§75

‘I think I was about seven, because it was after we’d moved house but before my brother was born. I was in bed, the headboard was partially over the window as it was a small room. The curtains were thin fabric, pale in colour, with a snazzy 1980s geometric print. The orange streetlight outside threw the shadow of the window-frame onto the back of the curtains, I was lying on my back looking up at it when the curtain started twitching. As I watched the silhouette of a tiny figure began climbing up the inside of the curtain. I don’t know where it went as it went higher, as it moved out of the orange squares of the streetlights and disappeared into the shadows. I suppose it could have been a dream, but I remember the scritch-scratch on the fabric of the curtains, the way the curtains pulled, the way the shadow on the folds grew and shrank. It’s always been far too clear to be a dream. I don’t have many childhood memories, lots of them are fuzzy and disjointed, but that one is clearer than most.’ ‘Probably a little smaller than my adult hand, I only saw it in silhouette, the clothing must have been fitted as I remember the skinny legs well, unless the legs were bare. I think his hair was fairly short, and I think there was probably a hat, sort of pointy. Given my age, and my love of faeries thereafter, it’s possible that I imagined clothes from what I saw in storybooks. I remember an outfit very close to the Disney Peter Pan, but as I only saw the faery in silhouette I think that was my imagination dressing him.’ ‘It looked like a faery, I’m sure it was a faery/elf/pixie/brownie type of being.’ ‘I don’t think we had lived in the house for very long, possibly we disturbed him, my mum was heavily pregnant so he was probably escaping before the screaming human baby arrived! As far as I know no faeries have been seen since. My parents still live there, and we visit a few times a year with our children now.’