Some Kind of Fairy Tale Read Free

car and surveyed the bare winter trees grouped around the clearing of the parking area. The trees were golden and gray and somehow asleep, off guard. It was bitterly cold. He tasted a flake of dry tobacco on his tongue and his first drag on the cigarette made him cough. The cigarette smoke hung like a gray rag in the cold air, and so did the sound of his cough.
    The Outwoods was one of the last remaining pockets of ancient forest from which Charnwood took its name. It nestled at the spot where the three counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire touched, and seemed neither to belong to nor take its character from any of them. It was an eerie place, swinging between sunlight and damp, flaring light and shadow; a venue of twisted trees, its volcanic slopes of ash and granite ruptured by mysterious outcropping crags of the very oldest rocks in Britain.
    He didn’t like it.
    The last time he’d seen Tara was here in the Outwoods. It had been May of that year and they had walked through the woods, and the bluebells at that time had been astonishing. They had sat on the golden lichen-stained rocks and talked about the future.
    Peter flicked his cigarette to the ground half smoked and stamped it into the earth. Then he climbed back in his car.
    Sometime later he parked right outside Richie’s house but left the engine running. It was almost a challenge, inviting someone to come out and ask him what he was doing; but no one came. No one even so much as glanced out the window. Richie’s house was a council property in what might once have been a row of houses tied to a local land owner. Squat, badly built, and grimy little peasant hutches. Peter knew them well because he’d been raised in an identical house five doors away. Richie, having inherited the property from his mother, still lived there.
    There was a light on in Richie’s house, but deep, low, and at the back. There was a single living room that ran the depth of the house. The dim light only made the house look cold and uninviting. Just go up to the door, Peter told himself, and when he answers the door just say Tara’s back, that’s all you have to do. Tara’s back.
    But he couldn’t. He and Richie hadn’t spoken in a long, long time, and two words might as well have been two hundred thousand words. He couldn’t do it. He cursed under his breath and drove away.
    “COME IN, LAD.” DELL spoke in a strange kind of whisper.
    “Where is she?”
    “Are you going to take your coat off? And your shoes? We’ve got the new carpet.”
    Peter took off his coat and handed it to his father before untying his shoelaces. He felt a wave of frustration with his father, that at a time like this he was concerned with clean carpets, but said nothing. He made to move down the hall but he felt the flat of his father’s hand on his breastbone.
    “Don’t go upsetting anyone. Your mum’s had a fall.”
    “I’m not here to upset anyone!” Peter tried to keep the keening note out of his voice. “Is she through here?”
    “Come on.”
    Peter took a step into the living room and stopped just inside the doorway. His mother lay on the couch. She was sipping tea and had an ice pack on the knee she’d cracked when she’d slumped to the floor. But Peter was more interested in the woman nursing Mary from the armchair next to the sofa. Even though she wore dark glasses, it was his sister, Tara: of that there was no doubt.
    Tara stood up. She seemed an inch or two taller than he remembered. Her soft nut-brown hair was maybe a darker shade, and still fell around her face in a tangle of curls. Behind the shades and around her eyes there might have been one or two lines but she hardly seemed to have aged. She just looked pretty grubby, like she’d been living rough.
    “When did you cut your hair?” she said.
    “Oh. That would be about fifteen years ago.”
    “You had such lovely long hair!”
    “Everybody did then. Do I get a hug?”
    “Of course you do.”
    Peter