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‘Ben... Ben...’ Cass called over to the boy and Jack saw his head turn. ‘Ben, stay still for me. I’m coming to get you.’
‘Cass...’ The boy’s voice was full of the excitement of seeing the cavalry ride over the hill. Full of the panic that he must have felt when he’d started to sink into the mud and found he couldn’t get out.
‘Ben—’ Cass came to a halt at the edge of the mud. ‘Ben, I want you to look at me. No...don’t try to move. Stay still.’
The boy was crying but he did what she told him. ‘I...can’t...’
‘I know. Just hang on in there and I’ll be out to get you in a minute. Then your mum gets the job of cleaning you up.’
Her grin said it all. She was trying to replace Ben’s terror with the more mundane fear of a ticking off at getting himself so dirty. Cass was edging forward slowly, testing the ground in front of her before she put her weight on it. Jack followed, ready to grab her if she started to sink.
‘You’ll be able to tell your friends at school that you got rescued by the fire brigade.’ She was grinning at Ben, talking to him as she tested the ground ahead of her and to either side, and the boy seemed to calm a bit.
Her foot sank into the mud in front of her, a good fifteen feet away from Ben, and he began to howl with terror. ‘Okay. Okay, Ben. It’s okay.’
She reached back and Jack clasped her arm. A brief smiling glance that seemed to sear through the urgency of the situation. ‘Don’t let me sink...’
‘I’ve got you.’
Another tentative step in the clinging mud. Another and her boot sank as far as her ankle. Jack felt her fingers tighten around his and he reached forward, gripping her waist and pulling her back.
‘I think that’s as far as we’ll get...’ She looked around, pulling her phone from her pocket and dialling.
‘Joe, I need the ladder now. And there’s a toolbox in the garage—can you take a couple of doors off their hinges and bring them over...?’
She turned back to Ben. ‘All right, Ben. Just waiting for my ladder. Then I’ll be out to get you.’ She was doing her best to turn this into an exciting adventure and, although it wasn’t totally working, Ben was a lot calmer now.
Jack looked round and saw two men appear from Cass’s garage, one on each end of an aluminium ladder. Wading through the water, they reached dry land and made for them as fast as the muddy terrain would allow.
‘Here we go, Ben.’ Cass was keeping up a stream of reassurance. ‘They’re on their way.’
As soon as the men reached them, she stretched the double length of the ladder across the muddy ground towards Ben. More than halfway. When it was extended fully, it would reach him easily.
‘Thanks, Joe. Have you called the emergency services? She turned to one of the men who had brought the ladder.
‘Yes. They’ll do what they can. I called up to the church and they’re sending the medical bag down. Pete and Laura are coming too.’
‘Great, thanks.’
Jack and the other two men helped Cass drag a couple of heavy branches over, putting them under the end of the ladder to try and stabilise it. Then she took a deep breath, turning her face up to him.
‘Cover my back, eh?’
‘You’ve got it.’
He tested the ground at their end of the ladder and put all his weight on it to steady it. Cass began to crawl along it, pushing the extension towards Ben.
‘We’re going back to help with the doors.’ He heard Joe’s voice behind him. ‘The screws are all painted in, so they’re not coming off that easily.’
‘She’s going to need some help out there. Use a crowbar if you have to.’ Jack knew that Cass wouldn’t hesitate to say the same.
‘Right you are.’ Joe turned, jogging back towards the house.
Ben gave a little cry of relief when the end of the ladder reached him, grabbing it and wrapping his arms around it. There was a click as Cass locked the extension in place, and then she began crawling along the extension.
Jack applied all his weight to his end of the ladder. The other end seemed to be sinking a little, but not so much that it stopped Cass from reaching Ben. He wondered whether the boy saw the same as he had, when he’d been tangled in that tree yesterday and he’d opened his eyes and seen her there.
From the way that Ben grabbed at her, he did. He heard Cass laugh and saw her wrap one arm around the boy, trying to loosen the mud around his waist with the other hand.
