The Fairly Godmother

Would-be author Nic Ford tried out a new interactive writing software package to help him get started on his first chick lit novel. This is an excerpt of his first draft
Read how he got on with the electronic writing aid here

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, not so long ago and in a land less far from this than you might imagine, there lived a King and Queen.

The King and Queen were very happy together. They were fair and just, and ruled over a prosperous kingdom full of rosy-faced children, and contented peasant workers who'd actually voted for the feudal system so that was all right then, and Dukes and Duchesses rich enough to own Volvos. Yes, the kingdom was a very happy place indeed, and apart from the odd border skirmish with neighbouring kingdoms over which was responsible for cutting the branches off an overhanging tree, or when the Royal Lawnmower was going to be returned, it continued to be a happy place for many, many years.

Except... except...

Except that there was one thing making the Queen very unhappy. Although she loved the King very much, and liked nothing better than to spend all day (while he was busy signing official-looking papers that he didn't really understand in Parliament) dreaming up wondrous and exotic dishes for him to pretend to enjoy that evening, there was something missing from her life.

The Queen wanted a child.

She needed, demanded, craved a child. Yearned after, begged for, obsessed over a child. She had tantrums, screamed ab-dabs and threw teddies out of cots (this latter after her husband the King suggested she might have bought the teddy and cot in question just a smidgen too early). And the King needed, demanded, craved, yearned, begged, obsessed, tantrummed, ab-dabbed and teddy-cotted just as much. But however hard they tried, no child came.

Until, that was, the Queen's thirtieth birthday, when she received the present she most wanted in all the world: a beautiful baby girl. It couldn't have come as a greater surprise, for the Queen had all but resigned herself to childlessness, and anyway (being a slight and somewhat naève lady) had for several months been assuming she was merely suffering chronic indigestion. (To be honest, this was not unheard of in the palace.)

The King, too, was overjoyed by the new arrival, although less surprised by it, perhaps, than the Queen. As is the way with pregnant women, whether they realise they're pregnant or not, the Queen's tastes in food had turned away from her norm, and for several months now her cooking had been strangely edible.

The Princess was more beautiful than any baby had ever been, more perfect than any baby had a right to be, and from the very day of her birth her doting parents knew that, compared to other babies, she was Slightly Advanced for Her Age.

This being a magical kingdom, there was obviously nothing for it but to hold a Christening. A huge feast was held in the Princess's honour with yards of ale and flagons of wine (or Babycham if you preferred) and whole boars on spits, and a giant quiche, and those funny cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and, oh, just everything.

The entire populace was invited, with a place of honour for the fairies of the realm. It was very, very important to invite all the fairies, since if a fairy didn't receive an invite, she'd exact a terrible revenge on the child in question, usually involving spinning wheels, sleep, death or inadvisable hairstyle, or some terrifying combination thereof. Luckily the King was absolutely au fait with this, and took extra special care in making sure they were all present.

And so it came to pass that soon after the Christening - which, incidentally, was actually a non-denominational naming ceremony because the Kingdom was proudly multicultural, and quite right too - the fairies gathered round the child's cot, and gazed and cooed and giggled and poked, and finally gave the Princess their blessings.

Fairy June blessed her with eternal beauty.

Fairy Pauline blessed her with staggering intelligence.

Fairy Sheila, who had a train to catch back to Redcar, only had time to bless her with Marks and Spencer vouchers but it's the thought that counts.

And Fairy Agatha blessed her with... blessed her with... well, to be honest, no one was entirely sure what Agatha had blessed her with. No one could make out the words. They were arcane, they were mystic, they were unintelligible. Was it a blessing? Was it a curse? Nobody knew but Agatha, and she wasn't telling.

She'd been at the gin all afternoon, you see, and by this stage she was far too pissed to talk.

Twenty-four years later...

Samantha Lewis - Sam to her friends, Ms Lewis to her enemies and "hey, gorgeous, three sugars" to men she was utterly determined never to see again even if they were servicing her boiler - slammed her way through the front door to the flat, exploded into the living room and threw herself, radiating heat, anger and annoyance, onto the leather sofa. Her plan was to do this with such righteous vigour against the world that the sofa would, on behalf of all the arses who had got in Sam's way during the day, collapse. That'd show 'em.

The sofa, of course, did not collapse. It was not disposed to being blamed for the evils of the world in general, and the arses in Sam's life in particular, and so did what it usually did instead. As Sam violently sank down into its leather cushions, it let out a long and satisfying raspberry.

Which was, Sam acknowledged, about par for the course that day.

The day had not started well. Sam had had to stay in for the heating engineer who was coming to service her boiler. When she booked him, he'd promised to be there before 8.30am. This had turned out to be "only an estimate", as had the number of sugars he took in his tea (five, as it turned out), the number of tools he'd brought with him ("Got everything I need in the van" - wrong!) and the cost of the job ("Shouldn't be more than a couple of hundred" - don't even go there). He'd also pinched her bum. Why men ever thought that courtship - this example involving leering, loud tea drinking and a strange dance involving a spanner and little real improvement to a recalcitrant boiler, which was about typical in Sam's experience - could successfully conclude with painful abuse of the buttock, Sam had no idea.

Then came work, which was, well, work really. No need to expand on that; Sam's job was always poo. Sam worked in the media, specifically on a magazine. Sam's mum didn't really know what Sam did, and that was understandable because Sam didn't either. Some weeks she didn't even know what magazine she was working on; not because she had a busy life, but simply because, in all her time there, the editor (or, the person Sam assumed was the editor - she had never been directly introduced to anybody) had never actually told her the name of the publication, and it was strangely missing on all letterheads and internal memos.

At least, the ones Sam was privy to. Which, to be fair, wasn't many of them. Sam suspected that this was because her job was too lowly to warrant inclusion on many internal memos, but since she wasn't sure what her job was, she could never be certain that was the reason. Maybe she was actually the editor-in-chief, and nobody wanted to bother her with mundanities.

On the whole, though, editor-in-chiefship would probably involve more and better lunches than Sam was used to, so probably not in fact. One day, she was sure, she'd find out what she did - probably just before being told she had been doing it so badly for so long that they'd bought a computer to do it quicker, cheaper and better, so could she clear her desk, please.

Actually, if all they wanted was it done quicker, cheaper and better, they could probably buy a stapler.

Copyright Nic Ford. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reprinted without permission from the author.