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As he entered the tobacconist's shop, a spark of elation jumped within him at the prospect of wi
He posted the slips in the white plastic box and started to leave the shop when he felt a loose pound coin in his jacket pocket. At the same moment his eye caught a separate scratchcard dispenser beside the main lottery ticket display. Dropping the pound coin in the slot released one of the scratchcards, which he slipped into his jeans intending to scratch off when he reached the car. But the rain had begun falling in slate-grey sheets, the traffic was bad, the DJ on the radio a
A
'Doesn't it amaze you that we have all this modern technology, and the best random-number selection device they can come up with is ru
It was then that he remembered the scratchcard in his back pocket. And it was only when he looked at it properly that he realised what an odd item it was. One word was emblazoned across the top of the card in crimson: WIN! Win what it didn't say, almost as if the promotions company could not be bothered to put details on the card. Underneath this were six grey panels, and beneath these were instructions: Scratch off each of the boxes in turn. Each one will reveal a word, WIN or LOSE. The more you WIN, the bigger your prize. To be the Prizewi
Then a third.
'A
'Not sure. All, for the grand prize.'
'Keep going, then.'
He placed the edge of the coin against the corner of the fourth square and scratched. WIN.
And the fifth. WIN.
He swallowed and looked across at A
He scratched at the sixth square, but could not bring himself to look. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
WIN.
'It's a trick, it's not a real card,' he said, 'it must be selling something.'
'No, you paid for it, didn't you?'
'Yes, but – '
'Then you've won, Gary. My god, you've won. Does it say how much?'
'No, it just tells you how to do it, and there's no company name, it's weird. I've never seen cards like these before.'
'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 A
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 A
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 wi
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 A
A