Free Wild Lily by K M Peyton Page A

why I love you so.’
    That clinched it. She said no more. But the fear bubbled inside her. She tried not to think about it. But it was like those volcanoes they had been taught about at school, always ticking away beneath the surface, to erupt in flames without warning(not in England fortunately) – the fear leaped into her throat without warning when she was cooking or pulling up a cabbage or just lying in bed nearly asleep. Fear or excitement, she could not tell, just the feeling of bursting with an uncontainable emotion, indefinable … when it was over, if she were still alive, how dull life would be without it … although there would still be the party to anticipate …
    Her father thought she was sickening for something. ‘What’s wrong with you, gel? You’re like a cat on hot bricks.’
    She tried to play it down, contain it. But she didn’t have long to wait. Antony arrived unexpectedly, saying he had been suspended, whatever that meant, for a couple of weeks. Not to come back till after the Easter hols. His father gave him a thrashing, then was quite nice to him, forgetting all about it.
    ‘A fortnight off is a waste of his money, that’s all he thinks of. He doesn’t really care about what I did.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘Oh, a bit of larking about. Bit of a birthday celebration – I am eighteen now, don’t you see! Someone got hurt though, so we got into trouble. Nothing really.’
    It sounded like her parachute jump.
    ‘Tomorrow, eh, Lily? The weather’s just right, no wind, clear visibility. We can go off early and be back for breakfast. No one need know.’
    ‘Yes, all right.’
    In a way, it was a blessing to get it over. No more agonising. Dead or alive, it would be decided. To be dead would be so peaceful.
    ‘Piece of cake,’ Antony said.
    From that moment, through the evening and all through the night, Lily’s brain wrestled with emotions she could scarcely contain, ranging from a pitiful fear of death to euphoria of a blazing intensity. Sleep was impossible. It was a calm spring night, the sky glittering with stars. She felt she was to become part of the sky like the stars themselves, a magical being at one with the clouds and the raindrops and the highest flying eagles, pitched from a prosaic little aeroplane into a sphere unknown to human beings: the great canopy of the sky, all alone. She did not think her mind would work in such conditions, to instruct her to do all the things Antony had taught her, to save her life. To walk out on the wing and jump off backwards, not to pull the ripcord until she was well free, not to panic … impossible …
    ‘They do it all the time in America … Lindbergh’s done it four times …’
    Then to think: it’s all a dream, Antony just said it for a joke and it’s not going to happen. And then the hollow disappointment worse than the fear, the falling into a black pit of misery to think her boring life was not to be illuminated by this wonderful intimacy with the clouds and the sky, out there alone in inestimable space … I am going batty, she said to herself. I might never recover my brains after this. They say a great shock sends you loopy. Antony is doing this to me. She told herself that hundreds of men had jumped out with parachutes and lived to tell the tale, and Antony had bought her the latest design by Mr Irvin, unimaginable that it wouldnot work, a piece of cake indeed, go to sleep. Impossible.
    The stars began to fade and the grey light of dawn filtered into her bedroom under the eaves. She crept out of bed, dressed rapidly and went downstairs. She had put out her warmest clothes and a scarf to contain her hair in case it should get caught in the rigging. What hadn’t she thought of? Absolutely nothing. Her brain had now cooled and she felt calm and slightly sick. It was impossible to think of eating, so she unlatched the door quietly and went outside. The sharp fresh air was wonderful, a slap in the face to shift her stupid