It was not a comforting thought. But by then, Barbara had her mind made up.

After Barbara said good-bye to Tim, whom by then she had legally adopted, and told him she'd be writing him next from England, Leila helped her implement the first stage of her plan. Although against her better instincts, which she told her friend, she cut Barbara's hair short.

"Part it on the left side, like most men do."

After Leila did that, Barbara assessed herself in the washroom mirror of Leila's and George's apartment near the airport the three owned.

"I've been accused of being a 'tomboy.' Might as well look like one."

"You look like a Boy Scout, is what you look like!" George said, putting his head and two cents in.

Leila studied the tomboy and shook her head. "What're you going to do about those two growths on your chest?"

Barbara looked down at her breasts, which were not unimpressive.

"Can we strap 'em down somehow?" Barbara asked. "Didn't Mammy do that to Scarlet at Tara, before the ball at Twelve Oaks?"

"That was her waist they were squeezing into a corset," Leila corrected. "And don't forget, that was just a movie. This is real life."

"Sometimes I get the two a little mixed," Barbara admitted.

Wrapping her in the widest and heaviest surgical gauze Leila could find, Barbara became not quite but passably flat-chested.

"I've seen men with bigger pectorals," she said. "Stephen's no slouch in that department."

"Still think about the 'gorgeous rat,' huh?" Leila asked as she helped Barbara into a man's Navy shirt. She was already in blue jeans.

"I try not to, but what can a girl in love do?"

"He's still married, isn't he? And you still live by the old code of not messing with married men?"

"I'm not sure for who's sake... the man, his wife, or my own."

"All three good reasons, seems to me."

"But another side of me hopes something will change in our lives. There'll be some way out, like this way of getting to London I've figured out."

Leila looked her up and down. "Pretending you're a Merchant Marine sounds like a pretty crazy thing to me. But you've done crazy things before, like doing Immelmann turns. I have to admit, you might just pass."

The transformation surprised even Barbara.

She called for a second opinion. "George, tell me what you think."




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