Trumpet

“I crept out of my house in the middle of the night with a thief’s racing heart. […] Relief as I crossed the border into Scotland. I let down the windows to sniff the different air. I am exhausted. Every morning for the past ten days, someone has been waiting outside my house with cameras and questions.”

Running from the reporters and paparazzi who’ve harassed her since the reveal of Joss’s assigned gender, Millie drives to the Scottish seaside village of Torr. As it had been for 40 years, the village serves as a place of respite from the hostile demands of London. The bucolic setting eventually allows Millie to heal. As Colman works through his own grief, he also arrives in Torr, ready to renew his relationship with his mother.

“I scream at him, ‘An explanation, you owe me an explanation. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick? Have you killed somebody?’ The strange thing is he already feels like he belongs to me. My anger makes him mine. ‘You really want to know, don’t you,’ he says in a voice I can’t quite recognize. ‘You really want to know. I’ll show you then,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you what is the matter.’”

This exchange takes place between Millie and Joss in Millie’s apartment, when Joss refuses to be romantic with her despite the pair being in love. This is the novel’s first example of a misunderstanding arising from a faulty assumption. This exchange reveals how two of the main characters deal with frustration—Millie’s frustration with Joss’s lack of affection and Joss’s frustration and fear that Millie will reject him because he is a transgender man—through the desperate sharing of a secret.

“People should keep to their own, she said. It wasn’t prejudice, it was common sense, she said. Then she said the word Darky. I don’t want you marrying a Darky. I stopped her before she shamed me further. I told her she wouldn’t be seeing me again and I left. My brother Duncan came round to Rose Street and said the whole family wanted to come to the wedding. It seems they have overcome their prejudice at least for today.”

This is an example of one type of prejudice experienced by Millie and Joss because of their interracial relationship. Kay captures the attitude of those who either assume they’re not biased or pretend to be acting in good faith.