“What a pretty bracelet, dear!” Jane said, smiling. “Did your mother leave you that?”

“Oh, yes!” By a good fifty years, Luca Jackson was the youngest in the room — her father having just gone out to pick something up from somewhere. She twisted the new bracelet around her wrist, and then realised that something was missing.

Great-Great-Aunt Edith’s old bracelet, the one that had been passed from January-born to January-born female in the family on their 13th birthday. Luca was the fifth or sixth to receive the bracelet, and there wouldn’t be another one until she started having kids, if she ever did.

But she always wore it at these family gatherings, and surely she should have noticed if she never put it on this morning…

It would be Luca who found a way to ruin such an old tradition, wouldn’t it?