Winged fairy and door design on a calf

You will not believe what the Pargeters' boy found behind their scullery door when they took it off its hinges to paint it. Mr Pargeter swore it was only damp, but Mrs Pargeter had the poultice out before he finished talking, and I went round with the bread because I was nosy and because the lad had been crying about it.

Behind the planks was a little room no bigger than a tea caddy, papered in squares of gold and red like a playing card, and in it sat a fairy no taller than my thumb. Her wings were the grey of wet slate. She had a sprig of bay in one fist and she was holding it up to the keyhole as if it were a lamp, looking for the way out. The lad said she had been there since before the war. I said she had been there since the bottle went under the stairs, because that bottle is the only thing in the house nobody will admit to owning. It is brown glass, stoppered with wax, and it has been on the top shelf of the larder since your Aunt Edie died.

Mrs Pargeter wanted the fairy out. Mr Pargeter wanted the door hung straight. I wanted to know what the bottle was for, and that is the question I still can't answer. Yesterday, when the lad's father wasn't looking, I lifted the wax with a bread knife and poured a thumb of cold tea inside. The fairy sneezed, I swear it, and the bay sprig went green overnight.

This morning the door swung true on its hinges and the little room was gone, only a dot of gold paint on the jamb. The bottle, though, is empty and sitting on my windowsill, and there are bay leaves in it.

Write soon. Yours, Constance.