Fairytales for Wilde Girls

There was something familiar but strange about her - Snow White with a suntan. Cinderella in biker boots. Tough and delicate and magical and real all at once.

A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn’t matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast. Even then, Mother’s contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious. ‘Hmph,’ she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola’s bed. ‘Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty’s just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it’s really saying to impressionable girls is, “Don’t worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you’re sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he’s a prince in disguise!’’ Mother’s Most Lasting Advice ‘Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won’t devour you.

Her lips were frosted with sugar and faeriedust.

And they lived ever after, whether they were happy about it or not.

Ah, sweetie. If the poets couldn’t unriddle them, then you certainly can’t. Be kind, and keep your ears on offer if she wants to talk. But you can’t draw out the strangeness, Edgar. It’s not a poison.

His face was a ghost story: graveyard eyes, cheekbones as sharp as urban legends, a sealed-coffin mouth.

No sooner are her glass toes thrust into the mud grave than the revolutions begin. Uprisings, fire and steel. The prince is lynched in the ballroom with the dead girl's hair. Royalty's a thing of the past. The kingdom chooses their monarch. Naturally, they elect a wolf.

Once upon a time, Isola Wilde was watching late-night television with her eldest brother, Alejandro, when Channel 12 broadcast a live suicide.

Don't deny yourself your oddities but DON'T FOLLOW AFTER ME

He shook his head,'Fuck, you say such fucking weird things.' 'Is that still your favourite word?' asked Isola interestedly, 'I like "verisimilitude". Tolkein said the most beautiful English phrase is "cellar door",

I may not be the most kind, the most loving, the most steadfast – but I have a little of all those things, and while I have those qualities, and the memories of the people who gave them to me, why, then Loneliness can never hurt me!

He said her name like a detective unmasking the face of the culprit he'd suspected all along.

He's Jack the Ripper baby.He'll take your heart.

The bathroom was jungle-fogged, flooded with puddles, piled with soaked towels; cakes of soap with long strands of blonde baked in. A girl in pieces: Barbie-thin ankles, a shaving cut on her knee; hipbones she could stab you with; white hands gelled with strawberry body lotion.