Book 2, Chapter 13

Having dumped a pile of steaming, equine faeces in my lap Bill sat back to await developments. The American president Harry S Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying 'The buck stops here'. It is rarely mentioned that 'buck' can refer to either responsibility or to a dollar, two things which are often confused by greedy politicians. Also those who regularly accept responsibility rarely care let alone get hurt or make amends regarding the damage done in their name!

Exasperated I decided I wasn't going to suffer alone! With the title 'non-executive director' they had effectively given me a shovel to start slinging the horses' do-dos back at them so I set to with a will as it would be up to them to make the roses grow!

"Alistair; I presume you have the plans of the land with you so let's all go and see it. Bill I want a private word so you can drive me there."

I don't know how I expected them to react but not-a-one objected and 5 minutes later we were on our way. "What have you told my family about the trust Bill?" I demanded to know.

"They only know now what they have known for years. They know I own my house, this land that we are going to see and they probably guess I own a bit more, but they have no idea of the scale."

"Why me? I have no knowledge of property development beyond that there is a lot of money involved and people are likely to get hurt. In fact, how on earth did you even get the others to agree when my mother doesn't even trust me to wash behind my ears?"

"I relied on self-interest and the fact it was my money and my land to sway them but as to why you…? I'm 78 Venus! I could drop dead at any time and you have to start handling the trust sometime. This is a good place to begin because even if I die today you now have the authority to protect your Dad's business and that is what you wanted to do when you first phoned me about this."

How did Bill come out of this sounding so reasonable? He didn't even have to mention the one fact that made me drag them all here - that this bit of land we were looking at was my 'back garden'. We'd moved houses but not my playground. This place where my Da worked, I had grown up exploring and playing in; this place I knew the people and their quirks. If I cared about or identified with any piece of land this was it.

Within an hour I had the boundaries of Bill's land fixed in my mind although it was larger and more disjointed than I expected. I looked at everyone and felt ridiculous. I was an 18 year old girl about to start ordering real adults about, including my own mother.

"This land has unused space but it isn't the time for a big development as they've only just finished rebuilding the city centre and things are booming so nobody needs the city turned upside down again. I've done enough history to understand that it won't always be that way and but the land won't run away, Dad and the others here will keep their jobs for now and when the next slump comes the land won't be under houses filled with a lot of unemployed people. That's how I see it and if you think I'm biased because Dad's yard is here… Tough!"

I looked about me wondering how they would react when I started giving orders… "That tongue of land with the monumental mason shouldn't be industrial. The houses next to it hate the noise and there isn't wide enough access for the heavy trucks to turn in without regularly hitting that wall. If you think you can buy that bit of garden to make the access wider dream on because the house owner loves his garden but hates trucks and the stone-mason's noise. The good news is if you can move the stone-mason's business onto a different part of the land it will be easy to get the furniture maker to move with him as they are like twins - what one does they both do. The third unit reclaims batteries but I've seen drums being emptied down the drain so there is a danger that if his land wasn't originally contaminated it might be now. If you can get that bit of land reclassified as residential, and cleared of industry then I think it might make a reasonable scale housing development."

Nobody interrupted and nobody objected so I turned to face the south side of the land which ran down to the slipway Dad used for boats he worked on. "That big old house belongs to Mrs Clarke. It isn't part of Bill's land but in time it should be. She needs to move into a smaller place but nobody will offer her enough for that house as it is isolated and needs lots of work. First buy it then, as it's already residential, rebuild it as flats with ground floor workshops."

"That's my contribution to Arianrhod Development for today so any other choices for the immediate future I'll leave to Bill and Alistair." The whole thing felt unreal but then so had being told I was a company director…

For the ride home I again went with Bill and we sat for a while outside the house. "Is this what life is really like Bill? On the news this morning they said Tony Blair was with George Bush on his ranch in Texas. What are they talking about? Is it politics or are they both wondering when the rest of the world will wake up and realise they don't know what they are doing?"

"You made decisions on company strategy today Venus; which particular decisions do you think were wrong?"

"None, although it is only a hunch from listening at college that makes me think there are young people wanting accommodation with workshops."

"I thought your ideas were sound too Venus so the only reason we're sitting here is that you made those choices and not some faceless man you never met. In my experience that is what life is really like; real people making choices and you are as real as anyone!"

Litara, like me was home early leaving the others to their schemes at Bill's place.

As we warmed up with a cup of tea after our cold February afternoon on the windswept industrial plot I gave thought to her modelling plan for me…

"I don't believe you're doing a documentary on modelling Sis so confess, why do you really want me to be filmed doing a modelling course?"

"You're right Venus and I should have given it more thought as I don't think it's right for you."

"This afternoon proved to me that I'm the one who has to decide what is right for me so tell me what it's really about and let me decide."

Litara took a moment to pour herself a second cup of tea then started. "It isn't for a documentary. A journalist friend is going undercover to expose so called modelling schools who not only take the girls' money without teaching useful skills for modelling; they push drugs onto the girls, they get them to do pornography and they pimp them out as prostitutes. When the subject of modelling came up I thought of two things: first that when the programme is made, footage of what a good school does would contrast well with the experiences of my friend and secondly, and please forgive me for saying this, you missed years of growing up as a regular girl and are now you fluctuating wildly between a Huckleberry Finn-like tomboy and a Princess Barbie like a 13 year old and I thought a modelling course would 'settle' you down a bit."

"So why isn't it right for me?"

"You are not an investigative journalist so you don't know the backlash and even real physical danger they face when they expose something like this - especially on television. My friend thinks it's worth taking the risk to expose the scandal but whoever appears with her faces that same risk and I don't want my little sister hurt, especially with what you have recently been through."

"First I must remind you that I am not little as I'm almost an inch taller than you! Second I haven't lived the last 18 years wrapped in cottonwool and a close friend got conned into having nude shots taken which ended up on the internet. I'll do it!"