Sabrina Fludde by Pauline Fisk Page A

This was the railway bridge, and she was on one of the concrete islands which held its iron legs. She had fallen into the river, forced over the edge by her confrontation with the BC boys, and now this other boy was rescuing her. Or trying to, if she’d only give him a chance!
    â€˜
Don’t just lie there!
You can do it!
’ the boy cried.
    Abren did her best, but it was a feeble effort. It would have been so much easier to let herself go. She kicked against the waves but they were a hundred times stronger than her. Tried to draw up her legs, but they seemed to weigh a ton. Hauled herself backwards, but struck cold iron.
    She turned around and found herself pressed against some sort of cage which the boy was squeezing through – an easy task for someone as thin as him.
    â€˜Come on!’
he yelled at Abren. ‘You can’t just stay there – the river’s rising!’
    Abren realised that the cage housed a metal service ladder. The boy started up it, and Abren would have been left behind if she hadn’t hurried after him. She squeezed between iron bars and started climbing. Above her she could hear the boy coughing and shivering as if his freezing dip had done for him. She shivered in her wet clothes as if it had done for her too. By now her hands were white and she had lost all feeling. She couldn’t get a proper grip, and had to bite her lip to force herself to keep alert. The higher she climbed, too, the less safe the ladder seemed. Some rungs were missing and others had lost their screws and hung loose.
    Shaking with relief, Abren finally made it to thesolid safety of an iron-girder walkway. Here the boy was hauling himself into a big black coat and a pair of boots. Then, as if it was understood that Abren would follow him, he started along an iron walkway no more than half a metre wide, which stretched ahead of them without a handrail on either side.
    â€˜I can’t do that,’ Abren said.
    The boy turned back. ‘Of course you can!’ he called. ‘There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is tell yourself that there’s plenty of room – and just keep walking! It’s easy once you’ve made a start.
Just don’t look down
.’
    â€˜You must be joking!’
    â€˜I’m too cold to joke.’
    The boy pulled his coat around him, bowed his head and coughed into his chest. Suddenly, Abren realised that she had seen him before. It had been in the market on Christmas Eve. He was the boy who’d stared at her and she’d stared back as if they’d known each other. A tall, thin boy in a black coat – and she’d seen him before that, too, going through the bins at the market.
    Now, he returned along the girder, biting back his impatience and offering her a cold hand. She took it with reluctance. Slowly, they edged their way out over the river, Abren clinging to the boy’s words about not looking down. When they reached the end, he didn’t say ‘well done’. He just let go of her hand and started up another service ladder and along a dizzying series of further girders until they reached the central core of black stone arches which formed the bridge’s hidden spine.
    Here they came to what seemed like a dead end.There was no way forward on the girders, not that Abren could see. And there was no way back – at least not one that she could face.
    â€˜What do we do now?’ she whispered, a dangerous wobble in her voice.
    The boy looked at her coolly, and said,
‘We jump.’
    â€˜We
what
?’ Abren replied.
    The boy grinned tightly. ‘There’s a gap,’ he said. ‘Half a metre wide. Nothing much. You could always try to stretch across it if you want – but you’d probably lose your balance.
It’s safer to jump
.’
    Abren stared into the darkness. She couldn’t see the gap and she couldn’t see beyond it. And the boy could be lying. He could be playing