Free Viva Alice! by Judi Curtin Page B

table, and it kept falling over, so Alice brought out the blanket from her bed to support it, and then the three of us lined up at the edge of the balcony, and put our arms around each other and said ‘LANZAROTE!’ all together really loud and the camera flashed and we all laughed and then there was a sudden gust of wind and the door into the bedroom slammed shut and Grace stopped laughing and said in a very quiet voice. ‘Oh.’
    ‘What?’ I asked, noticing how worried she looked. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Now we are in very, very big trouble,’ shesaid. ‘That’s what’s wrong.’
    Alice ran over to the door. ‘This is stupid,’ she said. ‘There’s no handle on the outside. How are we supposed to open the door? How are we supposed to get back inside?’
    ‘We can’t,’ said Grace. ‘That door can only be opened from the inside. Gavin and his friend got stuck out here last year. They shouted for ages and it was nearly an hour before we heard them and set them free.’
    ‘But there’s no one to hear us shout,’ I said in a quiet voice. ‘We’re all alone.’
    ‘We can phone for help,’ said Alice in a bright voice. ‘Who’s got their phone?’
    Grace and I both shook our heads. ‘Not me,’ we said together.
    ‘We’re teenagers,’ sighed Alice. ‘Isn’t there a rule saying that we should never be more than a few metres away from our phones?’
    I looked through the glass to where our three phones were lined up on the lockers next to our beds.
    ‘We
are
only a few metres away from our phones,’ said Grace. ‘Only trouble is, there’s a locked door between them and us. They might as well be a million miles away.’
    Alice leaned over the balcony and looked down. ‘Maybe I could climb …’
    ‘No way,’ I said, pulling her back. ‘Don’t even think about it. We’re on the second floor remember? Things are bad enough, but I think they might be a bit worse if Grace and I were stuck up here, looking at you lying on the patio with a broken leg. Have you forgotten what happened when you climbed up that tree to rescue Domino?’
    ‘You’re right, Meg,’ said Alice. ‘That was a stupid idea. Maybe we could try shouting for help instead.’
    ‘We’d be wasting our voices,’ said Grace. ‘Mum and Dad especially chose this villa because it was so private. We never hear a single sound from the other villas, and that means they won’t be able to hear us either. Everyone’stoo far away.’
    ‘But that means …’ began Alice.
    ‘… that we have to wait until either Gavin or my parents come back to rescue us …’ said Grace.
    ‘… that also means we’re going to be on this balcony for the whole night,’ I said, and I started to cry.

Chapter Sixteen
    A lice and Grace hugged me until I stopped crying. That took a long time, and when they finally pulled away, I realised that I was very cold. I was in my bare feet, and I was wearing thin summer pyjamas. I couldn’t help thinking of my lovely warm fleecy onesie, which was folded up on my bed at home. I shivered.
    Alice picked up the blanket from the table, and wrapped it around me.
    ‘There,’ she said. ‘That better?’
    ‘Thanks, Al,’ I said. I was afraid if I said any more, I was going to burst into tears again.
    I sat on the swinging couch and looked around. Even though the balcony was big, the only furniture was the swinging couch, and the small glass table.
    Why couldn’t there have been a huge comfy bed, piled high with soft blankets?
    Or a wardrobe full of warm fleeces and hoodies?
    Or a vending machine serving hot chocolate and packets of crisps?
    Or a telephone for emergencies?
    ‘This is all my fault,’ said Alice. ‘I was the one who came out here to look at the stupid sea.’
    ‘But I was the one who suggested taking the picture,’ I said.
    ‘And I should have propped the door open,’ said Grace. ‘I knew it couldn’t be opened from the outside.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter whose fault it is anyway,’ said