‘You don’t want to know,’ the wicked queen said quickly. ‘Come on, this is your chance to be a star.’

‘My chance? Now wait a minute…’

Before Sis could protest any further, the wicked queen grabbed her by the shoulder and marched her up the stairs. Three beds, as anticipated; one large, one medium, one small with obligatory pink bedspread and matching pillowcase. On top of the pillow lay a rather dog-eared, obviously much-loved button-nosed humanoid doll. It was dressed in a jacket with tiny lapels, tight straight trousers and sunglasses, and its black hair was slicked into a kiss-curl. Ah, thought Sis, who’d seen something similar on the television, a teddy.

‘What are we doing here?’ she demanded.

‘Gate crashing,’ the queen replied, kicking off her leaf-encrusted shoes and flopping on the medium-sized bed. ‘What else would we be doing in the Three Bears’ cottage?’

‘Yes,’ Sis insisted, ‘but why? And if you say narrative patterns, I’ll make you eat the curtains.’

‘You and whose army?’ the queen yawned. ‘Sorry, but a better example of narrative patterns would be hard to come by. Just think for a moment, instead of whining. In this —’ She waved her hands in the air. ‘Well, for want of a better word we’d better call it a dimension, though of course it’s nothing of the sort. In this dimension, things don’t just happen in the messy, haphazard way you seem to favour where you come from. Things here happen because there’s a slot or a hole precisely their size and shape in a story. And it’s a well-known fact that once you’ve skimmed off all the tinsel and watercress, there’s only about twenty stories; all the rest are just the same ones with added bells and whistles. Accordingly, everything here has got to fit into its proper story, or else there’s chaos. That’s why you and your repulsive little siblings crashed my beautiful system; there wasn’t a slot for you, but you came in anyway and that blew a huge hole right through the middle of everything. So, first things first, until we can find a way of getting rid of you, we’ve got to try a little damage limitation and find a slot to put you in. So; I thought about what you’ve done here so far — barge in uninvited, treat the place like you own it, break things, spoil things; in addition to which you’re a cute little girl—’

‘Hey!’

‘—So the choice was obvious. You’re a Goldilocks. An absolute natural for the part. What else could you possibly be? And here we are.’

‘I am not cute.’

‘I wouldn’t bet the rent on that if I were you,’ the queen replied with a nasty grin. ‘If they weren’t all down at the moment, I’d suggest you look in a mirror. You wouldn’t know yourself.’

Sis clutched instinctively at her face. It felt the same, more or less; but since she’d never spent hours lying in the dark feeling her own face, that didn’t mean a lot. But (now that the queen mentioned it) she could feel an unaccustomed tugging at the roots of her hair on either side of her head; she felt gingerly and discovered — ‘Plaits,’ she groaned.

‘With big pink bows,’ the queen confirmed maliciously.

‘You’ve also got big blue eyes, freckles and a great big golden curl right in the middle of your forehead.’

‘Yetch!’

‘You should worry. You’re not the one that’s got to look at you. Honestly, if this was a Disney film you’d be chucked out on your ear for excessive cuteness. Not to mention blondness with intent to nauseate.’

‘Shut up.’

‘But there,’ the queen sighed, turning her head away in an ostentatious manner, ‘it’s very bad manners to mock the afflicted, so I won’t say another word.’ She stretched her arms and legs like a cat, then sat up on the bed and put her shoes back on. ‘That’s enough here,’ she said. ‘We’d better go down and start smashing furniture.’

It helped Sis to be able to take her feelings out on a dear little chair, and by the time she’d finished with it there wasn’t enough of it left to provide a packed lunch for an infant woodworm. The cold porridge didn’t interest her nearly as much, even though it was a long time since she’d had anything to eat. She forced down a couple of spoonfuls just to stop the queen nagging at her, spilt milk all over the tablecloth, and trod on a little wickerwork donkey she found on the mantelpiece. The last, the queen pointed out, wasn’t exactly canonically correct, but Sis maintained that it was essential to her reading of the part. Then they sat down on the two surviving chairs to wait.

They were deep in a discussion of the state of Mummy and Daddy Bear’s marriage — separate beds, the queen felt, was a sure sign that the whole thing was on the rocks — when the door opened. Which of them was more surprised, Sis and the wicked queen or the three little pigs, it’d be hard to say.

For what little evidential weight it carries however, it was Julian who spoke first.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he complained. ‘It was bad enough when he was a handsome bloody prince. The bimbo outfit’s going beyond a joke.’

The wicked queen opened her mouth to say something but decided against it. Sloppy thinking, she chided herself. A failure to think things through to their logical conclusion before taking action. Of course, what with the system being down and everything being in a state of narrative flux, the last people you’d expect to see in the Three Bears’ cottage would be the Three Bears. And, come to that, the deceased system’s fatally Boolean logic, unable to locate the Three Bears, would automatically revert to the nearest available match, namely the Three Little Pigs. Spiffing.

‘Told you,’ Desmond muttered, shifting the pad of his crutch under his arm. ‘Told you it was pointless running away to this godforsaken backwater and trying to hide from the bugger. I say we do Plan B and that’ll be an end to it.’

Julian stared at him. ‘Plan B? That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’

‘No. Let’s do it now, get it over and done with.’

The wicked queen cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

‘Shut it, you,’ Desmond snarled. ‘Oh, you think you’re so damned smart, don’t you, with your shape-shifting and your disguises and everything. Well, we’re going to show you this time all right. This time, it’s our turn. Eugene, where’s that remote?’

Julian tried to protest, but Desmond and Eugene scowled him down. ‘Des’s right,’ Eugene said, handing his brother a slim black plastic box with red buttons on the top. ‘Let’s end it right now. Okay, so the house goes up in smoke, us too, but at least we’ll take this bastard with us. At least he won’t be able to terrorise other pigs the way he’s terrorised us.’

‘Excuse me,’ the wicked queen repeated urgently. She could feel sweat in the palms of her hands; a sure sign that (as her old mentor the sorcerer would have put it) a bloody great big opportunity was descending on her from a great height. ‘I think there’s been some sort of mistake.’

Desmond only laughed. ‘Too right, wolf,’ he said grimly. ‘And you just made it. Eugene, stand in front of the door, just in case he tries to make a run for it.’

The wicked queen recognised the key word; a short, unostentatious little grouping of letters, easily overlooked in the rough and tumble of dialogue: he. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said sweetly, ‘but I’m not a he, I’m a she. So’s she. Two shes.’

‘Nuts,’ replied Eugene contemptuously. ‘You’re a wolf. In she’s clothing,’ he added ineluctably. ‘Prepare to die, sucker.’

‘Now wait a minute.’ Sis stood up, missed her footing, wobbled and grabbed the table for support. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re planning to do, but it’s nothing to do with me, okay? I’m just an innocent civilian. I don’t even belong here. You want to do something horrible to her, be my guest, but…’

Julian was listening; the other two weren’t. Desmond in particular was devoting his entire attention to the buttons on the remote control in his left trotter. ‘Armed and ready,’ he said harshly. ‘Plan B laid in and ready to roll. It’s a far, far better thing…’