Lottery Boy (28 page)

“How’s your dog?” Jo said in the silence that followed.

“They chopped her back leg off. We didn’t have to pay though,” he said.

“I’m really sorry about that. But she’s all right though, is she?”

He nodded, a little ashamed of himself because though he was glad he still had her, he couldn’t help feeling embarrassed when people saw him out with a three-legged dog, whatever breed she was.

“So, is it all OK? Are things all right here for you living back with your – with Phil, is that his name?”

He shook his head to say things weren’t OK.

“When we get the money, I’m living somewhere different.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. He’d forgotten that she didn’t know about the deal he’d done with Phil that they were pretending it was
his
ticket. That they were splitting it 50/50 and Phil was giving him half and not the other way round.

“So when do you get it then?”

“What?”

“The prize money.”

“Dunno. Soon. It’s only 1.1 million though.” He was disappointed when the lady from Camelot had told them that. That the jackpot that week was one of the lowest they’d ever had and
only
1.1 million pounds.

“That’s still
loads
.”

He turned on her then. “Well, you must have
that
.”

“No! You’re joking, right? My mum and dad work full time. You
know
they do,” she said, as if to remind him he had met her parents.

“Yeah, but your house. And all those books. That must be worth way more. You didn’t even have to win anything. You could sell that and be more of a millionaire.”

“Yeah, I suppose so, maybe, but…” She waved her hands about, struggling to explain away this comparison. “It’s where we
live
.”

They walked along Dowley Road, ended up walking past the Spar shop where he’d bought the ticket. He didn’t want to go in in case Old Mac was on the till and suddenly remembered, like old people did, that it was
him
who bought the ticket that day. So Jo went in and got them drinks. They talked about what Jo was doing next, going to college. And that Alex was off to some place called
uni
.

“I nicked his passport,” Bully said. He thought he should confess in case Alex might need it to go there.

She looked surprised and then disappointed. “Did you? Oh… OK. He’s got a new one now. We just assumed it was from the break-in.”

He nodded, annoyed with himself for shrinking down in her eyes. “What did they nick then?”

“Nothing much. Just some money and stuff. But they got the keys to Dad’s van with all his work gear and it wasn’t insured.”

“I’ll pay for it then. And I’ll get him a new one!”

“You can’t do that…”

“I can. I will.”

“No, I mean it’s very kind of you, Bully…” She looked embarrassed. “But I mean, it’s not your money, is it? It’s Phil’s…”

And he remembered again that she and everyone else thought it was
Phil’s
ticket and that
Phil
had bought it.

They walked along, past the little kiddie park with no little kiddies in it, on towards the station. “Are you walking me back?” she said. “The station’s this way, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

But he stopped walking because of where they were, and what was here. He looked across the road at the straggly bed of still-flowering weeds. He could just see one edge of the broken paving-stone, imprisoned in the pale green stems.

“You OK?” she said. He looked back at her like she was a photo from a long time ago. “I’ll give you my number if you want… If you need someone to talk to. And Dad says you should come over and visit again. You
and
Jack.”

“She dudn’t go out in the day,” he said automatically.

“If there’s anything I can do, Bully… Bradley, I mean. Sorry. Is there, though? Anything … I can help you out with?”

“Like what?” he said to test her, to see if she really meant
anything
because there was one thing he had in mind, that he would need help with, going behind enemy lines…

“I don’t know… Taking Jack out, maybe…”

“She dudn’t walk.”

“She
can
walk though, can’t she?”

“She dudn’t. She
hops
,” he said dismissively.

“OK, well with school then, maybe?”

He just sniggered. Wasn’t planning on doing too much
school
once Phil gave him his share of the payout.

“I don’t know, whatever, you know, to help. Anything you want…” She didn’t seem put out by the way he was behaving and it annoyed and impressed him at the same time.

“OK then. Yeah,” he said.

She nodded expectantly, waiting for him to tell her, but instead he turned away and headed over to the patch of scrubland that looked as if it might once have been a proper flower-bed.

She followed him across the road and watched him prise up what looked like a piece of paving-stone from among the late summer weeds. He started poking around with a stick but she didn’t say anything until he began to dig with his hands.

“What? Have you lost something?” she said. And he waved her over to take a closer look.

They got a taxi from the train station. Five minutes later the driver was pointing out a big brick office block on a roundabout; no castle, no moat, just tarmac around a bunch of bricks and glass.

“This is it,” he said.

As soon as they got out, Phil said, “Remember, right? We do this by the numbers, keep it simple. Right, right, right?”

Bully nodded. Phil was like this when he got nervous, repeating things like they did in the army so you didn’t forget. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bully said.

They went up in a lift, right to the top. The woman in reception let Cortnie press the button. A man and two women were waiting for them in the corridor outside a room with a frosted-up window so you couldn’t see through it. The man telling them his name was Alan had his hand out before they even went inside. Bully watched Phil shake it and the hand was still there for him. And then he had to do it again with the two women: Carol and Diana. He recognized the lady called Diana. She’d come to the flat a few weeks ago as a
Camelot representative
. She hadn’t looked like he’d imagined, mostly because she was a woman. He hadn’t expected a real knight but he had expected a real man to deliver the message.

This second time, he didn’t mind her. She was OK, he decided, making a fuss of Cortnie, saying how nice her new clothes were as if they were all designer. He didn’t like the look of the other one, Carol. Her teeth were too white and they looked at you like eyes did, wet and shiny. And he didn’t like the sound of her either, like she had chocolate stuck in her throat when she spoke.

They went inside the room and they all sat down at one end of a massive table, and that was made of see-through glass. Everything in the place was see-through except for the windows which were frosted up. He supposed it was to stop people thieving stuff. He could see the new jeans Phil had bought him through the glass, right down to his sports socks and new Reeboks.

“Would you like something to drink?” Alan asked Phil.

“A bit early for me,” he said as if it was a test.

Bully said no thanks but Cortnie got a Coke out of it.

Then they got started.

They wanted to know all about the day Phil bought
his
ticket. Bully started listening but lost interest and did his best to look through one of the frosted windows. It was sunny out and he suddenly wanted to be outside, back on the riverbank, shading his eyes and doing a bit of fishing… It was just a feeling he had, him and the old Jack out there (the one with four legs), hanging out, things back to normal. Because this
wasn’t
normal.

“So … we just need to ask one or two more questions.” Carol was talking, had taken over, surprising Phil – Bully could tell because he was already nodding before she was anywhere near asking him anything.

“So, Phil, you’ve just said you purchased the ticket at the Spar shop in Dowley Road. And from the terminal read-out we can see this was at 5.26 p.m. on February the 16th.” Phil was nodding still, and faster, and Bully could hear him bunching his fingers, freshening up his fists every few seconds.

Carol was looking at Bully now, with those wet, white, shiny teeth. She kept showing them at him and then Phil, backwards and forwards between them like the bandog, unsure which one of them to attack first.

“We can see from one of our terminals that the ticket was checked against a till in Waterloo station on Friday, August the 9th at 6.45 p.m. … 174 days after the draw and 176 days after it was purchased. Is that right? Did you get it checked, Bradley?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what we would like to know is how it came into your possession?”

“What d’you mean, like? What? Like how he got hold of it?” asked Phil, butting in.

“Yes. How did you get hold of it … Bradley?” said Carol. She hadn’t even been looking at Phil while he’d been talking. She was getting ready for Bully’s reaction.

“He must have picked it up after I went out, by accident. He’s cack-handed like that,” said Phil, like it was a proper thing.

“We appreciate that but we would like to hear it from Bradley,” Alan said, coming back at him, one either side now, getting ready to outflank Phil.

Bully spoke hesitantly, slowly looking through the glass table down at his feet, as if the past was down there and might give him a nip on the ankles. “I went to Smiths but the man said it wasn’t a cash prize from the till and that I had to go to Camelot in Watford.”

They all nodded and smiled at that as if the man in Smiths had done the right thing.

“He said I had to phone them up. But I didn’t have any credit so I went instead. And that’s when they started chasing me.”

They all pulled very serious faces now. They had heard about that, the terrible things that had happened to him and his dog.

“Yes, that sounds awful, Bradley,” said Carol.

“Absolutely awful,” said Alan.

“How’s she doing? Your dog,” asked Diana.

He shrugged. “They chopped one of her legs off. The vet did,” he added when he saw their faces freezing up, thinking it was the gangstas.

“So… OK,” said Alan after they had all said how sad they were about that. “Getting back to the ticket: how did you come to have it, the winning ticket, in your possession? Because we have to ask you this, Bradley,” Alan said with a very serious teacher look on his face to make sure Bully understood this was about money and so it was really
serious
. “Did you buy this lottery ticket yourself?”

“No,” he said. He heard Phil puffing out a breath next to him, the old air saying that was it, they would pay out now.

“So who
did
buy the ticket?” asked Carol, leaning right forward so that her teeth were closer to him than any other bit of her.

“My
mum
did.”

Bradley heard Phil’s neck clicking, his head turning that quick.

“
She
went down the shops.
He
wasn’t even there. He was wiv
’er
. Not my mum.” He didn’t know where this was coming from; he didn’t know what was making him say this now.

“Sorry?” Alan asked. “Are you telling us that Phil didn’t buy this ticket?”

“
My
mum
bought it,” he said very slowly, like he had learning difficulties.

Phil blew up. He stood up, catching his knees on the edge of the glass table. “She couldn’t have got down there! She’d been in bed since New Year! She was
dead
before they even called the numbers!”

“Please, Mr Greg … Phil,” said Alan, trying to put the lid back on it.

“All I’m saying is, you ask her doctor!” Phil interrupted, coming back at him. “The last few days she couldn’t have got out of bed to go for a – she couldn’t’a got down the shops, that’s all I’m saying. She was so dosed up she didn’t even know if you were there half the time!”

“
You
weren’t there,” said Bully. “
None
of the time.”

All during that last week Phil had been “popping out”. And Bully knew where. Declan’s mum had been popping in, taking Cortnie off their hands. No one knew for sure when his mum died except him.

Phil sat back down and stared at him. His fists were solid under the table now, the bony tops of the knuckles showing just under the skin.

“Well, well… Maybe, maybe she did buy it and I got confused with the midweek draw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thinking about it now, I think I must have done. I think she
did
buy it after all,” said Phil, surprising Bully, going along with his version now.

“Well, this changes things, unfortunately,” said Alan, looking to his left and right at Carol and Diana. “And I think we are going to have to conclude this meeting for now and look at gathering more evidence.”

No one said anything.

“Do you understand, Bradley?” said Diana, leaning forward like Carol but looking concerned, like it really wasn’t anything to do with the money. “Bradley… Bradley…”

His mum had been telling him for days they were going to win.

He’d found it hard listening to her, especially that day, the day of the draw. She kept calling him in from the lounge, shouting against the TV, talking and breathing at the same time, jumping from one thing to another, shouting
Happy Birthday!
Even though that day was nearly two weeks away.