Woman pranked her husband with fake National Lottery win only to actually scoop £1m jackpot just two weeks later

Charlotte was 28 at the time of the 2018 win, which came from a ticket costing just £1.50.

She told The Mirror: "I went to deposit £10 into my online lottery account and saw there was £1.50 sitting in there, so I used that to get a ticket, and it happened to be the winning draw. It was definitely a £1.50 well spent and it was pure luck."

Convincing Daniel that the windfall was real proved to be a considerable challenge.

Duped by Charlotte's scratch card prank just two weeks earlier, he was understandably sceptical when she broke the news.

Only after he logged into the lottery account himself and saw the winning sum displayed there, and after Charlotte phoned to confirm the details, did the reality start to dawn on him.

Charlotte herself was not immediately convinced either, initially mistaking the jackpot notification for an advertisement rather than a genuine prize.

Daniel Peart and his wife Charlotte celebrated their EuroMillions HotPicks win in Alwalton, Peterborough.

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She described the experience as "overwhelming" and a "feeling that you can never forget".

"I don't even think you can describe it in 1,000 words, because there are so many emotions you feel. You want to laugh, cry and scream," she said.

Once the million pounds landed in their account, the couple's priority was finding a family home spacious enough for their three children to each have their own bedroom.

Fortune smiled on them again when a property became available in Whittlesey, an area Charlotte had dreamt of living in since childhood.

By November 2018, just three months after their win, the family of five had moved in.

The couple thanked the community around them

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A three-day trip to Lapland that December added further magic to an already extraordinary year.

"The house and holiday were the two things we were really pleased about, and we wouldn't have been able to do them without winning the lottery," Charlotte said.

One thing the couple refused to alter, however, was their children's Christmas budget, adding: "We could have bought them everything they wanted, but we thought, what are they going to learn from that?"

Charlotte, now 36, has been determined to keep life as normal as possible despite the seven-figure windfall.

"We try to live our lives as normally as possible. We believe that if we just behave normally, it helps other people feel normal around us as well," she said.

The couple said the community's reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

"A lot of people have actually said, 'It couldn't have happened to a nicer couple'," Charlotte noted, though she added that friends would jokingly ask to touch her for a bit of luck.

More recently, she has channelled her good fortune into giving back, establishing a Ladies Circle group in Whittlesey.

"The town has supported us through it, so it's giving back, and the lottery has allowed me to do it because of the position I'm in, as I don't need to concentrate so much on working and providing," she said.

The Peart family scooped the win in 2015

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Peterborough, the Cambridgeshire city nearest to the Pearts' home, ranks ninth on the National Lottery's list of luckiest locations in the United Kingdom.

Since the lottery's inception in 1994, the area has produced 142 millionaires, contributing to a nationwide total of more than 8,000.

Charlotte acknowledged that luck does seem to cluster in her corner of the country. "I do know a couple of other winners in the area," she said, adding: "there's a lot of good in this town."

Kathy Garrett, Winners Experience Lead at Allwyn, the National Lottery's operator, said: "One of the things we love most about The National Lottery is seeing luck turn up in every corner of the UK.

"From big cities to small towns, we've celebrated thousands of life-changing wins over the years, and these figures show that there is no single postcode for luck."