Accidents

June finds her eldest daughter's hidden box on a Sunday afternoon. Tom is out, rollerblading round the streets. Bea is out, somewhere, probably the woods. Hatty, as ever, is the only child at home, and she and her mother are taking the opportunity to tidy the girls' bedroom. Fat gift-bags sprawl around Hatty on the bed, and she sorts methodically through their contents. Sylvanian Family animals, badgers and rabbits and otters, some missing their clothes, are scattered over her pillow. Hatty is quiet and has her secretive face on as she touches all of her different things. Sometimes she stops to just hold something to her chest for a little while, replacing it after it goes clammy in her fist.

June enjoys the peace, singing in her head, grunting occasionally as she stands up or kneels down. She does not understand how they have accumulated all this stuff, and makes a mental note to look for car boot sales in the Mercury on Wednesday. She stands and sighs, holding herself up with a hand in the small of her aching back, and her right foot comes down on a small hard thing that cracks as she stumbles.
"Jesus H Christ!
Hatty does not even look up. When her mother curses or swears, her words rip out of her and her voice sounds like a tornado. Hatty doesn't care much for that voice, and pretends she hasn't heard. Once, after the tornado, June had grabbed Hatty and Bea by the hair, and smashed their heads together.

June wipes sweat off her temples as she bends to examine the casualty. Sundays should not be this stressful. Why can they not just keep it tidy by themselves, is it so hard? One of Bea's bright plastic monster toys is cracked into pieces on the carpet. This one is a red and yellow gargoyle. June kicks it off to one side as she straightens. She makes a decision.
"Hatty? I'm going to do Bea's side now. She won't like it, but I did tell her to be back by lunch if she didn't want me to do it for her.
Hatty is stroking a little velveteen white rabbit. She rotates it so the beans inside fall about. The rabbit's head swells as its legs become limp and useless.
"You know, Mum, she won't like it.
Hatty's voice is almost threatening in its deliberate impassivity. June rolls her eyes.
"Well that's her problem isn't it? I'm not having this room look like a shit-hole for another week.
Hatty can say nothing to this. The white rabbit has fat legs and a flat head.

June goes around to the other side of the cabin bed. Hatty can hear her muttering. Hatty wishes her mum had never bought that stupid bed for Bea. Every morning when Bea wakes up, she climbs over the wrong side and drops down onto Hatty's own bed. Sometimes she misses Hatty's feet and ankles and it doesn't hurt, but it always wakes her up. How come Bea gets to sleep in a tower and Hatty has to have a normal bed? She listens to her mother again, groaning under her breath, always repeating the same thing, like for good luck. Bloody children, bloody children. Why can't something nice happen to me? Bloody children. Hatty makes her worst face in her mother's direction - crossed eyes, pushed up top lip, snake's tongue flickering in and out. Still June mutters on. Hatty swivels on the bed, making the springs squeal, and begins organising the badgers.

As June pokes and sorts she becomes aware that she is looking for something. She's not quite sure what it is yet, but will know triumphantly when she finds it. She looks inside all the hiding places she can think of. As she fumbles through Bea's knicker drawer, a memory dimly blushes of her own mother, brandishing a cut-out movie star, red and furious, spitting on it and praying for her. She shakes it away. She has sworn to only remember the good parts.

There must be things, evidence, among all these toys and books. Fags inside the mattress. Matches in a pencil case. Even - God forbid - condoms in her koala pyjama case. But none of these things materialise. Is that worse? June isn't sure. She wishes she could really talk to Bea, just like a human talking to another human, as if they were friends or had met in a pub. She knows that Bea goes to a pub. That Bea's group of friends are known as the 'under-underage' kids in the scummy pub they go to on Friday nights. June doesn't mind. She's prepared to let Bea have her few little secrets. As long as she knows about them.

June turns her attention to Bea's school exercise books. Maybe a letter will slip out. There'll be conversations, written during French, several lots of handwriting in different coloured inks. Bea favours red biros. Drugs, boys, parties, clothes, sex, booze. Bea needn't think her own mother didn't know teenage girls. June finds only neat, mature handwriting that no longer resembles her own, pen-drawn pictures of volcanoes, the tabled results of experiments with magnesium. Bea must hide things in other girls bedrooms, in houses where the parents don't care enough to search for secrets. June hears the spring and bounce of Hatty's mattress and then the slaps of her bare flat feet down the wooden stairs. Suddenly she feels weary. Her bones ache like they are getting too old. She wants to give up this unnatural quest for tidiness and order and go and snuggle with Hatty and the dog on the sofa, watch old cartoons and eat crisps soaked in spurts of vinegar. She crouches for a final rummage, the bottom drawer of the bed's inbuilt desk unit, and suddenly notices something. The leg space under the desk extends right along behind the bed's wardrobe. June crawls right under the desk and sticks her head into the dark hiding place. She sniffs, and smells only old dust. Shuffling her knees, she settles back to sit on her feet so that her hands are free for groping and finding. Her breathing is quickening: she does not like small dark places, and feels shut in. But this is necessary.

Leaning in, right at the back in the corner, her fingers graze an odd smoothness and she knows at once that she has found it. And it must be a huge secret for Bea to have gone to the trouble of hiding it this well. June scrabbles her hand about to get a grip on the object, finds the corners, edges it out into the fading Sunday light carefully. She recognises this rough walnutty box. She had given it to Bea years ago because her father had made it when he was young too. Obviously she hadn't told Bea that objects like it made her sick at the sight of them.

June claps her hands together to rid them of the dust, wiping them on her trousers before she begins the slow ascent that is getting up off the floor. She uses the edge of Bea's desk to steady herself, the box in her other hand. This gives her an idea and she pulls the desk chair back in to sit at the desk. To open the box here, at Bea's very own desk, seems somehow fitting, the right thing to do, a hint of ironic ritual. What will it be, then? What is bad enough? Serious drugs, class A's? Contraceptive pills? Shoplifted jewellery? June expects a combination, if not all, of these things. She opens it. Holds it up to her face, quite close, as if she were smelling the contents. Peers, for a few moments, eyes narrowed. Slowly she lifts the box and turns it upside down. Several squares of folded paper fall with little taps onto the desk. June puts the box on her lap and lets her fingers play over the papers. As she picks one up, her fingers give a slight, involuntary quiver. This is a line here. Are you really going to cross it? She supposes they are love letters, and thinks with an ache and a sob in her throat of her Bea that morning, dancing silly, wearing Tom's hat, trying hard to make Hatty laugh. She opens the paper out and smoothes down the creases, not yet ready to read. And then she is reading it.

Minutes later it is still clutched in June's hand as she hangs over Bea's chair, crying hard. She cries like a child, putting all her energy into it without a thought to the aftermath. Her eyes are wide and unblinking in desperation, and her other hand is to her mouth, as she chews and bites at her knuckles, a coping strategy of hers. She looks wild. A shudder sweeps through her body in stages, and then she shreds the paper, stinging her nails at it, wanting it gone. She pulls at another folded square, wanting to get rid of all of those sickening words, but yet wanting to understand. Needing to know what is wrong with her baby, what has happened to her baby while her back was turned. The next paper is part of the same theme - this one details the wake, who to invite, what music to play. The food. She wants her ashes scattered from the top of the white cliffs. June is disgusted, repulsed, by whatever is dark in her daughter's mind. Cannot think, pushes back in the chair but then grabs at the last folded square, to end this properly. It is a letter to her. Dear Mum. If you're reading this then I have died.
"Mum!
June whirls around, an automatic response to that dreadful word. Hatty grabs at her wrists, shaking her arms. Hatty's face is shocked and teary, and old for someone so small.
"Mum, come quick, Tom's fell over, Bea's got him, he's all bloody-

They run out together, Hatty leading, quicker, darting and exclaiming, turn out of the path and along the pavement and there they are, in the distance, Bea staggering slowly but carrying her brother. A little closer and June can hear his crying, agonising to her, full of real pain, can see the red slick around his mouth and down his chin, runs quicker, wanting to be holding him. They meet outside the Worboys house and June snatches Tom up out of Bea's arms, kisses his frowned forehead, whispers "oh, my baby boy. Hatty slips her hand into Bea's pocket, feeling the need to be attached to someone safe with so much blood around.
"Mum.
Bea is calmly sad.
"He's knocked his front teeth out. I saved 'em. Look.
She puts out her closed hand and opens it up, bringing it down lower so Hatty, on tiptoes, can see. On a patch of dried blood, white and alien, are Tom's two teeth, one much longer with roots rearing out like horns. Hatty gasps, eyes rounded, eyebrows up.
"Mum? We should put them in milk. Right now.
June just watches the teeth, entranced, so Bea leaves her hand out, dangling where it is.