"I've Got Sixpence"

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A sixpence. One whole, shining, silver sixpence, sitting in a dissolving patch of snow on the way to the shop. It was bully-boy Mike's turn to do the shopping, but he twisted her arm and stole her thruppence instead. Now she is the one out in the cold, swinging the basket, and she is the one who found the coin. And she knows exactly what to do with it. "I've Got Sixpence" is a short, sparkling childhood vignette set in a mid-twentieth-century English town where sweet shops smell of aniseed and sherbet and a quarter pound of the right sweets can feel like justice. Inside old mother Wilkinson's shop, with jars of Yorkshire Mixture and Floral Gums lined up on the shelves, a clever girl makes a plan so perfectly calibrated to her brother's weaknesses that he will never suspect a thing. This is a story about small victories and the specific satisfaction of outwitting someone bigger and louder than you. It is about grandmothers who share your taste in sweets, brothers who always overplay their hand, and the particular delight of spending your own money exactly how you choose. Warm, funny, and drenched in nostalgia, "I've Got Sixpence" will delight readers who love finely observed short fiction and anyone who has ever savoured a well-earned, quietly triumphant moment.