Smash hit

And, indeed, her dress was rather worn, but that was because she had picked the oldest dress in her wardrobe to wear in the kitchen, even if she had no intention of actually doing any work there. So the good fairy waved her wand and provided Cinderella with a beautiful gown, and changed a couple of harmless and slightly shocked mice into coach horses, and transformed a pumpkin into a coach that smelled unpleasantly, and not entirely surprisingly, of pumpkin, and was a rather virulent shade of orange. She also gave Cinderella a pair of glass slippers to wear. In truth, the slippers weren’t very comfortable, but Cinderella decided that perhaps it might be wise to keep quiet about the fact, as she didn’t want the good fairy to think that she wasn’t a deserving cause. Neither did she complain about the midnight curfew imposed by the good fairy, as she knew that nice girls didn’t stay out beyond midnight, and she wanted to be thought of as a nice girl, even if she wasn’t one.

That night, Cinderella danced and danced, and caught the attention of the handsome prince. He spent the final hour dancing with no one but Cinderella. He fell in love with the mysterious young woman, but before he could ask her name the clock began to strike midnight and she fled, leaving behind a glass slipper that with a vicious heel that had rather bruised the prince’s toes a number of times as he waltzed with the unknown beauty.

A search commenced the next day. The prince and his men went from village to village, and from house to house, trying the slipper on the foot of every young woman that they found, but none fitted. After three days, they came to the house of Cinderella, and found her in the cellar, not doing very much at all. The prince placed the slipper on Cinderella’s foot, and it fitted perfectly. Great celebrations ensued, and even the stepsisters joined in, so pleased were they that they would soon be rid of Cinderella forever.

The prince and Cinderella were married, and they lived happily ever after.

Except they didn’t. They lived happily for about a week, until the prince discovered that Cinderella wasn’t a very nice person at all, whereupon he returned to her father’s house with the awful girl in tow.

The prince knocked on the door. Cinderella’s father answered. He took in the prince and his daughter and understood immediately what had happened. Still, he pretended to be surprised, if only for form’s sake, but he wasn’t really surprised at all.

“Um,” said the prince, realising that the situation was a little awkward. “I don’t really like this one. She’s nasty and lazy, and smells faintly of pumpkin. I wonder if I might swap her for one of the others?”

And so the prince divorced Cinderella and married the sister whose eyes were not quite level, and they did, in fact, live happily ever after, even if the prince sometimes got a bit of a headache from trying to stare into both of his wife’s eyes at one.

As for Cinderella, she used her father’s money to open a store selling uncomfortable glass slippers.

It went broke.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy