I scrabble desperately at tufts of grass with my hands, feeling them slipping through my fingers, but I finally manage to grab onto a small outcrop of rock, which halts my descent.
Heart pounding in my ears, I grasp onto another natural hand-hold nearby, then – slowly, fearfully - I peer down. One of my feet is lodged on a protruding hillock of grass, but the other is dangling above a drop to the ocean that makes my head swim just looking at it.
Oh, God, don’t look down!
‘Help!’ My shout is feeble. I’m worried that even the vibration of my voice could dislodge my hold on the side of the cliff face, but I need to attract Gabe’s attention when he passes along the footpath.
I yell again for help, a few times and louder this time, but the crash of the waves far below me seems to swallow up my voice. ‘Gabe? Hello? I’m down here.’
But all that comes back to me is a dreadful silence, and I’m forced to conclude that Gabe must have passed the spot already, with no idea that I was dangling a few feet below the path and safety.
How long can I hold on here?
This is apparently a popular place for ‘tombstoning’ so clearly people do survive their foolhardy leaps into the sea. But surely no-one would dare jump from this high up? Certainly not me.
Glancing down (very bad move) confirms this. I’m nowhere near brave enough to make the leap.
Then I hear a shout and my heart leaps hopefully.
Someone is peering down at me, but it’s not Gabe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Hi, there!’ I call in desperation. ‘My name’s Lucy.’
The girl peers at me curiously, craning her neck to get a better look.
‘I’m Madison.’ Her long chestnut hair swings around her shoulders. ‘Doing a spot of climbing?’
‘What? No!’ In my agitation, my sweaty right hand slips slightly on the rock I’m clinging to, and panic flutters inside.
‘Well, what the frickin’ fudge nuggets are you doing down there?’
‘Cleaning my engine parts, what do you think?’ I snap.
I regret my sarcastic retort immediately. I need this Madison person on my side.
Happily, she just laughs. ‘Cleaning your engine parts. Good one. Sorry, Lucy, I was thinking out loud there. I take it you’ve got yourself into a sticky position.’
‘You could say that. I slipped over the edge.’
‘Right. So…how do we get you back up here?’
To my horror, she suddenly vanishes.
‘Madison?’ I call in a panic. ‘Madison! Don’t go. Please come back!’
After a tense and scary few seconds, she reappears. ‘I wasn’t going, you numpty. I was looking for a big stick.’
‘Did you find one?’
‘Nope. Just wait while I think.’ She frowns hard, standing there with her arms folded. Then she opens her mouth and I eagerly await details of her rescue plan.
‘Any ideas from your good self would be most welcome at this point in time,’ she says, and I resist the urge to weep.
‘I suppose the best thing might be for me to lie down and try to reach you that way.’ She takes off her cap and sunglasses, brings out a hair tie and scrapes her perfect locks back in a ponytail. Then she drops down on her front and wriggles forward over the edge, reaching down to me.
‘Can you grab my hand?’
‘No! I might pull you over.’
‘Hm. Good point. We don’t want both of us hurtling to our deaths, do we?’
‘Don’t we?’ I mutter through gritted teeth.
‘A rope would be good.’
‘Do you have a rope?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Right.’
‘Just hang on there while I think.’
‘It’s not as if I have a choice!’ I squeak in a panic. What if I get cramp from being in this weird position and my foot slips?
‘Ooh, narky.’ She frowns. ‘You know, you’ve got some fairly easy-to-reach hand and foot-holds down there. I could point them out and you could climb up.’ She shrugs. ‘Unless you want me to call for help? Fire brigade? Police? Mountain rescue?’
‘No! Just point out the hand-holds.’
‘Okie-dokie. Well, there’s a solid foot-hold just level with your right thigh there, so if you hitch that foot up and catch that bit of rock there with your right hand.’
I nod, trying to screw up the courage to leave the relative safety of my position.
Don’t look down!
‘You need to start moving,’ she says helpfully.
‘I know that.’
‘Well, go on, then.’
‘Listen, you’re not the one clinging to the side of a cliff where one false move will send you plummeting to a watery grave.’
‘This is true.’
‘So if you could just let me do it in my own time?’
‘Be my guest. Just trying to help.’
‘I know. And you are helping.’ Heart thudding in my ears, I manage to shift my position.
‘Yay! Well done.’
Painfully slowly, I climb the couple of metres to the top with Madison’s help, and seconds later, my rescuer is pulling me onto the path beside her.
‘Bloody hell.’ She slaps her hand over her heart, looking overwhelmed, as if she was the one recently hanging off a cliff face, not me. ‘I honestly thought you were a goner there, Lucy. Did you see how I was trying to stay calm so you wouldn’t panic?’
‘I was too preoccupied with staying alive to notice,’ I mutter. Now that I’m safely on solid ground, my legs have turned to cotton wool.
Madison peers over the edge and grimaces. ‘You know, I was convinced you were going to lose your grip, slide down and bounce off those jagged rocks way below us, before being dashed against the foot of the cliffs by an enormous wave.’
‘Well…I didn’t.’ I swallow hard, sinking down onto a grassy patch by the path and refusing to look where she’s pointing.
‘No, you didn’t. And we should celebrate.’ Her beam changes to a frown. ‘Hey, Lucy, you’re shaking.’
I burst out laughing, which is probably more a hysterical reaction to my trauma than actual amusement. Is this girl for real? I mean, I’ll obviously love her forever for saving my life but if she were in the Mastermind chair, her chosen subject would have to be ‘Pointing out the Frigging Obvious with No Trace of Subtlety Whatsoever’.
‘I’m being gobby again, aren’t I?’ She looks crestfallen.
‘What? No, no.’
‘You don’t have to be polite. The reason I’m here in the first place is because my friends are fed up with me. I irritate people, usually without meaning to.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘Oh, it is. But I’m trying to change.’
I nod encouragingly. ‘So how did you irritate your friends today?’
She frowns and flumps down on the grass beside me. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve got nowhere I need to be,’ I tell her with a shrug. ‘The truth is, I could stay here all day and all night and there’s not a single person who’d be worried about where I was.’
Hearing the despair in my tone, she gives me a stern look. ‘Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Because let me tell you, that gets you absolutely nowhere.’ She heaves a sigh, as if she knows only too well.