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“Aren’t you too old for Cinderella?”

“You’re never too old to want to be a Disney Princess But that’s beside the point, it’s barely six thirty!” I’m surprised I’m up at all, my bed is so comfortable

“Please, Holly Coh He’s hurt hi really hard”

“Oh, no What did he do?” I hurry out into the hallway, ignoring the fact that I’ the kinds of jammies that most five-year-olds would be eht to wear them, but that doesn’t mean I want to be seen in thehten on ins to pull “Where’s your mom?”

Isla—no need to use so formal an address, so she’s insisted—usually takes care of the boys in thewith the school run

“She’s in her roo her eyes watery, but we know she’s been crying Daddy called this , his blue school shirt untucked and flapping from the back of his pants “I told hi at the bottom of the stairs, probably dead!”

“Holy fudge!” Ithe kid as e My sock-clad feet skid on the shining floorboards as we race through the long gallery, littered noith a badminton net, a football, and a pair of rollerblades Past bedroo, I almost barrel into the bannister Hand flattened to ive thanks that the kid isn’t dead because there, at the very base of the grand and ancient staircase, sits a dazed but s his head Next to him lies a piece of statuary that once stood in a row of them On black ht at hoin Marbles in the British Museuh this one had been in better condition than those antiquitiesuntil it very recently lost its head

“Hugh, I’lad you’re not dead,” his little brother shouts over the bannister

“I’rin

“Watch it!” Wrapping er boy’s shirt, I pull hi over the burnished handrail, just in case he decides to take a shortcut “One near death before breakfast is all I can take”

“I’h happily calls back