Read Online The Postcard by Leah Fleming - Free Book Online Page B

sensed Prim had gone far enough. This was her plan and she must execute it. ‘Go back down now . . . I can do the rest. There’s not enough room for two of us,’ she
ordered, but Primmy clung on. ‘It needs two of us and you know it.’
    ‘I can do it and that’s an order,’ Callie shouted, seeing all the faces far below looking up at them. Suddenly it didn’t seem such a good idea to raise their banner in
public. It should have been done at dead of night, but they were here now and she’d see it through. Primmy must leave, though, and get to safety. It was higher than she’d thought.
Getting into the old bell tower had been easy enough, but they’d dislodged stones climbing up outside and both girls were unnerved at the ease with which they skittered away beneath their
feet. ‘Go back, Primmy, please,’ Callie yelled, and waited, clinging on tight to her position, for Primrose to back down and out of sight.
    If Callie stretched hard, the weather vane was in reach. They’d made a loop to go round it but it was a much longer stretch than they had anticipated. Straining every muscle in her arm,
she reached as high as she dared and on the second attempt she got the banner round. The words inked out on the cloth were ‘VICTORY FOR THE TRAILBLAZERS’, and she then slung her own
blazer, with its distinctive navy-blue material with red and gold piping, round the weather vane for good measure. It had seemed a huge joke at the planning stage but now it didn’t seem so
funny, and even from the bell tower roof it was clear to Callie that no one was laughing down there.
    For a second of terror she clung, feeling her feet slipping, but with the sense of real danger came a strange exhilaration too.
You did it!
If she got up here she would make it down,
but retracing her footholds wasn’t easy. She could see the janitor running with his tall ladder, and men with heavy blankets acting like firemen in case she fell. That was when she froze, her
limbs stiff with fear at the thought that Aunt Phee was seeing all this, waiting and worrying. It was supposed to be a day of triumph, not tragedy.
Hell’s bells . . . what do I do
now?
was racing through her mind.
Stay calm, one foot at a time, back down inch by inch and don’t look down. The stones will hold your weight.
She felt the sweat trickling on
her forehead and her palms were slippery. Slowly, she edged back to the balustrade and knew she was safe, but with this came the sinking feeling that her trouble would be only just beginning when
she touched solid ground.
    ‘I’d like to know what you thought you’d achieved by that demonstration of stupidity, Caroline?’ Miss Corcoran had the two girls standing in front of
her desk with their parents behind. ‘Making an exhibition in public and putting your lives in danger, embarrassing your parents and aunt, Primrose?’
    Phoebe watched her daughter bow her head. No one watching had seen anything but danger, and she still could hardly breathe at the thought of what might have been.
    ‘I thought it was a good idea to remind everyone of your motto, miss.’
    ‘My what?’ Miss Corcoran bellowed. Phoebe dug her nails into her palms, wishing she was anywhere but here.
    ‘You asked us to be trailblazers so we took my blazer on a trail.’
    ‘I see. So this was some joke at the school’s expense?’
    ‘No, Miss Corcoran. We have our trailblazers club, Callie and me. We wanted to do something daring like the suffragettes.’
    ‘But you could’ve been killed climbing that tower. It’s centuries old and out of bounds, as you well know. How on earth did you get in there?’
    ‘We used our initiative, like you always say we should,’ Primrose replied, looking at her parents, who could hardly contain their smiles at this riposte.
    Miss Corcoran didn’t see anything amusing at all.
    ‘That was a foolhardy needless prank that could have ended in tragedy and brought our school into disrepute. We pride ourselves on