Wild Lily Read Online Free PDF

sleep with such portentous rubbish floating around in her head.
    In the morning her father departed with Squashy and Barky and she went down to the lake with her heart pounding. The awful fear had faded and now it was excitement that filled her. The worst imaginings always surfaced in the hours of the night, but with daylight and sunshine came optimism and hope. The water reflected the clear blue of the sky and the birds were all singing again. She made her way down to where the aeroplane stood, straightened out now and facing back theway it had come. It was a biplane, quite small and stumpy, with two seats one behind the other, a cocky little thing, Lily thought, and the right sort for Antony. Not too serious.
    Quite soon Antony appeared on his bicycle, making round the head of the lake. He was wearing a long leather flying coat and a leather flying helmet, with goggles slung round his neck, and looked every inch the proficient pilot. The other boys were arriving too, agog, Lily thought, to see a bit of excitement.
    Ghouls, she thought … they want to see us crash! But Antony won’t crash – she willed it, a prayer to God. How she wished she could believe in God! It was so hard, after what he did to her mother. It would be a big help now.
    ‘I thought you might have changed your mind,’ Antony said when he arrived.
    ‘No, why should I?’ Very nonchalant.
    ‘Lots of good reasons,’ Simon said.
    ‘Honestly, you haven’t got to,’ Antony said, rather unexpectedly.
    ‘No, I want to come.’ Big lie.
    ‘Good. You’re a brick.’
    Her seat behind him had its own door, and the boys opened it and bunked her in.
    ‘Do up the straps,’ Antony called.
    ‘Why? You’re not going to loop the loop?’ A flare of panic.
    Simon laughed.
    ‘Coward!’ Lily hissed at him.
    ‘A live coward though!’
    ‘It gets a bit bumpy up there sometimes, that’s all.’
    Lily could not conceive of air being bumpy, but conversation was cut off by the sudden roar of the engine as John swung the propeller to Antony’s instructions. The noise was terrifying and the birds all left the grotto again in a great cloud of confusion, swirling high into the sky. And me too, Lily thought: here I go, and the little plane started to move off down the side of the lake, very sedate, like a car.
    But instead of taking off, the plane stopped outside her cottage and Antony throttled down the engine and shouted, ‘Go in and get a coat or something, and a hat – you’ll freeze up there without.’
    Lily struggled out of her straps and jumped out and ran indoors. Whatever did she have for such a trip? No smart leather coat and helmet like Antony’s; she had seen pictures in smart magazines in the houses she sometimes cleaned of ladies in motor cars, or leaning on aeroplanes, with the most elegant suitable coats and hats. But as it was, after a quick scour in her mother’s old wardrobe, she came out in a fur coat made of rabbits and moles, which her mother had once stitched from the gamekeeper’s gifts, and a hat used for Squashy’s christening, tied down with an old towel out of the kitchen. By then the boys had caught up with them and, after laughing themselves stupid at her get-up, they bunked her back in the plane and did up the straps again. Lily had a suspicion that their derision was a counter to the humiliation they were feeling at her having outdone them in courage. If it wasn’t, it should have been.
    She didn’t show it, but her courage was fading fast as Antony turned the plane back on course down the side of the lake and revved up the engine. The terrible roar obliterated the boys’ rude shouts of farewell. Perhaps I shall never see them again! Lily thought.
    Antony turned, grinning, and gave her a thumbs-up, then the little plane went hurtling down the grass towards the far stand of trees that barred the open sky.
    I am going to die! Lily thought. She knew she wasn’t brave at all, only an idiot trying to gain Antony’s