Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

'Maybe they're new, maybe the money goes to some special charity. Fill in your name and address, send it off.'

'I'll put your name down, if you like.'

'That's sweet of you,' said Ann. 'But you picked that particular card, you were chosen fair and square.' So he filled out his own name and address, and on Monday morning drove back into town to send it off by registered post.

The next few days crawled by in agonising torpor. They had agreed not to mention the win, not to even think of it, but to behave in such a way would have been a defiance of human nature. They'd pay their bills, thought Gary, be prudent, clear all their debts, start anew and not make the same mistakes. Find somewhere decent for Ann's mother to live instead of her damp run-down flat. Find himself a job that paid a proper salary. Maybe they could even think about starting a family… The locks seemed to be falling away from the sealed gates of their fate, and some kind of decent future beckoned beyond. But Gary could not allow himself to think of such a thing; the more he dreamt, the greater would be his disappointment if it turned out to be a con, if the company was, say, a double-glazing firm attempting to hook customers.

He did not even believe in the lottery. Surely somebody less contemptuous should have won, a true believer who slavishly worked out the odds of various numerical formulations in order to maximise winning potential, someone who paid visits to the ticket dispenser with the regularity of a devout churchgoer? When it came to the divine power of chance, Gary was an agnostic. The idea of fate was unnerving; it contradicted natural laws. Someone had to win, Ann told him, but that meant someone had to lose.

One odd thing happened four days after he bought the ticket. He had stopped in town to pick up some shopping, and entered the tobacconist's to buy a newspaper.

'Where do you get your scratchcards from?' he asked the young Asian man stacking shelves.

'We don't sell 'em, mate.'

'Yes you do, you've a machine -' he indicated a space just past the regular lottery ticket dispenser, ' – just over – there.' His words dwindled away as he found himself pointing at nothing. 'It was there on Saturday,' he ended lamely.

'No, mate,' replied the boy, 'we've just got the regular one.'

'But I saw it, a red box near the door. I bought a ticket from it.'

'If there was anything like that there, someone must have brought it in from outside and then taken it away again.' He chuckled, shook his head and returned to aligning boxes of tampons.

Maybe it had been a scam. He had heard of bogus cashpoints being set up in empty shops, then removed at the end of a busy Saturday, filled with credit card details. As the days passed he grew convinced that he had been abstractly victimised – but then the postcard arrived.

It had been mailed inside a plain white envelope, presumably to preserve his anonymity. The frank-mark indicated that it had come from London. The address was computertyped, and the back took the form of a generic tick-box reply, the kind you found attached to the guarantee when you bought a toaster. The top of the card bore the legend GRAND PRIZEWINNER. It asked a variety of simple questions, his age, marital status, if he was a houseowner. At the bottom it read Our representatives will call you to arrange a time when they can visit. There was no other information on the card, or in the envelope.

'Don't you think they're being rather mysterious?' he asked Ann over breakfast on the morning the card arrived. 'No company name, no details, no picture of cars, or cash, or sundrenched beaches…'

Ann shrugged and gathered up the plates. 'They obviously have their own system,' she said, 'you'll just have to be patient.'

'When I was a kid there was a special offer on the back of a packet of cereal,' he recalled. 'Something called a 37-In-One-Scope, a kind of – instrument – that had 37 separate uses, magnifying glasses and knives, all sorts of stuff. You had to send three and six – '

'My god, old money,' laughed Ann.

' – to get this wonderful thing. I'll always remember how excited I was when the postman called to deliver it, but when I opened the box I found this tiny, badly made piece of plastic. The illustration on the cereal box had been greatly exaggerated, and the magnifier was blurry and the knives were plastic. It was junk.'

'Poor Gary.' She reached down and gave him a kiss on the head. He seemed melancholy today. She decided not to show him the final demand from the gas board that had arrived with the card. 'Well, you never know. Maybe your luck has changed.'

'Not me,' he replied, 'I never get chosen for anything.'

'But you have been,' she said, waving the card at him. 'You're a good man. Why shouldn't you get what's coming to you?'

A man rang that evening, to arrange the visit. He and his colleague would come to the house on Saturday night, one week after Gary had scratched the card. He thought it odd that they operated outside of normal office hours, but said nothing to Ann; she had quite enough on her mind. On Saturday evening, shortly after a watery sun had set behind the trees, there was a knock at the front door. Two gaunt, unhealthy-looking young men stood side by side in matching black ties and raincoats. They looked like eastern European government inspectors, he thought, or Bible salesmen.

'You are Mr Gary Chapman?' asked one.

'Yes, I am,' replied Gary. 'Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?'

'The same Gary Chapman who filled in this form?' He held the card up between thumb and forefinger.

'That's right.' Gary held the door wide, but neither of them showed signs of accepting his invitation. 'What have I won?'

'Will you be available to receive your reward here, say, tomorrow afternoon?' one asked, ignoring his question.

'I suppose so, yes.' He felt vaguely put out by their dour, unsmiling behaviour. Wasn't this supposed to be something to celebrate? Shouldn't he be congratulated on his luck?

'Shall we say four o'clock?' The man took a small black notebook from his colleague and jotted down the time.

'Yeah, fine.' He nodded at them defiantly, looking from one to the other.

'You'll be ready tomorrow, then.' They turned to go. 'Good day to you.'

'Wait, will it be you coming back tomorrow?,

'No, not us, sir – someone else. Well, good day to you.' They walked to the corner of the street in perfect step – as though they had rehearsed the movement together – and were gone.

'Why didn't you ask them anything useful?' Ann was watching from the kitchen, waiting for him to shut the front door.

'How could I? You saw what they were like.' Something they had said bothered him. The word reward . Surely they'd meant award ?

The forecast for the day ahead was stormy. By noon on Sunday the sky had blackened and the wind was flattening the grass in the fields behind the house, making the moors resemble billowing green sails. There was an uncomfortable, heavy atmosphere in the kitchen. They barely spoke to each other as they sat studying the newspapers, watching TV, eating lunch. At five minutes to four they began surreptitiously watching the kitchen clock. By a quarter past four rain was falling in a light fine drizzle, and Gary had begun to feel as nervous as a condemned man in his last hour. He tried to read an article in the paper, something about the Church of England revising their definition of hell, but found it impossible to concentrate for more than a sentence or two.

'Nobody's coming,' he concluded finally. 'Look at the time. It's gone half past now.'

'Perhaps the weather has set them back.' Ann put down her book. 'Pacing about isn't going to help. If someone's coming up from London, the traffic's probably bad on the motorway.'