As luck would have it

 Let me read it to you!

Written for Sunday Scribblings

Lucy never had much luck, and during the last two years it had gone from bad to worse. It was just before she was due to start university that she claimed it. She was walking along the street when an old lady a few steps in front of her dropped something. Lucy bent down to pick it up with the intention of running after the lady and handing it back. It was a silver necklace from which hung a talisman. As she looked at it, shining in the palm of her hand, something naughty inside her told her that she should keep it for herself. And so she did. From that day forth, whenever she felt she needed a bit of luck she gripped it between her fingers for a second or two convinced that it would help. However nothing ever went her way, in fact during her  two years at uni, and despite the talisman her luck seemed to go from bad to worse. Yet somehow Lucy managed to finished her course.

It was a Tuesday morning. Nothing ever went well for Lucy on Tuesdays, so when an envelope containing her final exam results dropped onto the mat, she naturally expected the worst. Four weeks earlier when sitting the exam, the questions on the sheet might just as well have been written in a foreign language. She had taken educated guesses in the hope that one or two of her answers might just be right. On that day she was not wearing the talisman around her neck; she'd decided to get rid of it before sitting the exam. After all, it seemed to be bringing her bad luck rather than good and she needed all the luck she could get right then.  So you can imagine her delight and surprise that Tuesday morning, when the piece of paper inside the envelope told her that she had passed her finals with flying colours.

Lucy had in fact disposed of the talisman whilst walking to the campus on the morning of her final exam. She really wished she could have got the talisman back to the old lady, but that would have been impossible. So she had simply dropped it in the grass verge. What ensued was almost like history repeating itself. A fellow student, Stacy, was walking a few paces behind Lucy and saw it fall to the ground. She of course had no idea that Lucy had intentionally dropped it, but just like Lucy she had decided to keep it for herself rather than hand it back. The difference was, Stacy did not need any more luck. Everything always went Stacy’s way and often well beyond. Everything Stacy touched turned to gold (except the talisman which is silver and remains that way to this day). It was therefore a bit of unusually bad luck that occurred a second or two after popping the talisman into her bag, because when she stepped from the pavement to cross the road, she got knocked down by a car and landed up in hospital. Whilst lying in her bed she had insisted on holding the talisman in the hope that it would speed her recovery. Sadly for her it did not and Stacy went rapidly downhill, departing this mortal coil some twelve hours later.

When her relatives came to collect her things, none of them recognised the necklace so they gave it to one of the nurses, Natasha.

A few days ago Natasha went to visit her Granny in a nursing home. Granny had gone from being a lively bubbly old person two years before, to a bit of a vegetable. No one knew why. But on this particular day, her eyes lit up as she saw her long lost talisman dangling from her granddaughter’s neck. She put out a wobbly hand to touch it, and it was as if she’d swallowed a magic potion! Her cheeks filled with colour and she smiled a great big gummy smile. ‘My luck has returned’ she said as Natasha fastened the necklace around the elderly lady’s neck.

So there we have it!  Lucy got a little bit of luck, Stacy got what she deserved, Natasha is a favourite granddaughter and Granny is ballroom dancing again. I like a happy ending!