The Fairy Godmother Part 24

“You still here?” said a voice just behind me. I turned around to see Enid standing behind me in the queue for the supermarket checkout.

“Enid!” I squeaked.

“That’s me,” she smiled as the cashier finished with the customer in front of me and started passing my purchases through the till.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed as she vanished.

“Helping you put the shopping in your bags,” she said, suddenly the other side of me and filling bags with the things that I had bought for the orphanage.

“That may be what you are doing now, but we both know that isn’t why you are here,” I snapped as Enid put the last thing into a bag and put the bag into the trolley.

“I think you need to pay for them,” she smiled in an infuriating way. I put the orphanage credit card into the reader, typed in the four digits and then accepted the piece of till roll the cashier was proffering to me.

“Thank-you,” I said smiling at the cashier.

“Where’s your car?” asked Enid. “I assume you have one.”

“It’s in the car park,” I smiled.

“There wouldn’t be much point in having a driving licence without one,” Enid said smugly as I pushed the trolley towards it. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I know about it?”

“You know everything,” I replied smiling back. “Stands to reason that you’d know about the driving licence.”

“And all the other documentation you’ve been after,” Enid added.

“It’s a given,” I said.

“What are you still doing in that place?” Enid asked as we arrived at the car. It was a classic, a mark one mini, I had the idea that it would be unobtrusive, it being so small. Nice idea, it didn’t work, sometimes when I got back to it there would be crowds of admirers standing round talking about it and the Mark I’s they had had.

“She is alone in the world, she doesn’t know her real name and so is in no position to find her family, if they are still alive,” I replied.

“So you don’t think your job is done,” Enid sighed.

“Not by a long chalk,” I replied, putting the last of the groceries into the car and heading back to the trolley stand with the trolley.

“So what have you done to find them?” Enid asked.

“I have been through her file looking for clues,” I replied. There was a surprising lack of information in them.

“What do they say?” Enid asked.

“They tell me where she was found and when,” I said.

“And that’s all?” she asked.

“It isn’t much to go on, but it’s all I have,” I sighed.

“Have they checked out the missing persons?” Enid asked.

“They did, at the time but didn’t come up with any answers,” I replied.

“I could ask at the Tooth Fairy Office, if you’d like me to,” Enid said.

“How can they help?” I asked.

“As a small child she will have had a file, all the teeth she leaves for the Tooth Fairy will be registered on it,” Enid explained.

“I know that,” I snapped. “I was a tooth fairy.”

“When the child disappeared from her original home, did she stop loosing teeth?” Enid asked.

“No,” I replied.

“So when an unnamed child in an orphanage looses a tooth?” asked Enid.

“The tooth is matched with an open file and the name changed to co-inside with the name they are calling the child by,” I said. “But the original details are kept on file,” I added. The way, the truth and everything was in that file.

“Exactly,” said Enid. “The answer is there, do you want me to get it for you?”

“I would go myself, but,” I smiled.

“It would be hard for you to get the time off and they may not give you the answers you want, whereas they would have to tell me,” said Enid.

“I would be ever so grateful,” I smiled.

“Grateful enough to come back?” she asked. “Never mind, don’t answer that one, not till we know who she is.”

“I am just trying to be a good Fairy Godmother,” I said.

“I know,” Enid smiled and slowly started to disappear, from her feet up, the last thing to go was the smile.

I started the car, put it into gear and headed back to the orphanage.

It was the end of a long and difficult day, I opened the door of my room to find Enid sitting on my bed.

“I was beginning to wonder when you were going to go to bed,” she said, looking up from reading my diary.

“That’s private,” I said snatching it from her hands.

“It’s OK, I’d finished reading it,” she said. “Though I would put it somewhere a bit safer if I was you.”

“I thought at the back of my wardrobe would have been safe enough, especially as you are the first person to have found it,” I replied.

“If you say so,” she said, but I could tell that she didn’t think that.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“I have that information you wanted,” she said.

“Information?” I asked.

“Rosie,” Enid replied. “Only Rosie isn’t her name.”

“I know that,” I snapped.

“Her real name, the one given to her by her parents, is Ella,” said Enid, picking a file out of an invisibility bag and handing it to me. “You’d better keep the bag,” she added handing that to me as well. “Keep your diary in it.”

With that she vanished, slowly again. I sat on my bed and read the file. I knew the tooth fairy had more information than Father Christmas, but I didn’t know how much. The problem I had was how to use this information to bring about a family reunion.

By Janice Nye © 2020