gas was making her ears ring. It was so windy… It had been a little windy before they’d started but had promised to settle, but a front had unexpectedly turned. So now they were being hit by gusts which, as well as making the ride bumpy and not calm at all, were also blowing them way off course.
Mind, she couldn’t see their course. All she could see was a sea of cloud. The guy in charge was looking worried, barking instructions into his radio, most of which seemed to be about the impossibility of finding a bus to get his passengers back from who knew where they were going to land.
There were three couples in the basket and Misty. The couples were holding each other, giggling, keeping each other warm.
She was clinging to the basket, telling herself, ‘Number One on my list, okay, not great, but now I’ll get to wander down the Left Bank and take a barge down the Seine and buy Lily of the Valley on the first of May.’
Alone. She glanced across at the giggling couples who were holding each other rather than the basket.
Get a grip, she told herself. This was her list. She’d waited almost thirty years for it.
A month of Paris. Then the Dordogne. The great chateaux of Burgundy.
And then cruising the Greek Islands. It’d be fantastic-if she could just hold on for another hour and she didn’t freeze to death or burst her eardrums. And maybe the clouds would part for a little so she could see Paris.
She must have started these lists when she was Bailey’s age. They had all the scrapbooks out now, spread across Misty’s kitchen table. Every night they seemed to be drifting back to Misty’s side of the house to read her scrapbooks.
But, in truth, it wasn’t just to read her scrapbooks. It felt better here-on Misty’s side.
The dogs seemed more settled in Misty’s kitchen. They slept by the stove, snuggled against each other, but every time there was a noise their heads came up and they looked towards the door with hope.
No Misty, and their heads sagged again.
How can they have fallen in love with her in so little time? Nick thought, but it was a stupid question. He knew the answer.
He had. And he was still falling…
They were reading the scrapbooks instead of bedtime stories. There was so much…
She’d been an ordered child, neat and methodical. The first couple of scrapbooks were exotic photographs cut from old women’s magazines, and the occasional postcard. Some of the postcards had lost their glue and were loose. They were tattered at the edges as if they’d been read over and over. As he and Bailey flipped the pages it was impossible not to read their simple messages:
In Morocco. Oh, guys, you should be here. I feel so sorry for you, stuck in Banksia Bay.
Grace.
He thought of an eight-year-old receiving this from her mother, and he thought of going out and cancelling Grace’s cheque. He couldn’t. It would have been long cashed. Grace was gone.
Misty was gone.
‘I wish she was here,’ Bailey said, over and over. He leafed through to the third scrapbook. ‘This place is number one on her list.’ Her list…
They’d found it now, carefully typed, annotated, researched. What she’d done was take her piles of scrapbooks and divided them into twelve to make her list.
He went from scrapbooks to list, then back to scrapbooks. Pictures, pictures, pictures. And then, later, articles, research pieces, names of travel companies.
A child’s hand turning into a woman’s hand.
These were dreams, a lone child living with ailing grandparents, using her scrapbooks to escape to a world where her mother lived. Her mother didn’t want her, but to know a little of her world… To dream of a world outside Banksia Bay…
She’d been raised with that message ringing in her head.
Bailey found the scrapbooks entrancing but, as Nick worked his way slowly through them, he found them more than entrancing.
He began to see what he’d done.
He’d asked her to give up her dreams.
‘Twelve months,’ she’d said. ‘I just want twelve months.’ He hadn’t given them to her. He’d reacted with anger.
It had been said in an instinctive reaction when he hadn’t got his way. Yes, it was born of his need to protect Bailey, but it had been unfair and untrue. He thought of Misty’s face when he’d said it and he felt appalling.
‘We miss her,’ Bailey said, looking at pages linked to the item at the top of her list, at the advertisements for hot air ballooning over Paris, at the lists of castles on the Dordogne, at photographs of a tiny chateau hotel at Sarlat, at underground cellars, miles and miles of cellars where they kept the world’s great Burgundies. Paris in springtime. France. ‘She’ll be there now,’ he said. ‘Is hot air ballooning dangerous?’
Yes, was his instinctive response. After the terrors Bailey had been exposed to…
But he knew it wasn’t.
‘No,’ he told his son. ‘It can be uncomfortable. Often noisy.’
‘It doesn’t look noisy,’ Bailey said doubtfully.
‘The gas burners are really loud.’
‘I don’t think Misty likes noise. Do you think we should ring her and tell her not to do it?’
He picked up the list and read it. Drinking Kir at sunset on the Left Bank. Wandering through the Louvre. Standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe and watching the crazy traffic underneath.
What was this? Hiring a motor scooter and riding round the Arc de Triomphe? Should he ring and tell her how crazy that was?
No.
He thought of her sailing, wearing a life vest. He and Bailey had watched her from the clubhouse before the race, practising and practising. Pushing herself to the limit, but her little boat was fine.
He’d accused her of being just like Isabelle. Was he mad?
‘I think Misty wants to find out all by herself,’ he said, and he knew part of it was true-she did want to find out-but the rest…
Bailey went to bed and he returned to Misty’s side of the house-with scrapbooks. Misty was here on these pages, a girl’s dreams followed by a woman’s serious commitment.
He’d given her a choice. Himself and his son-or her dreams. Would he want her to give this up?
He’d asked her to.
What to do?
He had clients arriving in Banksia Bay now. His international clients were talking to him about their boats, about their dreams. They were finding out where he was based and saying, ‘You know what? We’ll come talk to you in person.’
They loved it. Banksia Bay was beautiful. He never had to leave.
Bailey was safe.
But these scrapbooks…
Her list…
Twelve months.
The dogs sighed. They lay at his feet but they looked at the door.
‘She’ll be back in a year,’ he told them.
But if there’s someone else in her balloon…some guy who sees what Misty really is…how beautiful…
How could they not? He flicked through the list, thinking if she found someone to do these with her…
It was an amazing list.
He hadn’t done some of the stuff on this list.
Bailey was asleep. Here. Safe. But maybe…maybe…
He read the list again. Slowly. Thoughtfully.
This was not Isabelle.
