‘Are you going to call the fire brigade?’ Dawson asked, loitering in his doorway.
‘No!’ I took a deep breath. ‘Well, not yet.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Maddie wiped a tear away. ‘They’ll be stuck in there forever!’
‘I’m going to come up with a plan.’ I walked back into Ellen’s bedroom, and made a few mental calculations before going back to the kids. ‘Is that ladder Hamish had out the other day the longest one you have?’
‘I think so.’ Dawson perked up a bit, sensing that perhaps I did, indeed, have a plan brewing. One that might be quite interesting.
‘Do you think it’ll reach the window?’
We found the key to the cupboard on the extensive bunch Ellen had entrusted me with. But even before dragging the ladder outside, I knew it would be far too short. Looking up at the windows in the deepening dusk, however, did lead to a new plan. A more stupid, desperate and dangerous one, but a plan all the same.
Against the side of the house was a trellis. Faded, splintered, the remains of a spindly clematis clinging to one side, it hung half-heartedly from the old bricks. We reckoned I could reach the boys’ window from the top.
We poked a window key through a crack at the top of the boys’ door, and with me shouting instructions, Billy managed to open the window. The next challenge was convincing them not to try escaping down the trellis themselves.
Heart pumping in my ears, head spinning, I started to climb.
Maddie had made a pile of sofa cushions underneath me ‘just in case’. I wouldn’t die, would I, falling a couple of metres? Maybe break a bone or two, have a mild concussion. At least in hospital I’d get free food.
‘You can do it, Jenny!’ Maddie cheered from below. ‘Keep going, you’re nearly there.’
I ignored the creaks and wobbles from the trellis, the rotten section that snapped beneath my foot, repositioned my hand and edged higher. Three wide-eyed faces stared at me, mouths open, arms dangling out of the window above my head.
‘Okay, boys,’ I gasped. ‘Do not move. Or touch the trellis. My laser eyes are freezing you for ten minutes.’
My first hand managed to grip the window frame. Now the second. As I scrabbled upwards, leaning my shoulders onto the sill, the trellis broke away from the wall with a long, anguished shriek, followed by a solid thwack onto the cushions below.
Legs swinging against the wall of the house, I tried to screw my head around to see Dawson and Maddie. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t fall, Jenny!’ Maddie cried. ‘Jonno, Hamish, Billy, help Jenny!’
‘We can’t!’ Hamish answered, while I dangled in front of him. ‘We’re frozen for ten minutes.’
‘Three, two, one, ten minutes is up!’ I garbled, breathless, as I desperately tried to haul myself in. ‘Come on, show me what you can do.’
Those marvellous boys each grabbed a bit of me: a hand, a shoulder, an ear, and as my feet pushed against the wall, I kicked and scrambled inside. Collapsing in a heap amidst the total destruction inside their bedroom, I heard a voice floating through the open window. ‘What on earth is happening?’
Ellen or Will’s voice would have been bad enough. But as the angry tones continued demanding answers, Hamish looked at me. ‘Uh-oh, Jenny. That’s Grandpa Fisher. You’re in big trouble now.’
Ya think?
My heart still hadn’t recovered when Ellen returned, twenty minutes later. Seeming not to notice the mess, she greeted the children and leant in to give me a hug. ‘So sorry I’m late. I had a load of forms to fill in. Have you already eaten?’
‘I’m starving!’ Jonno declared, swinging off his mum’s skirt. ‘What’s for dinner?’
Ellen swept him up. ‘Why don’t you ask Jenny?’
‘Jenny hasn’t made any dinner ‘cos she had to go up the plant ladder to rescue us, and then it fell down and Maddie and Dawson were at the bottom.’
‘But they didn’t die ’cos they jumped out of the way like this!’ Hamish dived across the kitchen floor.
‘And Jenny was hanging out of the window like this.’ Billy demonstrated by dangling off the edge of the counter-top.
‘And she nearly fell ’cos we were laser-frozen and she was slipping off, but the alien koalas were coming but then she unfrozed us and we pulled her in like this and Maddie cried but we didn’t cry we saved her and then we destroyed the barricade and Grandpa Fisher was really cross. But he went home ’cos he didn’t have time to deal with it now.’
‘And Jenny was like a superhero! And we were too,’ Jonno squealed, waving his hands in glee.
