Misty and the Single Dad

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘WHEN I suggested we get a relief teacher next term I thought you might use the time off for a honeymoon. Not to leave.’ Louise was practically beside herself. ‘What happened? We were all so sure. A honeymoon with Nick… Oh, Misty, why not?’

‘Because our honeymoon would be at Madge Pilkington’s Bed and Breakfast out on Banksia Ridge, with tea and scones, a nice dip in the pool every day and bed at nine. We might watch a bit of telly. Wildlife documentaries, maybe, but no lions hunting zebras for us. Nothing to put our blood pressure up.’

‘You’re nuts,’ her friend said frankly. ‘Nicholas Holt would put my blood pressure up all on his own.’

‘Not if he can help it,’ she said. ‘Safe and sedate R Us, our Nick.’

‘So you’re definitely leaving?’

‘I’m leaving.’

‘Natalie’s mother says he wants to marry you.’

‘How would Natalie’s mother know?’

‘Does he?’

‘He doesn’t want to marry me,’ she said. ‘He wants to marry who he thinks I am. But, if I’m not careful, that’s who I’ll be and I suspect I’d hate her.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You know something?’ Misty muttered. ‘Neither do I. But all I know is that I’ve fallen in love with him. He deserves everything I’m capable of giving and I don’t know what that capability is. I have to leave to find out.’

‘For ever?’

‘For a year,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken a year’s leave of absence. I’m not rich enough to walk away for ever. Nor do I want to.’

‘He won’t wait. You can’t expect him to.’

‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘I can’t expect him to.’

‘Why is she going away?’

It was about the twentieth time Bailey had asked the question and it never got easier.

‘Because her gran’s died and she needs a holiday. Because we’re here to look after the dogs.’

‘We could all go on a holiday.’

‘Misty wants to be by herself.’

But did she? He didn’t know. He hadn’t asked.

He wasn’t going to ask. There was no way he was taking Bailey white-water rafting in the Rockies.

‘We could go sailing,’ Bailey said, verging on tears. ‘All of us together.’

‘You and I will go sailing. Next Saturday.’

‘Misty’s leaving on Friday.’

‘Then we’ll miss her very much,’ Nick said as firmly as he could. ‘But it’s what she wants to do and we can’t stop her.’

Friday. At eight Louise was collecting her to drive her to the airport. At dawn Nick went outside and found her crouched on the veranda, hugging two dogs.

‘Hi,’ he said and she turned to face him and he saw she’d been crying. ‘Misty…’

‘Hay fever,’ she muttered, burying her face in Ketchup’s coat. ‘I’m allergic to dogs. How lucky I’m leaving.’

‘Stay.’

‘No.’

‘Misty, we love you,’ he said, feeling helpless. ‘Both of us do. No, all of us,’ he added, seeing the two dogs wuffle against her. ‘This is craziness.’

‘It’s not craziness,’ she said and swiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘It’s what I need to do. I’m not Isabelle, Nick, no matter what you think, but I have my reasons. Instead of hating me for what I’m doing…I wish, oh, I wish you’d try to see who I really am.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she said and rose and brushed past him, heading for the door. ‘You see what you want to see, and that’s not me.’

‘So who are you?’

‘Heaven knows,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m heading off into the unknown to find out.’

Nick watched her go.

He watched until Louise’s car was out of sight.

Then he walked inside and slammed the door so hard it fell off its hinges.

Great. Something to do.

Something to do to stop him following her and dragging her back any way he knew how.

Misty was staring down at the receding vision of Sydney and all she could think of was what she’d left behind. What she’d given up.

‘But I’m not giving it up,’ she muttered. ‘I’m leaving for a year. It’ll be there waiting for me when I get back.’

‘Nick won’t be there,’ she reminded herself. ‘That’s up to Nick.’

Oh, but what a risk. She sniffed before she could help herself and the man in the next seat handed over a wad of tissues.

‘My wife does this every time we fly,’ he said. ‘So I come prepared. She’s not with me this time but she sobbed at the airport. Leaving family then, are you, love?’

‘Sort of.’ It was all she could manage.

‘He’ll be there when you get back,’ the man said comfortably. ‘If he has any sense.’

‘That’s just the problem,’ she told him. ‘He has too much sense.’

‘So what will we do without her?’

What, indeed? Move? The idea had appeal-to shift out of this house where he’d thought he had his life sorted. Only he had two dogs, and Bailey loved his new school, and to move out now…

They’d move before she came home, he decided. If she came home. She’d probably meet someone white-water rafting. Or kill herself in the process.

‘Why do you keep looking angry?’

‘I’m not angry.’

‘So what will we do?’

It was Sunday afternoon. They’d had a whole forty-eight hours without her. It was raining.

Even the dogs were miserable.

Nick stared round the kitchen, looking for inspiration. ‘Maybe we can cook,’ he said. ‘I’ve never tried a chocolate cake. You want to try?’

‘It’d be better if Misty was here,’ Bailey said, stubborn.

‘Yes, but Misty’s not here.’ He headed for the recipe shelf and tugged out a few likely books. ‘One of these…’

But then he was caught. There was a pile of scrapbooks wedged behind the recipes. One came out along with Mrs Beeton’s Family Cookery.

It was a scrapbook, pasted with pictures. All sorts of pictures.

On the front in childish writing…

‘Misty Lawrence. My Dreams, Book One.’

It didn’t quite come up to expectations. Flying over Paris at dawn…

For a start, it was loud. It hadn’t looked loud in the pictures. The brochures had made it look still and dreamlike, floating weightlessly above the Seine, maybe sipping a glass of champagne, eating the odd luscious strawberry.

She was cold. Champagne didn’t cut it. If she wanted anything it was hot cocoa-where was Nick and his rocker now?-but she was too busy gripping the sides of the basket to even think about drinking or eating. The roar of the 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…

I feel so sorry for you, stuck in 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.

‘You’re just like Isabelle.’

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.

Maybe dreams were made to be shared?

He turned to the dogs, considering. It was his responsibility to care for these two. Kennels?

No. He knew where they’d come from. If he and Bailey were to be free…

‘Sorry, guys, but I think tomorrow morning we need to go see Fred.’

Fred the vet.

She’d been away for six weeks. She was loving every minute of it. Sort of.

Number three on her list was cruising the Greek islands. It’d be magic. She’d pinned pictures up on her study wall at home. Whitewashed villas with blue-painted windows. Caiques bobbing at anchor. Greek fishermen stripped to the waist, hauling in their nets. Santorini, Mykonos, the Cyclades islands. It was all before her.

She climbed off the bus at the harbour in Athens. Her boat was due to leave in two hours. Two emotions…

After so much planning, it was impossible not to feel exhilarated as dreams became real.

It was also impossible to block the thought that back home was Nick. Nick and Bailey and Ketchup and Took, learning to live in Banksia Bay without her.

She couldn’t think about them now. She mustn’t. To follow her dreams with regret-what sort of compromise was that? She lifted her back pack and trudged down to the departure point, telling herself firmly to think ahead.

But the boat at anchor wasn’t what she’d expected. In the pamphlets it had been shown as a graceful old schooner, wooden planking, sails, lovely.

The boat before her was huge, white, fibreglass. There were tourists filing up the gangplank already. Many tourists. This was far bigger than she’d imagined.

Her heart sank-but she was getting used to this. Adjusting dreams to fit reality. She would not be disappointed. She’d looked forward to this for so long. Sailing on the Aegean…

But still… No sails. So many tourists.

A hand on her shoulder.

‘It’s not the same as your pictures. Maybe we can offer you an alternative?

She almost jumped out of her skin.

She whirled-and he was there.

‘We came to find you,’ Nick said before she could even kick-start her heart. ‘Me and Bailey.’ He smiled down at her, a smile that made her heart stop even trying to kick-start-and he put on the voice of a spruiker, the guys who pushed tourists to change their minds.

‘Madam wishes to sail the Greek islands? On this?’ He gestured contemptuously to the fibreglass cruiser. ‘My Mahelkee is a much smaller boat, but she’s infinitely more beautiful. There’s four aboard now. A crew of four, whose only wish is to keep madam happy. You come with us, madam, and we will make you happy. You come with us, madam, and we intend to make you happy for the rest of your life.’