Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

Kate sat in numbed silence and stared at the blackened shell where only a short while ago she had stood in the warm kitchen and smelled wood smoke and seen a tree surrounded by presents, and odd thoughts strayed through her mind.

She wondered whether, if she had stayed, the snow would have continued falling, and whether the kids would have got to open their presents. And she resolved that next year she would go back to the supermarket and, if Daniel was there again, she would accept his invitation to stay.

For as long as Gail had known Ricky Walters, he had dreamed of winning the lottery — the National Lottery, with its promise of £50 million, if not more. Much more.

Loadsamoney!

Moolah!

And he would win it, he knew; it was just a matter of time. He had a winning system, and besides, he had always been lucky. ‘You make your own luck in life. I was lucky meeting you,’ he told Gail. ‘Marrying you was like winning all the lotteries in the world at the same time!’

That was then. Now was ten years later. Five years ago, a clairvoyant in a tent at a charity garden party told Ricky she could see he was going to have a big lottery win. Gail had scoffed, but Madame Zuzu, in her little tent, had simply reinforced what Ricky already knew. He had absolute confidence. Absolute belief in his system.

It consumed him.

Yes, he was going to win the lottery. It was a fact. An absolute racing certainty. He was so damned confident that he was going to win that often, over a few drinks at his favoured corner table in The Dog and Pheasant, which he visited most nights, he would spend time going over the list of all the things he was going to buy and the investments he would make with the money.

He subscribed to a range of lifestyle magazines, which he always read cover to cover, tearing out and filing away pages featuring items he was considering buying when ‘L-Day’, as he called it, finally came. A yacht — probably a custom-built Sunseeker; cars — well, it would have to be an Aston Martin Vanquish for himself, and a convertible Mercedes SL AMG for madam; a private jet, of course — he rather fancied a Lear; a Hublot watch.

There’d be a new house too. Gail told him she thought it was strange that he had a new house so far down his list of priorities — considering they weren’t exactly living in a palace right now. Yep, right... well, that was another story.

Ricky was a systems manager, with responsibility for the computers in the Brighton head office of a national web design and development company. Algebra and maths were his thing, always had been, and it was through playing around with the six numbers of the lottery that one day, eight years back, he had his light-bulb moment. He saw something in the randomness of those figures that, so far as he could see, no one else had — and certainly not anyone at Camelot who ran the lottery.

A year ago the firm had gone into liquidation and he had so far not found another job. He’d done a few bits and pieces of IT work for friends and acquaintances, and they were kept afloat — just — by Gail’s job as a bookkeeper for a small firm of estate agents. Gail was worried as hell about their financial future, but he was happy and confident. He was going to win the lottery. Oh yes. His system rocked!

You make your own luck in life.

Whenever he talked about it to Gail, her eyes glazed over. He’d told her, on their first date, that one day they were going to be richer than Croesus. But when, after that light-bulb moment, he had begun to explain how, expounding enthusiastically his applications of elements of calculus, Pythagoras, Noether’s Theorem and the Callan-Symanzik Equation, her eyes would always begin to glaze over. In fact, throughout the years of their marriage, her eyes had begun to glaze over faster and faster. Recently, the moment he began to talk mathematics, he could almost hear them glazing over. It was as if the cords holding up shutters had been severed, and they’d fallen with a resounding crash.

But Ricky barely noticed. He wasn’t talking to her anyway; he was really addressing himself, reassuring himself, reconfirming all that he knew. He was going to win one day for sure. The big one — the National Lottery. And, for a whole number of reasons, it would be really convenient for him if it happened quite soon. Ideally within the next few weeks, please! His fortieth birthday was looming, and it was not a milestone he was happy about. He’d read somewhere that if you haven’t made it by the time you are forty, you are not going to make it.

And, as Gail had only too accurately pointed out, in eight years of spending twenty pounds a week on tickets for his system, to date he had had just one small win of fifty pounds to show for his efforts.

She’d calculated that if he had banked twenty pounds a week over this same period of time, they’d have over eight thousand pounds saved — and more, with interest.

‘Just how far would that amount get you today?’ he would retort.

‘It would get us a new dishwasher, which we can’t afford,’ Gail reminded him. ‘It would enable us to pay for a holiday — which we haven’t had for two years because you say we can’t afford one. It could replace my car, which is a basket case.’

Most importantly of all, in her mind, it would pay for IVF treatments, since all their attempts to conceive so far had failed.

‘Ah, but just wait!’ he would reply.

‘I’ve been waiting — when do I stop waiting?’

‘Soon, very soon. I know — I just know — that we are on the verge; it’s going to happen. All the numbers are meshing closer and closer. It could be any week now!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘dream on.’

‘Oh, I will!’

Ricky had always had a lot of dreams. But he needed the money to make the most important one of all come true.

They decided they could not afford to throw a party for Ricky’s fortieth birthday, so instead they invited a dozen friends to join them for a dinner celebration at their favourite Italian restaurant in Hove, Topolino’s. On the strict understanding everyone would pay for themselves. Ricky, who was by nature a generous man, hadn’t been happy about that idea, but his latest bank statement was the gloomiest to date, and had forced him to accept the plan, albeit still reluctantly.

That damned win was just around the corner, he told Gail. He could feel it in his bones!

But after an hour of gulping down Prosecco at Topolino’s, listening to jokes about ageing and questions about whether he was looking forward to his free bus pass, he was enjoying the company of good friends, and all he could feel was a deep sense of bonhomie growing inside him, the more alcohol he drank. They were a rowdy table, sensibly placed in a far corner of the restaurant so they could stand up and make their toasts and their speeches without ruining the evening for the rest of the diners there.

Suddenly, part way through eating his starter of ravioli florentine, he glanced at his watch. It was just past 9 p.m. Shit! He waved over a waiter, a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking Italian with a voice that was far more cheerful than his face.

‘Si, signor?’

Ricky tried to speak to him without attracting the attention of the rest of his guests. ‘Could shew do me a favour,’ he slurred. ‘I shleft my phone at home. Could shew let me know this week’s lottery numbers?’

The waiter frowned. ‘I go ask.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Ricky shoved a twenty-pound note into his hand.

‘For God’s sake!’ Gail admonished quietly into his ear. ‘Can’t you leave it alone for just one evening, darling, and enjoy yourself?’

‘What if tonight’s the night?’ he hissed back.