From the moment she set foot out of bed the next morning, Cinders’s day went from bad to worse.

First, she tried to take Sparks for a walk and find the spot where her parents had met, but everywhere she tried to go was forbidden.

Then she ran away when the palace photographers tried to take her photograph for the terrible magazines her sisters liked to read.

And then she was told off for running in the palace grounds because ‘it wasn’t considered ladylike’.

And, right after that, she was told off for saying something very naughty to the guard who had told her off for running when she thought he couldn’t hear her any more.

‘What’s the point in having a garden if you can’t play in it?’ she asked Sparks as she returned to her rooms to stare out of the window. ‘Imagine going to the bother of having an entire garden that’s just for looking at. What a lot of nonsense.’

‘Imagine having an entire kitchen full of food downstairs when I’m starving,’ he replied, rolling on to his back and letting his floppy red ears fall to the floor. ‘Wish us up a sausage, Cinders. I won’t make it if I don’t get something to eat soon.’

‘I’m hungry too,’ Cinders said, rubbing her own empty belly, ‘but I really, really don’t think it’s a good idea to make wishes while we’re in the palace.’

It seemed Sparks had changed his mind on that front.

‘But I’m starving,’ he cried, throwing his head back and howling at the ceiling. ‘My kingdom for a sausage!’

‘Shush, Sparks!’ Cinders leaped across the room and clamped her hand round his chops. ‘If the guards hear you, they’ll take you away and then you’ll be in the sausages, not eating them. Now do you promise to be quiet?’

Sparks nodded and she let go. Immediately, he began to howl.

‘I wish we had some sausages!’ Cinders shouted.

Her fingertips tickled and, when she looked down at the floor, she saw one measly-looking, skinny sausage.

‘That’s the best you can do?’ Sparks asked, poking at it with a paw. ‘Good grief.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she replied as he gobbled it up. Holding her hands up to the light of the window, Cinders sighed.

Why weren’t her wishes working any more?

And where oh where was Brian when she needed her?