Lucky Sixpence

Christmas. I was dreading it this time last year.

For the past couple of years, I'd spent the big day with my boyfriend Andrew in the little bedsit we shared. It was the ideal excuse not to spend the day with my family. Andrew and I made our own Christmas traditions – decorating our tree on December 1, for example, setting aside the evening to do it.

This year, at Halloween, he'd sat me down and said, 'I'm so sorry, love, but I've met someone else. I never meant it to happen. I fought against it, but this thing was bigger than both of us. She's the one I want to be with. I'll move out at the weekend.'

I'd truly believed Andrew and I would be together forever, so I was devastated. After he left, apart from going to work, I cocooned myself in the flat, wrapped in a duvet, comfort eating and watching trashy TV. I was just coming out of the worst of the post-relationship depression when Christmas began rearing its ugly head.

I turned down any party invitations, partly because I didn't feel like all that enforced jollity, but also in case Andrew was there with his new woman. The party season passed me by. I didn't bother putting a tree up on December 1, and the cards lay unopened on the table by the front door. I fully intended to hibernate until January 2^nd.

Then my mother called. 'Now Andrew's out of the picture, I expect you'll be coming to us for Christmas dinner.' I could tell by her tone of voice it wasn't a suggestion. It was an order. The sub-text was, 'he took you away from us for two Christmases, but this year, we're getting you back.'

I wished I hadn't told her about the break-up, now. At the time, I'd wanted to pour my heart out to someone. I ruled out both my best friends – one was pregnant and the other had always disliked Andrew and would only say, 'I told you so.' My sister was married with a couple of kids and never had time for a chat. So if I wanted to talk about it, the only option was Mum.

Mum had listened to me sobbing down the phone, but after that had come out with all the usual cliches like, 'you were too good for him' and 'there are plenty more fish in the sea'. I couldn't pretend I was having another cosy Christmas with Andrew to avoid the family madhouse.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family to bits, but all of them together at the same time is something I can only take in small doses. Christmas means spending at least three days with them. I live in the city, they live in the suburbs. I don't have a car, so I'd have to get a train on Christmas Eve, and there'd be no escape until the trains started running again the day after Boxing Day.

'I have to work until six on Christmas Eve,' I said, in a flash of inspiration, 'and the trains after that are a nightmare – you can hardly squeeze on and everyone's drunk.'

'Don't worry about that,' Mum said. 'Dad will drive over and get you. You are coming for Christmas dinner. It's just what you need to help get that bloke out of your system.'

I sighed as I put the phone down. There was no escaping it, then.

To begin with, Christmas dinner went exactly as I'd envisaged. I'd arrived with Dad on Christmas Eve to find Mum in the kitchen mixing up the Christmas pudding. 'Perfect timing,' she said, putting the bowl down and handing me an old sixpence. 'Just in time to do the honours.'

It was a typical example of how she thought I was still four years old. When I was four, I absolutely loved being the one to drop the lucky sixpence into the pudding mix and watch as Mum mixed it in, ready for someone to find on the day. Whoever did, she maintained, was in for a lucky year.

'Seriously?' I said. At nearly thirty, it doesn't matter to me anything like as much. 'Won't one of the nephews want to do it?'

'They're not coming until tomorrow, and that's too late,' she insisted.

'All right,' I said. I dropped the coin into the bowl but instead of watching it vanish into the gooey mix, I turned away to put the kettle on.

I helped with all the preparations – peeling and chopping veg. I didn't mind. There's something therapeutic about chopping and peeling; but once we'd done as much as we could it was time to sit and relax, and for Mum to start grilling me about my life.

'How's Tracey?' she asked as soon as she'd put a glass of sherry in my hand. Tracey being my pregnant friend.

'Fine,' I said.

'Is she still getting morning sickness? Does she know if it's a boy or a girl yet? Is she getting cravings? Is she getting big?'

'I don't know,' I said. I have to confess I hadn't taken much of an interest in Tracey's pregnancy. 'I never see her now she's finished work.'

'She's supposed to be your best friend.'

Truth is, seeing her all loved up was the last thing I'd needed these past few months, but I didn't think Mum would understand. Luckily the conversation was brought to an end by the arrival of Uncle Ed. Who pinched my bottom when I got up to re-fill my glass. Part of me wanted to deck him for his sexist beahviour, but I'd only be told 'It's Christmas, love. Lighten up.'

Nevertheless, I'd rather have him than my sister's husband, who arrived next day with my sister and the kids. My sister air kissed me, about all she could manage with a toddler on her hip. Her husband looked at me, with my glass of wine and said, 'Not sprogged up yet then? Your Andrew needs to get his finger out. Well, not his finger, but you know what I mean.'

'We split up,' I snapped back. 'So shut up.'

He gave me an affronted look.

'That's a pity,' my sister said. 'I liked Andrew.'

My nan came in, greeted everyone, then sat at her usual place at the table and took her teeth out, placing them on her side plate. 'Thank God for that,' she said. 'They're so uncomfortable.'

'Ew!' said my older nephew, summing up what we were all thinking but were too polite to mention.

The dinner was scrumptious, I have to say. It had been three years since I spent Christmas Day with my family and my memory seemed to have filtered out all the good bits. It was nice to be reminded of them. If there's one thing my mum can do really well, it's a roast.

Then it was time for the pudding. Dad brought it in, placed it in the middle of the table, and did the heating whiskey in a spoon thing, so a sheet of flame engulfs it. The older nephew said, 'Wow!'

It smelled so good, fruity and spicy. I helped myself to a dollop of brandy butter and tucked in.

A few mouthfuls in and I found the sixpence. Or it found me. I felt a stab of excruciating pain and two hard objects in my mouth. The sixpence, and the tooth which had broken when I chomped on it.

'Are you all right, darling?' Mum asked as I spat my tooth and the coin into my hand. 'I just broke my tooth on that bloody sixpence!' I raged, holding my jaw. 'It really hurts!'

'Oh dear,' Mum said. 'We'd better find an emergency dentist.'

A trip to the dentist? On Christmas Day? Finding the sixpence is supposed to be lucky. Must be some new meaning of the word 'lucky' I was not previously aware of.

I didn't feel the least bit lucky, sat in the car with Nan's scarf tied around my jaw, driving to the emergency dentist. If I hadn't been in so much pain, I'd have felt a right idiot.

Even through the pain, I was getting pangs of guilt, for calling the dentist out and ruining some family's Christmas, not to mention the dental nurse who would have to turn out, too; and for ruining the day for my nephews, who we'd left in floods of tears because present opening would be delayed until we got back.

The nurse/receptionist, I noticed right away, was wearing a hijab, so I guess it was a normal working day for her. The dentist, however, was a young-ish white guy, who, I could see under his white coat, was wearing a garish Christmas jumper. He was also gorgeous. If I'd known there were dentists who looked like that, I'd go more often.

'The lucky sixpence, eh?' he said with a lopsided grin which made my heart melt. 'Happens a lot. Come through.'

To cut a long story short, he patched me up as best he could and dosed me up on pain killers and antibiotics. 'No more booze for you today, I'm afraid,' he said.

How I wished I'd met him in a bar, or at a party. I'd have chatted him up, for sure. Not here, though. Not now. 'I'll give you a ring later to check you're okay,' he said, 'but if there's any problem at all, call me.'

I was so groggy that when everyone else dozed off in front of the telly, I did, too. I was woken by my phone.

'Hello, it's Tom.'

Tom? I had no idea who that was. I didn't know anyone called Tom. I concluded it must be a wrong number, which was a shame. He sounded nice. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I don't know who you are.'

'Forgotten me already?' he said. I could hear a smile in his voice. 'You only saw me a couple of hours ago. Is everything all right with your mouth?'

Of course – the dentist. He had said he'd ring to check on me. 'Oh, sorry,' I said. 'I'm still not thinking straight, but apart from that...' I probed the gap with my tongue. It would take some getting used to, but I wasn't in any pain. '...it's fine. I'm fine; but I'll have to look into getting an implant in the new year.'

'Does that mean I'll be seeing you again?' he asked.

'I'm afraid not – I was only here visiting my family for Christmas. I actually live in town, so I'll be seeing a dentist there.'

'Oh, good,' he said. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted that he thought not seeing me again was a good thing. Before I could come to a conclusion, he continued. 'Because, if you were my patient, I couldn't ask you out to dinner.'

'Did you say what I thought you just said, or am I still under the influence of all those drugs?'

'The drugs should have worn off by now, so yes, you heard me right. I'm asking you out. How about I come up to town in the new year and meet you? You can recommend some good places to eat.'

'Um, okay,' I said.

That was last year. I'm going back to Mum's this Christmas, but this year, I won't be alone. Tom will be with me, and we'll be celebrating the anniversary of the day we first met as well as Christmas. As if that's not enough, we'll be using the occasion to tell my family that Tom and I are getting engaged. That sixpence proved much luckier than I could ever have imagined.

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