Some Kind of Fairy Tale Read Free Page B

Running wild. Then a bit of a gap because we weren’t … well, we did, and we had Amber, who is seven, and Josie, who is five.”
    “Amber has webbed fingers,” Mary said.
    “Mum, please.”
    “Small thing,” Tara said, smiling. “A very small thing.” Then her smile dropped for the first time. “I’m sorry I missed it all. I really am.” Suddenly Tara vented a huge sob. She squeezed her eyes shut and her lip trembled. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve and sniffed. “I’m sorry I missed it all. They sound so wonderful. Are they like you?”
    “God help them if they are.”
    “The boy is the spit,” Dell said helpfully. “The girls take more after their mother.”
    There was a silence. Dell had a photograph album that he handed to Tara. “These are all old. It’s all digital now, isn’t it? Things change so fast.”
    Tara studied the photographs. “But they do look like you!”
    Dell turned to Tara. “Zoe even looks a bit like you.”
    “She’s almost the same age as you were when you left,” Peter said. He looked at Mary. She shook her head at him in fierce warning.
    “Will I get to meet them?” Tara said.
    “Of course. If you want to.”
    She held up the photo album. “Where was this photo taken?”
    “Oh, that one’s in Greece. Before we had the kids. You said you were in Athens, didn’t you?”
    “Not for long. Couldn’t get out quick enough.”
    “So where were you in Greece?”
    “Crete. Some of the islands.”
    “Really? Genevieve and I lived for a whole year in Crete. Were you ever in Mytilini while you were on Crete?”
    “Yes, one or two nights I think. But I just passed through.”
    “Wouldn’t that be amazing? If you were there the same time we were there?”
    “These things are possible.”
    “What year was it?”
    “Peter, stop interrogating the girl, will you?” Dell was wringing his hands. “Look, she’s hungry and I’m going to rescue what I can of Christmas dinner and we’re going to sit down and enjoy it, and you can sit down with us, too.”
    “I’ve had my Christmas dinner, Dad.”
    “Okay, but no more questions.”
    “Don’t you think this is a day for questions? You realize we are going to have to tell the police?”
    Tara looked startled. “Is that really necessary?”
    “You bet it is!” cried Peter.
    He explained to her what had happened after Tara had walked out of their lives some twenty years earlier. He explained how everyone had feared the very worst, feared that she’d been abducted or killed. That there had been wide-ranging searches conducted. That neighbors and friends had, along with a huge force of police officers, carried out searches at the Outwoods and at every other place they could think that she might have gone. That her photo had appeared in all of the local newspapers and some national ones; that her face had appeared on national TV; that known sexual offenders had been dragged in for interrogation; that not a clue had turned up, not a hair from her head; that the search was eventually scaled down; that her mother and father went into a state of shock and mourning from which they had never entirely recovered; that he and her boyfriend at the time, Richie, who had himself fallen under a cloud of suspicion, had continued to search the countryside and local beauty spots for months and even years afterward.
    “They had frogmen searching the pools and the lakes, Tara. It went on for days. Weeks. Yes, even after all this time I think we have to inform the police, don’t you?”
    Tara looked ashen at these reports.
    Suddenly Mary was on her feet, the ice pack slithering to the floor. “Stop it! Stop it! All I know is that Tara has come home for Christmas Day and it’s a miracle to have her home and I don’t want to hear any more talk of it! I want no more questions today! Peter, you can stay here and be pleasant or you can go straight back to your family. That’s an end to it.” And with that she collapsed back on