When my cousin Jack and his mother, Auntie Cassets, ran off with their stolen stash of cash, they left their cottage to me. "It's all yours, now, Rosie," Auntie said. "We're off to join the upwardly mobile."
       Anything would be an improvement on my student bed-sit with its discarded curry cartons in the bathroom, green sausages evolving their own eco-system in the fridge, and something indefinable under the bed. So, I waved goodbye to my bed-sit buddies and moved into the old homestead.
       Auntie had left behind a collection of antique dust collectors, consisting of enamel powder compacts, silver snuffboxes, and objects that might have been either sugar tongs or instruments of torture. I packed them in a cast-off milk crate from the neighbourhood convenience store and banished them to the attic.
       She had always been a house-proud old soul. The cottage was a palace compared to my recent abode, but the garden was a vision of the scuzzier side of Hell. The felled beanstalk lay in its narrow crater all the way to the distant horizon. The remaining stump protruded through the weed and fungus-infested soil, among discarded alcohol containers and butt-ends of dubious legality. The major irritant, however, was Jack's victim, the dead giant, which was starting to stink.
       First things first. I visited the local shelter for homeless animals. A young man with an earnest expression and long hair tied back with a frayed shoelace, put down his mop and bucket and trudged across the paddock to greet me. "Hi. I'm Julian. You looking for a pet?" his accent suggested rich parents and a private school education.
       "No. Are you looking for food for your inmates?"
       "Yah, but we don't pay. We're a charity."
       "That's okay; you'd be doing me a favour. How many of them are carnivores?"
       "None of them are picky. They'll eat what they can get."
       "Decomposing giant?" I asked.
       He shrugged. "Why not?"
       I gave him my address.
       Next morning, Julian turned up with a young woman wearing a long, fringed skirt flapping around her mud-caked Wellington boots. "Hi," she said. "I'm Bryony."
       The pack of felines, canines, big bad wolves, and a Billy-goat Gruff that accompanied them set about devouring the offensive carcass, and by the time the setting sun stained the clouds pink, the homeless pets were gnawing on clean bones. Problem solved.
       The next project was the beanstalk. I consulted my boyfriend, Tom 'Woody,' the Woodcutter. Due to the previous generation's lack of imagination, every working-class male in our vicinity was called either Tom or Jack, so he was grateful for his nickname. Woody didn't lack imagination. He considered himself an entrepreneur. He scratched his head, stroked his chin, and said, "Hmm."
       "What do you think?" I asked.
       "I think what we 'as 'ere, Rosie, is a rich source of vegetable protein. The 'ealth foods industry will pay good money for it."
       While Woody was cutting the beanstalk into saleable chunks, I set about restoring the much-abused garden. After piling the scattered garbage into a bin liner, I treated the under-nourished patches of bare soil to a dinner of fertilizer. The pack that ate the giant had provided much of it. I completed the task with a scattering of grass seed and left the rest to Mother Nature.
       Before long, a semblance of a lawn established itself. Also, a new shoot sprouted from the beanstalk's stump. I pointed it out to Woody.
       "Stroke o' luck, is that," he said. "We'll 'ave an unlimited supply of the product. We're made for life, Rosie, lass."
       "Good to know," I said, "but when Beanstalk Mark Two reaches the clouds before we harvest it for veggie burgers and schnitzels, I intend to climb it and look around the giant's domain. You up for it?"
       "Count me in. Cuttin' things down and cuttin' things up can get monotonous. Time I broadened my 'orizons."
       Health Foods PLC paid us ten groats for every hundredweight of beanstalk. The money rolled in, I paid off my student loan, and Woody bought a new axe. He moved into the cottage with me. Life was bountiful, and all was well with the world.
       One spring morning, I received a letter from Auntie Cassets. She'd invested her half of the giant's gold in premises on the High Street, opposite the Cat and Fiddle Tavern, and opened an antique emporium. She asked me if I would deliver her collection of bits and pieces so that she could add them to her stock.
       Woody and I carried the milk crate between us and went in search of her business venture. We found it. I pointed to the sign above the door, Antique Assets. "This must be the place," I said. Auntie saw us through the window and beckoned us inside. "Hello, Auntie." I handed her the crate of dust collectors.
       "Thank you, lass." She turned to Woody. "I remember you. The woodcutter, right?" She winked at me. "Are you two living happily ever after?"
       "Yes, thank you," I said.
       Furniture, glassware, pottery, jewellery, and assorted oddments of obscure function filled every space. I noticed a shelf full of migraine-inducing orange, turquoise, and crimson vases. "They don't look old, Auntie," I said.
       "Art Deco. It's very 'in' at the moment. Even the antique business has to keep up to date."
       "Yes, I suppose so." Feeling out of my depth, I changed the subject. "How's Jack?"
       She shook her head, toddled to a three-seater chaise longue that had seen a better century, and sat down. She patted the threadbare velvet seat, inviting us to join her. "Once a loser always a loser. He's taken a room in that place." She pointed through the window to the tavern. "The landlord tells me he's in the bar every night with a tankard in his hand and a wench on his knee."
       "So, he didn't invest his gold?" I asked.
       "No chance. He frittered most of it away and then came here begging me for more. I chased him off with a thousand-year-old horsewhip." She patted my arm. "If he turns up at the cottage with some sob story, don't be fooled. He's a useless waste of space." She turned to Woody. "Keep your axe sharpened, young man. You have my permission to chop off his head."
       The colour drained from Woody's face. "I can't do that to anyone Auntie. I tried when the queen sent me into the forest with her stepdaughter an' told me to bring back her 'ead in a basket."
       Auntie said, "I suppose you let her go."
       He nodded. "Poor girl. I 'ope she came to no 'arm."
       "Don't worry, lad. She'll have found a handsome prince by now. That's the way the world works. What did you tell the queen?"
       "That a wolf ate the 'ead. That's why I had to take the 'By Royal Appointment' sign off the woodcutter's shed door."
       We stayed awhile drinking tea out of three-hundred-year-old porcelain cups and eating fruitcake off matching plates, and then we said our goodbyes.
       Spring bloomed into summer, and Beanstalk Mark Two reached the clouds. "Let's do it," I said.
       It took us three hours to reach the top. I was grateful for the rock-climbing course I'd taken three years ago, in the hills where Jack and his childhood sweetheart Jill, fell down. She'd never spoken to him again.
       We stepped through a cold mist into a long, stone-floored dining hall. Rats and cockroaches scattered from the table, where bare bones of scavenged carcases lay on golden dishes.
       "What's 'olding this place up?" Woody asked. "It can't be floatin' on a cloud."
       I shook my head. "No, I think we've passed through a portal into a parallel universe."
       "What?"
       "Don't worry about it. It's called physics."
       "I don't like it in 'ere," he said. "Let's go outside."
       A metal door led to a narrow corridor sloping upwards. We followed it to another metal door that opened onto a craggy hillside with sparse tufts of grass poking between the rocks. "Jack told Auntie the giant's lair was a castle," I said. "But he only saw it from the inside. It's a hide-out built into the hill."
       Below the hill, desolate scrub-land dotted with dead or dying trees stretched towards a mountain range on the horizon. Sullen grey clouds obscured the sun, and a metallic taste of ash and rust tainted the smoky air.
       Woody said, "We doesn't need physics to know this land 'as been devastated by some kind of war, or natural disaster."
       "It's a dump," I said. "Let's go home."
       We climbed down the beanstalk in half the time we'd taken to climb up, and flopped, exhausted, onto the lawn. Woody said, "I'll cut it down tomorrow after breakfast."
       Change of plan. Next morning, we were enjoying our toast and marmalade when the bad groat turned up. "Come in, Jack," I said. "I think there's some coffee left in the pot. Would you like a cup?"
       "Yes, please," he said, "and a piece of toast if there's any going."
       I fetched an extra cup and plate from the kitchen while Woody glared at our unwelcome visitor.
       Jack removed his fashionable feathered cap, colour co-ordinated with his purple, leather jacket, that must have cost as much as the goose that laid a golden egg. He pulled a stool up to the table and helped himself. "I heard about your Health Foods contract," he said. "Technically, of course, the beanstalk's mine. I appreciate the work you've put in, and I'm prepared to be a silent partner. I suggest we split the profit three ways. What d'ya say?"
       So that he could spend his split on feathered caps, leather jackets and tavern wenches, while his mother works for a living? Not a chance. This called for quick thinking. No problem. I'm a university student, so I can think quick. "I thought you'd be more interested in climbing the new beanstalk and stealing more of the giant's gold," I said.
       Jack's eyes widened. His hand shook and rattled his cup. "What? There's more?"
       "Sheds full. We climbed up and took a look around, didn't we, Woody?"
       Woody choked on his toast, nodded, and gulped his coffee.
       "They're in the castle grounds," I said. "There must be a goldmine nearby."
       Jack was breathless with excitement. "Why didn't you bring any back?"
       "We didn't have anything to carry it in."
       "I'll get it. Can I have a sack?"
       "Of course, and I'll make you some sandwiches."
       Woody found a sack in the attic. I placed Jack's packed lunch inside it, and we accompanied him to the foot of the beanstalk. "Actually," I said, "there's a good world up there for an adventurous lad to explore, make his fortune, and find a princess."
       "You're right, Rosie," he said. "I've heard that they're usually found in glass coffins or behind a hundred years' growth of brambles."
       "Sounds fun," I said. "Off you go, then."
       He waved, and with the sack slung across his shoulder, he started to climb. Woody whispered to me, "That may be the way our world works, Rosie, but I'm not sure about the one up there."
       "Not our problem," I said. "Give him three hours, then get out your axe."
       "What if he climbs slower than we did and 'asn't reached the top?"
       "We'll hear him scream on the way down, and we'll invite Julian and Bryony to bring the pack for a snack."