AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Venus
If her life were to be narrowed down into a list of phrases from her school reports then Venus Roberta Lowe’s would have portrayed the proverbial rebel without a cause. Her mum, Bobbie (who her big let-down, control-freak father, aka knobhead Martin, preferred to call Ro because it was more refined and suited to a teacher’s wife) had kept them all. And they’d served as a constant reminder that despite her best efforts, a mother had got it wrong with regards to how she handled her daughter.
Unruly. Working well above average. Unpredictable. Highly intelligent. Troubled and prone to unacceptable outbursts. Will go far if she applies herself. Suspended for one week and on report. Sensitive and kind to her peers. Easily led. Perhaps suited to a career within the arts where she shows great promise. Playing truant is severely impacting on her education. When motivated Venus is a joy to teach. The incident involving lumps of clay being thrown on the pottery-room ceiling has been placed on record…
Maybe Bobbie hadn’t even considered the Joe connection, not at first. There had been no need because up until the trouble started at home, Venus had been a delight, a good little girl who enjoyed school where she thrived, was popular amongst her friends, well behaved and polite. It was after Martin left that she began to change and who could blame her. There were no words to explain to a six-year-old why her daddy didn’t come to see her anymore. Yes, she knew he’d been nasty to her mummy and bad tempered with her all the time but some of her friends at school had mummies and daddies who’d fallen out, but the daddies still came to see them on Sundays.
Unbeknown to Venus, Martin had, in a sober moment of decency promised to keep the secret of her true paternity, that she wasn’t his, and therefore her mum was not only glad to be rid of him, but relieved when he disappeared from their lives. No way could she have risked him turning up rat-arsed, and neither was she going to allow Venus to travel to York to be with a man like Martin or his bitter mother.
That old witch always had plenty to say and even on visits, very rare occasions when they’d travelled up to Leeds or, the endurance test of having the Lowes stay for the weekend, there had been snide comments and thinly veiled insinuations.
‘She definitely takes after you, Bobbie, but she’s so tall for her age… I wonder where she gets that from? Definitely not our side of the family. Are there many tall ones in yours? And that’s such an unusual name, what on earth made you call her that? At least she has my Martin’s lovely blue eyes.’
Bobbie had gritted her teeth and along with being grateful that Venus did have the same colour eyes as Martin, explained she was named after one of her favourite songs, and then invented jolly giant distant relatives whose genes had filtered down the pool and into the blood of Venus who was oblivious to her grandmother’s vicious nature. And it broke Bobbie’s heart that her daughter genuinely loved her cold-fish grandparents who, after all, were the only relatives she had.
It was heartbreaking, to see how the split affected Venus because, as was often the case, she’d convinced herself that her daddy was a nice person deep down and would be sorry for what he’d done, and therefore was prepared to forgive and give him another chance. She’d clung onto the hope that he’d turn out to be a good guy and love her like he used to before it all went wrong. Eventually Venus realised it was never going to happen and while Bobbie got on with being a single parent, too proud to even consider contacting Joe who by now was married with a baby son of his own, their daughter started to change.
By the time she was at secondary school Bobbie knew she had a battle on her hands, and it was impossible to ignore the link between Joe’s wild ways and the increasingly wilful behaviour of their daughter. Bobbie did what she thought best and kept Venus close and stopped counting the terrible rows they had.
‘Why did I end up with the strictest mother in the whole universe? It’s not fair… why can’t I go out with my friends? You’re showing me up… I hate you!’
What made it all a million times worse was that Venus was intelligent, naturally so, one of those kids who rarely had to revise and stored it all in her head. She showed immense talent for the arts and when by some miracle she gained all of her GCSEs and got into sixth-form college, her tutors were predicting great things – if only she would stay on the straight and narrow.
Bobbie would never forget watching Venus perform in Romeo and Juliet. She looked serene and so beautiful in the glow of the stage lights: ‘Juliet the sun, far brighter and more beautiful, eclipses the stars as daylight overpowers a lamp – her eyes alone shine so bright that they will convince the birds to sing at night.’
That was how Bobbie thought of Venus. Never had she been so proud which is why she didn’t even tell her off when she pinched the textbook from school and began her obsession with writing down her thoughts in the blank spaces.
It was becoming clearer to Bobbie that Venus had inherited many of her father’s traits and one was his addictive personality which, at the age of seventeen was thankfully confined to alcohol. Once she started to drink, Venus couldn’t stop and on many occasions Bobbie had been called to a friend’s house where Venus had passed out, a bottle of vodka by her side. She’d sit with her for hours in the bathroom, her daughter’s head down the toilet, rubbing her back and telling her it would be okay. It killed Bobbie to see Venus like that, her beautiful blonde hair matted with vomit, her blue eyes bloodshot and streaming with tears as between retches she cursed all men and anyone else who’d pissed her off lately.
Focusing on the goal, a place at Cambridge that according to her tutors was within Venus’s grasp and capabilities, Bobbie imagined that being surrounded by academics and still close to home, her daughter would straighten herself out. Then fate ruined everything when, during a half-term trip to London with her friends, Venus was spotted at Kings Cross by a scout on the lookout for models. The willowy, androgenous, beautiful young woman was exactly what the agency was after. The chance to escape, live a life of glamour on the catwalks and appear on the front of fashion magazines was exactly what Venus was looking for.
From the second she burst through the front door holding the business card in her hand, begging Bobbie to let her do it, it was as though the combined force of a tsunami, volcano, earthquake, and a hurricane swept through the house, fuelling the wild beasts in her daughter’s soul, and sending them stampeding through their lives.
It had been a pivotal moment in their relationship because Bobbie knew that Venus was old enough to sign with the agency without her consent and if she kicked up too much of a fuss, then there was a chance her wilful child would do something really stupid and flounce off to London. Which was why Bobbie had accompanied her giddy daughter to meet a chap called Marvin at the agency.
Here, it was agreed that he would look after her career and be her booker and fit any assignments around her studies. Then, once Venus was eighteen and had finished her A-levels, Bobbie would let her make up her own mind where her life went. It was a compromise that Venus didn’t have to make, and Bobbie had held her breath and prayed she would accept, almost cheering when the angel child she knew was in there shone through and said yes.
Two years later, her excellent A-level results were behind her, as were any notions of furthering her education, Venus was on her way to becoming a catwalk sensation. Officially she still lived at home but spent so much time away, in hotels around the world, or staying with friends in London that Bobbie could have rented out her room and Venus wouldn’t have noticed.
She was living life on the edge, pushing boundaries, both personally and publicly, testing the patience of the agency when she found herself on the front cover of the tabloids while at the same time her notoriety brought in the contracts. Everyone, it seemed, loved a wild child. Venus courted the attention of film stars, the who’s who of the music world and before long she wasn’t the embellishment on someone’s arm, they were her accessory, and she knew it.
The money came rolling in and Bobbie wanted for nothing. Venus paid off her mortgage, bought her a better car and sent tickets for all sorts of events so that Bobbie and her friends could have big nights out in the Smoke. Life was good and even though there would be no degree ceremony, Bobbie still had her little girl who was the image of her dad. The wild and wonderful female version of Joe Jarrett in all her glory.
When Venus did come home, though, it was hard for Bobbie not to notice or comment on how gaunt her daughter had become, and while she was loving and funny and kind, showering Bobbie with gifts and goody bags from grateful designers, a mother knows when her child is in trouble.
Which was why Bobbie spent many hours lying alone in bed imagining the late-night call and rushing to a London A&E to find Venus having her stomach pumped and not for the first time either. Therefore, it came as a huge shock when her fall from grace occurred just a few hundred metres from home, after a party with some of her school friends where she bumped into an old flame. Jimmy was rising through the insalubrious ranks of the drug-dealing fraternity and after taking Venus back to his, allowed her to sample some of his wares, and not just between the sheets. Whatever reaction she had to whatever she had taken resulted in him bringing her home in his car, at least he hadn’t abandoned her, and after he panicked and sped off, he left Bobbie to ring for an ambulance.
After spending twelve hours in A&E, the picking up of pieces didn’t end there because three and a half months later, to Bobbie’s dismay, Venus realised she was pregnant and true to form decided to do things her way. She would have her baby and then go back to work. Venus wanted to be a working mum, like her own and saw no reason why she couldn’t have it all, a career and a child. Again, a compromise was reached because while Bobbie admired Venus for sticking to her guns and committing to motherhood, she also knew her daughter better than anyone and with temptation around every corner, at photo shoots, parties, wherever, tactful caution was required.
Not long before Edie came screaming into the world and stole Bobbie and Venus’s hearts, her father, Jimmy, was arrested and sent to prison on drug- and gun-related offences. To both mother and grandmother this was a blessing in disguise and Venus, untroubled by the prospect, took on sole responsibility for her baby. Torn between the love she had for Edie and the terror of being forgotten or usurped, Venus got herself back into shape ridiculously quickly thanks to a personal trainer and some horrendous fast-result diet, then went back to work. This time, however, Venus called the shots and only accepted assignments that lasted a few days, no more than a week, and there had to be a fortnight gap in between, so she could return to Ely and be with Edie.
Once again Venus was the darling of the tabloids, a twenty-year-old wild child who’d been sobered by the birth of her baby, with magazines, desperate for centre spreads and the low-down on how she got her figure back, and chatty women on midday talk shows, eager to hear about her life as a top model and working mother.
Venus juggled it all and Bobbie was so proud. Her angry little girl had stepped up and proved to be a wonderful mum, loving and devoted, spending hours just holding her baby, gazing at her, singing songs, pushing the pram around the park. She wrote everything down – how much she’d grown, weighed, first windy smile, first words; made imprints of her feet and hands, and the photos… there were hundreds. Venus was obsessed, not just with Edie but with providing for her, paying for the best childcare when she and Bobbie were at work.
While one of her personalities was a self-obsessed workaholic, there was another softer version who appreciated everything her mum had done for her while she was growing up, even being a strict psycho control freak. And after everything they’d been through, with the arrival of Edie, mother and grandmother had reached the most wonderful state of equilibrium and understanding.
Motherhood had not only settled Venus, it had brought with it the ability to look again at situations, behaviour, the past. For two years, one month, three weeks and four days, they were so happy. The three of them.
