A Tale of Two T's

The First T – Theresa was French and the Comtesse du Bascomme. She is also very dead, having died in a car crash some months previously. The Second T – Terry Cooper, a struggling artist heading for the ski-slopes with some friends. The story – The friends’ car breaks down and Terry is elected to find help. He sees some lights, so walks that way through worsening weather. He sees a woman, clearly ill-prepared for the weather conditions. She vanishes, so, believing she has gone though a set of gates, he follows. He finds a chateau belonging to Armand, the Comte du Bascomme. There Terry sees a portrait of the woman in the storm. Then he discovers that Theresa is dead. He also discovers through the reactions of those who knew her that he bears a striking resemblance to the dead woman. So much so that they all believe that Terry is a girl. If she didn’t go though the gates, where did she go? He comes to realise that the only other place for her to go was into him. Terry starts along a very different road in life to which he had expected to travel.