Book 2, Chapter 38

When a 16-year old is pounding the streets of Cardiff at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning it is tempting to look for other omens of ‘the end of days’ but Beth keeps glancing at me with a cheerful smile. Maybe the smile isn't for me but for Jean Luc who is running at my other shoulder playing out in his mind, for all I know, some fantasy of happy families.

I flashed back on the moment in the showers at the tennis club last year when I'd first seen a girl in the mirror and realised that today's image was not Jean Luc's fantasy but mine, seeing myself for the first time as a prospective wife and mother.

"Last one home washes up breakfast!" I exclaim, by no means ready to play mother to a 16 year old daughter.

I did get the shower first but that meant I was the one to help Mum prepare breakfast. Sharing breakfast with our normal family plus Beth plus Jean Luc, who slept in his campervan in the drive, did have something of a party feel. The day's plans were discussed with Dad planting out vegetables and Mum cooking two dinners, one for our lot and one to take up to Sophie. I had arranged to meet Ian at 10 am to go sailing on Cyflym so made up a packed lunch to take with us while Litara with Jean Luc decided that, the weather being good, a trip down to the harbour to watch me make a fool of myself before the rugby match was an idea not entirely without merit. What is it with that man?

Luckily I didn't make a fool of myself, at least not within range of Jean Luc’s camera… I thought. Within the harbour and with Ian's guidance I manoeuvred deftly but once we got out into the Bristol Channel I was in trouble. Boats built for ocean sailing, even if small like Bill's Molly, are not easily pushed about by the waves but Cyflym was a lightweight easily driven by the wind but with no inertia so easily knocked back or swung off her course by a wave. Having tried and failed to tack her bows through the wind I turned to put the wind on Cyflym’s stern and gybe so that the mainsail boom swept across the boat and while ducking to reposition myself I knocked our incautiously stowed lunch over the side! That we weren't quite out of range of Jean Luc's telephoto lens he demonstrated by leaving under Ian's car windscreen wiper a copy of the photo of me, backside in the air, fishing our lunch back into the boat.

Despite my inelegant start the sailing lessons went well with Ian settling himself in a corner to read and sip mugs of tea while shouting orders for me to make the trickiest manoeuvres he could devise. To cap it off when the wind dropped I got a lesson and practice in how to scull a yacht with a single oar over the stern.

Monday morning I found Ian had pinned up Jean Luc's photo in the workshed at the boatyard with underneath it the caption ‘Does My Bum Look Big In This’. Maybe the men had a point and Jean Luc had been doing me a favour because I smiled rather than blushing. So much of my life in recent years had been taken up with appearance from first hiding my breasts as Dai to then dancing and modelling as me; from being seen as a boy with a bit of behind-the-bike-shed experience with a girl to being seen as a girl clearly attracted to boys. Inevitably I'd become self-consciousness about my appearance and sexuality so I was glad to have friends who thought me easy on the eye and socially ok but now that I was coming under more and more public scrutiny the confidence that my friends and my classes had given me could easily bite back if I took myself too seriously.

In retaliation for the displayed photo I turned my back on the men, languidly stretched my arms then gave them from my dance class lessons, my ultimate booty shaking best.. With my Dad, Uncle Jack and Ian watching it was not an image I much wanted to be associated with but when the opposition fights dirty it is sometimes necessary to fight fire with fire.

Whatever the means my Monday morning display did seem to give the week an added oomph and we got more completed on Dumblebit than I would have thought possible yet I still managed to take Cyflym out for a sail each evening straight after work. Litara had talked with Dad about my soon needing time for filming and he took it in good spirit. Both of us had enjoyed working together over several years but it had always been vaguely unofficial with neither of us expecting it to continue much beyond student days. We appreciated that we had been luckier than most having work that could be shared unlike most jobs, such as Mum's accountancy, that couldn't be done by parents and their children together. Now though, somewhat wistfully it was coming to an end.

I was determined not to let myself slip back into a dutiful drone-like way of behaving once Litara or her director started putting on the pressure for me to perform for the camera. They were going to get and have to learn to live with a salsa dancing, Naomi strutting, kick boxing Venus who preferred harmonising with her friends to furthering ulterior motives no matter how noble they appeared.

Beth had got lucky on her idea for an exercise class as Evan's rugby club had time they weren't using booked in a Community Hall near our regular city café so, Judy having offered to lead the class, we could test the waters seeing who signed up for a few weeks without committing to a long term contract for the hall. That was my Thursday's fixed for some regular exercise with socialising afterwards and the preparations for my trip to Greenwich simply meant phoning Bill to ask him to loan me his sextant and booking time on Saturday morning for a trim of my hair and refill of my eyelash extensions. I did make more of an effort than usual to wear gloves at work so as to look a little more delicate if the camera zoomed in on the sextant in my hands but otherwise there was no clue from my behaviour of the coming change.

It was Kelly on Sunday afternoon, as the gang wandered through the RHS Flower Show in Bute Park, who had the final word on what I would experience once the filming started.

“It will seem as though everyone blames you for everything that's less than perfect. Just let them because the blame doesn't mean a thing. One day I'll be sitting with my daughter watching the television and I'll say, ‘Look, there's your Aunty Venus.”