“Saskia, this is Cass and Felicia. Cass, Felicia, this is Saskia. She’s…” Kivi tailed off. Clearly she hadn’t thought about how she was going to introduce her.
“Kivi’s protégée, guest, and friend,” Saskia said, coming to her rescue. Kivi momentarily raised her eyebrows, presumably at the latter declaration, but there was no time to query it. Saskia donned her most charming persona, held her hand out to each of the two women for a handshake, and then they all sat down.
“Saskia is only staying for another five weeks, but she intends to give a helping hand with the preparations while she’s here,” Kivi said. “Obviously, this is a big thing to take on for me, what with running the guest house too. So Saskia said she’d help. That is, of course, if you don’t mind?”
“As long as she’s not some raging undercover homophobe, then that’s fine,” Felicia said, and they all laughed. Saskia’s gut twisted. A handful of years ago, that would have been her to a T. “Now, before we get started, I must explain my DID to you. As you may or may not know, ladies, I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Sorry –peeps. Notladies. I’m trying to get better at using less gendered language. While I think about it, can I check your pronouns?”
“She and her,” Kivi said immediately.
“Same for me,” Saskia nodded. She’d never been asked for her pronouns before.
“Cool,” Felicia said. “Cass also goes by she and her. Almost all of my alters do as well. The only alter who doesn’t is called Coral, who goes by she and they, interchangeably, no preference.”
“Noted,” Kivi said – and she did, indeed, jot something on her notepad. “Can you run us through who’s who? And any terminology we might need to know? I’ve done a little research, but I know that every system is different.”
“System,” Cass nodded approvingly. “You’re picking it up already. The collective word for all of the alters is the ‘system’. ‘Alter’,fairly obviously, is short for ‘alternate personality’. We don’t call them ‘personalities’, because they’re so much more than that, although some other systems do. Everyone is their own individual identity, just like anyone else. They just happen to share a body.”
“And in terms of who’s who,” Felicia said, “well, there is nobody called Felicia. ‘Felicia’ is simply the body’s legal name.Myname is Heather, and I’m the host, or dominant alter. I’m the one who is engaged to Cass, and I’m the one you’ll probably deal with the most. The other two who you may see from time to time are Daniella, she/her, who you may have met at the bakery, and Coral. Coral’s age is frozen at sixteen, goes by she and they as I said, and isnotin any sort of romantic relationship with Cass. Daniella is, on a level, but that relationship is entirely separate from the one that Cass has with me. It’s complicated, but all I can say is that it works.”
“Will that have any sort of impact on this wedding?” Kivi said. She’d been furiously scribbling the whole time the ladies had been talking.
“Well, we want both Coral and Daniella to have a say in the proceedings,” Cass said. “But I am marrying Heather, not Daniella. And we would also like involvement from Kylie and Autumn. They are the other two alters in the system. Their impact will be slightly different, however, because Kylie is five years old. Again, her age is frozen.”
Saskia must have matched Kivi’s look of surprise, because the two women smiled.
“Yes, really,” Cass continued. “A five-year-old in a thirty-two-year-old body. She’s lovely, though, and we still want her to have a bearing on this wedding. Autumn is twenty, we believe, and she’s… quite a maelstrom, shall we say? She’s a force of nature. A very, very anxious person. Her appearances are characterised by a level of hysteria and… well, delusion. It’s been difficult for us to get to know her as a person, but now that she trusts me, I’ve been able to get a gauge of what she likes and dislikes. I’d still like her to be involved, although I’m not sure how I’m going to broach the subject with her, given that she doesn’t acknowledge the other alters.”
“Everyone else does?” Kivi questioned. “Everyone else… accepts each other?”
“Well, we’re not sure how much Kylie understands, because of her age,” Cass said. “But Heather, Coral and Daniella get on well. They’re all aware of each other’s existence, and they’re all co-conscious. Meaning that when one of them is fronting – in control of the body – the others can see and hear what’s going on too. So take right now, for example: Heather is fronting, but Daniella and Coral are around too. They just can’t speak, or move the body, or take control unless they’rereallyforceful about it.”
“So you are Heather?” Saskia said, nodding towards Cass’s fiancée. “At the moment? I can call you Heather?”
“I’d like it if you did,” Heather said. “We’d like it if you tried to call us all by our correct individual names. It can be difficult to tell who’s fronting, sometimes, but Cass can always tell. And we won’t be offended if you ask. Or get confused. It’s a lot to wrap your heads around.”
“God knows I’ve screwed up a few times,” Cass said with a quirk of the lips.
“That’s all good to know,” Kivi said, then sat up. “In that case, I think we’re all set. Any questions, Saskia?”
“None so far,” Saskia confirmed.
“In that case, we’ve got a wedding to plan.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kivi
This is going to be one heck of a job,Kivi thought as she waved goodbye to Cass and Heather an hour and a half later and returned to the dining room.
Perhaps she should have done her research in advance. After all, it was public knowledge on the community grapevine that Felicia Wilson had Dissociative Identity Disorder. It was certainly not a secret that she had multiple people living in one body, although some treated her like she had some sort of alien spirit possession. “But not the choir,” Heather said with a relieved smile. “They know there's nothing wrong with us. And that's a point: we'd like them to perform at our wedding. Jean and Petra have already said yes.”
Over toasted sandwiches with salad, they'd ironed out the basics. They were hoping for a late September date – they'd originally plumped for the late August bank holiday, but Kivi had warned them that this would be difficult. “September is less busy at the moment. I can block out that last weekend for you, no problem. If it’s summer you're wanting, and you're also wanting Sandy Dunes as a venue, it'll have to be next summer.”
As it was, timings would be tight. It cost nearly two thousand pounds to get a wedding licence, and it was only because of Kivi's contacts within the council that they had been promised that itwould have been approved by then. Good old Anna. They didn't speak much these days, but she could always be counted upon to step up when it mattered.
She hoped that Saskia would be the same. She had been remarkably quiet throughout the meeting, her head moving backwards and forwards between the three other attendees like a spectator at a tennis match. If there was any chance of this ‘shadowing’ arrangement working out, the journalist would need to get involved. It was already shaping up to be a mammoth task.
Kivi expected that she would step up. She didn't exactly seem a shrinking-violet type, much more a throw-self-in-at-deep-end-and-sink-or-swim type. It was entirely possible that she had just been observing. Listening, like a true journalist. And at least she'd eaten lunch today. Kivi had noticed her staring at the cheese toastie as if it were a house brick, but she had eaten it, then returned to her former passive observations. By the time Kivi got back to the dining room after seeing Cass and Heather off, Saskia was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, Kivi's skin prickled. That was a sudden disappearance. Was she-
