"Dads House"

I remember Dad’s house. I remember the steep, carpeted stairs, the large, bare bedroom, the vast and overgrown garden at the back that bordered on the woods, the taste of tiger bread and salted butter, and the fairies.

It’s one of those houses that’s sandwiched in between a million others, but it has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen and living room of course. It has a patio and a rose bush outside that I once reached into the depths of to retrieve a plump, pink flower, only when I pulled out my hand a bee sat perfectly fat on my thumb, digging its little jabber into my skin and making me shriek. I still have a little red dot there now.

I remember playing with the next-door neighbour, Eloise. I remember how big of a deal It was when she turned ten, “double digits!”. Now I know being ten isn’t really much different to being seven!

I remember evenings in pubs, crunching prawn cocktail crisps and glugging j2o, sticky tables and chalking the end of my dad’s pool cue, sleeping on two chairs pushed together with his coat draped across my body. I enjoyed those times, playing with the other daughters, it was the best when the pub had a park, the warm sun and my school uniform, giving high fives to dads loud laughing friends.

I’m going off track, memory lane is slippy. One of my favourite things about his house was the light brown, L shaped sofa. It was where I was sat when I saw one for the first time through the patio door. I liked to sit in the nook in the L of the sofa, me and dad would squish into it together, smushed close and stuck, like chicken in your teeth. Anyway, the fairy’s body was small, about the length of my dog’s head (my dog is a Jack Russell), completely naked and shocking, light green skin, a snake-like nose, and sprouting, rootlike hair. Its fingers were long, and they wrapped around a rose from the bush, plucking it and scampering off with it, I was so excited I could hardly move. The sofa was dotted with singed, black holes from cigarettes, and I liked pressing my fingers into them, they felt scratchy and hard, not like the soft squish the rest of the couch had. My dad only pretended to believe me about the fairy.

The next time I saw one I was out with my bug jar in the back garden, one of those jars that has a a magnifying glass lid. I stalked around the garden slowly, it was summertime, the air was sparkling with the gleam of the sun through the trees crawling in from the woods, and it was when I was looking up that I saw something! This one was smaller in tallness, about the size of a big mac or chipolata, and it was much prettier than the other, with wings like autumn leaves and spotted, yellowy orangey skin, the colour of pancakes, or cupcakes, and this one had a leaf wrapped around its body. It was collecting feathers, dirty pigeon ones that I’d been told off for touching because of germs, and I tried to creep close enough to CATCH… but it saw me and flittered off into the trees before I could get it.

I slept at my dad’s house on Wednesdays and every other weekend, and he had decorated my room for me- pink walls and a fluffy pink rug, teddies everywhere and princess stickers on the walls. I remember one was a fairy, she wore a pink dress and had a face like mine, normal sized fingers and normal coloured skin, and I always hated the wrongness of that.

I remember when my dad let his car slide into the car in front of us driving into Tesco, it was an accident, and I remember how he seemed so confused, getting out and apologising with the same look on his face that the dog has when he’s peed on the floor whilst we were out. No one listened to me when I told them what really happened- I saw my third one, this one was the smallest yet, around the size of bourbon biscuit, and it was plump and purple skinned like parma violets, and it must have latched onto dads car because the next thing I knew we were driving into Tesco and then it appeared on the bumper! I can tell dad doesn’t remember seeing it, but he’s still playing along like this is a game.

If you’re wondering, I never saw the fairies at my mum’s house. I’ve searched and searched, but I think they live in the woods that are near the back of dad’s garden, but I was hoping one day to bring a fairy back here when I finally caught one.

After the day in the Tesco carpark, I was mad at the fairies. I set traps and camped behind my pink ztech camera for hours in the garden. By that time, we weren’t going to the pub much anymore, and the loud laughing men were coming to us, although they didn’t actually laugh as much anymore, but they still gave me high fives, giving away my post every time one came out to scrabble my hair and ask how I was doing.

The fairies were taunting me, throwing acorns at my bedroom window and robbing every rose from the bush- I think they took those for bedding and blankets as the weather became colder and I had to start wearing tights to school again, but dad’s house just had less colour without them. By that time too my hair had started falling out in patches on my head, mum told me I had alopecia, but I suspected something different, perhaps the fairies were sneaking in in the night and stealing my beauty for themselves.

The last one I remember seeing was the ugliest one yet! It was the last time I was in dads house, a Tuesday, which was strange, and the house was full with people, so I stayed outside. By then all the leaves had dropped from the trees, I suspected the fairies had shaken them out and taken the leaves to make outfits and bags, but I can’t be too sure. My dad liked music like the arctic monkeys and songs about es ee ex, and I remember playing a funny game where he’d have to put the radio’s loudness to 0 when a song swore, otherwise he’d be in trouble, but that wasn’t the music playing in the house that day, in fact it wasn’t music I’d ever heard him listen to before, which was another reason I didn’t want to stay in there. The fairy I saw that day was leafy green and stood as tall as a freddo frog, it had beady, purple eyes and came closer to me than any other had before, creeping through the grass and looking up at me. I didn’t have my jar or my vtech, so all I could do was stare right back at it. I only ever remember staring at it for a while, until it scampered away again.

Dad’s house is rented now to a man with a daughter and a son. I haven’t been back, but I know my bedroom that was pink is now grey, and the L shaped sofa is gone. The mans children visit him weekly, and I wonder if they have seen the fairies too. I just hope they don’t scare them away.