head is just bloody brilliant. I am jealous"

"What of? Hair or nose?"

"Both! I just wish I could get away with it. Maybe when George and I go away on holiday, I could try it out? So did you do this after you got back?"

"No, I got back looking like this."

"Wow. Scars of battle or right of passage?"

"Well - bit of both really."

"Active or passive? I mean did they just do it to you, or did you ask for it to be done?"

"Well — oh, it's a bit embarrassing really."

"Embarrassing? Now I am really interested. This sounds as if it could be fun. Tell me more."

"The instructions they sent me for the course said much of it would be about learning to follow orders..."

"Uh-oh! This is not your strong suit. For goodness sake Jenny: you went on a course which was about following orders? You could have been in real trouble in no time at all."

"Yes, well exactly. Anyway the idea was that you would receive rewards if you succeeded; encouragement if you tried but did not quite make it and you would have to pay some sort of forfeit if you did not try hard enough."

"Go on..." Cathy is beginning to smile very broadly. She knows her friend and knows that Jenny has a very independent state of mind. Perhaps it's something to do with her being half Swedish...

"Anyway as a preliminary challenge, I was supposed to get a crew cut hair-do and have an additional ear piercing, but I interpreted the instructions a bit too liberally."

"Aha. So in fact you..."

"Just had a trim and passed on the ear piercing"

"Ha!" Cathy throws her head back and laughs. Jenny clearly deserved what she got but in the nicest possible way.

"So your forfeit was to get your head shaved and to have a more radical piercing. That is brilliant! Serves you right."

"Yes, I was an awful warning to the others."

"I bet you were. A very attractive and sexy warning though."

However, Jenny does not confess that her failure to observe the dress code was also punished and that her punishment was to spend the entire two months naked. There is a limit after all, to what friends can disclose to each other on a single occasion, in public.

"Well, Jenny I have got to say, that I really like you just as you are. I do hope you are now under strict orders to maintain your present appearance? What does Joe think? I mean he's a bit conservative, really — isn't he?"

"Taken aback — but accepting. At least, I think so."

Time has passed quickly and by the time the two friends have finished their lunch, it's time to go back to work.

"My guess is that you have had a lot to cope with?"

"You could say!" For a moment, Jenny thinks about telling Cathy all about her arrest and interrogation. About seeing Angela. About the threats made to her. But some memories are very painful, even dangerous. She thinks again and decides against it. There will be other times and the less she thinks about the incident right now, the safer she feels. Going over it again will conjure up devils from the past where, at present, they seem to lay silent and sleeping.

As they leave the café, Cathy continues her gentle interrogation. "So what happens now?"

Jenny assumes Cathy is talking about her research. She's only partly right. "The first move is to diary the events. I was supposed to be under cover and so I couldn't just write everything down. I will use this to identify the research questions I will be able to investigate and then I have to get Inward Bound to agree to let me go back and do the data collection."

"Do they spank you if the stats don't come out right?"