Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

uniformed bobbie and the incredible hulk still fingering his collar. Only now he’s looking at me with dead-fish eyes. He sniffs. Then he does it again. Sniffs. Like he’s telling me he can smell something.
    After a moment they come back in. Sit down again.
    Dave says, “Richie, you must have known that Tara was under the age of sexual consent, which is sixteen in this country. But for the moment, for the moment, I’m quite prepared to let that go. I want to make things easy on you and I can guess how hard things have been for you.”
    “What things?”
    “Were you the father, Richie?”
    “I thought doctors weren’t supposed to reveal confidential information,” I say.
    “In situations like this, it’s different.”
    “What is this situation?”
    “For God’s sake!” says the fat one with his squeaky voice. Then he actually wipes his own spittle off his own black trousers.
    “Richie, we know you had a lot of very angry rows with Tara. We also know that you have a pretty hot temper.”
    “Violent temper,” says the fat one.
    “No.”
    “We’ve got information about your violent temper. We found some records about a case in which you badly beat up a young man in a disco pub.”
    I turn to my lawyer. She’s busy scribbling. She’s not behaving like the lawyers you see on TV. “Why are you here?” I shout. “You’re saying nothing!”
    The lines crease even further around the copper’s face. He looks incredibly depressed. “Richie, I’m going to say something now in front of these other people and it shames me to have to say it. Things happen. Some years back, Richie, I used to take a drink. Not anymore, but I did then. One night I went home drunk. I’d been married for twelve years and I had three lovely children. My wife and I got into an argument.”
    My lawyer stops scribbling, and she looks up at him.
    “That’s all I remember, I swear to you,” says Dave. His blue eyes are burning into me. “Then in the morning I woke up and I found my wife sitting at the kitchen table. Her face was a terrible mess, Richie. Puffed and swollen. Split lip. Two black eyes. I don’t remember anything about it, Richie, I swear to you now as God is my judge.”
    I look at him. He’s leaning forward and gazing deep into myeyes, like he wants to look right into my soul and back again. His eyebrows are raised. I look at my lawyer. I glance at the fat cop, and at the uniformed cop. They are all looking at me, and their eyes, all of them, are like water swirling down a drain.
    And for the first time I think: Did I do it? Did I?

CHAPTER NINE
    The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual
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    B RUNO B ETTELHEIM
    I s there something wrong with our aunt Tara?” said Amber.
    “What do you mean by ‘wrong’?” said Genevieve.
    Genevieve, Amber, and Josie were baking a chocolate cake in the kitchen of The Old Forge. Zoe was out with her white rapper. Jack had got bored shooting rats and was now trying, from a distance of twenty yards, to ignite matches suspended by string on an outhouse door.
    “She squints and pulls faces.”
    “No, she doesn’t.”
    “And her skin hangs off her like there’s too much of it. And she wears dark glasses indoors.”
    “She’s certainly very slim. Wish I was.”
    “And Zoe says she only looks fifteen and there must be something wrong with her.”
    “You’re spilling that. Pay attention.”
    “And she does this,” Josie said, half closing her eyes and moving her head from side to side while affecting a smile.
    “Stop being mean, you two. I thought she was very kind and sweet to all of you.”
    “And she smells funny,” said Amber.
    “Oh, that’s patchouli oil. I used to wear that. Now, stir.”
    O UTSIDE , J ACK WAS STILL trying and failing to ignite