Page 5 of Not in a Million Years

Rowan: Oh man! Of course – I knew that. Sorry, Kate – I remember telling you about taking Clara to Go Ape and you made me stop because you said you might faint just thinking about it. Not the ideal choice by him, then.

Naomi: Did you say something to him?

Kate: I couldn’t, could I? I mean, come on. This man I’ve had a crush on for months, finally asking me out and planning something so amazing. I wasn’t going to tell him I’m the world’s biggest wimp and want to cry when I’m standing at the top of the escalator at Angel Tube station.

Abbie: So… what did you do?

Kate: I went through with it. What else could I do?

In my mind, I replayed the scene. How we’d stepped into the basket, the roar of the burner above us, the billowing rainbow silk of the balloon – so fragile; how could anyone possibly imagine it could support any weight at all? – gradually filling up with hot air, eclipsing the blue sky above us. The moment the basket had left the ground and the solidity of earth had been replaced by the swaying sensation of – well, nothing.

The way Claude had looked over at me, grinning broadly like this was the best idea ever, and I’d realised I had no choice but to style it out.

The first five minutes hadn’t been too bad, I remembered. The balloon had ascended gently, to about the height of the treetops. If this was as high as it went, I thought, I could bear it. If it fell from this height, I might survive; escape with a few broken bones but alive.

But then the burner had roared again, and the craft had climbed higher and higher into the sky, the fields of Surrey spreading out below it in a patchwork of green, the Thames coming into view like a narrow silver ribbon in the distance, snaking through the landscape.

I couldn’t bear to look – I longed to turn around, but that would mean releasing my death grip on the edge of the basket. And there was no way I could do that. My knuckles were white, my fingers already cramping with the intensity of my grasp.

‘Cool, huh?’ Claude smiled again, but not even the delicious curve of his lips and the crinkles I could see at the corners of his eyes behind his Saint Laurent shades could lessen my terror.

The only thing I felt more intensely than my fear was the need to not let him see I was absolutely bricking it.

‘Really cool,’ I squeaked. My voice sounded almost normal, although it didn’t feel like it was coming from me but more like I’d left my own body and been replaced by a ventriloquist’s dummy with a killer blow-dry.

‘Look over there,’ Claude went on, leaning casually over the rim of the basket, actually letting go with both hands and pointing with one. ‘That’s Windsor Castle, I reckon.’

‘Sure is,’ the pilot confirmed, abandoning the burner (What? Don’t do that, you wannabe kamikaze fuckwit! my mind screamed) to come and join us. ‘Ascot Racecourse is over there, and over in the distance you can see Heathrow Airport.’

Great. So any second a massive jumbo jet was going to take off and collide with this tiny craft, and that’d be it. Game over. All done, except for the screaming as we plummeted to earth in a ball of flame.

And then I realised that that wasn’t what was going to happen. I glanced down at my feet, my trainers planted firmly against the wicker base of the basket, my knees above them visibly trembling. Where the base of the basket met its sides, I could see a strand of wicker that had unfurled. It wasn’t long; it was barely moving in the breeze that passed through the open weave. But it was definitely, unquestionably, separated from the cane strut that rose up to form the corner of the tiny, fragile box that contained us.

It was going to work loose, then looser still, I realised. After a bit, the entire base of the basket would fall away, and then the only thing that would lie between me and that final, fatal, howling fall to the earth hundreds of metres below would be the strength of my hands and forearms as I clung to the rim of the basket.

I did not have strong hands or forearms. When my personal trainer had suggested abandoning my workout gloves to improve my grip strength, I’d declined on the basis that I didn’t want calluses on my hands. If only I’d known that she was – literally – trying to save my life.

‘You all right there, madam?’ the pilot asked.

I realised I was sweating, in spite of the chilly air that surrounded us. There was no wind – or at least there was, but it was carrying the balloon on its course, so the air on my face felt still.

‘Fine!’ I croaked. ‘Great! This is so fun!’

‘Are you sure?’ Claude reached out a hand and brushed my fingers, which were still rigidly clamped to the rim of the basket.

It was the first time he’d touched me. Under different circumstances, I’d have relished the warm contact; now, all I could think was: If you try and make me let go of this basket, I’ll scream.

‘Of course.’ My voice definitely wasn’t sounding so normal any more – more like the same ventriloquist’s dummy had been hitting the nitrous oxide hard.

I just want this fear to end, my brain screamed. I just want this to be over so I can never, ever go through it again.

I forced myself to lower my eyes from the horizon on which they’d been fixed and look down. Good God, the ground was far away – the clouds above had looked way closer. But – surely it wasn’t just my imagination? – it seemed to be growing slowly, ever so slightly closer.

Either the bastard thing had sprung a leak, or we were finally coming in to land.

‘We’ll be coming in to land now,’ the pilot called.

Yes! Thank you, God! Now we just had to return to terra firma in one piece – an outcome I devoutly hoped for but in which I didn’t feel even slightly confident.

---