Ribblestrop Forever! Read Online Free PDF Page B

din.
    ‘Look out! Oh no! Sweet Jesus, no! Brace, children! For God’s sake, brace! Bridge! Bridge!’
    It happened so fast.
    Captain Routon was simply trying to keep the bus on the road, because it was shimmying wildly. They were almost at the bridge, and the blue lights were blinding. There was snow in the air, too,
thick on the windscreen and flying all around them. It was foam from the fire engines, and even as Doonan shouted they felt themselves spinning into a vast cloud of bubbly whiteness.
    The bridge was just low enough to catch the upturned nose of the plane, and flipped it backwards. The cable round the plane didn’t snap, it simply tore the whole roof of the bus right off
and sent it spinning onto the road. One of the police vehicles that was following skidded and hit the wreckage broadside. The other managed to brake, but was then whisked away on a lake of
gobstoppers – Miles’s suitcase had fallen onto the road and burst, spraying them in all directions. The car pirouetted into the central reservation and slammed into a Portakabin. The
children emerged from the foam clinging to their bus seats. The bus then shouldered its way through a crash barrier and down a steep embankment – just where the elbow of the River Ribble was
at its widest. A handful of fishermen jumped for their lives, and could only gape as the mangled vehicle slipped hissing and steaming into the deep, dark water.
    Mr Tack pulled up neatly on the hard shoulder and put on his hazard lights. Ruskin, Sam and Oli raced to the river-bank in time to see the bus, with everyone onboard, sinking fast. A strange,
awestruck silence descended, then the three boys rushed forward to save their friends from drowning.

Chapter Five
    Ribblestrop’s headmaster was in his study when the call came through.
    He had ignored the phone all day, thinking it was one of the school parrots. There were two, and they’d been learning more and more sound effects ever since they’d arrived. Now
they’d gone to roost up in the rafters above his desk, and it seemed their chief occupation was to torment him. Telephones, door-knocks, children’s voices; Doctor Norcross-Webb felt he
was being haunted. He was quietly seething, because on the last day without children he’d hoped to get some concentrated work done on the school song. There was still only one verse, and he
was determined to write the second before the big assembly at six o’clock. He’d brought his accordion down from the attic, but the birds had even started to imitate that. He closed his
eyes, put his fingers in his ears, and sang the opening lines of his latest effort:
    ‘
Ribblestrop, Ribblestrop, jewel within my breast.
    I will hap’ly die for thee; I will stand the test.
’
    He paused.
    Was the allusion to death wise? He knew that ‘jewel’ was an awkward word to sing, and he wasn’t at all sure why a child should have one buried in its breast. Would anyone
understand that ‘hap’ly’ was ‘happily’?
    He looked at an earlier draft.
    ‘
Ribblestrop, Ribblestrop, let me hug thy stones . . .
’
    It was worse, and he knew it.
    He gazed out of the window again. The breeze was warm and it ruffled the heads of the spring flowers. They were the product of Captain Routon’s gardening club last term and overflowed from
the pots on the terrace. Pinks, whites and blues – it was a perfect scene. In the distance one of the school donkeys cropped the grass beside the camel, and the sun gave the lake a silvery
glimmer. He gazed, and tried not to let his eyes drift to the furious letter in his in-tray. It was the second of the day, from Lady Vyner, and had been hand-delivered.
    To the so-called headmaster of Ribblestrop,
    So-called ‘school’ for dysfunctional reprobates and vandals.
    That was just the opening.
    You are ordered, by law, to vacate these premises. You are instructed to pack your bags, as I’ve got a court order now, so I’m changing the locks and hiring a security