At the last count my 15 year old's smile has cost me £2,777 on a cost-per-wear basis (say, Christmas and birthdays) that must work out at about £450 per smile. He has been wearing metal of some description in his mouth for over three years and at night goes to bed sporting a head brace, a sort of elasticated coat hanger affair, which I can only pray does not turn him into a sexual deviant in future years. So perhaps it's not surprising that he doesn't smile much.
Even offsetting the cost of all the Hello! and Tatler magazines I have consumed in the orthodontist's Louis Quelquechose-style waiting room, it's an awful lot of money to pay for a straight set of gnashers. And now, to rub salt into the sore gums, new research has emerged suggesting that British orthodontic treatment, which often employs teeth extraction in combination with fixed braces, can result in long-term damage to the skull, jaw pain and headaches.
"Oh yes," confirms my friend and anxiety counsellor, "my chiropractor has always said that tooth extractions in childhood cause all sorts of problems later on - hormonal, spinal..." Her own 10-year-old daughter, surrounded by metal-mouthed friends in class, has been directed by the same chiropractor simply to stick both thumbs in her mouth and pull on her palate in order to widen it. This may not look as cool as having train tracks (getting a flashy multi-coloured brace fitted along with your first bra is now considered an essential rite of passage into puberty), but it's a damn sight cheaper.
Unfortunately for my oldest son, thumb yanking would have been too little, too late. He had, I was assured by the first orthodontist we saw when he was 11, a mouthful of problems. An overbite, overcrowding, teeth set to emerge in all the wrong places, plus a couple of vampire fangs.
This was an NHS consultation and I presumed, naively, that a child with such "severe problems" would be treated on the national health. Oh no. It was much too severe for the NHS - the problems required more time and better materials, which he could only supply privately.
I had already taken a dislike to the orthodontist in question - I was suspicious both of his bow tie and the fact that the first question he asked, on both of our visits set a year apart, was where my son went to school. When I replied the local primary, he more or less said "push off, then". Next year, when the answer was a private secondary school in Hammersmith, he smirked "oh, very smart" - ignoring my hypocritical middle-class splutterings about having chosen it precisely because it wasn't smart - and proceeded with the diagnosis, his eyes rolling pound signs like a Prada till on a Saturday morning.
My dentist seemed unwilling to refer me to anyone else, fuelling my conspiracy theories about cozy financial relationships between dentists and orthodontists. But outside his room the receptionist quietly slipped me two cards: one for an NHS orthodontist and the other for a private one that other mothers with similar aversions to bow ties had found "very nice".
For the NHS one there was a waiting list of two years - by which time my son would presumably be frightening small children every time be opened his mouth. I plumped for Mr P and changed my dentist.
The diagnosis from Mr P was pretty much the same. He pinned up X-rays - which could have been cro-magnon man's for all they meant to me - and tutted. To add to the problems (and ultimately the bill) he managed to find a stray molar located up in the roof of Smiler's mouth, which he intended to deal with by surgically excavating it, bonding one end of a small gold chain to the tooth and attaching the other end to a brace which would then pull the tooth over into its God-given place. The whole treatment would take 18 months and cost £2,000.
"He's a good-looking boy..." the dentist said, leaving unspoken the assumption that any decent mother would mortgage her own teeth to ensure that her son would have a girl-snaring smile. I thought of Ken Dodd and paid up.
Eighteen months came and went, as did the bills. The tooth in traction was not cooperating - a non-cooperation that was costing us £100 a month. My husband went to complain (assertive is not my middle name), and Mr P started treating Smiler for free.
Other orthodontists at the practice said that the treatment wasn't working and should be changed, but my money was on Mr P. He had excellent taste in fine wines, gourmet foods and luxury holidays - I reckoned he knew a thing or two about teeth.
Sure enough, it eventually came through, only to feel the embrace of cold metal close around it as it too is manoeuvred into perfect formation. Only another six months or so and we will have, I am assured, an extremely handsome boy with a dazzling smile of American proportions (that'll be after the personality transplant, of course).
Meanwhile my husband's dental legacy is becoming apparent in the rest of the children. ("I don't know what all the fuss is about. I just had a few teeth pulled out and that was that," he says with a wolfish grin, two rogue incisors catching on his bottom lip. "Try not to smile," we say.) I'm a little quieter now on the subject of perfect American smiles looking false, while my belief that slightly crooked teeth show character has waned.
Our new dentist found us an NHS orthodontist in Hammersmith for the next two children; recently qualified (taught by Mr P as it happens), he had just opened his practice so there were still NHS places up for grabs.
The waiting room is horrid - decorated in maroon with pink chairs, it's a bit like walking into a mouth - and the patients lie next to each other on dental couches, so there is no privacy when their mouths are pulled into hideous rictuses (or should that be ricti?) as the braces are fitted. But the actual treatment is no different, according to the orthodontist. Private patients get the cubicle, the after-school appointments, and the coloured braces. Give our Smiler a year or two, however, and I expect he'll have something to say on the subject of fine wines.
