Ribblestrop Forever! Read Free Page A

you press that little digit there, under the screen.’
    Sam pressed it and the words
Address book
appeared.
    ‘You’ve pressed the wrong one,’ said Ruskin. ‘Give it to me.’
    ‘I think that plane’s in some kind of trouble,’ said Sam, glancing out of the window again. ‘Unless it’s just practising stunts or something. It was low and now
it’s high.’
    Ruskin pressed another button and found
Games
. ‘Did you know you had games on this thing?’ he said.
    ‘The man in the shop said there were games, but he showed me so quickly that I could never find them.’
    ‘Texts. I’ve got it. Inbox.’
    ‘So who was it from?’
    ‘I’m in your inbox. This is such a crafty gadget: it actually stores all the texts you receive, so you can go through them. Oh, it’s from Millie again.’
    ‘She’s probably at school by now. What does it say?’
    Ruskin blinked and held the phone higher. ‘I can’t see. There’s a reflection. Looks like,
Why R U so crap?
’
    ‘That was the last one,’ said Sam.
    ‘Oh. Right. Scrolling down . . . hang on a moment. Here we are.’ He tilted the screen again.
Goodbye all. We R going . . .
’
    ‘Going where?’
    ‘It doesn’t say. What a strange message. Maybe she was interrupted.’
    ‘Go down a bit, Jake. If you press the down arrow, you can see the rest of the words.’
    Ruskin pressed the arrow and the sentence continued.
    ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘There is more.
Goodbye all. We R going to crash. We R all going to die. Millie.
’
    ‘Crash where? How can you be about to crash and have the time to text someone?’
    ‘Maybe she’s joking. I’m not sure it’s something to joke about, though, Sam – you remember that crash we were in last term?’
    ‘Shall I phone her?’
    ‘It’s quite expensive, isn’t it? Making calls?’
    ‘Can I have it back a second? I’ve got five pounds credit, so I might as well use it.’
    ‘Don’t waste it, Sam. What if there’s an emergency?’
    ‘I’ll give her a very quick call – just check she’s okay. Oli? Look, sorry to disturb you, but you’re better at this than me. Can you give us a hand calling
Millie?’
    Millie, Miles and Sanchez were now all pressed together in the cockpit and Miles was still relaying information from the headset. Timmy Fox was alive, but hardly breathing. The
three terrified children watched as the fields rolled beneath them and the electricity pylons spread their cables inches under their wheels. Millie had pulled the craft upwards several times, but
for some reason it kept wanting to descend. She had worked out that the pedals on the floor stabilised them somehow and had got used to pressing them carefully.
    They all knew the fuel supply was getting lower; the needle was even closer to the red. Millie slipped her phone back into her pocket and concentrated on the controls again. ‘There’s
some kind of river ahead,’ she said. ‘What if I aim for that? What if we go straight into the water?’
    ‘No,’ said Sanchez. ‘We’re going way too fast.’
    ‘You’re doing okay,’ said the voice in Miles’s ear. ‘We’re finding you an airfield. Now, if you—’
    ‘We keep going down, Sandra,’ said Miles. ‘Over.’
    ‘I think you may have a headwind. It’s decreasing your speed and your trimmer needs adjusting.’
    ‘What’s a trimmer?’
    ‘It’s the adjustable flap at the back of the plane tail. It keeps you level, so the pilot has to compensate—’
    ‘I don’t know where the controls are! Can’t we just land? Please?’
    ‘Look for a wheel about the size of your hand. It’s between the two seats and it’s got a bumpy edge to it.’
    Miles repeated her words and Sanchez located it. He leant behind Millie, so she was free to move the joystick.
    ‘Got it.’
    ‘Roll the front downwards. Nice and slow.’
    Sanchez did so and the plane’s nose lifted. They felt a buffet of air and the plane tilted to the right and set off in a dramatic curve. They rose steadily,