The tube train rattled over points and the entire carriage lurched, sending Patty into the passenger behind her.

​

She craned her head around and up into the face of a handsome man of about fifty, she guessed, well dressed in a navy blue pinstripe suit. "Sorry," Patty mumbled. He stared right through her and turned his attention back to his Telegraph. A little manners goes a long way, her mother had told Patty when she was a girl, but that advice was thirty years old, and it seemed it didn't mean a thing in this day and age. Patty turned back and stared at the tube map. Only two more stations, then she would be free of this rancid sardine can on rails.

​

Two stops later, Patty struggled to the carriage door, with many 'Excuse mes', 'Pardon mes' and 'Sorries', until she reached the platform. She heaved a sigh and joined the throng of fellow commuters as they wound their way along tunnels, up stairs and escalators and, finally, out into the sun, where they scurried away, scattering like cockroaches startled by bright light.

​

She walked past a small knot of smokers outside the tube station. It's like walking through an old fireplace, she thought, with a slight air of superiority, having kicked that habit five years ago. Such a pity others had taken the place of nicotine.

​

Of course, she hadn't really wanted to stop, it was just that he had insisted. Richard Hardy - whom she now thought of as Dick, because he was - had wheedled, cajoled and out-and-out argued with Patty to stop. He said it was like kissing an ashtray and her perfume couldn't hide the smell on her clothes and hair.

​

She had nearly, so very nearly, left him after that argument. But Dick had relented, apologised, and Patty had forgiven him. She used the patches and gum, even tried aversion therapy, and after a long six months of hell on Earth, she was clean. 

​

The day after the first fitting for her wedding dress, Patty found out he had been sleeping around for the entire three years they had been together. Their final argument had been likened, by those who had witnessed it, to Ripley versus the alien queen, only with more thrown wine and broken crockery. Video shot by a couple of her friends showed Patty's rage in all its glory and Dick high-tailing it for the door, still trying to explain, apologise and promising to make things right.

​

Patty came to her senses with a startled "What?"

​

"What would you like this morning, Patty? The usual?" The barista, Will by his name tag, asked with a smile.

​

Patty looked around, eyes wide. Completely on autopilot, she had walked to the little coffee kiosk in the small square opposite her office block. It normally took her ten minutes to walk from the tube station to here but she didn't remember a second of the journey. She had been lost in her memories of Dick all that time. Christ! she thought, I could have walked in front of a bus and not known a thing until it was all over. She shook her head and returned Will's smile. A skinny latte was not on the menu today. "Not this morning. Make it a double espresso, please. I think I need a wake up."

​

"That's not all you need, dearie," the voice scratched from behind her.

​

Patty turned and looked down at the short, pudgy woman, with grey hair tied in a bun, shabby dress and an almost incomprehensible Irish accent.

​

The woman thrust a bunch of white heather towards Patty. "Only a couple of quid. Bring you luck."

​

Patty, torn between paying for her coffee and fending off the old woman, dropped her purse, swore, and bent to retrieve it. 

​

"It'll do you good, a little bit of luck here and there. Never know, you might win the Lottery."

​

Patty straightened. "Look, please. I don't really believe in lucky charms and stuff like that. It's all mumbo-jumbo to me." She looked more closely at the woman whose gap-toothed grin made her octagenarian wrinkles deeper. Something about the knowing gaze from the woman's slate-grey eyes made Patty pause. "How about I give you a couple of quid to buy a coffee. Yes?" She fumbled in her purse and found a two pound coin which she held out to the woman.

​

The woman snatched the coin. "That'll not get me a cuppa." She shot Will a glance. "Not at these prices!"

​

Patty produced a pound coin. "Is that enough?"

​

Again the wizened grin as the woman took the coin. "You're a good'un, aren't you?" Then she thrust a sprig of heather into Patty's hand.

​

"I don't need this," Patty said. "You keep it and sell it to someone else. You've got yourself a coffee without having to sell your stock. That's a win for you, isn't it?"

​

"But that's not the point, is it? This is a trade. You give me money, I give you the luck. It's not fair to do it any other way."

​

Patty frowned at her watch. She was running late and had a meeting scheduled to start soon. "Okay," she relented, "I'll take it." The old woman beamed and Patty wagged a finger. "But I'd better win a Porsche or something this weekend. Please. I have to go." She pushed past the old woman and walked towards her office building.

​

"Mark my words, Patricia Dixon. You'll need that bit of luck sooner than you think."

​

Patty did not look back. She hated being called Patricia. It made her feel as if she was in trouble. She shuffled through the revolving doors and walked across the foyer to the lifts, stopping only to drop the sprig of white heather into a wastebin. As she rode up to the third floor, something occurred to her: how had the crazy old woman known my surname?

​

Patty walked to her desk and sat with a thump in her chair. There was already a pile of sticky notes on her desk and monitor. The topmost, bright pink, square was a message from Janine. Her assistant had come down with a dose of 'flu, or something, and wouldn't be in today. Yeah, thought Patty, more like waking up on someone's sofa with a screaming hangover. It was the sort of 'flu bug Janine had experienced many times.

​

She crumpled Janine's note and tossed it into the wastebin. It was a good shot, for once. Patty took the next note and let out a gasp.

​

Hidden under the note was a sprig of white heather. She threw the little twig towards the bin.

​

***

​

Patty worked late that Friday.

 

She was leading the planning for an event the following week, an author's launch of his new book, a copy of which was on her desk. "Read it", her boss had ordered, "get a feel for it and write something inspiring for the introduction to the party."

​

"Can't I just get Janine to design a PowerPoint?" Patty complained but her boss would not be moved.

​

"We need a friendly, human face on this one, Patty," she had said, "not some point-and-click machine presentation."

 

Bitch! Patty had thought, as she smiled at her manager and said: "No problem, then. I'll have a draft on your desk by Monday."

 

Patty took a gulp of now-cold coffee, grimaced, and hefted the doorstep of a book. She scanned the back cover blurb and edited the summary to a single word: shit. How on earth, she wondered, could three esteemed authors and reviewers give such ringing endorsements as 'incredibly moving', 'insightful' and 'a modern masterpiece' to a book that was little more than four hundred pages of testosterone-fuelled machismo, littered with excessive profanity, bloodcurdling violence and ridiculous erotica? 'A teenage boy's wet dream' was a more fitting description, Patty thought.

​

She huffed at her screen and started typing.

​

***

Blue and red lights and high-vis jackets greeted her as she approached the tube station. The entrance was cordoned off and a police officer held up her hand.

​

"Please stay back, miss," she said. "The area is sealed."

 

"Why? What's happened?"

 

"Fire on the eastbound platform," replied the officer. "It's dealt with now but ..."

 

Patty cut her off. "But the line is closed and will be for the foreseeable, yes?"

 

The officer nodded.

 

"Then how the bloody hell am I supposed to get home?" Patty asked thin air. The officer had turned away to deal with another potential passenger whose hopes would be dashed.

 

***

​

Patty sat in a nearby bar, nursing her second pink gin, keeping an eye on the news screen and deflecting clumsy attempts to chat her up. The timeline of the story disturbed and intrigued her. The fire had broken out at 17:15. One person had been taken to hospital with second degree burns and three others were being treated for smoke inhalation. No comments had been made about the source of the blaze but at that particular time, Patty would have been standing on that platform, waiting for a train.

​

That was a spot of luck, she thought. Then it hit her. The white heather that she had thoughtlessly spurned, not once, but twice. Maybe it was lucky after all?

​

She drained her gin and headed back to her office.

​

***

​

"Stop!" Patty cried. "Wait a minute!" She was seconds too late.

​

The Filipino cleaner upended Patty's wastebin into a large black sack attached to her cleaning trolley.

​

"I need something from that bag," Patty said as she reached for the sack. 

​

The cleaner guarded her trolley. "No. Can't do that," she said in accented, broken English.

​

"Look, please," Patty begged. "I chucked something away earlier and I need to get it back." She reached for the black sack but the cleaner stood in the way.

​

"Can't do that. No," she repeated.

​

"But it's important," Patty insisted, almost whining. "I'll lose my job if I can't find it." The cleaner shook her head. "Look. I'll give you a fiver if you let me check." Patty rifled through her purse for a five pound note, which she held out to the cleaner. "Yes?"

​

The cleaner shrugged, her expression indicating she clearly thought Patty was mad for wanting to rummage in the rubbish. That didn't stop her taking the fiver and stepping back from the trolley.

​

Patty raked through the waste produced in a day at the office: printouts, food wrappers, apple cores and orange peel, bent paper clips and empty biros. It wasn't all her rubbish, of course, and she cursed when a dribble of coffee seeped into the sleeve of her jacket. But there was no sign of the white heather.

​

"Thanks. Okay. Sorry," Patty said to the cleaner as she slumped into her chair.

​

The cleaner shrugged and trundled away.

 

Dejected, Patty sat at her desk, feeling as if her luck had run out. She logged in to her computer and typed another paragraph into her author's introduction. The little red squiggles indicated nearly a dozen spelling mistakes in the fifty words she had written. These she corrected, then saved and exited her work.

 

She flexed her fingers and reached into her drawer for some hand cream. On top of the pen tray was a bright green sticky note. She saw two words: Last Chance. Under the note was the sprig of white heather.

​

Relief washed over Patty like a warm ocean wave, making her think of the Seychelles again. Maybe, just maybe, a little luck would do her good? Patty slotted the heather into her purse.