Winter Wishes Read Online Free Page B

for that!” snapped Ivy. “I’ve left a saucepan on and the fire’s going too. There’s an open window upstairs, around the back.” She turned back to Jules and demanded, “Can’t you just climb through it?”
    Ivy’s cottage had to be two hundred years old at least and the windows were pretty narrow. And then there was the small matter of the cottage backing right onto the River Wenn.
    Jules wasn’t in the habit of carrying a ladder around, either.
    “She’s a vicar, not Spiderman,” Issie said, earning herself a look from Ivy that would have laid a more delicate personality out flat on the lane.
    “Roger Pollard left a ladder round the side of my house when he was mending next door’s roof. Their loose tiles blew into my garden and they’re lucky I wasn’t hurt. I had my solicitor onto them straight away, let me tell you!” Ivy said. “I must have told Pollard to move it fifty times but, like everyone else around here, he works at a snail’s pace. Anyway, you can use that to get in.”
    Ivy wasn’t asking Jules: she was telling her. Now one bony hand was clamped round Jules’s wrist and Ivy was towing her down the narrow path to the back of the cottage. The path was shadowy and smelt of damp; barely beyond it the river rushed by, muddy and swollen by the rains of the previous night’s storm. Sure enough, though, the top window of the cottage was wide open.
    Jules gulped. She didn’t like heights at the best of times. Scaling the cottage walls on the Pollards’ dodgy ladder wasn’t at the top of her list of fun things to do. In fact it wasn’t even on her list.
    “Well, go on then,” snapped Ivy as Jules dithered, torn between her duty to help and her terror of heights. “My saucepan will catch fire at this rate.”
    “They always did burn witches,” murmured Issie. She stepped forward and, grabbing one end of the ladder, began to drag it towards the back of Ivy’s cottage. “Come on then. Better get this over with. Then we can go home and party.”
    Together Issie and Jules manhandled the ladder along the path before leaning it against the wall. The gap between the bottom rung and the rushing river was a matter of inches. One false move and Jules would tumble into the cold, brown water.
    “Jules, you don’t need to do this,” Alice said, looking worried.
    “Yes she does. How else will I get in?” barked Ivy. “Anyway, she’s the vicar. It’s her job to help me.”
    Jules swallowed back the huge lump of fear that was starting to block her throat. Now that the ladder was leaning against the whitewashed wall it seemed ever so precarious. The top of that wall looked higher than Everest.
    “I’ll go up if you like,” offered Issie, catching sight of Jules’s pale face.
    Jules shook her head. She’d been asked do this. She had to do this because Ivy was right: it was her job. Surely now that Jules was in her thirties she ought to be over her silly fear of heights?
    “I don’t care who goes up,” Ivy snapped. “Just hurry up. I’m getting cold!”
    Jules placed her feet on the bottom rung, first one and then the other. Her palms were clammy and her fingers were starting to tingle. Slowly, painfully, she climbed up, one rung at a time, the blood whooshing in her ears and her heart thudding. Just don’t look down , she told herself. Don’t look down, don’t look—
    Oh! Too late! She’d looked down and it was such a long way that her vision turned black around the edges and her head swam. Below her, Ivy, Alice and Issie’s faces were just three pale and blurry ovals in a world that was growing ever darker. Jules clung to the ladder with all her might; her fingers tightened on the uprights in such a vice-like grip that she didn’t think she’d ever loosen them.
    “Jules!” Alice cried. “Are you all right up there, love?”
    Jules couldn’t answer. Her mouth had gone dry and, besides, every last bit of concentration she had was being consumed by the effort of clinging on