Chapter 32

On Thursday morning I waved goodbye to the Dougans and started on the varnish work - a case of making the most of the sun while it shone. Strange doesn't begin to describe my feelings being the centre of everyone's attention one day and the insignificant bottom of the social heap the next.

"Make the most if it girl" I said out loud to myself putting extra effort in with the scraper on an area that needed taking back to bare wood.

"Make the most of what?" came an almost echo.

"You know that you're in trouble if you talk to yourself then hear an answer!" I said turning with a smile on my face to find my 'echo' was a deeply tanned woman of about 30 with a mass of sun-bleached hair that was clearly a stranger to stylists. "My name is Venus and I'm a gleamoholic" I confessed. "That is someone addicted to making things gleam if you wondered"

"My name is Bonny and I walk everywhere, carry everything and always pay cash," she replied holding up a propane bottle by way of explanation.

"Tea?" I offered - a traditional suggestion among Brits which is tailored to "Coffee?" for Americans and "Wine?" for French visitors.

I would but I left my husband Pete with the kids so he"ll need a cuppa too and I've got the gas. We're on 'Daydreamer' over at C dock so please come by in 30 minutes and meet my family.

Half way down C dock, cake offering in hand, dock I spotted it. Too far out to grab, a cat was in the water paddling frantically! Call me soft but I couldn't let it drown so I stripped off my t-shirt and 'too expensive to ruin bra' and jumped in the water. Naturally it refused to be rescued swimming away from me around a boat as I tried to grab it. Valiantly I followed just in time to see it climbing a ladder that had been left hanging over the boat's side. Looking around I saw no easy way out of the water for myself other than to trail after the bloody cat.

"Good morning Venus." The head rising through the companionway inches from my nose was instantly recognisable…

"You're stalking me!"

Jean-Luc swept up the cat in a small towel and reaching below found a larger one which he passed to me. "We meet at my pub. You come to my work and now, bare-breasted, you board my boat accusing me of stalking you… . Crazy English women!"

"You know each other then?" came Bonny's words from the dock where she stood holding a baby about 3 months old. "Jean-Luc, perhaps you would like to join us for coffee on Daydreamer"

"A pleasure Bonny. You are always so kind and the reference to English women in no way includes you."

"Or me!" I inadvertently blurted, being uncomfortably aware that through filming yesterday's interview Jean-Luc had learnt I was if anything Welsh not English and not entirely a woman. To cover my blushes I picked up a dock hose as I stepped off Jean-Luc's boat, to wash the harbour water from myself and my hair. An unsuccessful ploy it turned out as when I glanced up I saw Jean-Luc instead of following Bonny was following instead, with his eyes, my every move!

Once washed and re-dressed, a few minutes later I was in Bonny's cockpit pinned down by a gurgling 3 month old baby that had been plopped in my lap the moment I sat - an imprisonment soon compounded by visitors from other boats sat either side and an 8 year old squatting behind me determined to use my inability to escape as an opportunity to practice on my hair, her pigtail technique.

That began nearly 3 weeks of living a lifestyle that before I'd never even known existed. Racing sailors, weekending sailors, holidaying sailors and ocean voyaging sailors I'd met but it never occurred to me that there were people for whom their boat whilst not a house-boat was their full-time home. As paid crew of an expensive boat I was a marginal member of this floating village but Jean-Luc's boat was his home when he wasn't away filming and for some reason the two of us were treated as a couple, albeit a couple that didn't live or sleep together and barely talked.

Days, very long days, were taken up with boat work as I completed Alistair's maintenance list while raising her appearance to boat-show level. The evenings though were an education as boats took turns to host get togethers and the sailors of these boats had been everywhere, got into every scrape imaginable and loved to talk. Jean-Luc was treated as a goldmine of technical information being not so much as a technical geek as a man without an agenda to promote.

On people Jean-Luc was more erratic being an acute observer of what people did but with seemingly no idea why they did it. Maybe that is why one evening he observed as Pete sat feeding the baby, "New fathers become more attractive to women who want babies." Complete rubbish as a theory but I noticed Bonny never after that left Pete alone with 38 year old Rachel from E dock!

Everything comes to an end and on Tuesday, 10th of October, Jean-Luc and I pushed our trolleys into the new Bilbao airport terminal . Nicknamed La Paloma (The Dove), maybe the surroundings made me inclined to make peace with Jean-Luc. I was flying to London and he to Cape Town. Perhaps we'd never meet again and through everything he'd been kind and patient. Yes he was often as annoying as hell but perhaps that was because he saw in me things in me I wasn't ready to acknowledge to myself?

Whatever it was I kissed him. A full on the lips kiss. He at first seemed frozen, arms limp by his side, until slowly his left hand rose to the small of my back, his right to the nape of my neck as first his lips then his tongue began to move. As my head went back my right knee bent as my foot left the floor and…

I was still in some shock from the kiss when the plane on which Alistair had arranged a seat for me on its private company flight to London City Airport, went through its final approach and I suddenly experienced a gut twisting cramp and lights behind my eyeballs exploded!