A Happy Coincidence

How had one good deed led her to the point of disaster?

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Please, Auntie Linda, I’m desperate. Bradley won’t be any trouble.’

Linda looked at the enormous grey rabbit cradled in Danni’s arms. His woofly nose charmed her and she melted.

‘OK. You’re back from Spain on Monday, right?’

Everyone else is doing something exciting for Easter, she thought bleakly, and I’m staying at home alone. Babysitting a rabbit. A rabbit called Bradley, at that.

If she was going to be alone for the holiday, she at least deserved to buy herself some Easter treats. It’s only once a year, she reasoned, filling her supermarket basket with hot cross buns and more marshmallow eggs than she could possibly eat.

At home, absentmindedly unwrapping her third egg, she stood watching her new neighbour sawing wood on his lawn. He looked a little like a pirate, with a well-trimmed dark beard and long hair tied back. He sometimes even wore a red bandana. Captain Hook, she thought, smiling, only more attractive.

The hammering started soon after the sawing stopped. He appeared to be making a box of some sort.

When she arrived home from work the following evening, Bradley was missing. The roof of his hutch had blown off in the stiff April breeze and the rabbit had escaped.