Free Christmas Wishes by Katie Flynn

probably see the fire engines, fully manned, emerging from the station. Alex would be riding shotgun, as he called it, sitting next to the driver – Chalky or Fred Finnigan – and ringing the bell, a task the girls knew he greatly enjoyed, and though he would not approve of them leaning out of the window on such a wild night, Gillian thought – and knew Joy thought also – that to see the engines charging past, with all their Blue Watch friends aboard, was worth the telling-off they would probably get when their father returned home.
    Joy reached the window first and pushed it open to its fullest extent. ‘Beat you …’ she began triumphantly as her twin tried to elbow her aside, but before she could get another word out the wind had seized the open pane and brought it crashing back straight into her face.
    For a moment, Joy knew blinding pain and felt blood trickling down her brow, saw the scarlet of it and felt the chill of the icy wind. Then she fell into the black pit which had opened up before her and knew no more.
    For one awful moment, Gillian had no idea what had happened. Her sister slid down from her position at the open window and landed in a tumbled heap on the floor, and Gillian began to scold her whilst leaning perilously out to grab the window latch. It was only as she began to pull it closed that she realised the big pane was there no longer. Casting a startled glance around the room by the light of the nearest street lamp, she saw glass starring the floor, the windowsill and her sister’s inanimate form.
    ‘Joy?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right? Did the glass hit you?’ As she spoke, her sister’s head rolled a little, revealing a face covered with blood and spears of glass.
    Then, Gillian screamed.
    Despite Joy’s earlier comments, Mrs Lubbock was up the stairs and into the bedroom within moments of Gillian’s beginning to bash at the wall between the two houses. Wheezing and clutching her chest she turned on the light, screwing up her eyes against the sudden brightness. ‘Wharrever is the matter?’ she demanded. Gillian jumped to her feet and seized her fiercely, turning her round and beginning to propel her back towards the stairs.
    ‘The window slammed in Joy’s face; she’s hurt real bad,’ she said wildly. ‘You go to the telephone and ring for an ambulance; I’ll stay with her so she’s not afraid when she wakes up.’
    ‘Perhaps I oughter tek a look …’ the old woman began uncertainly. ‘The ambulance folk is bound to ask me …’
    ‘She took the glass full in the face and she’s unconscious,’ Gillian said, aware that not only her voice but her whole body was shaking. ‘Tell ’em there’s blood an’ glass everywhere, tell ’em our daddy’s away to a fire somewhere with the rest of Blue Watch. Tell ’em … oh, tell ’em anything you like, so long as you get help.’
    ‘Right,’ Mrs Lubbock said. She descended the stairs ponderously and the last Gillian saw of her was her long nightgown disappearing through the front doorway.
    Gillian returned to her sister and knelt down beside her once more, without even noticing that she was kneeling on shards of broken glass and adding her own blood to that of her twin. ‘Joy?’ she whispered. ‘When I said I didn’t like being a twin, and I didn’t want to look exactly like you, I didn’t mean it, honest to God I didn’t. I wish to God I’d reached the window first, ’cos I’ve got more sense than to let go of the latch, which is what you must have done …’ She looked at the window and felt the icy wind blowing through the jagged gap, and realised that her sister would not have had the strength to prevent the gale from first taking the window from her grasp and then flinging it back in her face. Despite her much-vaunted brainpower, she herself would probably have done no better.
    Gillian sat back on her heels; what should she do, what should she do? She supposed she ought to clear up the glass and