Transgender Hair Transplant Patient Alexandra

In a rambling Fifties country house in the verdant heart of Kent, three generations of one family have happily settled into this very traditional, comfortable neighbourhood where they are now considered valued regulars at the village shop and nearby pub.

The house is simultaneously impressive and cosy, dotted with eclectic furniture and works of art that have come from travels to Vietnam, the Middle East and South Africa. In the kitchen, a glass Mason jar sits on the window ledge three quarters full of a sourdough starter; a large tortoiseshell cat, Henry, is asleep in a wine box on top of the wine fridge, one leg fully extended in somnolent bliss.

As Durban-born Sarah Simoni, 49, busies herself alongside her mum, Dee, 76, making tuna melt sandwiches for the family lunch, she stops, knife suspended in her hand. “I never thought this is where I would end up, but it works for all of us and we love it.”

She laughs and adds, “But if you had told me at 21 that I’d fall in love and marry a man who transitioned to a woman… And then she and I would move into a big house with my mum, dad, sister and her three teenage children… Then I’d have said, ‘You’ve got to be joking. That could never happen to me.’ ”

It did.

Sarah has now been married to Dutch-born Alexandra, 56, for 8 years. When they first met in 2011, Sarah was the personal assistant to a senior executive at Deutsche Bank in London and Alexandra Leenen – then Harold – was the high-profile chief operating officer of one of its larger divisions.

With a background in law, he was a 6ft, wealthy, clean-cut, highly intelligent titan of the top-floor boardrooms, in charge of operations in Europe and the Middle East. In the 27 years he worked in corporate banking, he had acquired a wardrobe of immaculate silk ties, sober shirts and Savile Row suits, along with a reputation as one of the best operators in the business.

Today – which happens to be Valentine’s Day – I am upstairs in the couple’s white and cream bedroom.

No topic is off limits, from their sex life to their views on JK Rowling, trans politics (“I am a woman in every sense but biologically. I still have X and Y chromosomes,” says Alexandra. “I don’t agree with trans women with male genitals sharing a changing room with women”) and corporate attitudes to gender.

Alexandra’s opinions are as considered as they are forthright. She is feminist in her views. “I believe in the banking world I did extremely well because I have always thought like a woman,” she says.

“I didn’t join in the shouting around the table. I would listen and wait until I completely understood and had something to say. Very much like a woman. In a woman, though, that is seen as passive. In a man, it is seen as intimidating, which is viewed as a good thing.

“I did very well in that world because I was a man. I would never have reached the positions I did if I was a woman. It is a man’s world.”

As the woman she is today, she knows many of those corporate executive doors may have closed to her. “There are people I have known and worked with for years who cannot deal with me as I am now. They can’t accept it,” she says.

“But the pendulum has started to swing. I deal with a lot of younger people in finance who have no problem and have been very supportive of me. Maybe I will never be part of the old corporate banking world I was in before. But I could be part of a new corporate banking world and that is something I want to take on.”

When they first met in London in 2011, Sarah, who has a degree in psychology, was divorced and in a long-term relationship with the Bafta-nominated producer of the film Boiling Point, Bart Ruspoli. Alexandra was going through a divorce after a ten-year marriage to a fellow banking executive.

“My boss was tied up in a meeting,” recalls Sarah of that first meeting, “so asked me to look after Harold. He was this guy people were terrified of because they thought he was silent but deadly. Somehow, we ended up drinking two bottles of wine, talking for hours and having a blast.”

“And that was it,” says Alexandra. “For a year. Then we were seated next to each other at a dinner. By then we were both single. I knew I liked this woman – she was different from anyone else I knew. She was smart, her life was all about friends and family and she was very beautiful.”

Life with Sarah was a huge transition for Harold, then 46. Brought up in a strict Catholic household in the Netherlands where money was tight, he was the youngest of three high-achieving brothers (Luke, the eldest,is a professor of trauma surgery and Peter, the middle son, a pilot). Harold studied law and then got his first finance job at Deutsche Bank, where he rose rapidly through the ranks. He married, built a large and impressive house near Frankfurt and lived a focused, career-driven, conventional life well into his mid-forties, when his marriage began to fall apart.

Sarah, meanwhile, grew up in a comfortable, loving family with her younger sister Cat – a talented musician – in South Africa. She left in the Nineties, disillusioned by the politics of her homeland, and moved to London. She threw herself into a lively social scene while holding down a high-pressure job as an executive assistant in the City.

For Harold, as she was then, Sarah’s lifestyle – full of artists, musicians and open-minded folk – was a revelation that felt liberating.

I ask Alexandra at this point whether she had felt all her life that she was a woman. Does she regret not doing this sooner?

“In my early life it wasn’t even in my orbit that there was anything different,” she answers, patiently. “As I grew in self-knowledge, in confidence, it was a realisation of who I was. It was not a decision and it could not have happened to me any earlier.”

Ideally, she tells me, she wants to stop explaining herself and “just be who I am”. Later, she sends me a blog she has written. “Being transgender is not a choice. The only choices you have at your disposal are how you deal with it mentally and how you manage the process of your coming out. People, believe me when I say, I would much prefer to be a ‘normal bloke’. Bloke Life would be a lot easier. And cheaper! Hormone treatment, surgeries, counselling – the list is endless. To say nothing of a whole new wardrobe and classy heels in size 8.”

She recalls as a child secretly putting on her mother’s stockings when she was out of the house. Her first wife knew this was a “thing”. Sarah, too, felt comfortable with first the stockings and then, later, the cross-dressing. “We talked about it,” she says. “It was something he [Harold] liked. It felt different but I was OK with it. I loved him and it was a part of him. We were very open. All our friends knew and were totally accepting. There were no secrets.”

Work, however, did require a double life. In May 2013, Harold was promoted by Deutsche Bank, tasked with overseeing operations in Dubai. Not only did he ask Sarah to go with him, but to be his wife. They talked about his feelings of identity. “I remember her saying, ‘I don’t want to marry you under false pretences. I’m on a journey and I don’t know how far it will take me,’ ” says Sarah.

Alexandra adds, “I remember then saying, ‘But I think it will go all the way.’ ” Sarah nods. “I thought about it for three months. I didn’t fully realise every implication. All I knew was that, whatever was going to happen, I wanted to be with her.”

In 2014, they married in South Africa. There were two ceremonies. The first was a legal ceremony, attended by friends, and Sarah and Alexandra were both dressed as women. The second ceremony, a month later in January 2015, was a more conventional family affair with Harold in a suit and Sarah in a wedding dress.