Preface

How do the best stories start? That's right, with "Once upon a time." Well, this story doesn't.

Why not? Because it didn't happen once upon a time. It happened more like yesterday or last week: a while ago, recent you might say. Certainly not “Once upon a time,” in any case.

Anyway, this story is about a girl, whose name was Anna. Poor Anna, she was called. Poor, lonely Anna. It wasn't that the other children didn't like her, or that her parents were particularly cruel. It wasn't that she was ugly or anything like that. I suppose what people would say these days is that Anna was a solitary child, that she liked her own company. She kept herself just a little bit apart from other children, as though she wasn't really that interested in what they had to say or what they were doing. The other children were never quite sure of her and rarely asked her to join in their games (as they knew, when they did that she would probably decline the offer).

Of course, the grown ups (Anna's parents included) watching all of this, felt it was a shame. “Poor, lonely Anna,” they would say. “Not a friend in the world.”

You might be tempted to feel sorry for poor Anna. You might feel sad that she used to walk to school by herself (even though there were other children that walked the same way as her). You might find it upsetting that Anna spent most of the her school breaks sitting quietly, reading books with no-one bothering to interrupt her. You might be distressed to know that sometimes, apart from the teachers, Anna wouldn't speak to a soul all day. Poor Anna, you would probably say. Poor lonely Anna.

The truth was that Anna didn't mind. In fact, she often didn't even notice. And in any case, if you were at all worried, what was about to happen to Anna would soon change your mind. Lucky Anna, you would say. Amazing Anna.