When Shaun awoke after the operation she was so heavily bandaged she was certain something awful must have happened in the theatre. She had read about women who had had their breasts removed because of cancer. The hideous scars that went from their armpits right across their chests.
"Please God don't let it happen to me," she whispered.
She remembered someone telling her that breast cancer only affected women over forty-five, and she was nowhere near that age. Laura, she knew, would have nothing to do with her. The best she could hope for was that she might treat her as a sister.
She touched the bandage around her chest, felt a sudden stinging pain, and knew the scars must be horrific.
"Oh God I wish I hadn't had this operation." she said aloud, everything was all right before." Even as a man, she thought, who would want to look at someone's bare chest covered in scars. How could she go around bare to the waist like other men. If there are no complications, why am I bandaged like this?" she asked the nurse who suddenly appeared and had come to tuck the covers around her.
"Don't worry dear,"the nurse said with a smile, "the surgeon will be along in a moment. Just about through Dr Cade?" the nurse said as the surgeon walked in, "I have someone in the other ward that needs watching. All right if I look in from time to time? Unless you think there is some respiratory risk."
He shook his head. "No risk, thank you nurse. I'm going to stay for a few minutes. Just to make sure she doesn't start trying to move the dressing."
The Surgeon felt Shaun needed reassuring, some one to calm her, settle her down. When the nurse closed the door he sat by her bed. He thought Shaun looked more like a child in sleep than a grown woman. As a plastic surgeon he wondered why someone who looked so warm, kind and gentle would want to change their gender.
The mastectomy was only the beginning. Perhaps, he thought, even hoped that someone, or something would eventually change her mind.
It was Shaun's first day out of bed. She had a feeling of well-being, happy with her progress and smiled as Laura came in to see her.
"You're sitting up," Laura observed taking hold of her hands, "is it all right? Did the doctor say you are allowed?"
"For meals and a little while after. He told me not to touch the dressing. Wish I could they itch like crazy."
"When does the dressing come off?"
"In a day or two. I think I must be badly scarred. Oh Laura, I'm so scared. I don't want to see my chest. I know you won't want me near you. If only I had listened to you. I hate being bound up like this."
Shaun started to cry. When she laid down, Laura comforted her.
"I'm so sorry," Shaun sobbed, "I feel so mean. If only things were like they used to be. We were both happy then. I know we were."
Dr Cade came into Shaun's room a few days later with a nurse wheeling a trolley.
"This is the morning," he said with a grin.
Shaun's eyes were dark and wide. "It must it be now? Today!"
"Don't tell me you want to stay in this place? Your friend Laura is waiting for you. Now shall we see what's under this dressing? Scissors,..."
"No! please. I know what's under there I can't bear to look."
"Be still Shaun," the nurse said sternly, "the scissors are very sharp, and you're being a silly girl."
The adhesive tape parted. Dr Cade changed the scissors for forceps to remove the containing crepe and stained wool. He began to tease away the impregnated gauze. Splits in the skin he knew were unpredictable. He worried about the one on the left, even though it had been lifted accurately with his diathermy knife. The axilla had been drained, but he wished the arm had been kept raised longer. He lifted the remainder of the gauze away, dropping it into the receptacle the nurse held ready. He studied the area he had left bare, allowed his breath to sigh out in relief as he saw the new skin.
Shaun opened her eyes, their troubled glance questioning him.
"Just fine so far, looks like a cover," he smiled, "the scars are soft and pale, there is just one place, not quite clear," he frowned, "looks loose. Forceps please nurse."
Shaun closed her eyes. She felt the cold steel touch the place where her left breast used to be, the hesitation of the loosened, still clinging residue. Then it was gone.
"Swab."
The dampened swab touched her chest, cleansing it with gentle movements. It stung, felt cold. Instruments rattled as the doctor discarded them.
"Now would be a good time to pray," she said to herself.
"You can open your eyes now Shaun," the nurse told her.
She found reassurance in the calmness of her voice. She looked down at her chest as Dr Cade stood back. The nurse held a mirror for her.
"Thank God," Shaun whispered. The skin on each side of her chest showed a fresh pink colouring. She knew that the scars were so thin that when the colour evened out they would almost disappear. She looked past the mirror at Dr Cade who was studying the skin texture through narrowed eyes.
"Does it please you Shaun Maclaren?"
Gingerly she touched her chest.
"Very much. It makes me feel so much better."
"You can go home in a day or two," he told her as he left the room.
"Home," she said softly, "I thought today. Someone said Laura was waiting."
"Doctor wants you to stay here for at least another day. You must lie down now and rest," the nurse added giving her an injection.
"Laura will never love me again," she said as she closed her eyes.
This was the first time Laura had lived without Shaun for three years. She threw herself into her work, and though her period of chronic alcoholism now seemed like an incredible nightmare she continued to attend the monthly meetings of the A. A. She realized that if she wanted to avoid another mistake, they were going to be a part of her life forever.
Shaun came home from the hospital spent the first few days crying, and the nights sobbing in her sleep. Dr Cade told Laura it could happen and referred to it as 'Post-operative Blues'. Laura moved Shaun's things back into the empty quarters and treated her like a troublesome sister. Not once inquiring as to how she was feeling or managing.
Shaun dismissed her disappointment at first, but slowly she became conscious of Laura's tight-lipped indignation. She knew she must leave the apartment.
The months she had spent at the University made Shaun feel she was capable of doing something more with her life than chauffeuring people around. She bought a flat down the coast, decided on the tourist industry and took an intensive six months course learning the language of the Japanese.
In the beginning it appeared an impossible subject to master. But determined to succeed she studied every night, until the small hours. Received professional tuition every day becoming, fluent, quick and accurate. She accepted as many translation contracts from tourist Agents as she could handle and tried to blot Laura out of her mind.
Shaun quickly made new male friends within the industry, A world wide agency asked her to act as a guide for their Japanese clients which gave her a continuity of work. The first weeks of tourist guiding was a delight to Shaun Maclaren. She relished the power the position gave her. She was accepted as a man by everyone. She liked the excitement of drawing the coachload of tourists into an entity through the force of her own personality and enthusiasm.
She was flattered by their attention when she described the passing sights, and reveled in their laughter at her jokes. She felt all important when she stepped down from the coach with all their passports in her hand ready to give to the Hotel receptionist.
A month after guiding by day and translating in the evenings she found herself in need of some form of relaxation. She had become friendly with one of the male tour guides who was studying for his degree. He was reserved, tall, slim and considered by many of the female agency staff as a real dish. Occasionally they went to a hotel for a drink and a laugh, but he had been given an address and did not want to go there alone.
"It's quite safe," he told Shaun in confidence, "medically inspected, reasonable prices. We could have the time of our lives."
Shaun made all sorts of excuses, finding it impossible to refuse. She couldn't tell him she was really a female who'd had a mastectomy to make her look like a man.
Later that week, when her charges had been settled in their hotel, her friend knocked on her door demanding she go with him. They went to a cafe that somehow suggested a cross between a shop and a private residence. Her mind raced as the Madame showed them to a table and gave them a drink.
Minutes later they were shown into a windowless room on the left of the hallway. In a corner, at the far end of the room was a stage. Madame clapped her hands. A door opened and onto the stage trooped four women. All dressed alike in clinging blue gowns that were split on one side up to their thighs. They smiled and arranged themselves in a semi-circle. Shaun's friend found it difficult to chose. Eventually he picked a girl with long black hair, a lean nondescript woman whose friendly smile was marred by irregular teeth. As they left the room Shaun breathed a sigh of relief.
"Well! Which one?" Madame asked turning to Shaun.
Shaun gasped in amazement.
"Well!" Madame asked again, minutes later.
"Eh, the, the blonde," she spluttered at last.
She followed the girl into a deep-piled carpeted room. with mythological obscenities painted on a dark wallpaper. There was a wash-basin, a divan with a mauve cover and tasselled pillows.
As soon as the door was closed the girl took off the gown which was her sole garment. For a brief moment Shaun's mind faltered, she thought she was looking at a little girl who had opened her dressing gown.
"Look," Shaun said, "I have a problem. Here's fifty, for your time."
"Wait Mr," the girl said, "use the fire escape, go out of the window."
Shaun felt that part of her had been cut off since leaving Laura and the city, and longed to tell someone about her guiding experiences. She had made a few friends, all of them male. When, under protest they persuaded her to visit the local hotel as one of the boys, she became concerned in case she drunk too much and revealed her true identity.
Laura, feeling lonely, needing love and a friend to confide in, invited Shaun to dinner. Delighted she accepted, ignoring the premonition that this was probably the last time she would ever see Laura Finch.
It was obvious that very little cooking had been done in the apartment, so Shaun suggested that it might be more convenient if they dined at their favourite restaurant. Laura became incensed, demanding they eat in her home, having bought veal chops, salad and fresh cheddar cheese. From the cupboard she brought two bottles of red wine, neglecting to tell Shaun that she had bought a large bottle of gin.
Careful not to drink too much by filling her glass only a quarter full then waiting for Shaun to finish before refilling her own. Laura thought she could prove to Shaun she could now handle her drinking and was in full control.
Shaun spoke about Uncle John, who she thought had now become Aunt Nicole, asked Laura what she looked like and whether she still attended the Community Church Fellowship.
Indignant, Laura got up from the table. "All you're interested in Shaun Maclaren is Aunt Nicole. You don't want to listen to any of my problems," she told her angrily, "you are becoming a typical male. I hate men. Those who try to be like them are obviously no different."
Shaun, not wanting to argue with Laura left the apartment immediately.
Left on her own Laura burst into tears, vowed never to touch another drop of gin and smashed the bottle in the sink. She sat in the chair and drank the second bottle of wine. In the morning she suffered not only a headache but self-accusation and swore she would never have anything to do with Shaun Maclaren again.
Worried about Laura, Shaun telephoned Dr Mitchell the following day asking for an appointment.
"Come round this evening for a chat,"the doctor suggested, "we can talk about Laura, Nicole and your problems."
Shaun accepted the invitation, and eager for company Kerry Michell made her welcome. Over coffee, Shaun told her about Laura and asked about Aunt Nicole. The doctor burst into peels of laughter when Shaun told her about her experience at the brothel.
Eventually the conversation came around to Shaun's problems.
"I really think I need a tonic," Shaun told her, "I feel so tired. It's causing my work to suffer. My periods are my main problem."
"Is the flow extensive?" Kerry Mitchell asked.
"Yes!" Shaun admitted, "I don't like talking about it, but it is making life difficult."
"Are you constipated?"
"Most of the time. I've been having some real bad migraine. Sometimes it affects my sight."
Dr Mitchell thought for a moment. "You know Shaun, it's probably the testosterone therapy fighting the bodies natural hormones. I think it's time for the next step towards your sex-reassignment."
"What would that be?"
"A hysterectomy. I'll have a chat to Dr O'Donnell. If he can get his team to agree I'll get things moving."
Delighted with her suggestion, Shaun thanked her and got up to leave.
"It's a long drive to the coast,"Kerry Mitchell observed, "perhaps you should stay the night."
Listening to the rain, thinking about the wet roads, her flat, where she knew she would worry about Laura Finch, Shaun accepted.
"Nightie-or pyjamas?"Kerry asked as she took Shaun by the hand and led her upstairs, "and when you're ready I'll check that mastectomy-make sure there's no problem with the scars."
During the past months Shaun had managed to control the inner feelings that the testosterone therapy was creating. Now laying on the bed and being examined by Kerry Mitchell, who wore only a short dressing gown they began to surface more strongly than ever before.
Encouraged by Kerry Mitchell, she gave full vent to her feelings as they made love, a new kind of love. A love that was different, lasting longer, more fulfilling than Shaun had ever experienced before. During the night Shaun awoke with bad cramping pains. She rolled from side to side. Her knees drawn up and down in spasm. She clutched Kerry's hand as the spiral of pain increased. The pain, trapped inside her, struggling to escape, swelling and tearing it's way across her body. Shaun felt as if she were going to die. Kerry gave her a pain-killing injection and drew a blanket close around Shaun's shivering body.
"Has this happened before?"Kerry Mitchell asked after she had phoned for an ambulance. "Only when I get my periods. Usually I get lucky and pass out. When I wake up the pain has gone."
Shaun woke up in St James's Central Hospital. For hours she lay weak and speechless, aware only of the drip in her arm. A nurse came in, smiled straightened the bed.
"Doctor will be along in a moment,"she told Shaun as she left the ward.
Dr Mitchell sat by her bed, comforted her, spoke soft words and stroked her forehead. She felt her examine her legs. The left one was painful, and heavy.
When she awoke again someone was telling her to draw up her knees. To Shaun Maclaren it all seemed to be some sort of terrible dream. Then she heard Kerry, telling her that the hysterectomy had been successful.
A week later she obtained her discharge from St James's Hospital on the condition that she remain in the care of Dr Mitchell. Shaun felt exhausted, unutterably sad and at a loss to understand her reactions, when she knew she should be happy taking the next step towards her gender change.
She stayed with Kerry Mitchell for a few days, but desperately wanted to be on her own in her flat at the coast. Eventually Dr Mitchell agreed telling her she must write, and telephone her at least once a week.
On her own Shaun stayed in bed, unwilling to answer the telephone or open the door, and when anyone knocked or rang she burst into a fit of crying. After a few days she decided to go to the shops. Unable to be amongst people she returned to the flat as quickly as she could. Shaun Maclaren knew perfectly well that she was very lucky, with absolutely no reason to feel sorry for herself. She felt anxious about the melancholia that was overtaking her, locked her self in the flat, hoping that with large doses of pain-killers and sleep the mood would pass.
Dr Michell unable to contact her by phone or letter was worried. at a Community Church Fellowship meeting she saw Nicole. Her gender change had been an outstanding success. Kerry Mitchell spoke to her about Shaun and asked her to help.
With a friend from the church, Nicole arrived at Shaun's flat the next day. They rang the bell and banged on the door without result. Nicole thought she heard a moaning sound and forced open the door.
The flat smelt of stale air. The sink in the kitchen was full of dirty crockery, including pots and pans. There was litter and newspapers everywhere, and in one corner of the lounge room a pile of unwashed clothing.
A moaning sound came from the bedroom and they found Shaun laying naked on her bed as if in some sort of coma. Nicole was amazed to see how strangely Shaun Maclaren had changed, and stood staring at her, remembering how she had looked at the Holy Union. Gone was her hard pronounced shapliness. In place of the firm arrogant breasts were two very small, very flat nipples with a thin, almost invisible scar close to them. Instead of her curved well-fed belly, a flat depression stretched down between the two protruding bones of her pelvis. Two ungainly looking sticks replaced her once fine muscular legs.
The biggest change, Nicole thought was in her face. It was white, emaciated, dominated by eyes that her thinness made enormous. Beneath them etched furrows of fatigue. Her mouth, as Nicole remembered, once a natural, never needing, make-up pink was now an enlarged dark mass with fine hairs on her top lip. Her whole body gave off a strange impression of liquefaction, like a candle consumed by it's own flame. Nicole remarked to her friend that Shaun Maclaren, hadn't so much slimmed as melted. They stayed the night. Cleaned up the flat. Bathed Shaun, and forced her to eat some cereals.
The following morning they fed Shaun again while she sat limply in a chair. Forced her to drink black coffee, then dressed her in slacks and the only clean shirt that could be found. They took her to Dr Mitchell, who, after examining her, made arrangements for her to go into the Community Church Nursing Home.
Olive Cotton was a dark, plump widow with the shadow of a moustache and trotting feet in small shoes. She was Matron of the nursing home with a special interest in diet and psychiatry.
From the start Matron Cotton was the one who focused for Shaun Maclaren the complicated nursing home scene when she arrived stiff and speechless. She helped Shaun put away her things. Showed her the island of her property, bed, chair, rug, and locker in the long dormitory that immediately reminded her of the Convent, causing her to scream out in terror. Shaun suffered badly from nightmares. She knew so clearly what was happening to her. Understood her own gradation from the first numbness of the realization that she had had an hysterectomy, to a most awful pity and self-accusation. ( If I had not run across the road at Westhill Casey Ann would not have died ).
Through sleeplessness, and then sleeping to escape. Through all these, in a long, long slide to a dark sombre place, where at last depression closed around her like a curtain. She had dreams of falling, of crashing down cellar stairs. She remembered her mother talking about her Grandfather, John Carlyle. She could still see his photograph in her mother's locket.
She opened a door, stepped into an elevator shaft. She could hear her own screams borne away on the wind of a fall. She had nightmares of stairs, interminable stairs. This time going up. Coming out on top to stand on a narrow ledge, trying to reach a light that flickered, a light that was impossible to reach. Waking up in a cold sweat of terror. Breaking out into a bout of hypoglycaemia, where she became dizzy. She twitched and began to itch all over. She felt the prick of a syringe as sleep overcame her.
Under Matron Cotton's supervision Shaun slowly gained weight. Although the nightmares had disappeared she still dreamt of Laura. Of herself as a complete, whole, useful man. She dreamt of beautiful women who would fight for her company. After six weeks she was allowed to return to her flat providing she attend Dr O'Donnell's rooms once a week.
The time spent with the Psychiatrist went easily, with none of the raw moments the doctor had expected. He thought Shaun had become a somewhat religious hysteric who did not appear to be harmful to herself or others. He was not cynical about what he had always recognized in Shaun Maclaren as a pilgrimage away from an unsatisfactory life.
After lengthy consultations with his colleagues and Dr Mitchell. Dr O'Donnell made arrangements for Shaun to complete her sex-reassignment assessment. The Psychiatric unit at the Community Church Hospital, was he decided the best place for her to stay, for the two week assessment period.
Shaun remembered the hospital, which she still thought looked like a mad giant's castle outside, and a giant anthill within. The psychiatric ward was no different from any other ward. The same kind of furniture. The same kind of people, sitting, staring, shuffling about, or lying on their beds with their toes turned up in little rooms off the corridor. The meals were the same. The orderly brought round the medicine on the same kind of tray. The same kind of music came out of the headphones.
During tea on the second day a woman doctor came into her room and told her she would be examined in the morning, after rounds and medication. That there would be an aptitude test. The clock in the corridor struck eleven when she went to the Psychiatrist's office and opened the door.
The doctor looked up from her desk and motioned Shaun to sit opposite her.
She felt suddenly tense, not at all relaxed the way she did with Dr O'Donnell. This doctor she thought would give her no reassurance as she clenched her teeth making her jaws ache.
"What are your thoughts?" the doctor asked, taken by the intensity of Shaun's stare out the window.
"Of Westhill. The cottage opposite, the beach where we stayed, and I would become the Captain of a huge sailing ship. Then Casey Ann went away and everyone said it was my fault. But why am I telling you all this? Is it the tablets the orderly forced me to take this morning before breakfast?"
"Do you still enjoy the fantasies about being a ship's captain?"The psychiatrist wanted to continue this train of thought, even though Shaun had made a long pause.
"No I don't think about that any more. I don't have that much imagination. Sometimes I think about Casey Ann. Mostly I think about being a man. That's because I am a man, trapped in this body, which through the fault of your doctors is neither male or female."
"You give me the impression of being- -perhaps haunted. Are you? By your-twin sister?""Perhaps I am."There was a long pause. "Tell me about it,"the psychiatrist asked.
"Oh, I don't really know. I don't think I should."
"Why won't you tell me about it Shaun?"
"I will if you tell me about the medication your orderly forced me to take this morning, after I told him I didn't need it."
"You were not forced Shaun. You were given a relaxant. I thought it would help you to talk about things more easily. It was a short acting hypnotic drug. Mogodon ( Nitrazepam ) which I doubt would mean anything to you."
There was another long pause. Shaun found it difficult to concentrate.
"Can't you be haunted by what you've not done?"Shaun asked, "can you lie and dream of what you are fated to do?" she continued without waiting for an answer, "then wake and find yourself not strong enough to do it? Don't you know the nightmare of feeling there is something you have to do, you can't tell what.
It may be to get somewhere, find something, or warn Someone, all the time knowing that you can't get it done. Your feet are clogged. Something with a smiling, sinister face is catching you up, at the end. "
"You wake up, sobbing, and it isn't done," the Psychiatrist added.
"Always,"returned Shaun. "I am a man. I was born a man. Now I am trapped. Sometimes I dream a dream through to the finish."
"It is difficult for one to accept. Can you help me as a doctor to understand?"
"Some people," Shaun continued, ignoring the doctor's interruptions, "say one dream merges into another, so that you only end it by waking. Some say no one ever dreams their own death,dying, yes, and trembling with fear, but not dead. I do. I dream my dream out, then quite logically,I dream that I am a man,a complete, whole man or dead."
"And the dream itself Shaun?"
"Oh no," she answered with a laugh, "that belongs to another world, where not even you as a doctor are admitted."
"But I could find out,"the Psychiatrist threatened, "so why not tell me?"
"You are welcome to find out-if you think you can. At present I am regarded as sane and harmless, while I live in the real world of a female. But the moment another soul entered my dream-world, the only world I know as a real man I should be mocked and reviled."
Shaun suddenly felt very tired. She laid down on the couch and watched the psychiatrist through half-closed eyes.
The doctor decided that a little well-timed opposition, a chance question or patronizing display of interest would be sufficient to loosen her tongue. Perhaps unlock a stream of words, even an inexhaustible flow of ideas. The bait was taken. A hint or a challenge and the psychiatrist knew Shaun Maclaren would begin to talk, slowly, differentially, calm, judicial, perhaps restrained. She clicked her fingers.
Suddenly Shaun's eyes brightened, her face grew animated as an unexpected avenue of thought opened to her view. She raced down it, trying to drag the doctor in breathless pursuit.
Whimsical, picturesque, winged with paradox and flashing epigram, the ideas crowded and jostled each other till her brain grew dizzy with the sight of fantastic dream -figures made startlingly real.
The soft eager voice of the psychiatrist, rising and falling in musical cadence lost it's deliberate intonation and took on a speed and gentleness she had not known.
At times the doctor watched her pause, hesitate as the possibilities of a new theory of gender change unfolded themselves, and then piece by piece arrange the setting of the tableau.
The richness and strength of Shaun Maclaren's mind communicated to the doctor's as they talked. The psychiatrist's brain grew clearer, bolder, more penetrating as Shaun moved in a finer air and felt the doctor's intellect yielding her of it's best.
The awakening came with the cruel abruptness of a broken dream, as once again the psychiatrist snapped her fingers. Shaun's mind went flat like the slack string of a violin. The reaction making her vow never to enter into the charmed circle again.
Tomorrow, Shaun knew would be her last day at the hospital. She had been there ten days. After her last consultation, the doctor informed her she would be writing up her report for the panel of psychiatrists who would interview her in the morning. Shaun asked if the report would be favourable, but the doctor told her she could not discuss it at that time.
Deep into the night Shaun lay listening to the noises of the other sleeping patients. The pallid light of day was already sifting out the sky before sleep overtook her.
Smartly dressed in shirt, tie, and tailored suit, Shaun Maclaren entered the room where the panel of three psychiatrists were sitting at a long table in the centre. She was motioned to sit in front of them, reminding her of her Army days when she was informed of her discharge. Dr Beauchamp sat in the center of the panel. Shaun thought he looked like another Dr O'Donnell, and wondered if all male psychiatrists had a similar look.
"Ah!"he said with a false smile, "you are,er, Shaun Maclaren," he paused, glance at the doctors on either side of him, "we, my colleagues and I have studied the report and are pleased that you have fulfilled the criteria required for sex-reassignment."
There was a long pause. The silence, agonizing as they sat staring at her.
"However,"he continued, as he raised his horn-rimmed glasses to the back of his head,
"we find that we are not able to recommend that you have the operations necessary for a change of gender. The main problem being, that you are not, and have not for some considerable time, been in a stable relationship. This being the ruling factor. With regard to your medical condition, tests have shown that there are traces of blood in your urine, which suggests you could have a tumour. But as I have indicated, the main factor is an unstable relationship."
Shaun Maclaren was devastated. The silence unbearable.
"What!" she shouted, rising from the chair.
"You sit there in judgement and have the audacity to tell me that because I do not have a stable relationship, that I Shaun Maclaren cannot become a man. Who gave you the right to become judge and jury? You and your band of high and mighty religious cohorts have forced me to have a mastectomy, a hysterectomy, untold misery and a series of nightmarish dreams. Furthermore, you and your panel of so-called psychiatrists, without my permission forced me into a state of hypnosis. Which I feel could reasonably be construed into an act for malpractice."
"Because of you," Shaun continued, "I am at this moment, neither man or woman. But instead I am as your staff, and possibly you, so laughingly put it, nothing more than a Neuter."
"But we-" spluttered Dr Beauchamp. "That is, my colleagues and I."
"I can tell you here and now," Shaun roared angrily, ignoring his attempt at protesting, "I am a man. I will become a complete man, and I do not require your ridiculous assessment. And Dr Johnathan Beauchamp, I might add, I will become a man, which, in spite of your balls is something you will never be, and in future you will refer to me as Mr. Shaun Maclaren."