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at her, of Alison’s mouth opening and shutting but Gina has no idea what she is saying, of being in another bed somewhere else, and her head is hurting and hurting and someone says, “It’s all right, dear, you’re going to go to sleep for a bit now.”

    “Ambulance,” says Corinna crisply, into the phone. “A child has a head injury. Allersmead—Number Fourteen Temperley Avenue, driveway with white gateposts, on the right as you go east.”
    She returns to the terrace. Alison and Charles are beside the pond. Alison is kneeling. Charles is bending down. Ingrid is rounding up the other children. “Come, come,” she calls gaily. “We go inside now, the treasure hunt is finished.” But the children are uncompliant. Roger is saying that he wants Alison. The visitors are shocked and interested; queasily, they stare down towards the pond. Katie is asking if they can have tea now. Sandra seems not to be around. Ingrid has Roger by the hand, and is trying to herd the others onto the terrace. The baby is crying.
    “What exactly happened?” asks Corinna.
    Ingrid pauses. Her fair flat face, always rather impassive, has become even more so. “I think I did not really see,” she says.

    “Why the hell did you hide stuff right beside the pond?” says Charles.

    Alison weeps. This is not happening. Things like this do not happen. Not in this family, not to her. It is all some sort of ghastly hallucination, in a moment she will come to, and the children will be rushing around again, and it will be time to call them in for tea.

    Thus, the birthday, of which everyone will remember something different.
    Gina will remember coming home, her head all bandaged. And it is not her birthday anymore, her birthday has gone down the drain—written off, wiped out. There was never any birthday tea. Later, another day, they had the cake and she blew out the candles, but it did not count.
    In due course, there is the scar, across one side of her forehead, where, it seems, she hit the stone wall of the pond. And the hospital visits.
    “A wretched accident,” says Alison. “A wretched silly accident. She slipped.”
    Katie says, “You can have my treasure. All of it. I’ve kept it for you.”
    Ingrid says nothing. Not then.
    Paul will remember hating Gina’s friends—those girls ganging up, whispering. He will remember the ambulance men, advancing down the garden like alien invaders. He will remember watching out of the bedroom window, while the others swirl around in the hall and Ingrid cries, “Now we play a game—come in here and we play pass the parcel.” He will remember that people sneaked into the kitchen and helped themselves to the birthday tea.
    Alison will remember the ambulance ride, the siren, Gina’s face, the voices of strangers, the doctors, the nurses, the hospital smell, the trolley taking Gina somewhere, the waiting, the waiting.
    Corinna will remember telephoning someone’s parent: “I’m afraid that the birthday party has had to be curtailed—Gina has had an accident. I wonder if you could come and fetch—um—Sally.” She will remember Katie saying, “Can we have tea now? Why aren’t we having tea?” She will remember thinking, Now I know, definitely I am not having children, never. She will remember the arrival of concerned parents, the departure of their overstimulated offspring, Ingrid saying oh—they did not have the party bags for going home, the baby wailing, the dog discovered wolfing down bridge rolls in the kitchen, the eventual return of Alison (fraught) and Charles (irritated). It will be some while before she again visits Allersmead.
    Sandra will remember feeling sick.
    Charles will remember saying to Alison, “Get that bloody pond filled in.”
    Katie, Roger, and Clare will remember nothing.

SCISSORS
     
     
     
     
    W hen the day begins, when the light swells and within the house some people turn over in bed, blink, burrow down for some more sleep (Sandra, Katie, Roger, Clare), and