The Accident Read Online Free

interrupted.
    ‘Tash, what are you doing up?’
    ‘I woke up.’
    ‘Well, go back to sleep.’
    ‘I dinna get story.’ Rose-Marie got so excited when Tash started talking. Didn’t realise from then on she’d never shut up.
    ‘I have to do my homework.’
    She comes closer, climbs up onto my lap and nudges my hand aside to see what I’m doing. She’s always this way, as if she can’t wait to be reading and writing and doing overcomplicated and unnecessary maths problems too.
    ‘What’s that?’ Absolute favourite question.
    ‘Finding the loci of points in rectangular hyperbola.’
    The eyes go past my work, to the can of Coke. The hands reach out for it. I whisk it out of her reach. ‘No, mine. You already brushed your teeth.’
    I’ll get a tantrum now; natural follow-up to not getting what she wants. She’ll dig in stubbornly and keep going till she gets it. Well, tough luck, kid. I’ve been playing this game a lot longer than you have.
    Before she can unleash, I tighten my grip around her waist. Take her into her room. It’s dark. Rose-Marie forgot to turn on the nightlight. Climb onto her bed—it was another birthday present, graduating from the cot—and grab a random book from the shelf. ‘One book, okay? Then I have to go finish my homework.’
    Wriggly, impatient, not happy with that book. Elbow in the chest as she climbs over me to choose a different one. Diary of a Wombat. ‘This one.’
    ‘Okay, this one.’ She’s had it read to her probably hundreds of times, and like always she wants to race through, tries to turn the pages before I’m done reading them. I read through it once, then she wants it again, then I tuck her in properly, as she tries to wriggle free.
    ‘No, stay there. Rose-Marie’ll get mad if you don’t go to sleep.’
    I leave her there with her room lit blue by the nightlight. My maths books lie open, waiting for me, but my concentration is really screwed now. I shut the books and top up the Coke. Stretch out on my bed.
    The roof slopes downwards over my bed: it’s a real attic bedroom. The ceiling’s completely covered in A3 pages I printed off in the school library and taped up there. Took me nearly a week to put together. Izzy came over and stared at it for a full minute or two before she asked me what it was.
    ‘It’s a brain, you idiot.’
    She couldn’t understand why I’d paper my roof with a scientific diagram. Her bedroom walls are an inch thick with years’ worth of hot pin-up boys, the less clothes the better far as she’s concerned. I didn’t bother explaining, she wouldn’t understand. She never does.
    So this is my bedtime routine. I lie there with my drink and gaze up, tracing the different sections, rolling the names over my tongue. I imagine diving inside, watching the neural connections flash by on all sides, the cerebrum walls stacked with folders and files like on a hard drive, each packed full of data: snapshots, glimpses of memory. The fresh arrivals from today are: the foul odour of a stink bomb in our English classroom, the familiar shudder of the car just before it stalled, the sight of Tash’s bare little bottom in the bathtub and the sound of her nonsense singing echoing off the tiles. I sort each incident. I let my mind dwell on the good ones and commit them to memory. Will the rest away. Then I take my mind back, systematic as always.
    My first crush, on Matty Jardin in year two.
    Being bitten by a dog in kindy.
    Fourth birthday, somebody made me a castle cake.
    I explore each memory carefully, trying to squeeze out as much detail as possible before moving on. Sometimes, rarely, I get something new, something long filed away. A voice, a glimpse of a face or hands. Impossible to date. Impossible to know if it’s even real, or if my mind has simply started manufacturing memories. Making up answers because I don’t have them. One hundred billion neurones. Talk about a needle in the haystack.
    I scull the rest of the rum and Coke. Make