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Burch agreed and put his nose to the grind immediately, working tirelessly day and night. Designing a space balloon was no easy enterprise. It took him a few years to come up with a super - thin, one - of - its - kind helium balloon put together with a transparent polyethylene material, making it more manoeuvrable and less susceptible to bad weather.

 
    Outside the Moorland Links Hotel, Burch found an empty space in the far corner of the car park and filled it with his old van. Ignoring the rain, he darted between the parked media vehicles and ran across the lawn to the hotel entrance, fixing his necktie over a crumpled white shirt. A beautiful woman wearing a business suit with long, black hair and tanned skin caught his eye. She was wearing large sunglasses and was leaning against a pillar in a slight pose. He smiled at her. She didn’t see him. Never mind. He had no time for women anyway. He entered the hotel foyer and hurried straight to the Chandelier Ballroom.

Chapter 3

 
 
    The swell of the English Channel was making Claris Faraday feel boat - sick. The Wight - Link ferry from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, which crossed the Solent to Lymington on the mainland, was only a thirty - minute crossing, but she couldn’t take much more. The sea was ferociously alive, the rain coming down like sharp arrows and several people on the observation deck had fallen prey to the spiteful venom of seasickness. When the boat finally docked at the Ferry Terminal Marina in Lymington Harbour, Faraday was pale and lightheaded, though she had managed to prevent herself from throwing up by the pure force of will. Now she was on country road A358 heading towards the Moorland Links Hotel. Just ten miles to Plymouth, the sign stated.
    Tears were streaking down Faraday’s face like the heavy rain down her windshield, obscuring her vision, and she was driving at a dangerous sixty miles per hour. The roads were narrow but luckily not busy. Body numb, she felt as though she was floating across the asphalt of the A358. Lime Regis, Exeter and Dartmoor had become a single stretch of blurry land and memories as she headed further west. Dead ahead, a sheep casually walked into the road having escaped from a meadow via a snapped chain - link fence. It stood innocently in the path of Faraday’s hurtling Aston Martin. Only at the last moment did she see it and instinctively turned the wheel in a last - ditch effort to save the animal’s life. The sports car flew into an aggressive spin, adding to her giddiness. She heard a thud against the frame of her sports car. Then she stopped. She opened the door and vomited in the passenger foot well.
    “Oh God!” she yelled, banging her fists on the steering wheel.
    Realising that the sports car had stopped sideways in the road blocking lanes in both directions, she restarted the engine and drove slowly up the embankment. As soon as she stopped, something on her windshield appeared; a trickle of dark red fluid diluting in the rain followed by a little black foot. Then the whole sheep rolled down the windshield, leaving a smear of wet blood as it slipped onto the bonnet and off the side.
    “Oh my God, oh my God!” she shrieked, putting a hand over her mouth.
    She opened her window and vomited again. Not far off, sheep made cackles behind a hedged fence and she couldn’t help thinking they were meant at her. A cursory inspection of the car revealed a dent on the left side and a cracked taillight. Since nobody came forward to claim responsibility for the sheep, she climbed back into the car. Her clothes were soaked to the bone and the smattering of eyeliner she wore made lines across her pale cheeks. The last thing on her mind at that point was the damn press conference and the approaching balloon flight.

 
    Balloon flights were great opportunities to get some thinking done whilst watching the world roll by. The adventurist had spent her whole adult life ballooning for recreation, viewing landscapes