“I just thought of something,” He told me suddenly as we lie in bed awake.

“What?”

He turned his head to me, “I’ll be thirty in a few days. I met you when I was fifteen. I’ve known you exactly half my life. Fifteen years I’ve know you and we’ve been married for thirteen of them. I’ve been married to you almost half my life.”

“Wow. You’re right.” I let the thought wash over me.

“I’m so lucky,” He caressed my belly, “I’m so bleeding’ lucky.”

But I knew that it was me who was really the lucky one. Any sane woman alive would have fallen for Oliver Dickinson, with his handsome features, his intelligence, his charm, and his affectionate nature. For whatever reason, he’d chosen to stick with me. I refused to question why. I just thanked him and thanked the universe by loving him and his children every day with everything I had.

As far as the children, it was easy to want to knock their heads and even easier to love them all. Nigel and Carolena were only six months apart in age. Racing toward four years old, it seemed that the both of them had it in mind that they ruled the roost. Poor Natalie, at not quite two, was getting the stuffing knocked out of her on a regular basis. They’d run into her and knock her down, steal her toys, and take her snacks away. When she’d get hurt by some other means and cry, however, both of them would hurry to her rescue.

“Oh, Nattie, you bump you head!” Carolena would rub her back.

“Mind the door frame, Nattie,” Nigel would lift her to her feet, “There now! You’re right as rain!”

Then it would go back to constant screaming, constant banging about and utter chaos.

I loved every second of every day.

“She’s my mummy!” Nigel tried to pry Caro off my leg while I cooked, “You let her be!”

“She no you mummy! She you auntie!”

“Mummy!”

“Auntie!”

“Now, you two stop it or I’ll pop you both down for a time out!” I threatened, “I’m as good a mummy to Nigel as I am to you, Carolena, even if I am just an auntie! Now, come on, let’s go wash up…Oh, heavens! What is that on your face, Child?” She looked like a deranged middle aged housewife.

She had the same sparkle in her eyes that Oliver did, “Nigel make me cute, Mummy!”

“Did you paint Caro with my lipstick, Nigel?”

Nigel grinned at me, proudly nodding. He tucked his hand into his pocket and produced my lipstick, putting it into my hand. “Check out Nattie. She’s posh.”

“See me pwetty!” Nattie spun in a circle, holding her skirt out. She had deep purplish, crooked lines all over her. Caro joined her in spinning. A moment later so did Nigel.

I slapped my hand against my forehead and found my camera. What else was I supposed to do? At least he hadn’t painted the baby.

Gryffin, like his sister before him, was an easy going, happy baby. In the looks department, he was the opposite of Carolena. That is not to say that he did not resemble her, which he did in the face to a great extent. It was that where Caro had inherited her father’s dark eyes and my red hair, Gryffin looked like a shrunken Oliver. His hair was the colour of wet earth and his eyes were soft coco brown. Thanks to the other three, he had an uncanny ability to sleep through anything, which is why I was surprised when he would wake up whenever he would hear the elves.

I was not sure whether they had stopped coming by or the simple exhaustion of keeping all the children had me in such a deep sleep at night that I missed them, but it seemed to have been awhile since I’d heard Lord Copse and Lady Folia chattering in the house. Occasionally, I would hear a murmur or two from the trees when I was alone in the garden and I would say hello, but that was all the noise they made. Oliver, Alex and I had never stopped visiting the circle or leaving them sweets, nor had any of the children. Nigel was convinced that they adored peanut butter and would set crackers with it smeared on them out every afternoon. I think the ants got more of it than they did. Still, with as quiet as they had been, so many of the children’s toys went missing so often it was impossible to forget their presence. When the toys didn’t reappear after a day or two, I’d comfort the children by telling them that the boon must have really liked that particular item. “Elves can’t get toys at a store like we can.” I told Nigel once when he’d lost an elephant. “It must be special.”

“Then when we buy toys we need to buy two!” He wailed back at me. “I love my lellyfant!”

One night I awoke to the sound of voices from the nursery, which was straight across from our bedroom. Nigel and Carolena had moved upstairs to take two of the rooms there, so it was only Natalie and Gryffin sleeping downstairs. I knew immediately it was the Lord and the Lady. They were speaking loudly and I could hear them laugh from time to time. I lie in bed listening carefully, trying to gather what they were saying, but I couldn’t make out a single word.

Suddenly, Gryffin began to gurgle. A moment later he let out a giggle that woke Oliver.

“Is the baby laughing?” Oliver sat up and scratched his head, “What’s happening?”

“Shhhh, listen…” Their voices came again. Oliver nodded, leaning toward the door. Gryffin squealed with giggles. A second later Natalie laughed, too. We could hear her shifting in her bed, “No, tha’s OK,” She said aloud in a sleepy voice, “I tell him tomonnow. T’ank you. Nigh’ now.”

Oliver and I lay there smiling and listened for a while before the voices stopped. There was a crack as if someone had stepped hard on one of the floorboards and the baby was quiet again.

“Should we check on them?” Oliver whispered, “We’re up.”

I shook my head. “No, they’re sleeping,” I yawned and curled my body around my husband’s. “They’re happy and fine. Like me.”

Oliver rubbed my back. After a few moments we were both asleep.

The next morning I found something in my son’s crib. It was a small purple elephant.

“Well, there you go,” I said out loud though no one was in the room, “They must have realised it meant more to you than it did to them, Nige.”

My sister came to visit us that summer. It had been nearly three years since I’d last seen her in person. She’d finished with university, which she had attended more for fun than to pursue a career. Lucy had spent the last few years gallivanting around the United Kingdom, hopping from party to party, and when she’d graduated she really had no idea of what she wanted to do with her life. She’d ended up in Glasgow with a boyfriend who was none to kind to her, although she didn't tell any of us that until after they'd split up. If any of us had known, particularly the twins, I am quite certain the lad would have ended up with broken legs, lying in a pool of blood on a dark road some place. Still, she'd made it through somehow and remained in that city, not in a very savoury neighbourhood, now living in a rented flat with four other girls. She worked in an advertising office as an assistant for a woman she despised. She’d been through a series of short term boyfriends since her split. She was burned out on her life and tired of the scene.

“I don’t want to drink and smoke anymore,” She told me over the phone one night, “I don’t want to discover every boy who’s interested in me is a scumbag. My flatmates are sluts and slobs. This street I live on stinks! It smells like something died in the gully! A few nights ago a girl was raped a block away from my flat. I don’t want to be here, Silvia! I have to make a change before it‘s too late, but I don‘t have any money!”

“You can come here, Lu,” I told her. My heart ached for my sister.

“Do you have space?”

“For my sister, yes! We’ll make space!”

“Will I be imposing?” She gulped the words, but sounded hopeful, as if somebody had just switched on a torch in a dark room and she could faintly see a door out.