A Bad Run of Good Luck

“Are you lying?” she asked

“No!” A cry of outraged defiance. “Why would I make something like that up?”

Eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Why would you DO something like that for real?”
He tried for a disarmingly apologetic shrug and remained silent. Pale, a bit sickly looking and absolutely silent.

“Course you’re lying. You can’t be telling the truth. That would be ... Well, I mean ... Nobody, NOBODY, not even you, wins the lottery rollover worth £37.6 million pounds and then ACCIDENTALLY GIVES THE TICKET AWAY TO A TRAMP!”

His instinct for self-preservation kicked in and he got as far as opening his mouth to explain the situation more clearly, but she’d only taken a short breath and his moment passed. His girlfriend – eight months pregnant, two months unemployed and variously described by her father as ”feisty” and by his mother (on one occasion at least) as “a complete bitch” – carried on ranting.

“What were you doing? Eh? Did you think ‘well, we’ve got an overdraft of nearly a grand, a credit card bill of ... quite a lot more, a baby arriving any time now and a joint income of ... ooh ... three hundred and fifty a week, but hey! Nothing to worry about. I’ll give this £39 million away to this lazy bastard here so he can feed his heroin habit in peace.’

“It wasn’t ...”

“You’ve got another girl. Haven’t you? ... That bird in the Lucky Pig the other night, she was giving you the glad eye and I SAW you looking at her bum. I bet you thought ‘I’ve got £42 million, I can run away to Hawaii with her and leave the missis in that shithole with a screaming brat and she’ll never know the difference.’

Despite his growing headache, he was mesmerised by her with her with her dark blonde hair escaping round her face, cheeks pink with rage, and burgeoning cleavage heaving in exertion. And it had been quite a while. He sighed. She might have a mouth on her like the Channel Tunnel but she wasn’t half ...

“You’re not even bloody well listening are you? Standing there gawping like the complete moron you are.” She turned back to the sink and scrubbed furiously. “For God’s sake, I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t.” She slammed a casserole dish down on the drainer and he was quite touched by the effort of restraint it must have taken for her not to have chucked it at him. She was in the county women’s darts team and she had quite an aim.

However, she had put the first burst of fury and disappointment to good use and had finally washed up the lasagne dish from two nights ago, which she’d been avoiding in her hormonally sensitive state because cooked Parmesan smelt a bit too much like vomit for comfort. She couldn’t sustain her indignation and went from simmering siren to five-year-old-needing-a-cuddle in the space of milliseconds. He watched her deflate and drew her unresistingly towards him, kissing the top of her head. The baby, less easily won-over, made a decent attempt at kicking him in the ribs.

“Oww. He’s definitely on your side. Guess I’ll have to be more careful.” He grinned, but she wasn’t quite ready to let him off the hook and stepped past him to get paracetamol from the cupboard and a glass of water. She didn’t want to make eye contact because she’d start giggling and that would be that.

She handed him the painkillers and said quietly “You could stop working fourteen hour shifts and you might look healthy for a change. We could have had a proper house and a garden, new furniture for the baby, not that second hand crap your sister’s best friend’s mother gave us. It would have meant a whole new life.” She looked up at last, the threat of laughter having given way to tears.

He had to look down and muttered uncomfortably “The bloke was bleeding, some little twat had just kicked him the face. I only meant to give him a tissue.”

“Well, I guess at least now he’ll be able to afford to sue. You soft git.” It was an affectionate smile that she finally allowed him and, unable to bear her tragic demeanour any longer, he made a more determined effort to set the record straight.

“About that. You know that argument we had last week, when you agreed that you should let me finish a sentence and not jump to any conclusions?”

She gave a guarded nod, suspicion back in her eyes.

“If you remember, what I actually said when I came in was ‘You’ll never guess what I just did, I realised I’d won some money on the lottery and then I accidentally gave the ticket away to that bloke that plays the banjo outside the underground’”

She nodded again.

“Well, I never said it was THE winning ticket, just a winning ticket. It was only four numbers. I checked in the newsagents on the way in. It was only worth twelve pounds thirty seven.”

She stamped on his foot and stalked out.