Book 2, Chapter 40

"Close your eyes, stretch out your arms and tell me what you can sense."

I'd been picked up by the wardrobe assistant who had what amounted to full hiking gear for me to wear complete with a woollen beanie. A warm spring day was forecast, my hair is my best feature and I'd had lots of practice in using clips, pins, slides and combs so, having determined I wasn't expected to climb mountains or fight my way through jungles I decided my hair was fine as it was and there would be no beanie wearing today. Nor unless it started raining heavily an anorak either. Kelly and the modelling classes had taught me more than most about presenting an image for the camera so I'd already done my own makeup and was wearing a white cotton sleeveless shirt over a warm cami with combat trousers and trainers. Picking up my flower printed sling bag which held everything I might need for the day I told Jeannie, the assistant, that I would take the blame and change if the director wasn’t happy with my appearance and that I was ready to leave. An hour later I was in Epping Forest sniffing the air, feeling the breeze and keenly aware of every sound.

"I can hear traffic over to my left, smell what seems to be cattle on the breeze and am aware that you are standing by my right shoulder with an aroma of the shaving soap my father uses." I opened my eyes and he pointed out where the road ran and the farm buildings. The shaving soap comment summed up why I would win my bet with Litara; he was way too old for me! Even older than Jean Luc who although not the 30 I thought was almost 28!

I thought that nature navigation came down to knowing on which side of a tree trunk the moss grew and we did do that but he also showed me how to keep walking in a straight line; how to avoid missing the place I was aiming for by deliberately aiming to one side and how the sun, stars and even prevailing winds had been used to navigate for thousands of years.

The most fascinating idea to me was that maps might be made not based on miles but on the time it took to travel between places. What a different world picture the users would have, in its way as radically altered a view as that of those Londoners who use Harry Beck's underground map every day without being sure where those stations that they pass through really are. As we talked the camera's kept rolling as even though there was light rain I'd pulled a bright flowery umbrella from my bag and the two of us stood under that declining the offer of a large golfing umbrella from the film crew - it felt the right thing to do.

Eating dinner with Litara that evening she admitted defeat on my immunity to the natural navigator's supposedly irresistible charms but homed in on my mentioning that Jean Luc was 27.

"It was Jeannie who had told me in the car on the way to Epping Forest but I can't remember how it came up in conversation. Would you like some more lemon cheesecake, there's still some left?"

Litara let me get away with my blatantly distracting tactics but she had left me with very strange dreams that night about umbrellas, bus stops and Jean Luc.

My hands flew up in front of my face just moments before the car hit a wall. Luckily the car had no windows to break plus impressive bumpers to cushion the impact while I was wearing a full racing-driver's safety belt with a crash helmet yet the urge to put my hands up was probably motivated by the urge to stop my eyeballs popping out!

The day had gone very well up until that point as the new higher accuracy GPS was put through its paces steering a driverless car. While I understood how the new levels of GPS accuracy that the Americans have recently opened to the public could improve navigation the idea of mixing normal and driverless cars on the road seemed a non-starter. Driverless trains yes, maybe driverless planes but not driverless cars.

My expert guessed that the system failure was down to a passing vintage motorbike emitting enough electromagnetic noise to block the GPS signal and I suggested if driverless cars became popular mischievous children would soon learn to make their own EM transmitters. That did rather put a damper on the day although similar territory was being covered when I would be aboard a ship on autopilot going down the English Chanel.

My work for the day having finished early Jean Luc had a suggestion; he wanted to perform at the folk club that evening and would like to do a duet with me. The idea of getting all romantic in public with Jean Luc was frankly appalling until he explained the irony. Most of the people in the club would have seen us fighting on my last visit so what better choice than a duet between people who can't get on?

When did he get so reasonable and so persuasive? Back in the flat was a keyboard, which of course he played well, so before Litara got home we spent a couple of hours working on our harmonies. That done Jean Luc stopped for dinner with Litara and I explaining that we were both going to perform that evening and in a moment of inspiration he threaded a string of onions together to exaggerate his French heritage and I found a silk rose to show if not my English Rose character at least my Britishness. I wasn’t sure whether in modern multi-cultural London the English/French antipathy would play out but it was worth a try.

Surprise, surprise at 8pm the doorbell rang and I opened it to an unexpected caller in the shape of Simon from Cardiff. He explained that he'd been in London to see his publisher so was just passing but my look at Litara carried I hope the message ‘treat him gently because he’s falling in love with you’.

The mood down the pub was less boisterous than on my last mid-winter visit with evenings now getting lighter and spring in the air. When Litara and two of her friends took to the stage, although it must have been accidental, their song, Ready to Run originally by The Dixie Chicks, was taken I hope as a warning by Simon that not all girls want marriage. Then it was us…

There were a few whistles when Jean Luc walked up and sat on the piano stool with a string of onions around his neck. Those turned to wolf whistles when I with the rose stem held delicately in my fingertips took my place by the piano. We held still for a moment to catch a silence from the audience then Jean Luc opened and I came in with the harmonies to Ebony and Ivory.