Book 2, Chapter 54

“Are you Venus Williams?”

I allowed that I might be, wondering if anything good would come of it

“A Cardiff friend of mine phoned to ask me to keep an eye open for you on a boat called Molly. He said you had done all of the pool courses but, as you were leaving Britain soon, you were desperate for open water qualifications before you had to go. So desperate that he volunteered to pay me to take you scuba diving today.”

What could I say? This man had made a special effort to seek me out on the promise of paid work and I didn’t want to disappoint him but this was not the Caribbean; this was Wales in May and the water would be freezing.

“Your Cardiff friend, what is their name?”

Oh, didn’t I say? Ian.”

My excuses ran out when he said that the fee covered not only scuba gear but a wet suit and that the others were expecting me to join them on the dive boat mid-afternoon to go out to a local wreck.

With such an impossible to refuse offer I managed scarcely 5 hours sleep before finding myself hanging on for dear life as the divers RIB (rigid inflatable boat) zoomed along the coast to the dive site but the teachers knew what they were doing and knew how to get the most of their frightened charges. Stepping back ashore 70 minutes later I felt a fresh appreciation for the land but also for the underwater world. There is no way I would earlier have imagined volunteering to go diving the icy water today and visibility was nothing like the scenes on the television but the experience was eye-opening as we descended through the murk, where the only way to tell up from down was that air bubbles rose, until there appeared closer than I expected the partial remains of a wrecked ship.

The wreckage wasn’t interesting in itself but it had been colonised! While all about was flat, featureless mud the metalwork played host to all manner of plant and fish life. It was nothing short of a garden! Naturally I signed up for more lessons, I hoped at Litara's expense but at mine if it had to be and then I had to dash back to Molly to secure her and pick up my bags before catching the coach back to Cardiff.

“Wake up cariad (sweetheart).” The journey from Swansea to Cardiff took 65 minutes of which I spent 64 minutes out to the world and possibly snoring loudly enough to ensure nobody else on the coach slept.

Once at Cardiff coach station I was closer to Beth's dance/exercise class than to home so that is where my friends found me asleep on a chair in the entrance to the hall when they arrived at 7 pm insisting I get changed and take part. Dad told our family, on the first day that Litara had asked if I could sail a yacht to Tahiti, the fundamentals needed were, luck, money, stamina, a dynamite immune system and more luck. I joined the exercise class and felt that I deserved a medal for my stamina over the previous 36 hours and also that luck was with me as, whatever Ian's intention, his gift of a dive lesson was a lucky bonus. My friends might disagree about the luck as in the café afterwards, once they had heard those details of Molly's trip that were actually interesting to them, they were the ones who had to endure my second by second account of the dive.

Kelly rescued them and in particular pleased Beth no end as Kelly had been sent an accidently doubled order of cosmetic samples. The cost of manufacture of these things is so low that it wasn’t worth returning them and Beth was the major beneficiary. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch, unless it was Jenny who was exhibiting a pinkened face from a day modelling during which she had to change her makeup several times? My face was a little red to but from embarrassment because I was so full of myself I'd been treating my friends like a fan club and they had lives of their own.

Once back home I phoned Litara to share my day and ask advice about getting a wetsuit of my own. We were the same size and I thought she would have one or know a source but heard she’d always had to borrow a man’s as 6 foot skinny girls weren’t well catered for by dive shops. As a double blow my dive lessons would have to be at my expense too but if I kept the receipts it might be tax deductible and there was a possibility I could get a made-to-measure wetsuit out of the Milford Haven modelling job so all was not gloom if I didn’t question too closely what I would have to actually do to get the wetsuit.

Despite all my previous exertions Beth and I had our morning run on Friday although Beth did boast that she'd been faster alone on Thursday, and as a result at breakfast Mum complained that there ought to be a law against teenagers with energy to burn which could be better spent on housework and mowing the lawn, which she heavily hinted needed doing. The more things change the more they stay the same Dad, Beth and I joked in the car on the way to Beth's school bus stop but after she got out Dad quietened.

“Your Mum is going to miss you when you leave home,” Dad said gently. “You and your sister might not realise it but you are more like your mother than either of you might like to admit.”

“She does like things done her way.”

“And you don’t? Your Mum wants the best for you but the world has changed so much since she was your age that she doesn’t understand what you might feel is for the best.”

I looked at Dad and felt so lucky that he understood but then thought about Mum and wondered what it would be like to raise children only to have to wave them goodbye.