His mind was on something awful, and I gasped.
“Amber are you all right?” Charlie asked.
I shook my head, to clear away all traces of what I’d seen.
“Fine, just hungry, I suppose.”
We ate our donuts and still felt hungry.
“Well, let’s go home for tea,” she said, as we went to the bikes.
We followed the man, about fifty yards behind him, and I gently probed his mind.
He had had a fight with his girl friend and hit her with something. I saw blood and confusion, and she was lying by a fireplace somewhere. We arrived back at the bridge, so I started to panic.
I didn’t know what I should do.
I concentrated on the man, and as he rode over the bridge, an idea came to me.
As he freewheeled down the other side, the police station was to his left. I focussed on his front wheel, and pulled the brakes on with my mind.
The front wheel locked up, and he flew over the handlebars, landing on the ground outside the front door of the police station.
He sat there dazed, so I sought the mind of any policeman inside the station. Soon a large Sergeant appeared, and looked down at the man.
I placed a nasty suspicious thought in the Sergeant’s mind. He frowned and walked up to the prostrate cyclist.
I then worked the conscience of the man on the ground so hard, that he burst into tears, and confessed what he’d done.
As we cycled past, the Sergeant was taking the man into the station.
“Gosh, I wonder what happened there?” said Charlie.
“Search me. Come on, I’ll race you home,” I said, and I set off quickly, relieved at having done the right thing.
I saw something in the papers later. The girl hadn’t died, but she would have done had the police not caught him.
Most of the holidays were spent preparing for the wedding. It was quite sad really, as Jenny hardly knew anyone to ask. The additional problem was me!
She couldn’t ask any of my real family, not that I had much, just a couple of cousins in the West Country somewhere. Her own family didn’t know about me, so to be suddenly seen with a nine year-old daughter would be very difficult.
As a result, the wedding was to be small and very select.
She found a little dressmaker’s shop in Bath Street, and we all trouped off to be measured for our dresses. We had such fun with trying on all the different styles. Mrs Hancock, the dressmaker, beamed when she saw us.
“Oh, how lovely! I just adore it when the bridesmaids are this sort of age.”
Mummy chose a cream satin dress with a long train and veil. The fashion was for shorter and shorter skirts, so she was rather old fashioned. Gareth agreed, and so Charlie and I went with the long style, and with the fluted sleeves, they were so pretty I could hardly wait to wear it for real.
We were going to have flower garlands in our hair, and as Mummy watched me, I grinned at her. She smiled, knowing that I had no regrets at all about choosing to be Amber.
In August, Gareth and Mummy booked us into a small hotel near Swanage, in Dorset. We spent two weeks on the coast, and the weather was so lovely that we spent most of the time in the sea or playing on the beach.
They booked in as Mr and Mrs Lowe, and we were sworn to secrecy. Charlie and I thought it was fun tricking everyone, and I started calling Gareth ‘Daddy’, and Charlie called Mummy, ‘Mummy’. It sounded really strange at first, but after a while, we all got used to it.
Swanage was a small town, and apart from the beach, there wasn’t much else for children to do. There was a playground, but we were happy being on the beach, or playing board games in the hotel.
One day we were on the beach, Gareth was helping us build a huge sand castle, so we kept having to go and collect buckets of water to keep the sand from drying out and crumbling away. As I went to collect my seventeenth bucket- load, I felt a mental shout for help. I looked out to sea, and saw a young boy in trouble.
He had been lying on a li-lo (inflatable mat) and had gone out too far. The strong offshore breeze was pushing him further out.
My first reaction was to go in after him, but then I realised that I wouldn’t be much good.
“Daddy, that boy is in trouble!” I shouted.
Gareth took one look, and told Mummy to go tell someone. Then he ran into the water and started swimming out to the boy.
I ran a little way down the beach and found a man with a small rowing boat. He was sitting in a deck chair, with his boat lying on the sand by the water’s edge.
“Excuse me, but there is a boy in trouble, and my Daddy is swimming out to try to get to him. Is it possible you could row out and help?” I asked.
The man was about sixty, so he was very old. (Not that old! Amber)
However, he took one look and asked me to help him push the boat out. He jumped in and I did too.
Gareth was making fast progress, but the boy was still being swept out to sea.
“If only the little bugger got off, that’d help,” said the man.
I mentally told the boy to get off, so he immediately slipped into the water. Now the wind couldn’t push him so fast.
“Well, look at that! He must have heard me,” said the man, rowing harder.
Gareth reached the boy, and started to pull him back towards the shore. The boy was clearly distressed, so wasn’t making the job any easier.
The boat pulled alongside the pair in the water, and I helped the boy clamber into the boat. I pulled in the li-lo, and deflated it.
“There isn’t room for me, I’ll swim back,” Gareth said.
“I’ll come with you,” I said, jumping in as the boat turned round. We swam for the shore, and Gareth grinned.
“You saved that’s boy’s life,” he told me, as we swam in towards the beach.
“No, you did,” I replied.
“Okay, it was a joint effort. What made you see him, he didn’t shout?”
“I don’t know, I suppose he must have,” I said, and then concentrated on swimming.
I was a good swimmer, as I found my lithe build was perfect for the sport. Unusually for a girl of my age, I didn’t object to getting my face and ears wet. Charlie always kept her face clear out of the water, and couldn’t swim very fast as a result. I could swim front crawl with a very slick style, so was quite fast.
By the time we reached the beach, the boy’s mother was wrapping him up in a towel, and was trying to be cross, relieved and grateful all at the same time.
Gareth walked over to see if the lad was all right, and he seemed fine to me.
“I can’t thank you enough. We went to get an ice cream, and he was just a little way off. When we next looked he was half way out to the Isle of Wight,” she said.
“As long as he has learned, these off-shore winds are treacherous,” said Gareth.
“If your daughter hadn’t seen him, he’d still be going,” said the old man from the boat.
All eyes fell to me and I blushed.
“As long as he is okay, that’s all that matters,” I said, and walked away.
I lay on my towel, and Charlie sniggered.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“If it had been a girl, I bet you wouldn’t have helped!”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“You just go out of your way for boys,” she said, and I threw my flip-flop at her.
Our sand castle had suffered from the tide and neglect, so I dug my book out of my bag.
After a few minutes a shadow fell across me. I looked up. It was the boy from the li-lo. He was wearing a shirt and shorts.
“My mum asked me to come and say thanks, and to see if you would like an ice cream?” he said.
I grinned.
“That would be lovely. I’m Amber,” I said.
“I’m Richard. My friends call me Ricky. Does your sister want one too?”
“I dunno, ask her,” I said, and he blushed.
Charlie went equally red, so I laughed at her.