A/N So it's the presents that drive me mad this time of year. Not just the ones I have to buy everyone, but the ones I keep being given. In the last couple of weeks my cats have gifted me 2 live fieldmice, 2 dead birds, 1 live skink that got put back under a rock, and a half-dead weta that we threw on the driveway where I accidentally backed the car over him. I feel really bad. He's a native insect, after all. Poor weta. But I could seriously do without anything else, and am kind of worried they're planning something big for Christmas...

Disclaimer: Not mine.

EPOV

"What do you mean, not your fairy?" I asked Pam. I was really hoping to avoid another repeat of the whole fairy catcher debacle and the ensuing foot-stomping and yelling by Pam. I loved her, but she was fucking impossible to please sometimes.

"She's not my fairy" Pam said again, as if I was an idiot. "I wanted a sparkly fairy. I definitely said sparkly, because the best fairies are sparkly. THEY SPARKLE!"

I should, perhaps, have been grateful that the problem wasn't the fact that it was Amelia in a dress and not a real fairy that had come through the door, but I didn't really feel like counting my blessings at that moment. Mostly I was a bit fucked off that Pam was pissed because of the lack of sparkles. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why most of the females in this house were so obsessed with fucking sparkles. Everything had to fucking sparkle; fairies, vampires, dresses, the stupid little plastic ponies that had their own TV show. Every fucking thing. It was fucking ridiculous.

I was about to open my mouth to say this to Pam, when Sookie butted in.

"I think we can fix that" she said, quickly, casting a glance in my direction. I didn't know why, I wasn't the fucking problem. Pam was. I was fine with no sparkles. In fact I was fine with no fucking fairies either, so I didn't think Sookie needed to worry about me.

"All it needs" Sookie said, as she put an arm around Pam, who continued to stare at an increasingly annoyed Amelia, "Is a bit of fairy dust."

Pam huffed and looked at the ground. "Well…I don't know" she grumbled. "How's that going to work? She needs to sparkle."

"The fairy dust will make her sparkle" Sookie said. "Trust me." Pam looked wary and Amelia looked a bit cautious, but they seemed on board with the plan, so Sookie left the hall and disappeared.

Felicia walked over to Pam. "So, apart from the fact she doesn't glow in the dark or anything, that's definitely an, um, OK fairy?" she asked Pam, probably trying to gauge her reaction to the fact it was really Amelia in a dress.

Pam shrugged. "She's my fairy, not yours. Get your own."

"Yeah" Amelia said, "I'm her fairy, not yours!" She waved her wand at Felicia as though she was trying to make her sister disappear.

"So does that mean you have to do what she says?" Felicia asked Amelia.

"Um…" Amelia said. "It means…."

"Yes!" Pam said excitedly. "It does. She's my fairy and she's here for me. " She folded her arms and nodded.

"OK. Well have fun you two!" Felicia said, brightly, beaming at Amelia. She turned around and started to walk off towards the kitchen. "I'm off to eat some of the brownies…in the living room…"

"No you're fucking not!" I called after her. I thought she was teasing me. I hoped she was teasing me. Fuck, those kids made a fucking mess of the house, and the pets were no better.

"Daddy" Pam said. "Don't use bad language in front of the fairy. They don't like it. If you use bad words, then they shrivel up and disappear inside…a…a…leaf…hey, can you do that?"

"Yep" Amelia said nodding. "Too much swearing and I'll poof right out of here!" She waved her wand for emphasis.

"OK, well Daddy promises not to say anything too bad."

"I'm right here Pam." I wasn't fucking promising anything. I'd promised the fairy and it remained to be seen just how that was going to work out.

"Yes. But she's here to be my fairy. Even if she isn't a sparkly one. So I get to talk to her…and stuff."

Well it sounded as though Pam was coming around to Amelia or the fairy whatever the fuck she said her name was, anyway. So that was something. Even if I did have to be on my best behaviour around fairies, apparently.

Sookie came back with something in her hand. "OK" she said. "If I can get you to bend down a bit Fairy, um…"

"Florabelle" Amelia supplied, while looking at Sookie's hand suspiciously.

"OK, so just bend down and I'll give you some fairy dust from my supply…"

"You have fairy dust?" Pam questioned. "When did you get fairy dust?"

"She's the underpants fairy" I pointed out.

"So…why don't we get sparkly washing then?" Pam asked. Fuck, that one stumped me.

"Because your dad is allergic to sparkly things" Sookie said, as she poured something into the palm of her hand and tossed it over Amelia's head. Sookie repeated the process over her dress and then she stood back to admire her handiwork. "There" she said. "I think that's sparkly enough. Pam, what do you think?"

Pam stepped towards Amelia. "Wow" she said. "You are all sparkly now!"

"Well, yeah. That's, like, what you get with handfuls of gli…fairy dust all over you. Now, shall we go and see the place where the party is going to be? I'll put a spell on it to make it, um, kind of like…um, magical?"

"Oh! That's a great idea!" Pam said, and she grabbed Amelia by the hand and started dragging her down the hall. "Come on! Can you put a spell on the boys? One that'll stop them being pains during the party…"

"So" I said to Sookie. "Fairy dust, huh?"

"Yep" she said. "Thank God the glitter worked better this week than it did last week. And that Pam hasn't figured out that the origin of all this fairy dust is her own craft box."

"Yeah" I said. For all that Sookie thought the kids took after me with some of their plans and schemes, I maybe wasn't the adult who had the most creative solutions to things around here. I had a small suspicion they got some of it from Sookie as well.

I was going to say that to Sookie, when she pointed at the floor. "Glitter" she said. "Better get your vacuum cleaner out again."

"Fuck" I said. "Nothing stays clean for more than five fucking minutes."

"Nope. And on that note, I'm off to view the bathroom. I've been told it's a monument to mud in there now."

Sookie sauntered off down the hall and I surveyed how far the fucking sparkles had roamed. Too fucking far. Yep, I was definitely fucking allergic to sparkly.

SPOV

Parties were hard work, although just keeping the house clean for five minutes around here was hard work. I wiped down the bathroom and replaced the towels with clean ones from the linen cupboard in the laundry. On my way back to the bathroom I dodged Eric who was pushing the vacuum around and muttering a lot of words that started with 'F'. Still, better he pour his annoyance into the state of the floor rather than direct it at Pam.

As soon as she'd kicked off I'd almost been able to see Eric's blood boil, like those old cartoons where the characters would go red in the face and steam would come out of their ears. I don't know what it was about Pam, but when she got mad, Eric got mad and the situation got messy.

Luckily glitter fixed it this time, although it created quite a large mess for Eric to take care of. As long as Pam was happy with the sparkle to fairy ratio, though, it was all good as far as I was concerned.

I just hoped it was all good with the boys. They were in the kitchen, poking around the food I'd made. Pam had helped. We'd had to use her new cupcake maker, which was hopeless because it made six cupcakes. Only six. And you still had to actually mix the batter and ice them completely separately. And it shaved about a whole 5 minutes off the cooking time. But as far as Pam was concerned it was a miracle of modern engineering and was going to revolutionise our party planning.

And, after she'd made her six cupcakes, she'd promptly buggered off and left me to make the other 30.

But there were only going to be 36 cupcakes if I stopped Sam and Tray from eating any now. "Oi!" I said. "Hands off!"

Sam sighed. "We were just looking" he said.

"Is it the party now?" Tray asked. "Can we eat some?"

"No, and…no" I said. "No pillaging the food before the party starts!" They were as bad as Eric at that. "But the party is starting soon, so are you clean?"

There were some shrugs and a few more longing glances at the food. "What's in the oven?" Tray asked.

"Sausage rolls" I told him. "And you'll have to wait for them."

Tray sighed, and looked as miserable as if I was punishing him. "Can we go back outside then? And dig?" he asked.

"No!" I said, wondering why this was so hard for them to understand. "No the party is starting soon and you guys need to stop digging and prepare to be good party guests."

"Guests get fed" Sam pointed out.

"Have I ever not fed you?" I asked him, and he shrugged. "Your job is to hang out and be nice to some of the other kids, OK?"

"Yeah…but not the ones who are morons, eh Mum?" Tray asked, and he looked at me expectantly. For all the times I'd wondered what Eric might have been like as a kid, it was really scary when I got flashes of it from my own kids.

"You have to be nice to everyone Tray. It's a party." Tray sighed, and turned to say something to Sam that I decided I didn't want to hear. "Alright, out of the kitchen" I said, and they left. "But don't go back to that hole!"

APOV

My little sister is slightly weird at times. I came to that conclusion as she was leading me around the garden by the hand showing me all the stuff I already knew was there. And then we got to the hole.

"That's the hole" she said. "I don't like it. It's muddy, and it makes the garden messy."

"Um…" I said, thinking that garden design wasn't really what I'd signed up for. I thought it wasn't anyway. Because I didn't really know what Dad thought was going to happen with this. He'd just said I had to be a fairy, so I was trying my best. It was a big hole now though, and I didn't want to have to join in with the digging, so fairy it was.

But what did a fairy do with a hole?

"Maybe I could, like, put a spell on it?" I suggested. "So, um, no one falls in?"

Pam looked thoughtful. "Do you think anyone will fall in?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I guess they might. If they don't look where they're going."

Pam sighed. "Bella A falls off the swings a lot. Maybe it's a good idea? You are a garden fairy after all."

"I am" I agreed. It sounded better than being an underpants fairy. I mean, I knew Mum wasn't really the underpants fairy. I'd known that for years and years. I wasn't so sure about Pam. She was taking this fairy thing really seriously, and I wanted to tell her to be careful or else the boys were going to tease her like nobodies' business. She might be weird, but I still liked her more than them, after all. But I didn't want to break character. That's what my drama teacher used to say, it's breaking character when you stop acting and start just being yourself. So I didn't. I hoped she'd figure it out for herself.

Or at least get some good hits in on Tray when he started the teasing, because he was really annoying, and Pam was pretty good at dealing to the boys when they were pains like that.

"OK" I said. "Um…I'll just do my spell then?"

"Yeah!" Pam said happily. "Let's do the spell!"

I waved my wand and walked around the hole, which was a big mistake because there was mud all over the place and I really liked the new shoes Mum had bought me to go with the dress we hired. The dress was OK. It was a bit itchy and I really didn't want to think about all the other people who might have worn it before me, but the shoes were new and I was a bit annoyed that now they were muddy.

I lifted a foot and examined it. "Your shoes are really pretty" Pam said, as she watched me.

I looked at her. Yeah, she didn't get new shoes very often. She didn't get new anything very often. That dress she was wearing had been mine; Dad had brought it back from the States one time he'd gone. I think his friend Indira might've helped him, because I couldn't imagine him actually picking out a pale pink tulle party dress with sparkles all over it. Or maybe he did. Sometimes you couldn't really tell with Dad. Somewhere around there was an identical dress in silver that'd been Felicia's, but I wasn't sure it had ever been worn by her. Pam had worn it once, but the colour was crap on her and made her look too pale. Pink was much better.

The dress was slightly too big on Pam, and luckily she didn't seem bothered by the fact there was a small stain near the waistband on the front. I tried to remember what had made the stain…juice? Icing? Something, anyway. I remembered being very sad that the stain was there, and Mum telling me it was OK and no one would notice really.

"You have a very pretty dress on" I said to Pam. "It's a special dress, that Dad…your daddy had to go a long way to get."

"Really?" Pam asked.

"Yes…it was, um, like a…a…quest-thingy. You know. Anyway, he had to go on a plane, and Daddy hates planes…your Daddy hates planes."

"Yeah…I like planes though."

"Me too. But we're not big like him. He has to squish into the seats."

"Yeah" Pam said looking down at her dress. "Mum said this was vintage." She looked up at me again.

"Um..." I said. "It is. It's vintagely magical." OK, so maybe that wasn't a real word, but Pam wasn't at school yet, what did she know? Plus I was a fairy. There were probably a whole bunch of words they used that no one else did.

"So that's special magic, right? Like old magic?" Pam asked.

"Yeah" I said. "Really, really special old magic that you only get when you get very special pretty party dresses"

"Cool" Pam said.

"Well, shall we…uh…go and look at the special party circle then? And maybe make a spell so that everyone will have a good time?"

"Um…" Pam said.

"Come on!" I said, really, really brightly. "It'll be fun!" And then I realised that it was kind of weird to be saying, well, that like that, because that was a really Mum-type thing to say. And I sounded like Mum when I said it. Weird.

"OK" Pam said, as she took my hand. "We can make a spell that keeps my brothers out. They suck."

SPOV

I thought everything was going OK. Well I hoped it was. There seemed to be a lot of people to feed and mostly I was just concentrating on getting all the food out onto the table on the deck so people could eat. I had a lot of help, but mostly they were in the garden. Judith was supervising and Kennedy was doing face-painting for me. She was cheaper than hiring someone to do it, and probably a lot better.

"You OK?" Eric asked me, sticking his head in the door. He'd been outside talking to Calvin, and, I think, keeping an eye on the boys and making sure there wasn't any trouble.

"Yeah, I'm fine" I said, setting the cupcakes out on a platter. "It's just that I'd forgotten what happens when it's a fifth birthday party. Everyone suddenly realises that they can leave their kids here alone, and all those first-time parents have skipped off to enjoy their freedom and left us with their kids. I hope no one realises. And cries."

Eric shrugged. "Someone's bound to cry" he said, and then he came closer to take a good look at what I was doing.

"I know, but I'd like it to not be on my watch. Maybe Amelia will take care of it?" I looked out the window to where Amelia was surrounded by a semi-circle of adoring kids.

"Maybe" Eric said. "She's actually doing OK." He looked out the window at Amelia as well.

"She is. Maybe she's found her niche?"

"Yeah…" Eric said slowly.

"I think it would be OK to suggest the idea to her, but I don't think you can demand a manager's fee. From your own daughter" I said to Eric, and he turned to look at me. "What?" he asked.

"You're not telling Amelia you came up with the fairy idea and making money off her if she wants to set up her own business."

Eric looked like he was trying to formulate a response, but there was a shout outside and he turned around sharply to look. "Fuck" he muttered, and then he was gone, leaving me with two platters and 35 cupcakes. I had not even noticed him steal that one.

EPOV

I was used to Tray and Sam fighting, and mostly you could just ignore it as they got bored before they inflicted too much damage on each other, but the combination of Tray and Sam and Thomas and Will was a particularly bad one for some reason, and there was always the potential for injury. I didn't quite understand what the problem was, or why the four of them couldn't fucking get on for five fucking minutes, but it was always the same, every time we all got together.

By the time I got there, though, Calvin had already broken up whatever was going on and there were just a lot of fucking grumpy looking kids standing around. I swallowed the last of the cupcake I was eating.

"What's going on?" I asked Sam, and he looked at the ground and didn't answer.

"It was something about the digging?" Calvin said, half-telling and half-asking. He looked at Thomas, but he wasn't spilling the beans either.

"Well…if there's any more trouble, then I'll be enlisting volunteers" I said.

"For what?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"Party duty. Party clean-up duty. Sookie'll need someone to help her." Everyone was silent for a while as they thought about that possibility. And then they all glared at whoever they thought had got them into this in the first place. Sam and Tray both looked at Thomas, but I didn't really give a shit who had started it. I just wanted it to stop. The smaller kids who'd been left here by their parents didn't need to see Pam's brothers involved in an all-out brawl with some other kids.

"Fine!" Sam said.

"Now go and find something to do until the food comes out."

"We can't eat yet?" Tray asked.

"No" I said.

"Bollocks arse" he said, sighing and looking longingly in the direction of where Sookie was setting out the food with some help from Judith. I should probably have said something about his language, but fuck it, I'd never said either of those words. Sookie could deal with that one.

APOV

OK, maybe this wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. The kids were mostly OK, and mostly they were listening to me, except for that one Bella who didn't seem to know what the heck was going on and kept just sitting there stroking Pam's hair. She made Pam seem way less weird than she usually seemed. But there was this one little boy, called Caspian, who just pissed me off.

I didn't know how Mum did it, working with kids every day. Sure, the kids at her classes were smaller and probably mostly cute little babies, but she still had to deal with them.

"OK, Pixies!" I said, trying to remember what that fairy I'd had at my birthday had been like. I remembered she was nice, but it was a long time since I'd been five so it was hard to think back that far. Even the dress Pam was wearing only jogged so many memories. "Let's, um, form a magic circle by holding hands." The Caspian kid tried to walk away.

"Don't you want to join our magic circle?" I asked him, he shook his head for no. "Oh, that's shame" I said. "The little girls are really rather nice little girls, and if you hold onto their hands then they'll make sure that you're extra safe."

Caspian snorted and adjusted his pirate hat. "I'm going to look at that hole" he said.

"Oh no" I said, still trying to remember to use my special fairy voice. "You can't go near that hole! It's a nasty, dark pit and you don't want to hang around anything nasty and dark!"

"They went" he said, and he pointed at Sam, Tray and Thomas who were standing around it arguing again. Well, they weren't helpful at all.

"Yes, but, uh, they're not part of our special magic circle. And we need everyone in the special magic circle because otherwise it's not special and magic anymore!"

"He went" Caspian said. He pointed to Will, who'd gone to stand beside his brother Thomas. He hadn't turned five yet, so we'd tried to get him to hang around with us, but I think he wanted to be with the big boys and their stupid punishment hole in the ground. Well, he wasn't helpful either. Stupid relatives.

"Well…he's a bit special" I said. "But you're one of us so you're staying, aren't you?"

"No" he said, and he crossed his arms. At that point I'd, like, totally had enough of stupid boys, stupid holes and the whole stupid lot of them. None of them were helping me be a fairy!

"Listen" I said to him. "You want to stay here, like I said. You don't want to make me use my magic."

"What magic?" he asked.

"My fairy magic. The last little boy who didn't listen to me…well, you don't want to know what happened to him."

"What did?" Caspian asked.

"I turned him into a…a…cat!" I said.

"No you didn't."

"I did. There he is, over there!" I pointed to where Felicia's stupid cat Edward was sitting on the grass in the sun, one leg in the air because he was licking his bum. It wasn't nice.

"I used to have three brothers" Pam piped up. "But one got magicked and now he's a cat. I don't know what she's going to turn the other two into, but it'll be bad!"

"Really?" Caspian asked, looking at Eddie who still had his nose buried in his bottom. That was just euw.

"Yes!" I said. "He was naughty and now he's a cat. And he has to lick his own bum! So behave and join the fairy circle because I don't want to have to change you."

"Um…"Caspian said, while he tried to decide. "Um…OK."

"Good" I said, and then I turned back to all the other kids. "Right, everyone. Join hands and then we'll skip around three times and then all choose our fairy names. After that, we're going on a hunt for special fairy treasure!"

"Yay!" Pam yelled. "I love treasure!"

SPOV

I had figured it was to be expected that Eric would have no clue about who Chloe was when she'd been in our kitchen on Friday night, but he was a bit vague about everyone else too. Even people we'd known for years and years.

"Who's that kid?" he asked me, pointing to another boy who'd joined the circle around the mysterious hole of doom. I didn't understand what was so fascinating about it all.

"You really don't know?" I asked him.

"Nope" Eric said, cramming another cupcake into his mouth. "See, I said the cupcake maker was a good present" he said, and I probably rolled my eyes. I don't think he quite realised its limitations.

"It's Riley" I said. "You were talking to Andy before, when you were all standing around the hole. They're all here. Ruby's over there with Felicia and Jessica who are trading ever more outrageous netball stories." Yeah, Felicia and Jessica had been slightly competitive with each other ever since Jessica had decided to start walking on the day Felicia was born.

"Oh" Eric said, surveying the selection of food available. "He looks a lot older."

"Well, we haven't seen him for a while. He'll be fourteen in a couple of months now."

"Mmm" Eric said, having lost interest in random kids. He crammed some chips into his mouth and pulled a face. "Why do we have to have this flavour again?" he asked.

"Because Pam likes salt and vinegar flavoured chips and it's Pam's party."

"Pam got a fairy. Pam should be happy with that and not have total control of the chip flavours" Eric grumbled.

"Well, you go tell her that. And while you're there, tell her it's time to cut the cake as well." Eric sighed, and walked off.

EPOV

There were a lot of people all over the fucking backyard now. Many of them seemed to be strangers. It was one thing to not know all the little kids who'd arrived to crowd around Pam and shower her with a pile of Barbie dolls, but it was another when random teenagers turned up. I didn't recognise Riley, and I'd just have to take Sookie's word for it that that's who he was, because I had bigger problems.

"They're at it again" Felicia said, coming over to me, with Jessica behind her.

"Who? What? Can you be more precise, Leesh?" I asked. Sookie was passing around the birthday cake and I'd been waiting until she came this way. If I moved, I'd lose my place in the queue. Well, it wasn't a queue really. But there might not be any cake left if I walked away now.

"The boys!" Felicia sighed. "They're fighting."

"They always fight. I hate having little brothers" Jessica added.

"Me too. They suck" Felicia confirmed.

"They don't suck, Leesh" I told her, but she didn't seem convinced, she just shrugged and walked off with Jessica again.

I was torn about what to do. I'd already intervened once and had to threaten punishment. Maybe Calvin would get this one? Or Andy, he was around here somewhere and surely the threat of the police was worse than anything I could do? Although it wasn't like the New Zealand police had any weapons. Tasers didn't really seem that threatening. Mostly the police officers here just seemed to stand around and look intimidating and it worked. So maybe Andy could do that.

Fuck it. I'd have to go. It was our house after all.

The ruckus was happening beside the hole. "No!" Sam was shouting. "That's not the way we're doing it!"

Thomas shrugged and didn't look worried. "I didn't like your way" I heard him say.

"But…it's my project!" Sam yelled at him. "So you fucking butt out!"

Yep, definitely have to intervene before any of the fairy princesses milling around went home with a whole new vocabulary.

However, before I got there, Tray charged Thomas and had a good attempt at bowling him over. That suggested just how bad things were. Tray was usually the more laid back of the two of them; it was Sam who hated Thomas' interference.

"Hey!" I yelled at them. "Stop that!"

Tray turned around at the sound of my voice, which allowed Thomas to get a jab in while he thought I wouldn't notice. Sam gave him a disgusted look and clutched the spade he was holding a little bit tighter.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I asked them all, but there was silence, as I kind of expected there would be. Sure, they hated each other but they weren't going to spill any secrets to me. I was the fucking enemy, after all.

"OK, kitchen everyone to get garbage bags and then you can start picking up the trash from the yard." Tray opened his mouth to complain, but closed it again when Sam nudged him with the shovel and hissed "He'll make it worse."

"I will fucking make it worse. Now go." The three of them walked past me still muttering to each other. Fuck, I hoped they could pick up trash without fighting over the correct way to fucking do that.

Calvin jogged over. "Everything OK?" he asked.

"Yeah. Just the usual" I said. We'd never quite figured out what the problem was between them all, but to be frank, mostly I didn't care. I just wanted less fighting and more fucking listening to me.

"I don't think Sam likes the challenge to his authority" Calvin mused. "And Thomas seemed to have some ideas about what they should be doing with the digging. He was trying to tell me before, but I suggested he mind his own business."

"Well, they're on trash duty now" I said. "They can all have some ideas about that."

"Yeah" Calvin said. "So what is the hole for anyway? Did Sookie want a fishpond or something? Or a new garden?"

"Nope" I said, and then Sookie appeared with a piece of birthday cake on a paper napkin in each hand. "You want some?" she asked Calvin and me, and we took the slices she offered.

"So…we're all just standing around the hole in the ground?" she asked.

"Yep" I said, taking a bite of the cake. The bright pink icing was kind of off-putting, but it tasted OK.

"Blokes are weird" Sookie muttered, as she turned and walked off.

"I'm not a bloke!" I called after her.

APOV

That was the most exhausting party ever. I can't believe people actually do that for a job, because the kids they just don't leave you alone. Ever! I tried to get a drink of water at one stage and three of them followed me into the kitchen to see if I'd make it appear by magic. Yeah, the tap isn't magic! They asked me constant questions and I had to tell them everything. I even had to tell them why Sam and Tray and Thomas were picking up all the litter. I told them they were trolls who'd been bad and an evil giant was making them do it for punishment.

The funny thing was they believed it all. Every single thing I made up, they, like, just believed. Like I really was a fairy and I knew all this stuff. Who knew kids were this gullible? I mean, I was slightly worried that they shouldn't ever be allowed out because someone could just come along and tell them any old story and that'd be it. Their parents would never see them again.

I hoped their parents were coming soon.

"Miss Fairy!" one of the little girls called out. I think she might have been a Bella…possibly. Maybe she was the Izzy. But her fairy name, when she'd finally picked one had been Bella so maybe that was her real name too.

"Yes?" I said, wishing they would all just leave me the hell alone. Also that Felicia would stop sniggering and mouthing 'Miss Fairy' at me from where she was standing. She was such a pain.

"Miss Fairy, I'm bleeding. Do you fix bleeding?" The little girl held up a finger that was bleeding. Ugh.

"No, I don't fix bleeding. You need a plaster. If you ask my Aunty Jude, who's over there, she'll get you one." No way was I touching random bleeding children. Blood was just…ick.

"OK" she said, and then she trotted off. I sank down onto the old ottoman on the deck and watched Pam in the doorway of the playhouse telling something to one of her friends. She seemed to be deciding who could come in and who couldn't. I felt someone come and stand next to me. God, I hoped it wasn't another bleeding child. "What?" I asked turning around and sounding kind of grumpy. Well I was grumpy. I was sure fairies were allowed to be grumpy sometimes.

"Oh…um…"Riley just stood there, looking at me. I hadn't realised it was him. And I still wasn't used to the fact he was taller than me. That was wrong for a start. It had been a while since I'd seen him and in that time he'd had a growth spurt and I hadn't, which sucked. Now I was the same height as Mum I probably wasn't going to get any taller. That didn't seem fair at all; although I guessed it meant that maybe I could borrow some of Mum's clothes.

She had that nice purple wrap dress that I liked. I wondered if she'd let me borrow that?

And then I realised Riley was still just standing there. "So…you had to come?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "We got invited" he said.

"I had to be the fairy" I said. "It was exhausting!"

Riley looked at me, and then down at his shoes. He was pretty crap at conversation but I figured I was stuck with him as he was almost the same age as me. I'd been stuck with him a lot when we were little and he lived next door.

"You can sit here" I said to him, shuffling over on the ottoman. He stood there for a minute and then he sat next to me and stared out at the garden.

"So…um…" I said, at a bit of a loss for things to say. It had been easier when we were kids and we'd just jumped on the trampoline. Or we'd been in the paddling pool. Oh God, I had the awful memory that we'd been naked in the paddling pool. That was so wrong! My mother had a LOT to answer for. I think I started blushing.

I looked sideways at Riley and he was sort of looking at me and I think he was blushing too. Yeah, so he remembered that as well. Terrific.

There was silence for a bit and then Riley said. "Cool dress."

"It's a costume. I hired it. For the party." I said. It was OK as a dress, but I didn't want him to think I dressed like this all the time.

"Oh" he said.

"The shoes are mine though" I said, holding up a foot so he could see. That didn't really get a response from him. I guessed boys didn't like shoes. I tried to think of what I could talk to him about, because I guessed I was stuck with him, given he was sitting right here next to me. Actually really close to me, because our legs were touching. But it wasn't bad, it was just…close.

"So, um…how's school?" I tried.

Riley shrugged. "S'alright. I just go, mostly."

"Yeah" I said. "Me too."

"I've seen you" he blurted out suddenly, and I turned to look at him, but he ducked his head back down again. "Um…on the way home, from school? I saw you. Walking. Through the village."

"Oh" I said. "I didn't see you." Well, I thought I hadn't. The Grammar boys all looked kind of the same.

"Yeah…um, my friend, um…Ollie, yeah…he saw you too…" Riley stopped talking. I couldn't think of a good response to that. "OK" I said.

"He said you were hot" Riley said quietly.

"Oh" I said again, feeling really stupid, but not sure what to say to that at all. I mean, I wondered what this Ollie was like, because he liked me. A boy liked me! That was so cool. I wanted to tell Yvetta, but she's a bitch and I don't care about her anyway. But even so, I wished she could know that one of the Grammar boys liked me. Maybe he was really nice looking?"

"But he's a dick" Riley said, which didn't sound great. "He...uh…I said that I knew you…" I waited, hoping that Riley had promised to introduce us. We could maybe go to the mall at St Luke's and go to the movies, and it would be lovely and he'd buy me popcorn and hold my hand and be a proper boyfriend, and it wouldn't matter that I had to eat lunch by myself because I would have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who went to Grammar. And one day I'd get to go to their ball!

"So, yeah. He called out to you…when we saw you…but you didn't hear him…" Riley said. Oh. Right. So he was one of those guys. The ones that yelled when they saw me walking home. Probably to make fun of me. God I hated them.

"What'd he yell?" I asked Riley in a really small voice.

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter" he said, and I knew that meant it wasn't nice. Why couldn't any of them be nice to me? Why were they all so horrible? I hated boys, really, really hated boys. They were all stupid and they just liked holes and were mean to girls, and if Sam and Tray were ever mean to girls I was going to be horrible to them, I really really was.

"I, um…I called out" Riley said, "But you didn't hear me say hello. You had your ear-buds in."

Well, yeah. Because who wants to hear those horrible boys yelling stuff? "Walking's better with music" I said. "Otherwise it's boring." I wasn't letting Riley know that that friend of his upset me, because he'd just tell him and they'd all have a good laugh about me, the stupid girl who walks past looking like a snobby bitch.

Riley nodded. And then no one said anything for a while. "Ollie's a dick" Riley said in the end. "I told him that."

"You did?" I asked. I guess maybe all that time we played together as kids counted for something. That was nice to know. I wouldn't like it if Riley wasn't my friend anymore. I didn't care what those other boys thought…well, I wanted not to care what those other boys thought, but I didn't want Riley to think I was a snobby bitch.

"Next time you see me" I said to him. "You should come over and say hello."

"Oh" he said. "Yeah. OK." He looked down at the ground again and nodded.

"We could, um…have coffee or something?" I suggested. "Like, on the way home. You know?"

"Yeah" he said again. "We could, I guess. I mean…well, Ollie's a dick…" he didn't say anything after that. We just sat there. It was nice.

SPOV

I got extra helpers for cleaning up, which was pretty good because Sam and Thomas managed to have a competition to see who could fill their rubbish bag the most and come and show me how helpful they'd been. Unfortunately that meant I'd had to stop Sam trying to load all the uneaten food into his bag, just to get more rubbish and to prove a point, but that was OK. Tray was trying desperately to eat what was left anyway.

"So what was the cause of the punishment?" I asked Eric, as he came into the kitchen carrying empty coffee cups.

He shrugged. "Thomas annoyed Sam. Same old story."

"Yeah…they really don't like each other, do they? And yet…sometimes they're so similar. They've both been in here showing me how great they are at picking up rubbish. Tray couldn't care less and has given up. They've both got something to prove."

"It's a bad combination" Eric agreed, as he grabbed a handful of the leftover chips languishing in the bottom of a bowl, and then pulled a face. "Yeah, they're still salt and vinegar, Eric" I said.

Eric sighed and looked out the window. "Riley and Amelia seem to be having a good catch-up" I said, nodding at them. They were sitting on the ottoman together and he was showing her something on his phone and she was laughing. I'd felt a bit sorry for Riley, he was a bit too old to be really interested in the excavation at the back, and had been moping around until Amelia was finished with the other kids. It can't have been fun hanging out at a kid's birthday party, but Halleigh had said she'd told him he didn't have to tag along, and he'd volunteered. Probably he'd be drawn by the party food, like the rest of them were. "Sausage rolls aren't nice cold" I said to Eric.

"They are" he said. And then he nodded at the window. "Who's Felicia talking to?" he asked.

"God, you're hopeless!" I told him. "That's Charlie. You know, we saw him at St Luke's when Amelia was getting her hair cut."

"Why's he here?" Eric asked, sounding grumpy.

"He came with his mum to pick up his sister. Lily. Although before she announced her fairy name was Bella so I think she's trying to fit into that club."

"Uh-huh" Eric said, frowning.

"Cheer up" I said. "Look, you can have the last cupcake."

EPOV

All of a sudden there were a lot of boys in our backyard. Previously, I'd been worried about the boys who were fighting over how to dig a hole. But now, fuck. There were extra boys all over the fucking place. Only they weren't all over the place, they were all hovering around my fucking daughters.

I would have kind of liked to go and tell them to fuck off, like I'd done to that asshole man-handling Amelia the weekend before, but I couldn't really justify it this time.

Maybe I could?

No, I fucking couldn't, and it fucking annoyed me that I couldn't. I didn't think it was right that they could just fucking waltz in here and…and…well, I guessed they were just talking. And I guessed I couldn't stop them talking. And the talking might just be talking, even though Amelia was leaning really close to Riley and laughing at who the fuck knows what, and Felicia kept trying to punch that Charlie kid in the arm and they were both clearly flirting with those guys and it was all kind of wrong.

I looked at Riley and Amelia. I did wish about now that the New Zealand police force issued guns, because fuck, surely Andy should be keeping his own son in line? And away from my daughter?

Fuck it all. Fatherhood fucking sucked sometimes.

Pam came bouncing in. "How's the party going?" Sookie asked.

"Good!" Pam said. "Caspian said that he's going to be my boyfriend now!"

Fuck, not her too. Which one was fucking Caspian? I looked outside although I had no fucking chance of figuring that out.

"But I said no" Pam continued, and she screwed her face up. "Boys are stupid. They like digging and holes…and…and…well, I don't want a boyfriend. Look! I got a new fairy doll from Izzy! It's Rosetta and she has the pink dress."

"That's great Pam" I said. Thank fuck for that. "The fairy's...um…nice."

"Yeah, she is. And my fairy was good too." She came over and hugged my leg. "Thanks for getting me the best big sister fairy ever! Izzy was sooo jealous, because she doesn't have a big sister fairy at all!"

"You're welcome Pam" I said, and she skipped off.

"Make the most of that" Sookie said, as she left. "It'll be gone before you know it, and it'll all be boys."

"Yeah…" I said. Fuck, I hated them growing up. I wondered if we could make the wall at the front of the house bigger. And extend it? And get an electronic security system that only I had the code to work?

"It's kind of nice though" Sookie said, "Watching it all. Remember Amelia's fifth birthday? At The Fairy Shop? Who'd have thought she'd grow up to be a fairy herself?"

"Well…she does have you" I said, putting my arms around Sookie.

"Phfft. Yeah. It's not really the same. But she did well today. She's really growing up." Fuck, I wished she would stop reminding me of that. "And next Pam starts school." OK, Sookie really needed to shut up about now.

"Mmm" I said, and then I kissed her, because that usually did shut her up. Not for long though. When I pulled back she started talking again. "I'd like to know one thing though" Sookie mused, looking up at me.

"What's that?" I asked.

"What the hell is the deal with the hole?"

A/N So Grammar is Auckland Boy's Grammar school. Amelia goes to their 'sister' school Epsom Girls' Grammar School, or EGGS as it's known.

Thanks for reading!