Max’s mother and Max’s father and Max’s brother Pierre and Max’s sister Claudette all turned to look at her, not sure what to do with this idea. Normal things for Max to do included going to school, disappearing into attics and being told off for daydreaming at the dinner table. Max going to Turkey to visit great-aunts was not on the list. Pierre snorted. Claudette examined her fingernails with magnificent disinterest.

“Don’t be silly, Max,” said her father. “You’re only twelve.”

Max was eleven, actually, but she decided not to point this out. “I’d be fine,” she said. “It’s not like I’d be staying by myself. I’d be with Great-Aunt Elodie.”

“But it’s so far away,” said her mother. And she sighed despairingly at the thought of anyone being foolish enough to put a city so many miles from Paris. “It would be so tiring for you.”

“I’d like to go,” said Max. “Really.” She tried to look sensible-and-reliable, while a great un-sensible balloon of excitement was being blown up inside her chest. To go all the way to Istanbul would be a hundred times more interesting than days and days of sitting in her attic and watching the sky and coming up with new things to pretend about the dining room. Maybe she would go on an aeroplane.

Pierre rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t like it. It won’t be like one of your stupid games. You’d get homesick in three minutes.”

“I wouldn’t get homesick. I promise,” said Max. “Please can I go?” And very subtly, just an inch, she turned her butter-knife sword on scurvy landlubber Pierre, who had already lost interest and was making a face at Claudette about something. Claudette, of course, was much too old and important to notice.

“We’ll think about it,” said her mother. And she started tidying the already-tidy salt and pepper shakers, so Max knew that she couldn’t ask again. For the rest of dinner they talked about chess and showjumping and the neighbours, as usual; then they all had coffee and watched the evening news, as usual.

The headline was a new world record for the fastest solo hot-air balloon flight around the world. Max went to sleep that night imagining that she was flying a hot air balloon of her own, all the way to Istanbul, and her duvet was a nest of blankets in the bottom of the basket, and the on-off blink of the faulty street lamp outside was a star that she could navigate by.