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Description
Penny's life started just like every other coin's long life: having been melted, flattened, punched and inscribed, she was finally born into the world in 1971. Along with her 1,521,666,250 sisters, Penny was introduced to a new life of travels and adventures and hardships, beginning in the bottom of a Tesco cash drawer.

It was lonely there, certainly not one of the high points of her existence: none of the other pennies were particularly verbose and the majority of them were dull, rusted and squalid. However, as one of the newest coins on top of the heap, Penny didn't have to stay there long.

On her first day on the job, she found a new home in the hands of a four-year old boy: his hands were sticky and grubby and soon both of Penny's shiny faces were thick with a mixture of soil, saliva and sugar. It was almost a relief when he set her on the counter in his kitchen, but when the child's mother came into the room and beat him violently for taking ten pence from the coin tin, Penny wished she could somehow find a way back into the boy's chubby little hands, that she could somehow comfort him. It was a small crime - so small that Penny wasn't even sure it was a crime at all - but that didn't seem to matter. Soon, the child's vile and horrid excuse for a mother kicked her son to the ground with a disgusted grunt and turned to Penny, seizing her roughly and dropping her into the tin with the other coins. Just before being released into the tin, Penny got a glimpse of a small, bruised and trembling form lying beside the stove, his wide, blue eyes glistening with tears he was too afraid to shed.

That was the last she saw of the boy.

Time passed and soon Penny was used as a contribution to a block of cheddar cheese. Back into the cash drawer, she thought wearily as she fell on top of the pile of other pennies, landing with a series of clinks and chinks of shifting bronze and copper.

Penny lost track of time during her second cash drawer epoch and supposed that there would be many more like it. Eventually, she began moving again from drawer to hand to drawer to hand - with the odd stint in tins overflowing with hundreds of other pennies - and back to drawer again. It seemed this perpetual exchange would never end. Years passed and Penny became grubbier and her shine increasingly muted. Her time as a fresh, young coin was passed. Everyday she was dropped into drawers, purses, wallets and tins where more burnished and lustrous pennies flashed their sheens in her faces.

In the odd moments where the light shone right, she was able to catch the dates on the newer coins: 1983, 1992, 2000 - 2000! It was with a sense of pride that Penny realised she had reached the second millennium. She was one of the original coins, one of the first born. These many fledglings could never say the same. Still, it was with a heavy sadness that she allowed herself to be disregarded and rejected - "Mummy, I want the shiny one - that one's all rusty!" - until finally she became resolved to her fate of drawer, purse, drawer, purse, tin, purse, drawer.

One day, many years later, however, Penny found herself in the hands of someone unexpected. He was familiar, but it was only when she saw his son - with his wide, blue eyes - that she realised who it was.

The poor boy with the grubby hands.

He was much older now: his temples were streaked with strands of silver and his face was scored with fine wrinkles, but he looked much happier than when Penny had last seen him. It could be that the joy brought by his child had overthrown any sadness in him; perhaps he no longer spoke with his violent mother; or maybe he had forgiven her and they were now reconciled. In the end, though, the reason didn't really matter at all.

The man - not a boy any longer, Penny reminded herself - had chiselled her off the pavement with the aid of a key, where she'd been trapped by a repulsive piece of chewing gum for one whole year. He flipped her over to her 'tails' side and smiled to himself, slipping her into his jacket pocket.

That night, he handed her to his little boy.

"Here, son," he said in a low and resonant voice. "Drop it into the glass."

Intrigued, the little boy took Penny between his childish fingers and held her over a glass of Cola, hesitating for a few moments before dropping her in. Suddenly, a feeling of cleanliness and purity washed over Penny as the acid in the Cola stripped away the impurities of forty years of hand-to-hand exchange. Some time later, the child reached into the glass and pulled her out, staring at her with a studious assay before beaming up at his father.

"It's clean!"

The man smiled and ran Penny under cold water.

"This coin," he told his son, "is one of the first 1p coins ever created. I was only four years old when it was made - just like you."

That night, the man brought Penny into his study and over to a cabinet on the far corner, where many other coins from all countries had been cleaned and mounted on little racks. After giving Penny a little polish, he slotted her in next to a gleaming 2p coin.

There Penny remained for the next forty years until the man passed away and left his coin collection to his son, who in turn left it to his son. It seemed that Penny had finally found her purpose, and that the poor boy with the grubby hands had found his too.