He giggles at the memory. “Anyway, I was perfecting my coiffure (that’s French for hairdo) when I fell foul of an appliance. My accommodation in those days being somewhat insalubrious, my measures for bathing were somewhat…primitive.”
He falters. I catch his eye and he looks away shyly. I stop playing for a moment. “What do you mean, primitive? Don’t be embarrassed, Clarence. In case you hadn’t noticed, I hardly live in Buckingham Palace myself.”
“I most certainly am not embarrassed, Candypop, I wouldn’t know the meaning of the word! F minor! Move those ape-like digits of yours down a string. There…Anyway Marie Antionette’s hair was terribly high and I was crafting a spectacular bouffant with the use of my hairdryer. As I mentioned, my conveniences were most inconvenient at the time. Unfortunately, I had to bathe in an…um…well…” A look of disgust clouds his pristine features, “A bucket. In any case my bucket was still sitting there and I had quite forgotten about it. I was doing the tricky part at the crown when I lost my grip and the hairdryer tumbled out of my grasp. I instinctively went to catch it. I succeeded. The very moment it hit the water, that was it,” he sighs, adding in a whisper, “Poof!”
I stop playing. Clarence is sitting on the windowsill now, hugging his knees, wings tucked in behind him, looking defeated like crumpled sellotape.
“I’m sorry.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then shivers throwing off his gloom like a cloak. “Thank you, my dear. In any event it led me here, to this…” he looks about him, aiming for a smile that lands more in the region of grimace,“…delightful seaside hamlet. And to you.”
“So we’re destined to be together, and you were sent here to look after me from a magical invisible world. Does that mean you’re my…” I leave a pause where the word fairy should go “…Godfather?”
“Godfather? I should say not, darling. I was a mere handful of birthdays above you when I met my end. But Godbrother? Perhaps. Now. From a party that never got started to one that is about to begin; I believe you have a soirée to attend?”
“Glad’s birthday! I completely forgot!”
“Luckily, I did not.” He raises an eyebrow and flutters over to my dressing-table, where he extracts from the bric-a-brac a toy tiara Holly bought for me last Christmas and plonks it on top of the already-enormous hairstyle he has created. “The finishing touch to your outfit and, if I do say so myself…fabulous.”
It’s not until our front door bangs shut behind me and the freezing air hits me in the face like a bucket of cold water that I realise Clarence is actually, like, coming with me. He swoops into the air in a reverse swan dive with a “WHO—HOO-HOOO!” shooting so high into the snowy sky he could almost be mistaken for a particularly shiny flake.
I do an immediate 180, simultaneously hissing over my shoulder in a shouty whisper, “Clarence! What do you think you’re—Get back here NOW!”
My Fairy Godbrother, meanwhile, is soaring high above like a demented shooting star. “Clarence! Come down here NOW!”
Nothing.
“CLARENCE!”
A faint giggle.
“CLAREENCE!!”
With a whoosh, he drops like a stone from the sky, a streak of light in his wake. I brace myself for a crash-landing on the roof of next-door’s car but somehow he brakes, stopping a fraction above it, then lowering himself delicately on to the frosty bonnet. He spreads his arms as wide as his Cheshire-cat smile. “Sweet freedom, Candypop! Has there ever been a better day to be practically alive?”
I sigh. “Look, Clarence, I know you’re happy to be out, I mean, back in the world and everything but…”
His grin shrinks a little.
“…but you can’t come to Glad’s party! You can’t just go flying about everywhere! People will see you! This is Bishopspool – there are no fa…I mean…we don’t do magic around here!”
Clarence smiles mischievously. “If we are going to agree on anything, my little Candypop, let us begin with this: we are not ‘around here’, here is ‘around us’ and we do precisely as we please!” And with that he zips off down the street, leaving me to run to catch up.
I wince as we enter the Day Centre. Clarence flits through the door ahead of me and off into the bowels of the building which is pulsating to the sounds of cheesy 70s disco and friendly chatter. I brace myself for a scream but none comes. Unsure of what else to do, I take my coat off and hang it up, then place Glad’s gift atop the growing present pyramid on a nearby table.
Clarence zips out of view momentarily, then returns asking loudly, “What kind of soirée is this exactly? Where are the cocktails?” before settling on my shoulder. I hear a gasp, then turn to come face to face with the gaspee – Calum Stainforth, who dropped Glad off the other day. He is staring at me with his mouth hanging open. Oh God! He can see Clarence!
“Candy!” Calum breathes, “Is that…? Is that a…” it seems like a phenomenal effort for him to get the words out. There’s a second’s silence that feels like an eternity. Clarence’s wings bristle beside my ear. Calum swallows hard. Just then, Glad appears by his side looking similarly shocked.
“Is that a new dress?” Calum manages to ask before Glad bursts into a peal of laughter and I remember that I have accidentally turned up dressed as a Guns ‘n’ Roses groupie from 1987.
“By God, lassie!” she chuckles. “It’s not that kind of party! You look like you’re dressed up for a night out there on the docks! Come inside and defrost!” She leads the way and I’m left with Calum who smiles awkwardly.
“Just trying a new look!” I laugh nervously, tugging down my mini-dress.
“I like it,” he says, almost in a whisper.
At this point, Clarence takes off and performs an elaborate loop-de-loop around Calum’s baseball-capped head, shouting (somewhat unnecessarily, because I’m already starting to figure this out), “Don’t worry about him seeing me, Candypop! In my present state I am quite invisible to anybody other than you. It is only when I make myself into a physical object – a thing – that lumps like this one can spot me. Or hear me.” He zooms round and round Calum’s head, who obviously senses something as he shivers. Clarence laughs wildly. “I am incognito! Imperceptible! Undetectable!”
So, happily, Clarence goes unnoticed. Unhappily this makes me look as nuts as my outfit – try as I might, I just can’t keep my eyes off him. He whizzes around like a gust of wind through the busy Day Centre, delighted to be at an actual live party with real human people (even if the birthday girl is eighty-four). Clarence might be out of sight but he isn’t out of trouble. My gaze flits around the room in search of him. People can’t see him but they flinch as he whooshes by, wondering what just happened (especially Glad’s friend Alf, whose toupee is left spinning round like a record after one of Clarence’s fly-pasts).
I’m keeping one eye out for Clarence among the dancing crowd (who are getting stuck into YMCA) when Mum and Ray arrive.
“Superb event!” Ray says to Glad, shaking her hand.
A
