Lucky

by Rachel Edwards

  Etta closed her eyes, felt the porcelain of the neck rest cool her. Her stomach muscles tightened as she heard the whoosh of the pump dispensing a squirt of shampoo into the hairdresser’s hand. A shiver ran through her as Jada turned the water on, let the temperature settle. Water was scooped and gently tipped onto the back of Etta’s head.

  ‘Is that OK?’ Jada asked.

  ‘Yes. Lovely,’ said Etta.

  Her eyes stayed closed as whoosh, whoosh … Jada gathered more shampoo and applied it to Etta’s hair. There, at last: the hands set themselves upon her head. Warm water coursed over her scalp; soft fingertips firm, pressing the neglected flesh stretching around her skull, circling, kneading in gentle sweeps, not judging but caring, not doubting but knowing. Tears pricked the corner of Etta’s eyes.

  She drifted. In the dark there was only comfort; the warm water, that restorative touch.

  Her tipped-back head grew heavy in seconds; it lolled to each side as the fingers rinsed, massaged shampoo in again, and rinsed.

  ‘OK, let’s towel this dry.’

  A rough-soft tussle of hair in cotton, ears rubbed, neck patted dry.

  ‘Right, my love. Here comes the hair mayo. Mayohhh.’

  Now the hands, scooped and slathered, scooped and slathered the creamy conditioning treatment all over Etta’s hair. Then the hands worked it through with a stout comb; divided the hair into four sections; wet the hair and pulled it into twists. Finally, she was crowned with a shower cap.

  ‘Chill a bit now, yeah? Twenty-five, thirty minutes. I’m going to check on Ionie.’

  Etta settled back, eyes still shut, and breathed. And breathed. All was dark and peace: too high up for traffic noise, no one hollering, no TV. Peace.

  At some point, soft footsteps, a voice coming through the dark:

  ‘OK then, let’s rinse this out.’

  Warm water, cleansing from brow to nape. Again, again. Hands towelling her hair dry. A spray of leave-in conditioner: the scent of warm skin, split coconuts, a cove …

  Click. Hairdryer on.

  Etta opened her eyes and shifted in her seat. She was being blow-dried with care, her hair blasted into its full glory.

  Click. The noise died; a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You’re done. You’ll be all right now.’

  A mirror was propped in front, another held up behind.

  Etta stared. She looked so orderly; so cared for.

  Tears were streaming before she could stop them.

  ‘Hey! Ah, no need for that. You’re OK.’

  Etta’s eyes closed tight against their weeping and she tipped her head back again, right back, into the warmth of Jada, stooped behind her; her head tipped back and the tears ran and she croaked out her pain while her pampered crown pressed into soft thick thigh, or breast or stomach, she knew not what; she could only feel the love.

  Back at home, Etta examined herself more closely for change in the mirror. She had to look away. She prepared a single poached egg on toast, coffee and orange juice instead of gorging. She drained her mug and set it down. Minutes passed; one long inconceivable moment. A tingle, a light burning grew on her skin. Compulsion began to crawl once more across her palms; the urge was back, stronger than ever.

  Etta was itching to gamble.

  Her body was breaking out: her thoughts starting to flutter, her breath coming faster. She patted her palms to her hair, trying to feel the love again … but no, there was just the itch. She rose, went to the cupboard and forgave her shortcomings with a whisper of gin, her thoughts growing hot and sweet in her head as she drank it down. She poured another half-glass for luck and went up to complete her breakfast of champions by playing slots, hard and fast.

  This time, she would also play smart. She planned to diversify, to spread her new eggs across the optimum number of baskets. Not on Cozee, never again. She joined Winners Kingdom, despite the lack of apostrophe (the omission of champions); she joined Spin City, because of the joining bonus – £30 now, plus £30 when you recommend a friend! (the incentive of champions); she stopped at just the two sites, because she was now back in control; what restraint! Even her pulse played along, never rising above a trot as she joined first one site, then the other. An excellent sign.

  Etta’s handle in this new realm was ‘Nemesis’. Hands steadying, she downloaded the Spin City phone app, to maximise her opportunities. She deferred the outstanding payday loans and took out two more. Everything cool. She was doubling her chances, getting a grip. She would be as smart as she hoped she was, this time. She had good sense, good hair. She would get through it.

  Etta was strolling around Spin City, dipping into games with the most appealing shopfronts. A text arrived: Joyce!

  I told you, we’re over. Don’t send me any more of your goddamn junk mail.

  Etta stood up from her chair. Sat down. Stood up again and picked up the phone.

  ‘Joyce, it’s Etta.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t send you anything.’

  ‘Bollocks, I’ve got the email here. Hold on … Yes. From these stupid arses: “Your friend Etta Oladipo has sent you £30 to start spinning on Spin City. Don’t miss this outstanding chance to have fun as you spin and win!”’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. I just wanted you to get a break, you know, have a bit of luck. I’ve been thinking about you.’

  ‘I need more than thoughts and prayers right now, thanks, Etta.’

  ‘I was trying to be a friend.’

  ‘Bit late for that.’

  ‘I am so sorry, Joyce, you have to believe me. I should never have let you down like that.’

  ‘You should never have done a lot of things, including sending me that stupid link.’

  ‘It was just a gesture, an apology. I thought—’

  ‘I thought, fair enough, I’m having a low day, let’s give it a go. Wasn’t gonna sniff at a free £30, was I? Thought I might win enough to top up my FOF—’

  ‘Sorry, your what?’

  ‘The Fuck-off Fund, you know this, for when you need to get the hell out. So, I had a few spins, won a bit first game. Thought, brilliant; few more spins. Then I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a longer go. Next thing you know, I’ve spent all this week’s rent and half of the next.’

  ‘Oh shit. Joyce, I—’

  ‘You blow out my mum’s funeral and then, just as I’m finding my bloody feet, while my head’s still a mess, you send me a link to these bloody crooks. What kind of bloody friend are you?’

  ‘Joyce, I am so sorry. Those games are never a dead cert, of course, but I thought—’

  ‘You thought “that stupid mare hasn’t got enough grief in her life, let’s shovel some more onto her, quick”.’

  ‘Joyce!’

  ‘It’s OK, Etta, no need to act surprised. My own stupid fault. We’re fine. We’re cool. Let’s just stay well away from each other from now on though, yeah? Because nothing calls to trouble like trouble.’

  She hung up.

  Etta sat down and stared into the screen of the laptop. A goggle-eyed cartoon dentist was testing his syringe, shooting a serum of pound signs into the air, to the amusement of the cartoon nurse.

  Drillionaire could take a running jump, for now. Her palms had stopped itching – no anaesthetic more effective than a friend pouring scorn on an open wound. From her heart to her fingertips, she felt numb.

  The front door went, Ola shouting:

  ‘I’m back. Did you miss me?’

  Etta clocked the truth before shouting back, ‘Of course!’

  Up early on Sunday, at 6 a.m., because this was a bright new dawn. Chris Wise had clearly thought better of his blackmail plans. She had funds and time. Today, Etta would begin to put things right, starting with Joyce. She would win £300 or £400 for her friend, whatever it took to cover her lost rent money. This was a priority and it would leapfrog all deficits. She would spin, win and transfer it to Joyce. Straight
away. This time it was serious.

  Leaving Ola sleeping in bed, she went to the spare room and fired up Spin City. She played Pandora. But Pandora played her back; within half an hour she had lost it all. The gambling stake, plus every penny she had earned that month: her whole July salary, gone in minutes. Devoured.

  Etta stared at the screen without any tears, or twitching, or flutterings of panic; something darker but more patient sat heavy in her chest. Something like hate.

  An alert popped up onscreen:

  You are now a Spin City VIP!

  She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes closed, and let the bad times roll, a raving, rambling movie in her mind. She drifted through the day, making meals, making empty conversation. That night, she drifted into a restless sleep; rolling inside her counterfeit dreaming, memories flowering and fading like colours in a kaleidoscope, until the metallic slap of Monday morning jerked her awake.

  She ran. Downstairs, five envelopes had landed on the mat. She scooped them up and shuffled. There it was: the grenade. She dropped the other post back onto the mat and took herself off to the downstairs loo.

  She locked the door and opened the bank statement. Only two months mattered:

  June 2018 – £22,018.34

  July 2018 – £0

  Etta’s eyes filled at the sight of the figures – the brutal reduction of their future to zero; the financial chasm between her and Ola; the betrayal tallied in black and white. With her vision swimming, she tore, tore, tore until there were at least thirty pieces of betrayal in her hands and – there! – they were floating in the toilet bowl. She flushed. A few shreds bobbed at the surface; she kneeled and flushed again, forcing them down into another turbulent stream before they could settle. One last scrap clammed itself against the porcelain, so that she had to grab the loo brush and shove at it, but it got caught in the bristles and then only her fingers could work it out, and her gullet contracted as she choked back nausea, the better to free the filthy white mush, only to flick each last bit of it into the bowl and cry freely as she flushed and flushed again.

  Once the cistern had shut up its grim song, Etta tried to think about moving away from the toilet bowl.

  But now there came knocking. Ola.

  ‘Are you all right, Teetee?’

  ‘Fine, Ola, I’m OK,’ she replied. ‘It just wouldn’t flush.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry o. I’m going to work now, if you’re sure you’re OK. Got to go.’

  ‘OK, thanks, I’m fine. See you later!’

  Etta tipped her head back against the loo door and tried to visualise the moment, seconds from now, when she would rise up from the mat and walk out into the hall, regaining the day. But she stayed sprawled on the ground, bent over and spent, floored.

  Work was a slow-motion replay; she fast-forwarded in her mind. Monday evening brought no text, again, from the man who haunted her thoughts. Maybe he felt too bad to go through with it. Or had bottled it. Whatever: he was not chasing her for £10,000 she did not have and that was enough light in the darkness to see her through another day.

  One further point of light: life off Cozee was starting to feel better. Safer. She could whirl around Spin City and explore Winners Kingdom incognito: a true player, with no loyalties and no connections. The right way. Pure madness to have engaged with another gambler – another spinner – outside of the confines of that shifty, ever-shifting world.

  Real-life friendships had been neglected – or blown apart – and she would put that right with a win. Money Meteor, next. She blazed a trail from £10 to £380 in a few spins.

  Etta was winning.

  Minutes later, money at the £440 mark, the roll, roll, roll of the reels set her mind drifting. This £400 would make everything right with Joyce. Withdraw now and the friendship was fixed. But the Meteor Shower bonus was still out there, waiting … Maybe Joyce would forgive her if she just called her up to explain once more?

  addict

  The word rang in her head, but she rolled on.

  It was late when the neighbours’ bulldog went mental. Then the doorbell rang.

  Ola had stopped at the pub opposite the uni and was on his way back. Etta went downstairs alone.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, tucking her phone into her dressing-gown pocket.

  The light above the front door had been left on, as usual. She could see through the glass that no one was on the front step.

  Bracing herself, she went to open the door.

  She breathed deep, waited, then yanked the door wide.

  No one. Her eyes darting into the dark corners. Was someone hiding behind a car?

  Then she saw them: glasses, on the doorstep, one lens smashed. Ola’s reading glasses. Propped up on their arms, placed central and straight on the porch mat. Etta snatched them up and threw herself back into the house, slamming the door shut.

  Chris Wise. What had he done to him?

  She fumbled for her phone and dialled.

  He picked up:

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ola! Thank God. Are you OK?’

  ‘Whoa, slow down, it is noisy in here. Hold on, I’m moving through to the garden …’

  Etta waited as she heard Ola close a door, voices fading out.

  ‘So. Speak to me. You OK?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Etta. ‘Have you been attacked? Hurt?’

  ‘Of course not? Why would you think that?’

  ‘I just … Someone’s been in the house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘They haven’t touched me. I found your reading glasses on the front step. Broken.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes!’ Etta gasped at her own honesty. She had no choice.

  ‘Are you sure they’re mine?’

  ‘Yes, the ones normally on your bedside table. Broken. A lens is broken.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ola.

  The two of them were silent for a moment.

  ‘They must have been in the front pouch of my rucksack. Fallen out, eh? Smashed.’

  ‘You reckon?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Time to pull back. No good could come of the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘You must be right.’

  More silence.

  ‘Sorry for bothering you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s OK. As long as you’re all right.’ A door opened, a burble of voices. ‘Go to bed now, heh?’

  ‘OK,’ said Etta. ‘Night night.’

  She went to the kitchen, turning on every light as she went, checking the large cupboards, looking. No sign of him. More lights on upstairs, all the lights; the house blazed with her fear. He did not appear to be in here and yet he had been here.

  Dead flowers, her lover’s glasses broken: these doorstep messages were enough to tell her that he wished her harm. That he was watching.

  Etta locked the bedroom door and sat on the edge of the bed, still dressed in her robe and ready for flight. She sat, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock to tell her Ola had returned. She sat, wondering whether she might first hear the sound of breaking glass, a stranger’s footsteps on the stairs.

  Her eyes were tiring in the glare by 11.24 when her phone announced a WhatsApp. She tapped the screen. Her mouth formed the O of a scream.

  She had been right. Chris Wise.

  You owe me

  Chapter Eleven

  THURSDAY, 2 AUGUST 2018

  It was three days later when the doorbell rang.

  Ola had returned soon after Wise’s late-night message and she had feigned normality ever since: working, waiting, watching out.

  Now, the bell. She had only been back from work for five minutes, again skimming looks over every passing face as she hurried home. She had felt Wise’s badness in every step she took, just as she had sensed his gaze upon her as she strived in the spare room. Had he followed? The front door was not that sturdy and the back of the house, the garden, the watched windo
ws …

  The bell went again.

  A lurch of horror as she realised that if she did not get it, Ola would. She ran downstairs.

  A man’s shadow behind the dimpled glass. His imagined height, his imagined build.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called brightly, reaching for an umbrella in the stand.

  ‘Did your windows the other day,’ the man called through the door. ‘We left you a note.’

  ‘Oh!’ The umbrella crashed to the floor. ‘Sorry! Give me a minute, please.’

  ‘No problem, love.’

  She replaced the umbrella and opened the door.

  ‘Whoa, hello!’ said the man.

  ‘Hi.’

  It was not Chris Wise, but a young man with ready wit and bucket, eyeing Etta as if he would like to clean her, limb by limb, with a tiny rag. She turned her back on him, buying time. She trembled as she made a show of looking in the coat cupboard for her handbag; her thoughts were oscillating and her hands and legs were quaking. The shock, of course, but also another night of no sleep and a 2 a.m. rendezvous with gin. The spirit had not done its usual trick, so she had stared blank-eyed into the dawn. She was tired of gambling, of lying, of stressing, and of not sleeping. She was tired of being tired of all of them: at least the trembling was a fresh tribulation.

  She hauled herself out of the cupboard, holding up her handbag.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  She continued her fake searching, this time rifling for her purse in her bag, which would contain nothing; she could offer this hard-working man not a thing for his trouble. The window cleaner watched; he whistled something vaguely familiar as she searched and shook.

  The rifling went on for too long; she knew it had to look like a bad joke, or a mime of desperation.

  The whistling died. An awkward noise: a laugh, quickly strangled.

  ‘You OK, love?’ The window cleaner was craning to see into her bag from the doorway.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I can’t find it.’

  ‘Take your time.’

  She leaned her bag on the hall table and rummaged more forcefully. His smile slipped from patience to concern.