Life's Lottery (66 page)

Someone who has half your money.

The other winner ticked the ‘No publicity’ box. You find yourself thinking more and more about him; or her. Is their life better? Did they have more to build on? For them, was the money extra fuel for a rocket already cleared for lift-off?

Or have they cracked up?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Out there is someone with £6.5 million that might have been yours if they’d made a random pen-stroke in a different way, if some unknowable synapse in their brain had fired left instead of right.

Do they think of you?

You don’t mind publicity. You
want
it. You want people to know you’ve got what you
deserve
. You let television crews into your new home, to follow your family as you relish your just desserts.

So the other winner knows who you are.

If they get Cloud 9 satellite TV, which followed you around for six months, they know how many luxury cars you own and have written off, which quiz-show presenter you had an affair with, what brand of champagne you filled the swimming-pool with at Jesse’s fourteenth birthday party.

Are they obsessed with you? Are they thinking of you as you think of them?

Is it a woman? Is she attractive?

Would you like them?

Were they rich already?

You make inquiries with the Lottery people. Even as a big winner, you don’t have a right to know.

The other winners are your peers. Soon there will be a community of Lottery millionaires. A class, even. Maybe a seaside township will be built for them, like the village in
The Prisoner
. A party town, a money town. One long holiday. One long soap. Cloud 9 would love to have the rights.

There are functions for you all. You meet other winners. But not
the
other winner.

* * *

Your family don’t understand.

You have what you wanted. Why can’t you just enjoy it?

‘Just let it go,’ Vanda tells you.

If you can forget the other winner, go to 205. If you can’t, go to 217.

Y
ou wake up for a moment and see James standing, in his dressing-gown, by the door.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he says, softly.

You obey.

In a dream, you are married to Marie-Laure but your wife manages never to be in the same place as you. Elements of your life are missing. The situation goes on for years. It’s not a nightmare, it’s a tragedy.

You are woken up by creaking. Lying awake, with an angry erection, you hear the four-poster in the next room. It’s a noisy bed. Through the cottage wall, you hear your brother and Mary Yatman fucking, trying and failing to be quiet about it.

If that’s the way it’s going to be…

You put a pillow over your head and try to get back to sleep. No luck.

‘Harder… deeper… yes.’

Nothing is so guaranteed to make you miserable. You want to knock their heads together and slam them into sleep. Eventually, it starts to get light outside. No let-up from next door. Oh, for a bucket of cold water!

You are wide awake. And still dog-tired. You get up and get dressed, clumping around as noisily as possible. Then you go downstairs and outside, to suck in a breath of icy air.

The cold hits you like a hammer and cuts you like a knife, but cleans you out. In the pre-dawn, the countryside is grey and green and gloomy. You can’t tell if the fine droplets of water on your face are thin drizzle or thick mist.

You look at Colditz and almost feel sorry for Hackwill’s party. They must all have been kept awake by seven sets of chattering teeth. The puddles around the pens are ice-cakes.

This morning, you’re giving them hot soup for breakfast and taking them to an assault course.

Something stirs in Colditz. A head pokes out, mole-like, and looks around. Hackwill. He gets out and stands up, stretching.

You press yourself against the side of Castle Drac, trying to blend in. You swear the whole building is shaking from sex.

Someone else gets out of the pens. Warwick?

‘We can start the minibus,’ Hackwill is saying, ‘and be in a warm hotel by ten o’clock.’

It’s almost funny. They’re plotting an escape.

‘
Raus! Raus!
’ you shout, striding across the grass.

The escape committee are startled. Hackwill is a deal more shocked than Warwick. It’s as if you’d caught them fucking, not planning to run away.

‘You men haff been tunnelling from A Hut,’ you sneer in an Anton Diffring accent. ‘Attempted escapees vill be shot.’

Warwick grins nastily and
heils
. Hackwill looks sheepish. There was something else going on but you don’t get it.

‘Press-ups, vun dozen,’ you say. ‘Zen hot breakfast.’

For a moment, you think Hackwill will argue, but he gets down on the cold ground and does his twelve. He doesn’t even break into a sweat. That might be because it’s so cold.

The others crawl out and you pass on the press-ups order. Since Hackwill is finished first, you tell him to make sure the others do their exercises.

As you go back to the cottage, Hackwill is shouting at a writhing Sean. The councillor is a born
kapo
. Collaborating with the guards comes naturally. Bastard.

* * *

Shearer wins the assault course. James asks if you’d mind Shearer having the other bed in your room so he and Mary can have the four-poster. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. But he’s your brother.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘if it’s a problem, forget it.

If you let James have his way, go to 223. If you insist on sticking to the rules, go to 236.

W
here do you want to be? What do you want to change?

If you want to be a child again, go to 207. If you want to be a teenager, go to 209.

‘
I
’m paying for this,’ Hackwill announces. You realise he means the course, not his sins. ‘Reg, get me McKinnell’s boots.’

Jessup Muttley-grumbles.

‘Do it, Fatty,’ Hackwill insists.

Jessup gets down on the ground and wrestles off McKinnell’s boots. He doesn’t enjoy himself.

Hackwill gets the boots on, stamps around in them, gets his feet settled. Warm feet give him authority. The game-playing is over and the Councillor is back in command.

‘You lot stay here,’ he orders. ‘I’ll send back help.’

Jessup whines a bit, like an abandoned dog.

‘I can’t take you with me, idiot,’ Hackwill says.

You all watch as Hackwill walks down into the valley, until well after he is lost in the trees.

‘Let’s get back to the Compound,’ you suggest.

‘What about him?’ Shearer asks, meaning McKinnell.

‘Heave that bit of old tarp over him,’ James says. ‘He doesn’t feel the cold any more.’

You cover McKinnell.

‘Let’s just hope he doesn’t get any company,’ you say.

* * *

You all sit in the small dining-room of Castle Drac, trying to keep your feet off the uncarpeted stone floor. The fire burns in the grate, but nothing takes the ice out of the slabs.

‘What if it was Hackwill?’

Tristram Warwick says it. But you’ve all been thinking it.

‘Perhaps you should have mentioned it at the time,’ James says.

‘You, Jessup, you’re his friend, what do you know?’ Warwick shouts in Jessup’s face and grabs him by his furry jumper.

‘Nothing, Tris. Honest.’ Jessup blubbers, a bully’s sidekick without the bully around, at the mercy of turning worms.

‘We could make him talk,’ Shearer says.

Jessup looks aghast.

After a few moments, James steps in. ‘We don’t do torture here,’ he says.

‘You could have fooled me,’ Shearer snaps.

You and James laugh. Someone’s dead but you can still laugh. That’s a surprise.

‘I don’t know anything,’ Jessup insists.

Warwick drops him.

‘Hackwill might come back,’ Warwick says. ‘This fat shit could be the inside man.’

‘Why would Councillor Hackwill want to kill anyone?’ you ask.

Warwick shuts up. But Sean cracks.

‘McKinnell was going to pull out of the Discount Development,’ Sean says. ‘Robert thought he would take the deal apart.’

‘Idiot,’ Warwick says, and you don’t know who he means.

‘He was going to use this week to persuade him not to.’

‘Well, he won’t now,’ says James.

‘Robbo’s not a killer,’ Jessup protests.

You and James look at Jessup, sneering.

‘If he is, he’s gone now,’ James says. ‘And we sit here like pillocks for a while.’

When will he mention the phone? He’s playing his own game, and hasn’t roped you in yet.

‘Tell them, Tris,’ says Shearer.

Warwick’s face shuts tight.

‘I think we have to assume we know each other well enough for secrets,’ Shearer prompts. ‘Tris was…’

‘I agreed with McKinnell. Robert is overextended. It’s time to get out while we can.’

‘So that puts you on a hypothetical death list?’

Warwick shrugs at your suggestion.

Outside, it rains hard. This is that proverbial dark and stormy night.

* * *

You and James get to keep your beds, Mary is gallantly offered the four-poster, which she declines to share with any of the prospective candidates. Jessup, Sean and Shane wrap themselves in blankets on chairs downstairs.

Warwick and Shearer opt to go back to Colditz. They take knives with them and clearly intend to resist anyone who tries to get at them in the night. You realise that, despite the danger, they intend to take advantage of the privacy of the pens to make love. Maybe it’s the danger that makes them so keen. This might be their last chance, the lucky bastards.

If you all die, your last physical contact with a woman was Mary stroking your balls with a knife. Not much to show for thirty-seven years.

Lying on your beds, you and James talk.

‘Do you think it was Hackwill?’ he asks.

‘My first thought was that it was you.’

‘I had the same thought about you. But you’d have started with Hackwill, or Fatty.’

‘You too,’ you say. ‘I think it’s most likely Hackwill had it done.’

‘He had Jessup pull the boots off.’

‘He doesn’t do things himself.’

‘He did in the copse.’

‘Long time ago, James.’

‘Who?’

‘Take your pick?’

‘Shane. Hired man. Hard man.’

‘What about Mary?’ you suggest.

James doesn’t answer.

* * *

You wake up and it’s still dark. Not early-morning dark, but small-hours dark.

You don’t know what has woken you.

Slowly, you sit up in bed. The slate roof rattles with rain and wind.

There’s a small torch on the bedside table. You cover the end with your hand and turn it on, making your fingers a transparent red, giving you some light.

James’s bed is empty.

Someone is talking downstairs, very low.

If you go back to sleep, go to 208. If you investigate, go to 221.

T
he big discovery is the kids. They make J and J seem precious, but there’s a lot of Jeremy and Jessica in Josh and Jonquil. With Marie-Laure working at the jam factory, you spend time dropping them off at school and picking them up afterwards. Then comes what you call the ‘pre-Mummy’ spell, the two hours when you have Josh and Jonquil to yourself before Marie-Laure gets home.

At first you just watch TV with them, but soon you start talking, telling stories about pirates, drawing maps that lead to ‘treasure’ hidden around the flat. They argue a lot but quarrels usually pass, like storms. Because they share a room, Josh and Jonquil are closer but thornier than Jeremy and Jessica. They understand territoriality.

You want to be the world for your kids. You try to furnish their minds with wonders. After all, as you know, many things are possible.

At weekends, you insist Marie-Laure come along with you and the kids on expeditions. You seek further afield for treasure. You often visit Mum, who is bewilderingly the same in this changed world, and even sometimes see James and Laraine, who are closer to the people you remember than the other Keith was to you.

You don’t think of yourself and the other as separate people any more. You’re submerged in his life but he’s transformed inside.

The kids do better at school now, which you suspect is a side-effect of your interest in them. Marie-Laure is a kindlier, tolerant presence. She must have been fed up with the way things were, but is settling down. She gets a promotion at work and you move out of the flat into a terraced house, where the kids get their own rooms.

You’ve become a housewife. You’re still not the world’s greatest cleaning-person but you display an interest in cuisine which affects the family’s health and disposition. The first time you cook a meal for the whole family, including Mum, using only ingredients you can afford on this Keith’s budget, it is a revelation.

There are struggles and heartbreaks, but there are triumphs and joys.

You live Keith Marion’s life. And, mostly, are content.

And so on.

A
fter a while, the knot unravels. The question goes away, unanswered. You even find out the other winner’s name (a man’s, French-sounding) but it doesn’t matter any more. Your life is too complex, rich and vibrant for that.

And you know you have a decision coming up.

You first think of it when trying to get insurance for your new home – a mansion next to the managing director of British Synthetics at the top end of Cliveden Rise (Sedgwater’s Snob Row) – and are told that actuarial tables done in the States suggest the life expectancy of a big lottery-winner halves the night his number comes up.

Wealth is lovely. But it can kill you. You can shove it up your nose, stuff it into your stomach or smear it on your dick. And you can die.

Quite a few lottery millionaires commit suicide. Lots more kill themselves by excess.

Then again, you have to
go to 0
sometime, and there can’t be a better way.

You imagine Dad telling you to spend the money wisely. And some haggard alternate version of yourself telling you to splurge the lot and go out with a bang.