(Note- I used to read far too much V.C. Andrews as a young ‘un.)

When I was a little girl, I believed that the world was a magical place.  In my mind, there were fairies at the bottom of the garden, pixies hiding in the woods, and mysterious fanged creatures at the bottom of our school swimming pool.  Actually, come to think of it, I turned out to be right about that last one.  Now that was an interesting lawsuit.  Anyway, I’ve never stopped believing that there were magical beings all around us, beings that can only be seen by the innocent and young at heart, or maybe those who’ve had too much vodka, and that, if we just believe, they will come to us in our hour of need.

If my mother heard me say such things, she’d tell me to take my head out of the clouds and come back down to earth.  That, or whack me round the head with a wooden spoon.  “There’s no such thing as magic,” my mother would say to me, “Life is nothing but a string of misery, horrible mistakes, and indigestion, so abandon all hope now.”

“But Mama,” I’d say to her, “If there’s no such thing as magic, how does the Tooth Fairy know where I live?”  I’d got her there.

“Pah!” said my mother, spitting into the sink, “Enjoy these innocent years now, me girl, because you’ll soon learn.  The world is a horrible place, full of war, and poverty, and disease, and men who say they’ll marry you but leave you two weeks before the wedding just because you were technically cheating on them, so you’re left with nothing but a baby that gives you stretchmarks and an empty bank account, and grows up to whine about her friends’ legs being bitten off during swimming lessons, honestly, like I haven’t got anything better to worry about, I have a life too, you know, Eastenders isn’t going to watch itself…”

At this point, I grew bored of marvelling at my mother’s impressive run-on sentence, and snuck out into the garden to talk to Granddad.

How I loved my grandfather!  He was always there for me, out in the garden among the trees and plants.  This was because he lived in the shed.  He’d been a famous naturalist in his youth, and he found that he didn’t feel at home unless he was surrounded by the beauty of Mother Earth at all times.  I respected his desire to live life in his own way, although I didn’t see why it meant he had to drink all the weedkiller.

“Don’t take what your mother says to heart, Ivy,” said Granddad, pouring me a cup of his homemade tea (specially brewed out of moss and dead beetles), “She’s had to put up with a lot of disappointment in life.”

“What kind of disappointment, Granddad?” I asked.

“Well, when she was a little girl, she wanted a pet unicorn.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they didn’t exist, so I got a rhino, painted it pink, and hoped she wouldn’t notice the difference.  It gored five of our neighbours to death before she realised something was up…”  Granddad’s eyes twinkled as he told the story.  He was a sprightly old man with long white hair and apple cheeks, and I never felt safer than when I was with him.  Even if he did keep feeding me insects.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “My point is, don’t be too hard on your mother.  She’s like a beautiful, exotic bird that yearns to fly free.  And until she does, we have to put up with her squawking a lot and crapping on us from a great height.”  He poured himself another glass of Weed-B-Gone.  “Fancy a sip, Ivy?  It expands your mind.”

“Er…  I’ve got to get to school now,” I replied, backing out of the door.

When the day came that I fell in love and decided to marry, I wanted my husband to be just as wise and good as Granddad, although preferably not as full of dangerous chemicals.

I rushed to school through the roads of concrete and tarmac that we Essex folk called a dual carriageway, thinking how lucky I was to have such a beautiful home.  All the graffiti on the walls was spelled correctly, and sometimes, at night, you could look out of your window and see a pair of urban foxes, noisily shagging the night away.  Was it any wonder that I still believed that there could be magic around every corner, when I’d grown up in a place as wonderful as this?

My best friend, Annabelle Lecter, would always tell me that I was foolish to see the world around me in such a way.  “There’s nothing magical about this place,” she said in her usual pedantic manner, “Pitsea is where hopes and dreams go to die.”  Annabelle was nice enough, but unpopular because of her weight, her spots, her greasy hair, her crossed eyes, her irritating personality, and the fact that she gave off a constant smell of sardines.  However, my Granddad had always taught me to look beyond the surface to see the person within, and besides, it wasn’t as though people were exactly queuing up to be friends with the girl who still believed in pixies, either.

“Well then why is it,” I demanded, “that whenever there’s a traffic jam on the road outside my bedroom at night, I see the headlights light up the darkness like a constellation of earthbound stars?”

“I’d say it was because you’ve been licking the inside of the freezer again,” she said dryly.  “Just look at this school- boys staring at your chest all the time, popular girls laughing at your outfit, science teachers who dump piranhas into the pool and then don’t bother to tell anyone…”

I thought about it.  I agreed with Annabelle about the popular girls, the ones we both called hyenas– always grinning inanely, laughing at other people’s misfortunes, and dominating weaker members of the pack with their vestigial penises…  OK, the metaphor needed some work.  Anyway, the hyenas never included us in their gossip or invited us to their wonderful parties.  Fortunately, we were mature enough to rise about it.

“I bet they’ve all got crabs,” I said.

Annabelle giggled.  “Yeah.”