by Adele Parks
Jake holds me close and speaks into my neck, his breath tickling. “Actually, technically, you have hit the jackpot. You bought the ticket. This win is yours. That’s why they wanted to speak to you on the phone.”
I laugh. “What’s yours is mine, though, right?” It has always been that way between us. It has for so long. We’re a team. Husband and wife. Your spouse is your teammate, right? I shake my head, as a clouding thought enters it. It has to be addressed. “Jake, what about the Heathcotes and the Pearsons?”
Jake instantly moves away from me; he concentrates on putting on his jeans and won’t meet my gaze. “What about them?”
“I just went to Jennifer and Fred’s tonight. That’s where I was earlier.”
“Oh, so not delivering a book to Diane Roper like you said.”
“No.” Normally, I’d be mildly embarrassed that I’d lied to him about something so petty, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t register. I hadn’t wanted to tell him that I was checking up on Jennifer’s story about them going away to Fred’s sister’s place this weekend. I thought he might have tried to stop me.
I thought he’d gently tease me, insist I was getting into a state about nothing.
Although he’d have been wrong.
“They are not away. Like they said they were going to be,” I tell him.
“I see.”
“I drove past their house. What do you think is going on? Why would they lie to us?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you care that they’ve lied to us?”
“Not at all,” he snaps. His tone suggests he cares quite a good deal. I stare at him; his head is bent. He must feel the weight of my gaze because eventually he straightens up and his eyes meet mine. Breathing fast and shallow, he says, “We’ve just won the lottery, Lexi.”
“But the Heathcotes, the Pearsons?”
His expression changes to one that is smug and victorious, but there is also something about the way he moves his mouth that reveals to me that he is smarting. Concerned? He draws me to him. “Look, this is karma, after the way they behaved last week.”
“It was just Patrick who was out of order.”
“The others sided with him. It was humiliating. We don’t need them,” he whispers.
I lay my head on his chest and breathe him in. “Are you sure?” I ask. I want to believe him.
“Not now we don’t, Lexi. We have everything.” I try to heed his words. I want to feel absolutely safe, secure. I’d always thought being rich would make me feel invincible, but honestly, I feel apprehensive. I bury my face into his neck. He has always been my haven, and I will the feeling of dauntless unassailability to overpower me.
“We need to think how we are going to tell them.”
“I’ll buy a Ferrari and drive past their houses,” says Jake. “Fuck them, Lexi, we are rich!”
I start to giggle because it is truly marvelous. “‘Rich beyond our wildest dreams,’” I quote his words back to him. Then I kiss him, my handsome husband, and I hold him tightly, putting all thoughts of our former friends—who I thought were the best people in the world but now realize I hardly knew—out of my head.
CHAPTER 3
Lexi
Sunday, April 21
I wake up, and my heart is beating so fast and hard I can hear it. Adrenaline and excitement, yes, of course, but also a fairly clear conviction that someone is about to jump out on me and say, Just kidding! I can’t believe we are lottery winners. I don’t understand the amount of wealth that is now apparently ours. It’s madness! As if to confirm the miracle, sunshine floods through the windows. It’s an unbelievably beautiful day. I can’t remember an Easter Sunday being warm before; I swear we had snow one year! How is our life such a miracle?
We’ve barely slept. How could we? We lie side by side, hand in hand, and whispered to one another about how this could possibly be happening. What it means. What we should do next. We made plans late into the night or actually early into the morning. The illusory feel is accentuated by the fact we fell in and out of consciousness and each other’s bodies throughout the night. Clinging to one another in a new entangled, intense way. I’m left unsure as to what is real, what is a dream. The dream. All night Jake whispered into my ear. He told me he loved me. That everything is going to be perfect from now on in. That we have nothing to worry about. That we’ll never have anything to worry about ever again. He repeated this over and over, like a hypnotist. And I want to believe him. I want that more than anything.
At seven o’clock we get up and go downstairs to make coffee. Jake takes the time to mess about with the old percolator, which he very rarely bothers with. In fact, I can’t remember when it was used last, and the ground coffee is probably well past its sell-by date. Still, I understand; the aroma drifts through the kitchen, declaring it is time to indulge. Cornflakes just won’t cut it this morning. We’re going to have French toast. I crack some eggs into a shallow, flat bowl and hum to myself. A fluttering of excitement ripples through my body as I recall Jake’s urgent whispers delivered in the dark, oozing seductive possibility. What an opportunity. How lucky we are. I am.
“Wow, Lexi, can you believe this?” asks Jake yet again.
“Nope, not really. I’m a different man!”
“Are you? How exactly?” I challenge gently.
“Okay, I’m the same man but, you know, better. Richer. Definitely richer.” He laughs. “I can’t wait until the kids get up. Shall we go and wake them? It’s like a massively exaggerated Christmas morning, isn’t it?”
For the past couple of years, we have woken up earlier than the kids on Christmas morning. Something I see as a bit of a bonus—it gives me time to listen to the radio, prepare the sprouts. For me, Christmas is about food, family time and, ideally, a little contemplation. Jake finds the kids’ teenage lie-ins frustrating as he is always desperate for them to open their presents. He likes to spoil them and see their faces light up when they discover he has after all bought the latest must-have they’ve longed for and that we can barely afford. For him, Christmas is all about the giving and getting of stuff.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe we shouldn’t tell them straight away,” I suggest carefully.
“What?”
“Let’s wait until we are sure.”
“We are sure.”
“But it’s complicated, isn’t it? Because Emily is best friends with Megan and dating Ridley. She won’t be able to keep her mouth shut. I thought we agreed the longer we can keep this from the Heathcotes and Pearsons, the better.”
“How are you going to hide seventeen-point-eight-million pounds, Lexi?”
“I’m not trying to hide it.”
“We’ll have to tell our families.”
“Of course.”
“They’ll expect a slice of the winnings. Well, maybe not expect but certainly they would hope for it, that is natural enough. How much is the right amount to give?” He is like an excited kid. I know he can’t wait to start handing out bundles of cash.
I shake my head a fraction, trying to clear it. It is impossible to think straight after everything I discovered last night, after the poor night’s sleep. I lost so much, then won so much. Their betrayal, his loving. My head and heart are about to explode. “I just think that it would be best to wait until the money is in the account. Just in case.”
Jake stares at me. “I don’t know how we can keep this from the kids. They’ll be able to tell something is up. It’s happening, Lexi. This is real.” Jake is grinning so widely it looks like his face is about to split.
“But it’s a big responsibility. This is going to change their lives forever. We need to think about what to tell them, give them ideas on how to adjust,” I insist.
“How to adjust to what?” asks Logan.
I jump. Where did he come from? I w
ant to kick myself—my excitement had made me careless. I know, and usually remember, that one or other of our kids is invariably lurking, especially if they can smell food.
“We’ve won the lottery!” yells Jake.
“What?” Logan looks sceptical.
“Seventeen-point-eight-million pounds. We’re bloody millionaires, my boy!”
“Jake!”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to swear.”
Actually, I was reproving him for his lack of discretion and caution more than his bad language.
“For real?” Logan asks, his eyes on me. He most likely thinks his dad is playing with him. “We’re millionaires?”
“Several times over,” I confirm with a shrug and a smile. “Most probably. Our numbers match and we’ve phoned to confirm it, but I—” My words are cut off because Logan starts to yell, actually squeal like a pig. He jumps up and down on the spot. Then he runs to his dad and launches himself, so their bodies smash into each other with a ferocious energy. A move that is somewhere between a hug and an attack. He doesn’t know how to contain himself. He is literally overflowing. Effervescent. It’s brilliant.
“What’s going on?” Emily is in the kitchen, too, now.
Logan announces, “We’ve won the lottery. We’re millionaires. We’ve won seventeen-million-and-something pounds!”
Emily looks cynical. “Yeah, right.” Sluggishly she reaches for the cereal.
“It’s true, my princess,” says Jake, picking her up and twirling her around, just the way he used to when she was much younger and less self-conscious.
“Honestly?” Emily asks, caution and disbelief swilling in her eyes.
“Yes,” I verify with a beam.
Emily bursts into tears, and then we all run to one another and amalgamate into a big mass of cuddles, screeches and happy tears.
We’ve been saved.
CHAPTER 4
Emily
Tuesday, April 23
“Emily, get up. Your alarm didn’t go off. You’ve slept in.” Mum is banging on my bedroom door, then she opens it and rushes in, carrying a freshly ironed school shirt. It’s like this weekend never happened. “Come on, sweetheart, you’ll miss the bus,” she urges.
“Do I have to go in?”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Then of course you have to go in.” Mum looks confused.
“But we won the lottery,” I remind her.
“Emily, I’m surprised at you. Come on, get in the shower. Get a move on.”
She rushes out of my room, and I hear the almost exact same conversation play out between her and Logan. He mutters, “What’s the point of being a millionaire if I have to go to school?”
“He has a good argument,” yells Dad from their bedroom.
I smile to myself. Dad is always on our side.
“Come on, people. I’m serious. Get out of bed,” Mum insists. I stay where I am, thinking about how it is going to be at school today. The holidays are ridiculous this year anyhow. Who goes back to school straight after Easter? Who goes to school at all if they have just become millionaires? Mum and Dad have said we can’t tell anyone about the lottery, which is going to be so weird because why wouldn’t they want to tell the entire world? We are rich. Like super-off-the-scale rich! Mum says I just have to put it out my mind. Like, as if! How am I going to keep this from Ridley and Megan? We are lottery winners! Multimillionaires! Mum sometimes does this thing where she reads my mind; she does it now and swings back into my room. She hovers at the door looking uncomfortable.
“I know it’s going to be hard keeping this from Ridley and Megan.”
“Yeah, like, understatement of the year. Why do I have to?”
“Because there is a proper chance their parents are going to take this really badly. We were all doing the lottery together until just last week.”
“Yeah, but they said it was lame.”
“I imagine they’ll feel very differently now.”
“Can’t we just give them some of the money?”
Mum doesn’t answer me. She just looks torn. Mum has morals and makes a big thing of it all the time. If, for example, we are going into London to see a show in the West End and she sees someone sleeping rough, which is a given, right, then she insists we give the exact money we spent on one ticket to the guy on the street. Dad says it’s a waste and that they’ll just drink it or shoot it up their arms. But he says this at the interval when we are in the bar and he’s drinking a glass of red wine, so Mum’s counterargument is staring at his glass.
“We can’t tell a soul until everything is finalized and your dad and I have had our meeting with the lottery company. Honestly, this will be for the best, for you, for Ridley and Megan, for everyone.”
This is about the millionth time she has repeated this to prove she’s really serious about it. Like there is any doubt. Mum is always really serious about everything, even winning the lottery apparently. It’s a bit of a buzzkill.
I mean, I can see that the Heathcotes and Pearsons are going to be gutted. Can you imagine pulling out of a lottery syndicate the week before your numbers come up? Major fail! But Ridley and I will get through this. I know we are only fifteen, but we’re really serious about one another. He is my One. We’re soul mates. Megan, though? I’m pretty sure she will explode with jealousy. I mean, I love her, she loves me, but we are fifteen-year-old best friends so she also hates me sometimes and I hate her sometimes. Mum probably has a point. This shit is going to get real.
I hear the bathroom door slam. No! Logan got there first. He’ll take forever and make it smell like hell. I pull on my robe and drag myself downstairs. I know there’s no way on earth Mum is going to let me ditch school, lottery win or not. She values education above everything else. Thinks it’s the biggest agent for change, etc., etc. Personally, I think maybe she overvalues education. I mean, clearly, a lottery win is a big agent for change, too, right?
As I pour myself a bowl of cereal, I glance over the lists we drew up yesterday. There’s always a notebook knocking around the kitchen in which Mum scribbles herself little reminders of things she needs to buy. It also has the scores from our family games night when we play Monopoly or cards, and sometimes Mum and Dad write notes to me and Logan in there if they are going to be late getting home. Just stuff about what there is in to eat and how long to heat things up for, as though texting hasn’t been invented. Yesterday, we used the ordinary little notebook to catch our dreams. I smile to myself as I flick through the pages. On one page it says: red onions, gravy granules, bleach. On the next it says: Dad—Ferrari, Emily—holiday to New York, Logan—swimming pool (plus house), which was written as an afterthought when it was pointed out to him that we don’t have room in our garden to dig a swimming pool. Mum—new sofa. I don’t think Mum has the hang of this game. Dad had said he’d get us anything we wanted, anything at all, and that was the best she could come up with. When we all laughed at Mum and told her to think bigger, she got a bit huffy and said, “Well, our sofa is quite lumpy, we really do need a new one.” Hilarious.
Dad said he’d book New York in the next day or two. He would have done so last night, but he said the sort of style we want to do it in would more than max out his credit cards and the money from the lottery isn’t in their account yet. We’re going to fly first class. Obvs none of us have done that before, but Dad says that’s the only way we are going to travel from now on. We looked at some amazing hotels, didn’t know where to start. We put in the search “Best 5-star hotels in New York.” We couldn’t decide. They were all out of this world. Unlike anything we have ever stayed in. Well, we don’t usually go on hotel holidays. Mum has a friend from work who has a flat in the south of Spain, we usually go there. She gives us ten percent off the price that’s listed on the Owner Direct site. We stayed in a bed-and-breakfast when we did a city break in
Edinburgh. It was nice, fluffy towels with a good-size TV in the room, but these luxury hotels that we looked at in New York are something else! They all have spas, rooftop swimming pools, club lounges and amazing restaurants in cool subterranean basements. They are so stylish I don’t believe in them. We didn’t know which to pick and just kept jumping around from one site to another. Sort of overwhelmed.
In the end we chose the Ritz-Carlton, because we’d all heard of the Ritz and know it means posh. Mum and Dad kept singing some crazy old song about “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” They didn’t seem to know the song very well, though, as that was the only line they sang, but when they petered out, they just howled with laughter because it was a unique, unprecedented, amazing day when we all thought everything was funny! Maybe, and I really want to believe this, maybe none of us will ever be angry or sad or irritated ever again. Not for real.
The hotel is right next to Central Park. I have always wanted to go to Central Park since I watched this old show Mum likes, Friends. The Ritz-Carlton is the most elegant, chic place you could imagine, ever. Dad said Logan and I can have our own rooms; we don’t even have to share. Mum and Dad will get a suite, so we all have somewhere to chill after we’ve spent the day shopping on Fifth Avenue, which features on like every chick flick ever. I literally can’t wait!
Yesterday really was the most perfect day I’ve ever experienced. Dad quickly got bored of sitting around thinking about how we could spend the money; he wanted to get out and actually spend some. Mum made another call to the lottery company and once they absolutely, definitely double, treble confirmed that we had won, she said we could get a train into London and go to the big Topshop on Oxford Street.