The below work contains discussion of domestic violence and transphobia.

Gigi and Sotiria

North London, 2006

Out of the silence, Gigi hears a voice. It is not her own, nor the one of which she dreams, inexpressible but transfixing. It is a strong, deep, clear bell-chime – the sound of an older woman, weary and nicotine-stained. It seems to surround her, pulls her from her sleep and wrenches her into the bedroom in which she grew up, one she has redecorated for her new self but which retains in its walls so much of the former.

She opens her eyes. The woman gazes at her from across the room, casting a holy shimmer at Gigi through the early-morning darkness: a small, lollipop-shaped figure with tinted glasses.

Gigi wishes she had a baseball bat to hand. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she asks, in a startled, squeaky voice.

‘My child, my child,’ the woman says, raising her hands as if to show they are empty, ‘who I am is not important. You will only be able to sing when you discover your own identity.’

‘I know exactly what my identity is. I am Gigi Galani, and I have half a mind to call the police right now.’

‘Ah, the police,’ the woman says, laughing to herself, ‘I know them well.’

‘I bet you do, you weirdo. But this is the Metropolitan Police we’re talking about. They’re nasty bastards. They’ll shoot you for fare evasion. Look, if you don’t leave right now, I’m going to scream.’

‘Yes, you should scream! That will help.’

Gigi, sitting on her bed in a skewed string top, hair unbrushed, face unadorned, looks with confusion at the woman.

‘My name is Sotiria,’ the woman says. ‘Sotiria Bellou.’

‘You’re Greek?’

‘Yes. I have been sent to help you.’

‘By who?’

‘I died in 1997. Throat cancer. The cigarettes got me in the end, but where would I have been without them? I have been sent to help you with your singing problem.’

‘OK,’ Gigi says, and then she remembers that she is sitting on a bed in her childhood bedroom, looking at this eccentric apparition. There is only one explanation for all this: it is clearly a dream. She is obviously asleep right now and pulling this wackiness from her subconscious. She turns over to her side and attempts to go back to sleep.

Then Sotiria starts to sing.

But before Sotiria, there is Natasha. She sounds so beautiful when she sings. Old Greek ballads, dancey numbers with a sway of her hips, sometimes even Whitney Houston. Every Friday, the men in the audience bang their hands against their tables as if trying to restart a heart. With a wink of her eye and a swish of her train, she owns them. They wave their lighters, they coo at her, they festoon her with twenty-pound notes. She is a doll with a perfect voice, one that does not fade and does not change. She dances effortlessly between languages, thanking the audience in Greek before declaring: ‘I will be Evita at the Enfield Civic Theatre next month. Tickets are on sale now, so please come along!’

She will be Evita. As far as Gigi is concerned, Natasha already is.

The restaurant in question is Yia Mas tavern, owned by Gigi’s father, and where she is employed as a waitress. It is a gloomy space once dimmed by a thicket of cigarette smoke, until they changed the law and her father turned down the lights further. This place has been central to the community since it opened in the eighties, when Gigi, then a toddler, then a boy, was its curly-haired little mascot. It has served dutifully a catchment of pernickety Greek emigrants and traumatised Cypriot war refugees for almost twenty years.

‘Isn’t Natasha wonderful?’ Gigi says to the customers as she gives them their food and their cheap beer. The praise for Natasha is easier for Gigi to handle if she