There was nothing more that June liked doing than having a natter. She was, in fact, the queen of chatter.

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There was nothing more that June liked doing than having a natter. She was, in fact, the queen of chatter. Sometimes she would babble while eating off a platter; other times her attention was on her friend who she would flatter. She did not resemble the Mad Hatter, as her brain was not scatter – and she could always be counted on to ask, ‘What’s the matter?’

She had a grand old smile which would light up a room, and she would often correct you if you didn’t use, ‘whom’. She would arrange her flowers in a vase to accentuate each bloom and she always got about in the finest perfume.

But this morning was different; there was something wrong. All of a sudden she was scared of the throng. This once proud woman, who considered herself strong, couldn’t quite feel like she would belong. The truth of this pong was that she had lost her teeth box; the truth of the trouble was that she had lost her song.

June furrowed her eyebrows in thought. She was attempting to think back to the night before, and the usual routines that she followed.

1. She would apply her night creams at her mirror above her dresser. She would always lather up the creams generously, knowing how generously the ladies she lunched with commented on her glow.
2. She would move from the dresser then to sit on the edge of her bed, where she would carefully remove her dentures and place them into a small box which sat on the side table.

Given her level of chatter and inclination to natter; this was indeed what she imagined as her very own chatterbox. A clever pun that she would tell herself each nights, as she'd say good night to her pearly whites. But, as she sat on the edge of her bed, she was not mistaken, the box was missing. June rose to her feet, unwilling to show her gummy smile. She was resolute: she would not dare open her mouth without her luminous smile.

Little did she know, not speaking would destroy her. Her phone began to chime as she was leaving her bedroom. A lunch date, no doubt, and the latest gossip. She tensed, but, knowing she could not open her mouth to greet the caller, and then to entertain them with sensational stories, she let the phone ring out. She stooped a little lower as she made her frantic way about the house, trying to find her teeth. She was not in any state to reason, had she been, she may have looked under her bed (not that she would have found her teeth there, but it would have indicated a thorough search).

A knock on the door interrupted her frantic thoughts. She froze; there was no way she could answer it – and the temptation was there to do so, and to engage the postman in a flirtatious conversation. She knew it was cliché, but she couldn’t help comment on the package size, every single time! Of course, for the poor young man who (or should June correct this to whom?) was the subject of the unwanted advances, he did not have the grounding to inform June that her deliveries were on the small to very small scale, compared to the majority of his route.

The post man left, and June’s frenzy continued. She moved from room to room around her home looking for her teeth – and, as the clock rolled on, and she missed her lunch dates and three more phone calls (one of which was a telemarketer, who she would normally enjoy talking to for a quarter of an hour!) and in the end, night was about to fall, and she had no choice but to give up. She returned to her bedroom where she applied her creams, miserably thinking that she would never have the opportunity again to be in public to have others comment on her skin.

Then she walked to her bed and got in; noticing on her bedside table a small box with her teeth. She opened her mouth, for the first time that day, in exclamation! And, looking around bewildered, she finally understood – that morning she had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed, exiting via the wrong bedside table, which, as she very well knew, did not hold her teeth.

With a sense of relief then, at having found her dentures in their normal spot on her bedside, she went to bed; luckily, she was by herself, as she talked in her sleep until the sun peeped through her windows the next morning.

The next morning she rose, knowing that's how it goes. So let's abandon the prose, as June wriggled her toes, and now it's the end, let's bring this story to a close.