“You’re home?” said James senior as his wife walked in through the front door.
“I’ve been for a walk and now I’ve come back. It’s what I said I was going to do,” said Mary. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“I thought I’d lost you for good,” James said, watching as she filled the kettle.
“So I’ve been told,” said Mary.
“She rang you, putting more poison into your ear,” James replied.
“No, she spoke to our son and he rang to make sure I was OK,” Mary replied. “Though why you rang her in the first place is a mystery to me.”
“The fairies, they’re trying to get between us,” said James.
“And why would they want to do that?” asked Mary. “If their intention was to deprive us of our son, that’s been well and truly achieved.”
“I suppose you think that’s my fault. I’ve done nothing but try to protect you, all these years,”
James replied.
“Protect me from what?” asked Mary. “You tried to make me believe that there was only, ever, one baby and when I could prove that there were two, you tired to tell me one of them had died.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” said James.
“You tried to make out I was delusional and then you just didn’t talk about him, for years, you didn’t mention him,” said Mary.
“I thought you’d forgotten about him,” stuttered James.
“Like I was ever going to do that,” said Mary.
“You didn’t mention him,” said James.
“Because there was a row every time, it was easier not to say anything,” sighed Mary. “Then Mark brought Rose home and the two of you talked for hours about fairies and suddenly you had it in your head that they had stolen our baby James.”
“It was something that she had heard about and it seemed so logical, it fitted the facts, it was the only explanation,” James explained.
“It may have fitted the facts that we had, but we didn’t have all the facts and when you put those in, it doesn’t fit at all,” said Mary. “It doesn’t matter how much you want them to fit, the fairies didn’t steal our baby, I don’t see why you find that so hard to understand.”
“Because, it was easier to believe that they had taken him,” sighed James.
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Because, if they hadn’t taken him, then he’d been taken by humans,” sighed James.
“And why is that so much harder to take?” asked Mary.
“Because they are our own,” said James. “And we still don’t know who or why.”
“We know who took baby James,” Mary replied. “We saw her in court.”
“But she didn’t say why,” James replied.
“No, she didn’t,” Mary agreed. “I’d like to know that one as well. The whole thing did fall short in not pursuing the question as to why the babies were stolen and where they went to.”
“That’s why I keep going back to the idea that the fairies were behind all of this,” said James.
“You think that the fairies got human’s to steal babies for them?” asked Mary.
“Can you prove otherwise?” he asked.
“Not at this moment,” said Mary. “But I think I know where to start finding the answers.”
“You can’t ask her,” said James.
“Why not?” asked Mary.
“She wont tell you the truth,” James replied.
“That wasn’t my question,” Mary replied. “Why can’t I ask her?”
“They probably wont let you see her,” said James.
“You still aren’t answering my question, why can’t I ask her why she took our baby, what went wrong and why did she dump him in an orphanage instead of bringing him back to us,” Mary asked.
“You might not like the answer,” sighed James.
“That sort of implies that you know what it is,” said Mary.
“I said something at work, about how hard it would be, looking after two babies,” said James. “The cost of all that stuff,” he looked pleadingly at her.
“So someone took baby James and you think it might have been because of that!” asked Mary.
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” said James.
“Did you get any reward for this?” asked Mary.
“Not as far as I know, but there were promotions that came my way, I don’t know,” James sighed.
“So, the two things may be totally disconnected,” said Mary.
“Or it could be that someone heard what I said and thought I’d be OK if one of our kids just disappeared,” said James.
“So you’ve been thinking, all these years, that it was your fault?” asked Mary.
“I thought you’d blame me, I thought you’d hate me for what I’d done,” James muttered, shaking his head and looking at the floor.
“I might have done, at the time,” said Mary. “I was into blaming anyone and everyone, myself included.”
“How could you blame yourself?” asked James.
“Perhaps I didn’t want them enough, maybe, when we found out they were to be twins, maybe I didn’t sound eager enough. I was in a pretty dark place after the birth,” said Mary. “But now I want answers, answers that that court case didn’t provide. Answers that I’m sure that woman has.”
“But what if she says they were acting on what I said?” asked James.
“You didn’t give them permission to take one of our babies,” said Mary. “If you had done, they wouldn’t need to steel him.”
“That’s true,” said James.
“So, we go to see this woman, together,” said Mary.
“We will need to get permission,” said James.
“If we get that,” said Mary.
“We will go together and see what she has to say for herself,” said James.
“In the meantime,” said Mary, pulling the phone out of her pocket.
“Are you going to ring James junior?” asked James senior.
“He was very worried about me,” said Mary.
“As was Myrtle,” said James junior, his voice coming from the phone in Mary’s hand. “We asked her to stay on the line to make sure she was OK.”
“Did you think I would hurt your Mother?” asked James senior.
“We didn’t know,” said James.
“The way you have been, blaming the fairies when all the evidence pointed to them having nothing to do with it,” said Mary. “It wasn’t the you I know and love.”
“We couldn’t risk Mary getting hurt,” said Myrtle.
“I thought you’d be behind this,” said James. “Getting them to gang up on me!”
“Hard though it may be for you to believe, I want the truth, the whole truth, about what happened and why,” said Myrtle. “I want the answers to the questions that the court didn’t ask. I want whoever it was that organised all of this to be brought to justice and I think that is what you want as well.”
“Fine words, but what if it turns out that there are fairies behind all of this?” asked James.
“Then they should be brought to justice,” said Myrtle. “I think we could work together on this to get justice for all the babies and their true parents.”
“Do you want to come with us to talk to this woman?” asked James senior.
“I don’t think we would all be allowed to see her, not in one visit,” said Myrtle. “But you can tell us all about it afterwards.”
“And what will you do?” James senior asked.
“I shall go and talk to the tooth fairies,” said Myrtle.
“You don’t expect me to believe in them do you?” asked James senior.
“I used to be one,” said Myrtle.
“What can they do to help?” asked Mary.
“They have an extensive archive of information on all children,” said Myrtle. “They should be able to get together a list of all children who moved, suddenly, to a new address, without any of their siblings going with them and whose parents changed at the same time.”
“They have that information?” asked Mary
“The tooth fairy needs to know where all the children are,” said Myrtle.
“Why didn’t they tell the court?” asked James. “There are people trying to find all the missing children, or at least the ones they know about.”
“Probably no one thought to ask them,” said Myrtle. “There are so many people who don’t want to admit that they exist. No one who wants to be taken seriously is going to ask them for evidence and they wont volunteer the information.”
“So, we talk to the prison authorities and you talk to the tooth fairies,” said James. “And we’ll let you know how we get on.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Mary, hanging up the phone call.
“Sorry,” said James.
By Janice Nye © 2021
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