Esther Chilton

“Grandma, there’s a fairy at the bottom of the garden!” Grace cried, her finger pointing madly out of the window. “We have to go and see it. We have to!”

Annie smiled at her six-year-old granddaughter’s exuberance. “It’s just started to pour with rain, Grace.”

“But it’s a fairy.”

Annie peered out the window, her stare taking her past the sea of bluebells and the daffodils, which were beginning to droop.

“No, Grandma, near the gate, next to Geoffrey. See? Now he’s got a friend.”

Annie blinked. Sure enough, next to Geoffrey the garden gnome, was something which certainly looked like a fairy.

“Can you see her wings, Grandma? They’re beautiful, fluttering all colours of the rainbow.”

Annie nodded.

“Grandad, come and look,” Grace said, running over to the comfy arm chair.

 “Humph,” Peter grumbled, putting his newspaper aside and letting Grace lead him to the window. “It does rather look like a fairy. You’d both better go and have a look. I’ll get your coats.”

“Peter! Colin will be here to pick up Grace soon. He’ll have had a hard day at work and the last thing he’ll want to do is deal with a daughter who’s plastered in mud and soaking wet,” Annie said, grabbing her coat from Peter’s outstretched arms. “I see you haven’t got your coat.”

“No, I’m staying in the warm,” Peter said, picking up his paper and settling back down in the chair.

Annie shook her head. She looked down at Grace’s face, flushed with excitement and turned back to the window. Perhaps the rain had eased off a little.

…

“It was a fairy. I know it was a fairy,” Grace sobbed, stamping her feet.

Annie put her arms round the child, trying to ignore the splashes of rain stabbing at her face and the wind tugging at the folds of her coat.

Glitter. It was so obvious now. They’d had a lovely morning gluing, sticking and of course, using pots and pots of glitter. Annie had spread an old table cloth over the kitchen table to catch any blobs of glue and sprinkles of glitter. Once they were finished, Peter had opened the back door and shaken the cloth. The wind had been fierce all day and must have carried the cloth’s contents all the way to the bottom of the garden, where they had settled on a tiny shrub.

There was no consoling poor Grace, but as Annie waved her son and granddaughter off, an idea formed in her mind.

Part two next week

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