EVERYONE BELIEVES IN FAIRIES

By: J S Stuart

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

OVERVIEW: A boy discovers fairies in an ancient forest everyone else bypasses. Isolation is the saviour of the fairies. Years later he shares this knowledge with his own children and together they set out to rediscover the old fairy forest. A funny and heart-warming tale of hope amid the crush and compression of civilisation.

STORY: Tom is a young boy playing truant from school. Hiding from the traffic on the road, he discovers a forest he’d never been in before. The boy begins to discover strange things about this forest. When he declares aloud “I don’t believe in ghosts or fairies”, he hears a yelp as a fairy falls from the air. As he cradles the fairy in his hand, the fairy wakes up with a scream – and darts away, as does Tom.

At home that evening he is beaten by his father following the reported truancy. As he sleeps, the fairy sits on his pillow and sings to the boy.

The boy grows to be a man, with children of his own, divorced and in a job he hates. One weekend when his children are on half term school holidays, Tom tells them the story of the fairy forest and promises to take them there one day.

That “one day” comes very shortly as he wakes up in the morning and decides to phone in sick to work because, he realises, there is more to life than work he hates. This does not fool one of his colleagues – Diane - who shares his disillusion. Nothing Tom can do can get rid of Diane.

Ever since she was a child, she had been desperate to find fairies. After Diane threatens to call the police, he reluctantly agrees to take her along, and immediately regrets the decision. Sparks fly when Diane and Chrissie – Toms’s ex wife – meet. It is ever worse when they are all crammed in the car together for the long journey north, to the last of the ancient forests long since forgotten by the march of civilisation ...