Free Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall Page A

I took a deep breath and leaped over to the first, my boot finding traction as I shifted my weight forwards and stepped on to the next rock. I knew my foot wouldn’t hold – it was slipping across the wet surface – and I threw my arms out so that at least I would fall on to the rough rock of the gully’s other side and not into the gushing water.
    Harriet called my name, and I gritted my teeth as I hit the rock, my palms grazing across the barnacles and a sharp edge knocking my torso.
    For a few seconds I was winded, but then I clambered to safety.
    â€˜I’m alright,’ I shouted, looking across the gully at Harriet.
    All the colour had drained from her face, and she was shaking her head.
    â€˜You can do it, Harriet!’ I yelled. Now that I was across, a surge of excitement swept through me; my heart beat faster, and I felt wild with the proximity to danger, the risk. I laughed, and Harriet’s eyebrows folded together in fear and frustration.
    â€˜I can’t jump as far as you,’ she called, the sound hard to make out above the rushing water.
    â€˜You can!’
    My eyes flicked down to the mouth of the gully, the narrow opening where the water surged in and out, and I wondered whether a body would fit through that space and, if it did, how quickly it would be dragged under the forest of kelp and whether it would ever be found again.
    â€˜Kate – now?’ she asked.
    I scanned the gully and out past the break to see what was coming. There was not going to be a better chance.
    â€˜Go!’ I shouted.
    She jumped, wobbling already as she left the ledge. One foot down, a little splash as her boot hit the rock under the surface. Both of her arms stretched wide, her face pure determination. The leap to the second rock, her arms out and grasping for the same ledge I had crashed into. I held my breath. Then she was collapsing forwards, dress sodden at the bottom, hands reaching up to the ledge and to me.
    I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards me as she scrambled the rest of the way up and away from the water. We stayed like that, my arms around her back, her face at my chest, breathing heavily, our legs tangled under us, our skirts wet and heavy.
    She looked at me. ‘I did it.’ She laughed and grabbed my face with both her hands and kissed me, full on the mouth. Just for a moment.
    She pulled away, eyes shining and hair wild, framing her face.
    â€˜I did it!’ she yelled again, and threw her arms into the air and whooped with delight, while I sat staring at her, my body filled with the tingling strangeness of her kiss.
    And this time it was Harriet who led us back across the rocks, jumping and leaping and calling for me to catch up, while I trailed behind, feeling as though something had burst open in both of us, wondrously, and yet it was not the same thing. As we made our way home, Harriet kept pulling further and further away from me.

THIRTEEN
    I CAME DOWN WITH A DREADFUL COLD ; THE TYPE where my face felt stuffed full of damp laundry rags. I could not breathe through my nose, and I snuffled and coughed and moped about until Mother ordered me to bed with a spoonful of Glover’s mixture and a washer for my head and told me to stay put until I’d burned the thing away with a fever.
    Ordinarily I might have relished an excuse to lie in bed and take one of Harriet’s books from my shelf and read and reread the words that lifted me up and straight off the cape and away to adventure. But not even Ralph’s adventures on the Coral Islands could pull me from my glumness. For today, I knew, McPhail was escorting all the children to watch the whales off the point at Murray’s Beach, and I so dearly wanted to go. He had been fishing out there lately and had told Father that the whales were passing in large numbers, and he offered to take us all down there on an excursion of sorts.
    When Harriet came to collect me and found me bedridden, I