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Copyright Page

First published in 2021 by And Other Stories
Sheffield – London – New York
www.andotherstories.org

Copyright © Sammy Wright, 2021

All rights reserved. The right of Sammy Wright to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 9781913505127
eBook ISBN: 9781913505134

Editor: Jeremy M. Davies; Copy-editor: Bella Bosworth; Proofreader: Gesche Ipsen; Typesetting, text design and eBook by Tetragon, London; Cover Design: Jon Gray.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

And Other Stories gratefully acknowledge that our work is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Contents

• Once
• Rags
• Riches
• After
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For Mum, for the job you did,
and for the people still doing it

And for Clare

‘Early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.’

—

‘And you,’ he said to Cinderella, ‘what do you want?’

‌Once

Here’s Rose.

Most people say her eyes are too far apart. When she’s bored, like now, she wraps her legs (in the yellow leggings) round each other, one foot hooked around the other ankle. She does the same with her hands, twisting them so the wrists cross. She can feel the fingers on her left hand touch the skin on the wrist of her right.

‘What did one hat say to the other?’ she says. She’s eleven, but she often seems younger.

Aaron doesn’t notice. He’s eight, and is sitting on a low wall. His hair is thin and blond and clipped almost to baldness. He wears her old T-shirt. It says ‘Princess’ in purple glitter.

The two of them are outside the shop, and their mother is inside. Rose can feel the damp pavement through her sock. She switches feet, and, balancing, reaches her yellow leg out to prod Aaron with a toe.

‘What did one hat say to the other?’ she says again.

Aaron’s face skews into a bony grin.

‘You wait here. I’ll go on a head,’ says Rose.

Aaron says, ‘Good one.’

They always say, ‘Good one.’

‘Your turn,’ says Rose.

Aaron’s eyes drift up in thought.

Rose peers through the glass. She likes the way her own reflection sits like a ghost over the people inside. She can see them moving past clothes, toasters, loose shoes in buckets, pick ’n’ mix. She shifts a little so her face floats over a woman in a bright blue dress.

‘Oh!’

Aaron half rises from his seat on the wall. His limbs lurch, puppet-like.