Faerie Wars

'Have yow?' She couldn't have. But then this morning he'd believed his mum couldn't have either.

Charlie laughed. 'Not my thing.' She tossed her hair. 'You're not upset, are you?'

'About Mum? Yes, I am.'

'That's terribly old fashioned, Henry.'

'I don't care,' Henry said. 'It hurts my dad.'

Charlie looked thoughtful. 'I suppose it does.' She was a short girl with fair hair and blue eyes. Outside school he'd never seen her wear anything but jeans and a boy's shirt. Sometimes he thought she was nuts, but the thing about Charlie was you could talk to her. About anything. The other thing about Charlie was she never told. She said, 'What are you going to do?'

'Me? What can I do?'

'Dunno,' Charlie admitted. 'They going to divorce?'

'They say they're not,' Henry said, 'but it's bound to come.'

'What are they doing now? Staying together for the sake of the children? ^ 1 She rolled her eyes.

Henry nodded. 'Something like that.'

Charlie put her hand on his arm. 'I'm sorry, Henry, this is really upsetting you, isn't it?'

Henry bit his lip and nodded again. 'Yes. Yes, it is.'

Charlie said, 'My mum and dad divorced.'

Henry frowned. 'What – they got back together again?' Mr and Mrs Severs had always struck him as an easy-going couple without a care in the world.

Charlie gave a little smile. 'Peter's not my real dad, Henry.'

'He isn't?'

Charlie shook her head. 'Mum divorced my real dad when I was three. Or four. He used to come home drunk and beat her up. She stayed with him for the sake of the kids – well, this kid really. One night he broke her arm and knocked me out of bed on to the floor. I got bruised and cried a lot. Mum decided enough was enough. Walked out with me under her good arm and hired a solicitor. She met Peter eighteen months later and it was a lot better second time around.'

Henry was staring at her open-mouthed. 'I didn't know any of this.'

'No,' Charlie said, 'nobody does. When Mum remarried, Peter formally adopted me so I got his name as well as Mum. Peter's all right.'

'But what about your real dad?'

'What about him?'

'You ever see him?'

Charlie shook her head. 'Nope.'

'Not ever?'

'Nope.'

'Where's he living now?'

'Don't know.'

'Don't you want to see him?' Henry asked.

Charlie shook her head again. 'I don't even know what he looks like,' she said as if it were some sort of a triumph. 'I can't remember and Mum burned all his pictures. She says he's a turd.'

'Sounds right,' said Henry seriously.

Charlie suddenly grinned brightly. 'Anyway, the whole point is you're not the only one with a delinquent parent. Just that mine disappeared a long time ago. Thing is, Henry, it worked out well. Peter's as good a dad as anybody. Better than my real dad. They're happy together, more or less. You never know, this thing between your parents might be good in the long run.'

'Doesn't feel like a good thing now,' Henry said. To his horror he felt his eyes begin to fill again. He tried to turn away, but Charlie spotted it.

She did exactly what Anais had done. She came across to his plastic garden chair and put her arm around his shoulders and cradled his head to her chest. She was only really starting to grow breasts, so it didn't feel the same and somehow he managed to stop himself from crying.

Still holding him, Charlie said, 'Must have been a heck of a day.'

A butterfly fluttered past on an erratic course towards the hedge. Henry started, then relaxed. You don't know the half of it, he thought.

Fourteen

Aisling came home Friday night full of news about a pony called Chester and some stupid instructor named Damien Middlefield. She looked astonished when her parents wouldn't listen and spirited her away into the living room to explain that life, for once, was not a bowl of cherries. Henry waited patiently in the kitchen, ate some yoghurt, then two fudge brownies, but eventually it got so late he went to bed. The following morning he found Aisling heavily into denial.

'He's so big,' she told him enthusiastically, 'but so gentle. And he'll try anything, real have-a-go no matter how high they set the fences. I just wanted to pack him up in my case and bring him home with me.' She was talking about Chester, the wonder-horse. 'Do you think Mum and Dad would let me have a pony? I mean, there's room. Well, there would be if we got rid of the pergola. Chester might actually be for sale. And if Dad bought the field from Dr Henderson, we'd have more than enough grazing and I could – '

'What did they tell you?' Henry asked. They were alone in the house. Mum had gone shopping and Dad, despite the fact it was Saturday, had taken himself off to the office. Both had stressed they would not be back until the afternoon. Henry suspected it was a deliberate give-the-children-time-to-talk-things-over sort of thing.

'Well, I didn't actually ask them about Chester,' Aisling said. 'I mean I hinted but – '

'Oh, come on, Aisling!' Henry said tiredly. 'We're going to have to talk about it some time.'

'Talk about what?' Aisling asked.

'What's happening between Mum and Dad.'

'What's happening between Mum and Dad?' Aisling asked brightly.

Henry felt like strangling her. 'Did they tell you Mum's been having an affair with Dad's secretary?' he asked brutally.

'Oh, that,' Aisling said. 'It doesn't mean anything. Mum's not gay.'

'Mum's not gay?' Henry echoed.

'No,' said Aisling sniffily. 'How could she be? Besides, she told me last night.'

'Mum told you she isn't gay, but she's having an affair with Anais Ward? Didn't you see the tiniest little contradiction between those two statements?'

'No,' Aisling said. She glanced around vaguely, like somebody looking for an escape route. 'Don't you have to go work for that old poop Fogarty or something?'

Henry ignored it. 'They told you they were splitting up? Dad's going off somewhere and we're supposed to stay here with Mum?'

'Won't last long,' Aisling told him confidently.

'What won't?'

'The thing about Mum and Dad living apart. Mum's not serious -it's just an early menopause or something. It's not like it's another man. She's just at an age when women like to experiment. You're a boy – you wouldn't understand. It'll blow over and then Dad will come back. They mightn't even get as far as separating. They both said that would take ages because Dad has to find a flat. Mum could have stopped with Anais before then.'

He'd never thought of his sister as Brain of Britain, but this was dim even for her. 'And you think Dad will just… forgive her?'

'What's he got to forgive? It's not another man.'

Henry gave in. Aisling seldom made much sense and today she wasn't making any at all. But then everybody coped with these things their own way. Aisling obviously wanted to believe everything was going to be all right, nothing was going to change. Or if it did, it wouldn't change for long. Then she could get back to the important things in life, like persuading Dad to buy her a pony. 'OK,' he said.

'OK what?' Aisling asked suspiciously.

'OK, it's not happening.' He got up and started to shrug on his jacket.

'Where are you going?'

'To work for that old poop Fogarty,' Henry said.

For some reason it made her angry. 'Maybe if you stayed home a bit more, this whole thing might never have happened!'

He stared at her, speechless for a minute. She was just back from a week at her damn Pony Club, she treated the house like a hotel and she was telling him he should stay home more? Before he could think of a suitable riposte, something bitter and hurtful, she said, 'What do you do for that dreadful Fogarty person anyway? I mean, old man living alone, no wife. What's somebody like that want with a young boy coming round two or three times a week? You sure it's Mum who's the gay one in this family, Henry?'