“Ricky, this is Charlotte, my sister. Sister dear, this is Ricky, and he wants to know if you want an ice cream?” I said.
“I heard!” she replied, snootily.
“Well?” I asked.
She grinned.
“It would be nice,” she said.
I stood up.
“Come on, we’ll all go, you’d never carry them in any case,” I said, so we went to the kiosk a little way up the beach.
The road ran along the back of the beach, so we stood on the pavement while the cornets were being filled. As we waited, I watched a family walk along the pavement on the other side of the road. There was mother, father and three children, and they were all carrying lots of beach stuff.
The smallest, a little girl was only about four, was carrying only a big inflated beach ball. A gust of wind blew it out of her hands and into the road.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion, because the little girl just ran straight into the road after it.
I saw the bus out of the corner of my eye, and I still don’t know how I managed it, but I just sort of launched myself at the girl, who was now right in the path of the bus.
I gathered her in my arms and managed to jump aside as the bus missed us by a whisker. The driver was braking before I touched the girl, so it stopped. The back of the bus was level with where we were standing.
I looked and saw that I had jumped twenty feet.
It was impossible.
I had a terrible sinking feeling, as I knew that I was in trouble now!
There was still the smell of hot rubber, as clouds of black smoke came up from the road. I could hear the little girl’s mother screaming. I was the other side of the bus, on the same side of the road, so they seemed not to register that we were standing right in front of them.
Lots of white faces looked out of the bus at us, and I heard Charlie shriek, “AMBER!”
I was the other side of the bus from her, so she couldn’t see me.
I put the little girl down. She seemed shocked for a moment, but then screamed blue murder.
Her mother came and picked her up. She was crying too.
“Oh, my God! You silly, silly girl!” she said.
I wondered whether she was talking to herself or to the girl.
The girl’s father came over. His face was very pale, and he was shaking a little.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“I just saw what was going to happen, and started moving early,” I said. It took all my power to persuade him that it was not that impossible after all.
The bus driver got down out of the bus.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked.
Charlie and Ricky came and found me. Charlie was convinced I had been flattened, and she hugged me, crying her eyes out.
A man, with a black dog on a lead, walked over to us.
“That was amazing,” he said. “This little girl moved like bloody lightning. If I hadn’t seen it, I’d never have believed it.”
The mother was a little calmer now, and was cuddling the girl. Both were crying.
“I can’t thank you enough. However did you manage it?” she asked.
This was getting embarrassing.
I shrugged again, trying to get into their minds to make them believe that it wasn’t as impossible as it seemed, but there were just too many of them.
“You’re a proper little superhero. You were just like Supergirl,” the man with the dog said.
“What’s your name, love?” asked the girl’s father.
“Amber.”
“Well Amber, what can I say? If it hadn’t been for you, little Lucy would now probably be dead. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”
I smiled.
“That’s okay. I’m just glad she’s all right.”
Ricky came over to me, looking at me in a funny way.
“That’s the second life you’ve saved today,” he announced.
Everyone went quiet, looking at him.
“I was being swept out to sea, but only she saw. She and her Dad came and rescued me,” he said. Suddenly I felt under close scrutiny. All the passengers got off the bus, so I knew I had made a big mistake.
I wanted to hide.
I don’t know when they arrived, but I next saw Mummy coming through the small crowd. She was frowning, and Gareth was just behind her.
“Amber, what’s happening?” she asked, I could sense the concern in her voice.
“Is this your daughter, missus?” asked the bus driver.
“Yes, is she in trouble?”
“No, not at all. The opposite, in fact. She’s just saved this little girl’s life.”
She looked sharply at me.
<I’m sorry. It sort of happened, I just did it!> I thought to her.
She smiled, held out her arms, and gave me a cuddle.
“I’m so proud of you, but you must be more careful,” she said quietly.
Many people seemed to gather around us. I couldn’t get into everyone’s mind to change what they had seen. Finally, a policeman wandered along and asked what was going on.
The bus driver was only too quick to tell him. However, once he discovered that no one was hurt, he asked everyone very nicely to move along. Mummy grabbed my hand and walked me quickly away.
I was very good for the rest of the holiday, and did nothing to draw attention to myself. Mummy and I had a long talk about my powers. Neither of us knew just how strong they were getting, but she wasn’t sure if they would get any stronger.
(End of Diary)
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Brigadier William Wallace stood and looked out across Whitehall from his third floor office window. Actually, his first name was Henry, but such was his reputation as a soldier that the men in his battalion under his in command in WW2 had given him the name of the famous Scots warrior.
He had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders prior to his promotion, so as he watched the young girls walk down Whitehall in their miniskirts, he wondered what the hell he was doing here.
He was sixty-five next birthday, but looked younger. With a ramrod straight back, and still with a full head of sandy hair, which was greying at the temples, he looked every inch the soldier he was. He was one of the few soldiers who had seen action in both wars; he had been a subaltern right at the end of the first War, having stayed on as a regular between the wars.
There was a knock on the door, so he turned and said, “Come in!”
A tall man of about thirty entered and, although in civilian dress, he was so obviously another soldier. Major Matthew Rider’s whole manner and bearing was of a man used to doing what he was told, and in turn issuing commands.
“Morning Matthew, how did you get on?”
“Morning Brigadier. Splendidly, actually, I think we’ve found one.”
“Go on.”
“Well. It all started with that report we received from the Dorset Constabulary. Do you remember, the one about the young girl saving the child from in front of the bus a few weeks ago?”
The Brigadier didn’t recall the report.
“On the face of it, it seemed just a lucky escape in the hands of a very quick thinking and bright girl. However, the constable overheard a remark about the girl actually being involved in another separate incident when she was instrumental in saving a lad’s life as he was being swept out to sea on an inflatable mattress.”
“So?”
“I’ve just come back from Swanage, as I went out with the constable to the scene. We took some measurements and there is absolutely no way the girl could have managed to save that little child. Taking the witness statements I worked out that she managed to cross a distance of twenty yards in under two seconds!”
The Brigadier’s eyebrows raised.