Tracey Barnes always knew her daughter was different, but never imagined she would grow up to be a handsome young man who was engaged to her best friend.
Bobby was just a toddler when Tracey realised she wasn’t like the other little girls she knew.
By the time Bobby was four, she was dressing as a boy and soon after she started school she demanded a boy’s haircut and uniform and insisted she be called “he”.
“He was always a tomboy,” Tracey told British TV show This Morning. “He was misbehaving one day when he was little and I said ‘What do I have to do to make you behave?’ he told me that he wanted to have a boy’s haircut and a boy’s school uniform like his brothers and so that’s what I did.”
Tracey and her best friend Donna Price took Bobby to have his first boy’s haircut and after that, he never looked back.
He dated girls through primary school and at 15 he began hormone treatment to start his transformation to become a man.
Over the years, Tracey and Donna lost touch but they were dramatically reunited last year when Bobby — then 18 and living as a man as he prepared for gender reassignment surgery — bumped into Donna at a bar in their home town of Worcester, England.
“I bumped in to him, said ‘alright bab’, I didn’t think I would be walking out of the pub with him because I was there to kiss someone else!” Donna said.
“But then Bobby spun me around and just kissed me.”
Bobby admitted he always had a crush on Donna as a child and was overwhelmed by those old feelings when he saw her again.
The pair’s romance quickly blossomed and when they realised they were in love, they decided it was time to tell Tracey.
“I was scared because his mum Tracey was my old friend and I have known him from such a young age,” Donna said. “But I don’t need to care about people’s feelings now as long as I know I love him, because we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.
“And Tracey said she was glad he was with me.”
Tracey said she was initially shocked, but quickly became relieved her son had found love with someone who already knew about his past.
“When he got with Donna, who already knew about everything, I felt a relief because it wasn’t just me anymore,” Tracey said.
Donna and Bobby are now engaged, with mum Tracey’s blessing, and plan to wed as soon as Bobby’s sex change operation is complete.
