In the collection of skin, dust and hair that collected under the bed lay a forlorn toy bear, his stuffing peeking through his broken stitching. Once upon a time he had a growl that emitted fiercely from his chest when turned upside down. That growl had long ago turned into an unreliable squeak. Agnes had never seen that bear except in an old sepia photo of her grandfather as a toddler. In the dark space of her hiding place she worried about the bear and nudged it with her foot, but it stayed inert and silent and seemed that it would not come to life. Agnes felt a little of the tension in her body relax.

Agnes could hear shouts and shrieks all over the house, she could hear the thud of footsteps and slamming of doors. Agnes kept her foot resting on the bear and concentrated really hard on being quiet and still. She shut her eyes, listened to her breathing and remembered that old photo. It showed a small blonde cherub holding hands with an old lady as they stroked a calf, on the ground a few feet away was the bear propped against a tree stump. Her grandad was now a balding old curmudgeon, with enormous ears and hairs growing on his nose, but he had sparkly blue eyes. Agnes could remember seeing the same eyes on the little boy in the photograph. That’s how she had known it was him, as a small child she had pointed to him and said “Grandad” the first time she saw it and her mother had been amazed.

The photo had been in a silver frame on her grandmother’s sideboard. Alongside it had been a black and white photo of people in costume, they had pan-stick faces and rouged cheeks. One of them was her grandmother in 1956 portraying Lady Macbeth in the local Am-Dram Shakespeare production. Agnes found it much more difficult to syncopate that image with the wizened vacuous granny she knew. Old things came from young things it seemed but sometimes the connections were lost.

She felt pins and needles in her hand where she had been awkwardly resting on it and stretched out her arm for relief. Her fingers grazed across something soft and small which made her jump and fearing that it might be a dead animal of some kind she screamed. Immediately knowing that she had given herself away she put her hand over her mouth and waited. And waited. Not knowing if she was more scared of discovery or of the dead creature.

Agnes heard the door creak and saw legs enter the room. The shoes walked around the bed and away again over to the window, they turned and stood still for a moment before walking back over to the door. Agnes heard the door again and started to feel a surge of relief, before the shoes turned and the face and hands of her seeker lunged under the bed.

“Found you Agnes, your turn to count!” said Mark. Agnes wiggled onto her belly and crawled out from under the bed backwards. The last thing she saw on her way was not a dead mouse, but a crumpled sock.