Sabrina Fludde by Pauline Fisk Page B

games with her, just like those other boys. She felt herself panic, prickly and hot, forgot his advice and looked down at the river. There it was, black and full, running underneath her. But instead of making everything worse, it reassured her. The boy had rescued her from those dark waters, at a high cost to himself. He’d risked his life – and he wouldn’t do that just to make her jump into oblivion! It didn’t make sense.
    So when he yelled, ‘Jump!’ Abren jumped. And maybe just for a split second she wished she hadn’t, but then something hard rose up and smashed the soles of her feet. It was a floor! A good, solid, cold floor. Abren lay flat upon it as if she’d never get up again.
    The boy struck a match. ‘All right?’ he said in a gruff voice which couldn’t hide the fact that he was impressed.
    Abren looked around her. She was in a low, stone chasm, its walls oozing stalactites of slimy white-lime mortar.
    â€˜Where are we?’ she asked.
    â€˜We’re underneath the railway,’ the boy replied. ‘Inside the arches, in the middle of the bridge. The station platforms are above us, and the river’s underneath. But you’d never know it, would you? I mean, listen.’
    Abren listened, but all she could hear was the boy shivering. His match went out and he lit another. Then he got up, pulling her after him.
    â€˜Stay close or you’ll get lost,’ he said.
    He steered Abren through the darkness, lighting matches as they went. She stumbled over litter, and ducked under service pipes every time he warned her to mind her head. Her ears began to tune in to the silence, which wasn’t as complete as she’d first thought. Distantly, she made out the mumble of an electricity generator, and closer to hand she heard the cooing pigeons in their roosts.
    â€˜And rats too,’ the boy said. ‘There’ll be a few of them about as well.’
    They reached the end of the chasm, and the boy said, ‘Mind your head,’ one last time. Abren stumbled up a short staircase and found herself before a metal-plated door, which was stuck ajar. The boy leant against it, shoved deftly with his shoulder and the door scraped open enough for them to slip through.
    On the other side, Abren found herself in a space which she realised – with a shock – was actually lived in by someone. The boy switched on a single bulb hanging precariously from a swinging cable, and she saw a narrow room, full of what looked like rubbish, with a tea bar running down the length of it, complete with an old urn and stacks of china cups.
    â€˜British Rail cups, left over from the old days before polystyrene,’ the boy said.
    Abren stared around her. Behind the tea bar hung a rusty advertisement for Cadbury’s chocolate, and next to it hung a mirror on a piece of string. The walls were covered with embossed brown paper, which was peeling. There were no windows – at least not that Abren could see. The floor was cluttered with black bin liners and cardboard boxes, and out of them spilled everything from old toasters and books and jumble-sale clothes.
    The boy clambered over them to fiddle with a clump of dangling wires and switch on a bunch of plastic, icicle-shaped fairy lights. These hung over a splitting horse-hair mattress, illuminating its greasy cotton-ticking pillows with no covers, and grey stinking blankets, in a grim parody of a Santa’s grotto. Maybe the boy thought that it looked Christmassy with lights, but Abren shivered.
    As if he thought that she was cold, the boy reached into the nearest box and pulled out a choice of jumpers and thick pleated skirts, shell-suit trousers and tweedy jackets, all with the same fusty smell.
    â€˜You need to get out of those wet clothes,’ he said. ‘Take what you want.’
    Abren took the clothes reluctantly. The boy’s hands were like ice and he was turning blue, despite his thick