Zoe May - As Luck Would Have It

Will didn’t just come to Art Club once or twice, he came every week and he and I got really close. It was easier to be my real self around him when I was in the art room, which felt like a second home, than it would probably have been otherwise. I’d no doubt have been completely giddy and over-excited under normal circumstances. But I didn’t have Will to myself. Soon Art Club was the most popular club in school, and I realised I wasn’t the only girl who adored Will. A ton of other girls suddenly discovered a passion for painting the moment they realised where Will was spending his Wednesday afternoons. But Will always sat with me and I began to suspect that I wasn’t just fantasising and that perhaps – perhaps – he might actually fancy me.

But then things got messy, really messy …

‘Hi guys! Ready to get some raffle tickets?’ Rita, Mick’s sister who helps him organise the fundraiser every year, bounds up to me and Will, brandishing a pad of raffle tickets, before she notices Hera who’s now fast asleep and starts gushing over how cute she is.

While Rita fawns over Hera, I suddenly remember the prize. I’d got so distracted by all the commotion with Hera being sick, the cat jumper, Will and the buffet that I completely forgot that the reason I agreed to come along to this thing in the first place (apart from being a good person and raising money for charity, of course) was for the chance of winning a holiday. My mum was right, I do need a holiday. If anything was ever going to reinforce that fact, it would be standing here with a wet boob in a Cat Cuddle’s jumper emitting the faint odour of sick.

‘So, erm, is there really a holiday up for grabs, Rita?’ I ask breezily.

‘There is indeed!’ Rita replies, turning her attention away from Hera. ‘Mick really pulled out all the stops this year. His niece, Hannah, got a job at a travel agency and she managed to sort it. Best prize we’ve ever had. An all-inclusive romantic four night stay in a luxury five-star hotel in Marrakech! It has a swimming pool, a spa, the works. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?’ Rita’s eyes have lit up.

‘It sounds amazing!’ I enthuse. ‘Five-star? Really?’

‘Oh yeah, five-star. It’s top notch. The best,’ Rita insists, before glancing down at her pad of raffle tickets. She could be exaggerating to get me and Will to splurge on the raffle, but somehow, I get the feeling that this prize might really be a diamond in the rough. A five-star holiday amid a plethora of hampers, kitchen utensils and Debenham’s gift cards.

I rummage in my handbag for my wallet. ‘Okay, I’ll have five tickets please, Rita. No, ten!’

‘Feeling lucky, are we?’ Rita jokes. ‘It’s two quid a ticket, so that’ll be twenty pounds, please.’

Twenty pounds? This event really has moved on since I was 12, when raffle tickets cost 50p. I pull my wallet out of my bag. It’s a quirky one I found at an independent boutique in London with a Fendi-style monster print all over it. Will raises an eyebrow at the bold print as I pull out a twenty-pound note.

‘Interesting …’ he comments as I hand Rita the money. He’s clearly having difficulty getting his head around the new me. The businesswoman me who pays attention to trends rather than the head-in-the-clouds arty girl I used to be.

Ignoring him, I hand the money to Rita, who places it in a money belt around her hips, before tearing off a few strips and handing me the tickets.

‘Thanks Rita!’ I reply. ‘Fingers crossed!’

‘Good luck, love,’ Rita says, with a warm smile.

Rita turns around, looking for her next target, before clocking Clive. She waves over at him and turns to head his way when Will suddenly taps her on the shoulder.

‘Rita, wait. I want some.’

‘I already sold you one earlier,’ Rita points out.

‘Yeah, but I only got one. I didn’t realise people were buying multiple tickets,’ Will comments, sounding a little petulant.

‘It is for charity,’ I mutter under my breath.

Will laughs. ‘Oh sure, Natalie, charity is what’s on your mind right now!’ he jokes, and it’s as though he can see into my brain and is witnessing the picture in my head of me lounging on a deck chair by a gorgeous pool, the sun making my straw hat cast shadows over my face, a novel open on my lap and a cocktail in my hand.

‘How many tickets would you like, Will, love?’ Rita asks, ignoring mine and Will’s bickering.

‘Twenty,’ Will says.

‘Twenty?!’ Rita and I both echo in unison.

‘Yeah, it’s for charity,’ Will reminds me, with a smirk. I roll my eyes as he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a battered old wallet. He flips it open and hands Rita two twenty-pound notes.

She takes the money and gives him his tickets, which he folds into his wallet while smiling smugly.

‘I’ll have some more please,’ I tell Rita, before she has a chance to walk away.

‘What? How many more?’ she asks, looking a little taken aback.

I peer into my wallet. I have a crumpled fiver, two one-pound coins, a fifty pence piece and a couple of twenty pence and ten pence pieces. I quickly add it up: £8!

‘Four please,’ I say, fishing all the money out and depositing it into Rita’s hand. She takes it, counts it and slips the coins and notes into her money belt, before handing me four more tickets. I place them in my bag, feeling warm and fuzzy with excitement. At least I think it’s the excitement and not just the punch I’ve had to drink.

She glances over her shoulder at Clive who is looking over. He waves and looks hungrily at Rita’s pad of tickets, clearly keen to get involved.

‘Good luck you two!’ Rita says, before heading over to Clive.

‘Thanks Rita,’ I call after her.

I pat my handbag, feeling pleased with all my tickets.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Will asks, eyeing me. ‘You only have fourteen tickets. I have twenty-one.’

‘You’re such a dick,’ I tut. ‘Anyway, I don’t care if you have twenty-one tickets to my fourteen, I’m feeling lucky. I’m going to win. I can just feel it.’ I cross my fingers, praying I’m right.

‘Ha!’ Will scoffs. ‘Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?’

I devour another handful of crisps and wash them down with a third glass of punch, while listening to Rowena – the head librarian at the local library – extoll the mindfulness benefits of cross-stitch. Believe it or not, the party is in full swing now. A few people have taken to the dancefloor where they’re currently grooving to Katy Perry. The bowl of punch is nearly empty. The auction has been held – the highlight of which was a dark-haired woman bidding £100 for someone else’s used foot spa – and Mick gave a really moving speech about his wife Maggie and about the important work Cancer Research are doing. Will and I have mostly been avoiding each other the whole evening, but I keep glancing across the hall and catching him looking over at me, which is annoying but then I wouldn’t know about it if I wasn’t also looking over. God, I really do feel like I’m back at school.

At the moment, Will’s standing across the hall with his mum, Sharon – a softly spoken petite woman with an incredibly pretty face. She has a sort of Audrey Hepburn charm with sparkly eyes and a wide gorgeous guileless smile. She has a neat grey bob that always seems to have a natural bounce to it, the kind of volume most women can only achieve through a blow dry. She’s stayed single since Will’s dad passed away and I don’t think she’s particularly interested in finding anyone else – they were absolutely smitten – but that hasn’t stopped the hordes of admirers from flocking her way. From the looks of it, Sharon is currently being chatted up by Mr Price (a divorced history teacher from my old school known for his bad breath and terrible toupee), Matthew Black (a chronically single monotone-voiced bachelor who lives down the road and has a penchant for keeping pet rats) and some other guy I don’t recognise who appears to be totally over-excited to be speaking to a woman. So much so that his entire face is beaded with sweat. Will is standing protectively close, shielding Sharon from this onslaught of undesirable admirers and she keeps giving him grateful looks that, actually, now that I come to think of it, are bordering on desperate ‘get me out of this’ stares.