Carla was surprised by the view of the building as the car pulled to a stop with the sound of gravel crunching beneath the wheels. Although she had to admit that she would have been at a loss to describe what she expected the clinic in which she would be operated upon might look like, the red brick house she saw through the window looked to her more like something from a costume drama than a location at which a woman might be able to have herself transformed into a mermaid. As if the whole idea of what awaited her was not strange enough, she now found her mind struggling to cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of an English country house at the same time.
She climbed the steps to the main doors of the building in something of a daze, not aware for a moment of Henry dutifully hefting her bags out of the car behind her. Carla drifted into the smart, but understated hallway that served as the entrance and reception without noticing the woman sitting at a desk and smiling at her in a welcoming manner. Instead she walked straight past and found herself drawn to the large French windows at the very back of the hall, where the afternoon light was streaming in through the glass.
Henry watched her progress for a moment before turning to the woman behind the desk with an apologetic smile on his face.
"Sorry," he leaned forward to read the woman's name badge, "Gillian. She's a bit distracted, what with all of the stuff you do here...if you know what I mean."
"Of course," Gillian nodded, her thick accent almost baffling Henry after the time he had spent on the other side of the Atlantic, "you have the papers?"
"Right here," Henry handed them across the desk.
"Thank you," she looked away for a few seconds, tapping on the keys of the computer set to one side of the desk. "Ms Smith will be allocated a room in another wing of the house to yourself, I hope that will not be a problem?"
"No," Henry shook his great head, "she'll be okay without me breathing down her neck. All I need to know is where there's a decent boozer around here."
"I hear that the Green Knight is thought of very highly by the staff here," Gillian seemed amused by the mismatch between Henry's appearance and character, "just a few minutes' walk down the lane."
"So long as they have some proper beer," Henry waved a hand to excuse himself as he turned to make his way towards Carla. "I've had it up to here with that fizzy piss they drink on the other side of the pond."
All the time they had been talking, Carla was silent and still as she stared out of the windows and across the perfectly flat lawns that stretched out behind the house. At first she had simply been interested in seeing what lay beyond the main building, but she had quickly laid eyes upon a sight that occupied her attention and set her heart racing.
Beneath a stand of trees, perhaps a few hundred feet from the window where she stood were a pair of figures deep in conversation. At first Carla had supposed they were discussing the horse that stood partially hidden by their bodies. But as they moved, it became clear that there was something simply not right about what she was seeing if indeed they were a man, woman and a horse.
The man she could make out fairly well; white, tall and somewhat gangling in appearance he was smartly dressed without seeming formal and his body language radiated concern for the woman to whom he was talking.
It was that very woman and the horse that Carla had assumed she was either leading or sitting upon, that confused her. The woman was also tall, though not as tall as the man, and she was strikingly pretty even from such a distance with dark skin and her hair gathered in braids that cascaded down her back. Her horse was small, probably a pony and grey in colour although Carla could only make out its body while its head was hidden from view. That was the problem, she realised, and she could see the top half of the girl and the whole of the horse apart from its head. The girl's legs and the head of her pony were nowhere to be seen.
A second later the man moved no more than a few inches to the left and Carla realised that she was confused because she had been looking for something that was simply not there to be seen.
Below her waist, the body of the girl simply melted into that of the horse.
Carla turned to say something to Henry as he approached, but then she was seized by the thought of how she would feel if people clamoured to stare at her own altered form. She turned back to watch as the centaur and her companion made their way across the lawn, all too aware of the fact that soon she would be in the same position as the girl she was watching.
Morning coffee was something that would under normal circumstances have set Carla up for the day, waking her mind from the fog of sleep and getting her focussed on the day ahead of her. But the cup she was clutching in her hands had barely touched her lips in the time since it had been poured as her attention was centred on the face of the man who sat in a comfy chair opposite her own.
She had recognised his distinctive features as soon as she had entered the room and been invited to take a seat. Carla had never been troubled by poor eyesight and there was no mistaking that the man who had made her coffee and introduced himself as Dr Pickford, was the same man who she had seen the previous day as he spoke to the stunning female centaur on the lawn.
Though the man had a similarly pleasant Englishness to Henry, the fact that he seemed comfortable around creatures that had previously been the stuff of fairy tales as far as she was concerned lent him an air of mystery and made her feel slightly uneasy around him.
"I have to tell you that I'm quite looking forward to getting down to business in your case," Pickford took a sip of his own coffee, "if you'll forgive the forward nature of putting it that way."
"You have?" Carla was not sure if such enthusiasm was a good thing under the circumstances.
"Oh yes," Pickford nodded. "You see while I may have amassed what could be called a large body of work in this area, I always have a fondness for the mermaids that I have been asked to create. I see them as some of my best work and always find that they seem to be the happiest and well-adjusted to the change once the operation has been completed and they've had the time they need to recuperate."
"Doctor," Carla looked him in the eye. "I'm sure you know what you're doing and all. But I'm still more than a little scared by all of this...I mean, how am I supposed to handle becoming a mermaid?"
"It's different for everyone," Pickford placed a hand on her knee, "some of the patients that I've worked with embraced the change with gusto as soon as they saw themselves in a mirror, others needed time and a helping hand to come to terms with their altered situation. But I'm proud to say that we have never had a case of a patient being left in a position where they were unhappy with what we had done to them. I won't settle for anything less than you being happy as a mermaid or happy as you are right now."
"I have a choice?"
