Page 2 of The Lucky Winners

Six Weeks Earlier

Friday

Merri

Dev calls upstairs as he leaves for work, slamming the door behind him. I groan. I’ve been off work sick for three days with a chest infection and I still have the banging headache. Another day of feeling rotten.

‘Make sure you get plenty of rest, keep hydrated and take paracetamol, as directed on the packet, for the symptoms,’ the doctor had said briskly, before moving on to his next patient phone call.

I pop my first two painkillers of the day with a swig of lukewarm water and sink back into my pillows, staring at the ceiling.

There was the chance of picking up a few extra hours this week, too, with staff taking their summer holidays.

In some ways, I can’t wait to get back on Monday, not least because I can’t afford to take any more days off.

Downstairs on the kitchen worktop, there’s a small pile of unopened late-payment letters, most of them addressed as: URGENT: Mr D. Jain and Ms M. J. Harris .

I don’t usually ignore unpaid bills, but this month has been particularly challenging.

After a couple of emailed reminders, companies have started sending hard threats through the letterbox.

Final notices that are getting more difficult to ignore.

Rent, utilities, credit cards – most of them overdue.

It sounds dire but we’ve been even worse off than this.

We have our problems, but at least we still have each other. People generally leave us alone and our little routines help me to keep stuff zipped up inside where it belongs.

I know we’ll get on the straight and narrow again. We’ll just have to suffer a while longer first. No meals out, or impulsive purchases. Just more slog and lacklustre weekends when we’ll probably end up bickering about whose fault it is this time.

I pull my cardigan tighter around myself as I sit on the sagging couch looking around at the cramped space that seems to get smaller every day.

We had to battle to get this place among stiff competition from three other couples.

Two months’ rent up front as a deposit and a monthly amount that stretches us further than we’d originally planned, but the landlord was a Man City fan like Dev and he jokes that’s what swung it for us in the end.

It’s a tiny two-bed semi with a garden view on a fairly new estate at the edge of Colwick, in Nottingham.

Dev felt cautious about it at first, but I’d just found my current job as a healthcare assistant, which offered a thousand-pound raise on my last place, the chance of extra hours sometimes and a decent pension.

It was a big improvement on the private fertility clinic I worked at before that paid only minimum wage.

‘Come on, let’s do it!’ I’d urged him, full of optimism for the future.

I didn’t mention the backdrop of desperation to get away from the dingy flat we were living in, with the nosy neighbour who was always trying to get friendly.

Asking me which school I’d been to, where I’d lived before. Stuff like that.

Once Dev had viewed the house and seen the new no-contract gym that had just opened close by, he was keener than I was to move in.

Now, though, we have less spare cash than ever.

He can’t stand his new boss, and the two girls who’ve just moved into the house next to us throw parties every weekend, often until the early hours.

I’d started to think things couldn’t get much worse. Until last night, that is.

Yesterday had been our third wedding anniversary.

Dev’s ‘special dinner’ that he insisted on making for me had turned out to be a simple affair – Spaghetti Amatriciana.

We sat at the peeling wood-effect table for two that we were planning to replace with something of better quality when we moved in here.

To give him credit, he’d tried his best to make it special, lighting a candle and playing soft music in the background, but the ambience couldn’t disguise the undercurrent of exhaustion between us, especially with me continually yawning and snuffling into a tissue.

It had been a long time since either of us felt like celebrating anything.

‘Right, then,’ Dev said, with a nervous little grin. ‘Time for your present.’

‘Present?’ I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

‘Dev, you didn’t need to get me anything.

We agreed just cards, didn’t we?’ I wanted to say we had better things to spend our money on than this, but he was already reaching into his jacket pocket.

With a flourish, he pulled out a folded white sheet of paper.

‘Ta-dah! Happy wedding anniversary, honey.’ He unfolded it and waved it in front of me, beaming. ‘You are now the proud owner of a ticket for the DreamKey national prize draw. It’s that amazing house in the Lake District we saw on their advert.’

I blinked at him, confused. ‘A raffle ticket?’ My voice sounded flat, even to me, and I could feel my patience already wearing thin. ‘You bought a raffle ticket?’

We’d seen the ads on TV, of course, and I’d joked a couple of days ago how amazing it would be to win a house like that. Dev had joked how inconvenient it would be to win, a big move, leaving the jobs we hated and friends we never saw much any more.

‘Come on, Merri. It’s not a raffle, it’s a prize draw with a difference,’ he said, reaching across the table and pressing the ticket into my hands.

‘It’s the DreamKey mansion by Windermere, remember?

Imagine it – a beautiful home, no more rent, no more leaking taps.

You said it yourself! This could be it, Merri. Our chance at something better.’

I stared at the ‘ticket’ that Dev had mocked up and printed off after he’d bought our entry online. The bright lettering did little to cheer me up. Dev, however, was beaming.

‘How much did this cost?’ I tried to swallow my frustration. ‘We can’t afford to waste money on silly things like this. You cancelled the Netflix subscription last week.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said sheepishly. ‘But I had the idea after a few beers on the sofa last night.’

I’d gathered up the empty cans when I came down this morning.

‘Hey, it’s just one ticket,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘It wasn’t that much, just twenty quid. And it’s our anniversary. I thought it might give us the edge, you know? If the universe is looking for a Nottingham winner, I mean.’

Twenty quid. On a single ticket with ridiculous odds stacked against us.

I let out a weary sigh, my head pounding. My eyes felt tired and heavy. ‘Dev, we need to be realistic. We’re drowning in bills. And now you’re spending money on stupid pipe dreams.’ I let the ticket fall out of my hands, not caring where it landed. ‘I’m going up to bed.’

I stood up and instantly felt dizzy, my blocked sinuses making me sway slightly. As I made my way to the narrow staircase leading up to our bedroom, I heard Dev’s voice call up softly behind me: ‘I just thought it could be a chance to escape all the crap.’

I didn’t respond. I was too tired to speak – too frustrated to argue.

The ticket didn’t feel like hope: it felt like another gamble we couldn’t afford.