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to be quite traumatic for a child. They should know.

When they were a few years younger, they each had a stuffed bunny rabbit. Those bunnies, made of brown felt, were the twins' favourite toys. Sasha named her bunny Buster, while Maria named hers Babbit. They carried those bunnies with them everywhere they went and held to them tightly at night. One day, when they were seven years old, dad decided that their floppy-eared friends had to go. The bunnies had lost much of their colour, having made one too many trips into the washing machine. They each had lost one of their black button eyes and both had far too many holes in them for mum to bother to patch.

"Do you remember when mum and dad convinced us that we were too old for baby toys'?" asked Sasha. Maria nodded, "They gave us a set of story books each instead", she replied. The twins enjoyed those books very much, but that didn't stop the girls from crying in their beds at night when the bunnies went away. "I still wonder where Buster and Babbit could have gone. Why didn't we ever ask mum and dad?" asked Sasha. "I don't know," her sister shrugged.

As they got older, the twins did learn to cope with the loss of their bunnies, but finding this forlorn teddy bear made them think of Buster and Babbit again. "Kids!" someone called out from a distance. "That's dad," Sasha said, heaving a sigh, "We'd better go." Maria picked up the teddy bear and placed it gently on a soft patch of grass on the side of the road. "We wouldn't want him to get run over by another car," she explained and her sister nodded.

The twins reluctantly turned their backs on the squashed teddy bear and sped towards their father. The teddy bear lay there, as the sun began to set, destined to spend another long night out in the cold. Maria and Sasha caught up with their father, who had been chatting with their uncle on the patio. "What were you two doing, standing there in the middle of the road?" asked Uncle Ben with a bemused smile. The girls gave a weak grin as their father hurried them inside, "Your mum wants you to get washed up for dinner," he said. The twins thought nothing more of the teddy bear until much later that night, after they've been tucked into bed.

Their tummies full of their aunt's delicious roast chicken and custard pudding, the twins laid down in their bunk bed. "Good night you two", said mum, as she turned off the lights. As soon as the door closed behind her, Maria began staring at a spot on the wall. It didn't take long for

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