Bright Angel (26 page)

In an unrevealed location – well, that was actually a big old house in central France, right out of sight of the prying eyes of the media, that Aunt Freddy rented for a little while. Daniel and Gabriel stayed with her there, and Freddy helped Daniel with all the legal stuff you have to do to get custody of a child awarded to you. It was amazing how she was able to fast-track it so that quite soon he had a piece of paper saying he was Gabriel's legal guardian and as such could now decide with a steadier heart on the future. Well, like I'd said, he and I had talked about it and though I missed him a whole lot when I was back in Australia and he was still in France sorting out the legal stuff, I understood completely that he had to do what he had to do for Gabriel and that after that, once things were all clear, he'd come to me and we'd take it from there.

Well, it took a bit longer than we'd hoped, even with Freddy's fast-tracking, because then there were visas to get, and stuff like that, and an unexpected complication when Benedict Udo's lawyer rang Daniel and said that his uncle had made over a good deal of money in a trust fund for him and Gabriel. Daniel wanted nothing of it, because to him it was blood money and misery money and he'd rather have nothing at all than that. He'd rather slave in a factory all day. He thought of just sending a letter refusing it. But in the end he went to see his uncle in the prison and he told him that face to face and said he didn't want money from him, he wanted to earn his own living. He suggested that instead the money should be turned over to some charity, like one to do with victims of crime or mental health, stuff like that. Udo said he must be mental himself, thinking of a thing like that, and that he was damned if he was going to just give his hard-earned money away to losers and loonies, so Daniel just turned and went out of there and never went back. But he contacted the lawyer and told him what he'd said and the lawyer was astonished but said he'd see what he could do.

As to me, well, while I was waiting I had to go back home, back to school and it was just so weird because everything in my life had shifted and I felt like a completely different person. At home things had changed too because Mum and Dad, true to their promise, dumped their job in the Territory and came back down south to live with Claire and me. It was a bit weird at first settling back down with them but it's worked out really well, bar a few shouting matches here and there. And Claire's moved out. She's got her own flat now but not for long I think because she's talking of moving to France for a bit. No prizes for guessing what that's about. Yep, she and Marc Fleury really are an item, he's been over on flying visits a few times in the last few months. Like Dad says, he's really racking up the frequent-flyer points. Looks like the real thing for my sister too though nothing's been decided in concrete, but it's obvious they are pretty keen on each other and it's not some passing holiday fling thing, like she'd once thought. Oh, and she was bridesmaid at Helen's wedding, which was held at last just a few weeks ago. We were actually all invited to the ceremony, which was in a Greek Orthodox church and really beautiful (if a bit long). Helen looked absolutely gorgeous in a silk and lace dress (not bought from Wedding Heaven, I hardly need say!) and her bridesmaids too, of course, in their white and green silk, were stunning. Helen and her fiancé Theo went off on their honeymoon the next day and they seem really happy, with the ghosts of the past well behind them.

As to the film of Marc's book, that got held up a bit because of what happened with Udo – because of course he'd been providing most of the funding – they had to delay shooting but then they managed to refinance and so it got back on track, and it'll be out in a year or so and Marc reckons we'll all be invited to the red-carpet premiere in Paris, which will be cool but to be honest nowhere near as cool as what's going to happen soon, like, real soon.

See, Daniel and I, we've been emailing and phoning and texting each other heaps, I guess I write more than he does, but that's the way we are, I'm a real word person and he's not (he's really taken to photography though, he reckons that's what he wants to do, as a career). Sometimes he sends me photos he's taken and also drawings that Gabriel's done for me, and they nearly always (the drawings, I mean) feature Freddy. I think Gabriel's decided that Freddy's his new mum or something and that looked for a while like it was going to be hard, coping with that. But Freddy solved it in her usual straightforward and no-nonsense way by saying that she'd come over like several months every year and might even think of applying to emigrate, much to Dad's glee, who's always been trying to get his sister to make the move. Anyway, no idea whether that'll happen, but what is for sure is that Freddy will continue to be a presence in Gabriel's life, and that's really important. Oh, and by the way, she finished her book on King Herod, and it was really popular – and it's just got translated and published in France, and she's been asked to do all kinds of radio and TV talks about it here, so that's great.

It was funny, for ages I just couldn't write anything at all, except for emails to Daniel, and I couldn't face making one of my clips, and even the ones I had on my You Tube channel, I could hardly bear looking at them, because of all that they evoked. Especially that poem of mine,
Waiting,
which when I came to think of it, so much had the feeling of the rift that had come between me and Daniel, back in St-Bertrand, the rift Mick had engineered for his own advantage, and so I could hardly bear to look at it in case I fell back into those terrible feelings of loss and grief and the fear of never finding him again.

But not long ago – in fact only a few weeks ago – something changed. I don't know why, but I'd just got off the computer where I'd been MSNing with Daniel and he'd logged off and already I was missing him so much and I was staring at the screen, when I clicked on the Word program, just like that, and the blank page came up and I found myself writing, really writing, for the first time. The first thing I wrote that day wasn't the beginning of this manuscript – it was a short poem, called
Skylark at Midnight.
It came really quickly, like it had been waiting to be born, and though it wasn't perfect, I liked it, and I thought one day I'll make a clip of it too, maybe with Daniel's photos. I put it aside then but I didn't stop, instead I started writing what had happened, way back to that day in Wedding Heaven where it all began. And do you know, though I'd thought before I couldn't do it, though I'd thought the psychologist had it all wrong when he suggested it might help, well, as it flowed, I could feel a strength coming into me. It felt right. It felt like the right time.

I've nearly finished now. In less than an hour I'm going to log off and go with Dad to the airport where Daniel and Gabriel and Freddy are arriving. In less than an hour I'm going to be cuddling Gabriel and joking with Freddy and holding Daniel and never letting him go. A new life will have begun, shining with love and promise and a sense of finally coming home. And I'll be so happy and so absorbed that I know I'll never have the time to completely finish it all, round it off with a professional ending like in a book. So I thought instead I'll stop here and paste in that poem I wrote, right at the beginning of starting this, and that will do just as well.

For those interested in the French Government's UFO-tracking organisation that Mick worked for – GEIPAN – it really exists, and you can have a look at some of their work on their website at
www.cnes-geipan.fr/
geipan (if you read French) or on their English-language page at
www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/5038-geipan.php

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