Chapter 24

"We old, old men have to have a little fun, no?" Jean-Luc's phoney French voice had disappeared to be replaced by one very like the singer we'd just heard on disc.

"I don't know how old you are but if you want to survive for another birthday I suggest you stop trying to wind me up!" was what I chose to reply rather than the attractive alternative of throwing my drink over him.

Luckily that was the moment Litara chose to join us. "What do you think of our folk club Venus? Oh, I 'd better explain that it's not a club for folk music, more one for film folk. Jean- Luc here you have met; he is one of the best Steadicam operators in the world when he is not winding people up!"

"But everything about him is phoney!" I exasperatedly pointed out to Litara. "How can anyone bear to be with a person who lies about everything?"

"Au contraire mademoiselle," interrupted Jean-Luc. "What I say and what I film is the truth. It is the listeners and the viewers who lie to themselves."

"A lie by omission is still, in my book, a lie!" I objected. "You just deceived us into believing you were singing when you were miming. How is that not a lie?"

"Because I was singing! In the style of Joe Dassin yes, but the voice was mine and live except the last few seconds which I did not mime but had previously added to the backing track! Please, here… Keep the disc as a memento of our meeting for I must go now." With that he placed the disc with his left hand on the table beside me and as my head naturally turned, following the movement, his right hand , unnoticed, lifted my left hand to his lips. At the touch of his lips on the back of my hand my head and eyes snapped back to meet… the bluest blue eyes imaginable looking straight into my soul…

By this time Litara and Serena were doubled up, giggling and spluttering fit to burst. As Jean-Luc turned and walked out of the room Serena pulled herself together enough to say "Girl, the look on your face…! Are… you in deep, deep trouble…!"

Litara explained. "I think Jean-Luc has a mild form of Aspergers that makes it difficult for him to lie. To defend himself growing up he became an acute observer of people which has made him first such a good cameraman and editor but also second extremely adept at making us disbelieve what we are told. I've seen him forge a document and tell the official he was handing it to that it was a forgery, yet the official convinced himself that it was a genuine pass into a restricted area!"

When Serena and I woke next morning Litara had already left so we had a cereal breakfast on the balcony. I did have to endure some teasing but the slow wind down to the evening and a good night's sleep had almost convinced me that my reaction to Jean-Luc's singing had been a passing aberration and after breakfast we set to cheerfully cleaning the apartment, packing our cases and making a chicken and couscous salad for lunch.

Noon came and I have never seen a smile quite as wide as that on Litara's face when she returned to the apartment and joined us for lunch. While Serena and I served the salad and poured fruit juices, Litara dropped a folder onto the table and started to explain.

"First I can tell you that as you've been found no more likely than any of us to drop dead the project is going ahead and you are in!" with that Litara lifted her glass and we toasted 'The Project'.

"Now it gets complicated. I have arranged some difficult travel documents in the course of my work but yours is definitely the oddest. It would be most practical for you to have an EU passport for travel and work but thanks to computerisation that passport would have a large M for male on it unless… " a pause for a mouthful of chicken and a sip of apple juice. "Unless it was obtained using a previous valid British passport with no gender marked on it. Unfortunately you didn't have any such old passport and couldn't have obtained one after Britain joined the EU… except you have a Samoan grandmother who kept dual nationality so…" another pause for food, to the frustration of Serena and myself, but after which she laid down her knife and fork picking up the folder.

"I present to you… . A valid Western Samoan passport for Samoan citizen Delia Venus Williams, of no particular gender; British citizenship for the said Samoan citizen and finally…" raising her arms to acknowledge the imagined wild cheers. "a valid EU passport for Delia Venus Williams of no particular gender!"

"Surely that can't be legal, let alone possible in the time you've had," I asked.

"Shirley it is!" Litara replied. "The legality is iron clad for you to have those passports… The speed is what has made me at, 28, one of the most sought after documentary makers in the world and why I only got these an hour ago."

After lunch, as Litara drove us to Victoria bus station, I pulled out my new passports for third time. The EU passport was the most important I supposed but almost anonymous. The Samoan in contrast gave me a huge thrill making me a part of history and of a much wider world.

"Almost forgot" said Litara. Look in the glove compartment and you'll find a couple of books I'd like you to read. It looked as though working with Litara miight be like being at school with homework as I looked at books on the building of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and an artist called Anselm Keifer

It would be at least 2 days before Litara got to Wales but at the station where she dropped us Serena and I were soon queueing to have our bags loaded into the storage compartment of the coach. I stayed with the cases to make sure they went on ok while she moved to the coach steps to grab us good seats.

It was when Serena changed hands with her handbag to better climb the coach steps that the kid appeared. About 17, he had been waiting maybe for a chance and took it to snatch See's handbag and dash toward the back of the coach and coincidentally toward me.

My own shoulder bag I'd been idly swinging with its long strap in my hand so it was a mere instinctive reaction to continue and lengthen the swing, sweeping the boys legs from under him then run a few steps forward to pick up the bag he'd released as he sprawled. As I rose with the bag he too rose, surging forward on a heading straight at me only to swerve at the last moment so the kick I'd been unleashing caught him right up the backside as he flashed past.

The boy was gone in moments leaving Serena and I with nothing to do but settle into our seats for the ride home. Opening her bag to check its contents See hesitated a moment to say… "You're not quite all girl are you Venus?"