to the foam mat and the boys threw a couple of sleeping bags on top of her.
Bethany leaned in and yelled, Ire you OK?? forgetting that Lauren no longer had three hats covering her ears.
Lauren shuddered as she poked her head from under the sleeping bags and nodded. Live me the grease.?
Aram and his younger brother, Milar, began passing Lauren the tubs of Vaseline. She sunk her numb fingers into each tub and smeared it thickly over her body, trying not to wriggle too much because she didnt want any grease wasted by rubbing off on to the sleeping bags.
When Lauren was well slathered, Bethany pushed one end of the nylon climbing rope under the sleeping bags. Lauren wound the rope under her arms and tied it into a bowknot, like a shoelace. That way she could pull on the bow and release herself easily if the rope became snagged.
Ill ready??Aram asked.
Is ready as I抣l ever be.?
Bethany and Aram each grabbed a corner of the insulated mat and dragged it on to the ice at the edge of the river, with Lauren curled up under the sleeping bags. They stopped a couple of metres shy of the watere edge where the ice looked dangerously thin.
Miss Smoke was waiting for them. She pulled back the sleeping bags and tested the knot in the rope under Laurene arms.
Remember, the air is much colder than the water,?Smoke said gruffly. 慘eep your head under, except when you have to breathe, and dont hang around when you get to the other side.?
With no sleeping bags over her top half, Lauren was shivering too badly to speak, but she managed a nod.
OK,?Smoke said. Let going.?
Bethany whipped the sleeping bags away from Laurene legs. As Lauren sprang up, Aram gave her a quick inspection, before moving in with a Vaseline-smeared glove and patching up a few areas where the coating looked thin.
Lauren had too much on her mind to give a damn about everyone seeing her naked. She took three quick tiptoe leaps over the thin ice and took a huge breath as she speared into the water. Because Lauren had acclimatised to a temperature nineteen degrees colder than the water, a sense of calm passed over her as she began to swim. It almost felt warm.
She set off in a powerful front crawl, turning her head to breathe whenever the choppy water allowed her to. After two minutes?swimming flat out, Lauren thought she must have almost reached the opposite bank. She raised her head out of the water to get a look. A blast of sleet pounded her face, but she managed to keep her eyes open long enough to see that she was barely halfway across.
Lauren felt crushed as she dived back under, swimming at a diagonal into the fierce current; pushing as hard as her aching body would allow. She now had serious doubts about her ability to make it across. The next minutes were the most agonising of Laurene life. Her skin felt numb and she was fighting a stitch down her left side.
Finally, more than four shattering minutes after setting off, Lauren spotted the orange cone less than five metres from her face. Touching the ice sheet on the embankment was a relief, but getting out of the water was another challenge.
Laurene fingers were numb and the ice gave her nothing to grip on to. Her first three goes at climbing out of the water failed and she started getting desperate. At the fourth attempt, a wave pushed her at exactly the right moment and she managed to lift a knee on to the ice.
The danger now was of her bare skin freezing to the ice beneath the snow. The only way to prevent this was not to let any part of her body touch the ground for more than a fraction of a second.
Shivering so violently that she could barely control her movements, Lauren quickly smeared the soles of her feet through some extra thick grease on her ankles. By the time shet done this, a few dozen drips of water that hadnt been repelled by the Vaseline had frozen to the skin on her back. Every bead felt like a nail drilling her flesh.
Lauren stood up to an eruption of encouraging screams from the opposite embankment. She took four quick leaps towards the orange cone and plucked the small backpack out of the snow behind it. When shet hooked it over her shoulders, Lauren allowed herself a moment of triumph,