Lottery Boy

by Michael Byrne

  “Down ’ere then,” he said. He could maybe put the tiny TV back on. Better than nothing.

  “Jo, go upstairs to the attic and get the sleeping bag, will you?”

  “D’you want to come up?” Jo said, turning back to him on the stairs. And he didn’t say anything but followed her up.

  The attic place was right at the top, above all the ceilings. The room had a slanting roof so that you couldn’t stand up in the corners, which was just as well because it was full of stuff: more books, bags, clothes, like a charity shop that never sold anything.

  She started searching for the sleeping bag. “When it’s clear you can just about see St Paul’s from here.” He nodded, didn’t know what she was going on about.

  “Mum says it’s the only place she’d ever get married, so I think Dad’s safe. They’re kind of old hippies.”

  Hippies. They didn’t look like hippies. He pulled a look, didn’t approve of crusties or hippies of any age – didn’t realize the look was on his face until she said, “They’re all right though.”

  “Your dad talks funny,” said Bully.

  “Oh yeah, he’s still got an accent, hasn’t he? He’s from South Africa originally. He came over years ago when he met Mum.”

  “He dudn’t look black,” said Bully and Jo laughed until she saw he was being serious.

  “No, not really… Anyway, there’s the Eye, you can just about see it.” And then he looked out because he knew what that was. He could just about still see it, like a glowing dot. About the same size as his eye, blinking out the end of the day. “And that’s Highgate cemetery over there.” She pointed to one of the little stone houses he’d seen the night before, across the lane. “Lots of famous people are buried there, like Karl Marx and George Eliot … and loads of other people too,” she said when she saw he wasn’t nodding to any of them. “They do guided tours if you want to look round.”

  “What? You have to pay?” He’d seen it for free last night, hadn’t thought much of it either, at first, until he found the hound on the gravestone.

  “Um, yes. I think it’s about eight pounds. I suppose that’s quite a lot really,” she said, realizing eight pounds wasn’t so cheap when you didn’t have shoes. “I think the church is free though… Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.” When he looked at her, her cheeks were red like she’d put make-up on without him seeing. “I mean, anyone can just go in there. And sometimes people get you help and stuff. I’m not saying you need help. I just mean they’re like safe places to go, sort of like sanctuaries, aren’t they? Sorry, I’ll shut up…”

  She turned away and went back to searching for the sleeping bag but he knew what she meant: like a bird sanctuary. He’d been to one of those once and got a free pen. He realized he was still looking at her, just the back of her head, and he felt the same make-up on his face, turning it red. She was older than him. And everything.

  “Here it is.” She turned back to him, smiling like her mum did, just for the sake of it.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep up here, instead?”

  “Nah,” he said. He was used to the couch.

  * * *

  An hour or so later, when everyone else had gone to bed, he lay awake thinking about what had happened to him in the last few days since he’d won the lottery. It was like watching a boy in a film – he didn’t really think much about how this boy was feeling, what he was going through, he just wanted everything to be OK at the end. He kept watching it, over and over in his head, rewinding it each time he got to where he was now and wondering what was going to happen next, because the bit he was in now, in this house with these people, with all the stairs and books, felt like a trailer for another story.

  He woke up early with a plan that was perfect. He hadn’t thought it up; it was just there when his eyes opened. As if someone had pulled back a curtain in his brain and let the light in. He didn’t have to look sixteen; he just had to prove it. So what he needed to do was borrow someone else’s proof and make it his. It needed to be an older boy and Alex was an older boy. Alex had a passport; they all did. He’d seen the mum putting them in the kitchen drawer next to the sink. And checking it was still quiet, and telling Jack to stay, he got off the couch. His foot felt better, almost perfect, and he worked his way around the edge of the room on tiptoe so the floorboards didn’t squeak.

  He found Jo’s passport first. She was really called Josephine and that was much longer than Jo and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He stared at the picture instead. This Josephine didn’t really look like her either. She was years younger with a white, blank face trying to hide a grin and short hair just sitting on her ears, not doing anything. He flicked through the others and found the boy’s passport. His real name was longer too. It was Alexander. Bully was glad about that though, because it was like Alex was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. So it didn’t matter if Bully robbed his passport and did the same thing.

  He reckoned with the short blade of his knife he could slit the plastic and slide a photo of himself over Alex’s picture. He’d get one from a photo cabin at a bus station or in a shopping centre and then literally wipe that smile off his face.

  And if he ticked no publicity, Alex would never find out, no one would. Would Alex miss the passport, though? Bully didn’t think so. Not until they went away next year, anyway. He thought about letting himself out and going with Jack but that would look suspicious so he decided to wait until everyone got up, wasting a few more hours of his ticket’s life.

  He woke up again to see his cut-off shorts, hoodie and T-shirt on the arm of the couch. The mum had washed them and they were all dry, and white where the dirt had been rinsed out. He decided he liked his new clothes and left the old ones where they were. In the pocket of his new jeans he found a key – the key to the back door he’d used to get in. And though there was a very simple explanation as to how it got there, he didn’t know why it was there. Why was Rosie giving him back the key to their house? He couldn’t work it out.

  He could hear voices in the kitchen, official voices talking. He thought it was the Feds, but after listening for a while he realized the voices were coming from a radio and he listened in case there was any more about the dead man in the park. Then the mum and dad started talking, talking about money – about it not stretching. And it would have to be camping in Wales next year. And Bully was pleased about that because he was pretty sure you didn’t need a passport to go there.

  All the concentrating and the listening was making him hungry so he went into the kitchen. They were reading papers, sitting at the table. The dad was dressed in blue overalls like he was fixing something. In the light Bully saw how white his hair was and how brown his head was. When they saw him, they smiled as if he was supposed to be there.

  “Sorry, did we wake you up? Did you sleep well?” asked the mum. “Let me get you some breakfast.” Bully shook his head but she seemed to know that he didn’t mean it and got him some cereal and some milk.

  “Can I drop you anywhere? John’s off in a minute but I’m here all day.”

  The dad laughed. “Some of us have to go to work.”

  “Hey, I earn my holidays.”

  “Rosie’s a teacher,” the dad explained.

  Bully was both fascinated and appalled that a real-life lady with a first name and everything could be a teacher. He could not imagine them existing outside the school gates. He imagined them more like, well, like zombies, just wandering around the classrooms all night on the lookout for leftover kids, because they were always there before him, first thing in the morning, going mad about being on time.

  “I teach English, for my sins,” she said, like it was her suffering the punishment.

  Well, that explained a lot of the talking this family did. Out of all the teachers, the English ones went on and on more than all the others: about letters and dots and dashes and words and what they meant, as if they were teaching you a foreign language or something. And books. They went on and o
n about what books were about. Sometimes weeks after you had read them.

  “And I’m a plumber,” said the dad. A plumber, thought Bully, living in a house like this. That didn’t add up. It wasn’t right. Plumbers earned good money but they didn’t live in houses full of books.

  “Is that your van then?” asked Bully. “The blue one out on the road?”

  “The old heap? Yep. That’s mine and if it doesn’t start I’ll be getting you to give me a push.” He stood up. He wasn’t much bigger than Bully but that didn’t seem to bother him. He came over to Bully and patted him on the back. “Only joking, boy. You have a good day, son. See you later maybe.”

  Jo came downstairs. Bully had hoped she would. Her hair was up on top of her head like a fancy bun today and she was still in her dressing gown and pyjamas.

  Jack began to whine.

  “Oi,” he said. But she was hungry, wasn’t she? Jo had gone out and bought a small tin of dog food yesterday but it was gone now.

  “Is she hungry? There’s a shop at the top of the lane, in the square.”

  There was thump, thumping on the stairs. Alex came into the kitchen, avoiding Bully’s eye.

  “Morning, Alex,” the mum said and then Bully saw her reaching for the drawer where the passports were.

  “I got to go now,” Bully said.

  “OK … well, Jo, you get dressed and take Bully up to the shops and—”

  “No, I got to go now.”

  “OK.” She offered him her hand, money in it, and he took it.

  Rosie showed him to the door and handed him his new coat, which he took, and the new trainers, which he put on. They were still too sloppy but they looked good.

  “Oh, do you think you could do me a really big favour and bring back a loaf of bread? Just drop it off, if you’re not stopping. Brown if they’ve got it. But it doesn’t matter. Anything will do.”

  She opened the door for him and pointed up the hill. “Just straight up there. Go right to the top of Swain’s Lane and you can see it across the square. Let me get you a bag.”

  He stepped back inside and caught Alex saying to Jo: “Yeah, right. He’s coming back with the change…”

  And Bully was really glad then that he had taken this Alexander boy’s passport.

  A few of the zombies were out and about but Bully felt good. He didn’t mind them as he walked up to the shop. He was warm and dry and the sky was too. For the first time perhaps, he felt a bit like one of them. Places to go, things to do.

  The shop was just where the mum had said it was. He looked around, scouted it first, a little wary, but he was sure now anyone looking for him would be in Watford, waiting for him there. He tried not to think about that as he tied Jack to a bollard outside the shop and went in. Sometimes if he had money, like now, he would take Jack in just to wind them up, but he didn’t want to do that today.

  They didn’t have any tins with a Jack Russell on the label so he had to make do with one with an Alsatian instead. He was about to pay when he remembered the bread; brown she’d said, and he chose the brownest-looking bread he could find, which took some time, comparing all the loaves.

  The man at the till smiled at him.

  “Put that on toast, eh?” he said, nodding at the dog food. It was only after Bully left the shop that he realized that this was a joke.

  Outside the shop someone slapped him on the back, hard. He twitched forward onto his toes, pulling away, already off and running in his head.

  “Heh, heh! Slow down, man. Where you been?”

  It was Chris. He looked shorter and fatter with his pirate rag on his head, like someone had stood on him and only just taken their foot off, and he had a bit of a beard, just fuzzy stuff, so it took Bully a second to recognize him.

  “I said we’d find him, didn’t I, Tiggs?”

  And Tiggs was there too, with his ears round his neck, feeding Jack chocolate. “Where you been hanging? You got your phone off? What’s happenin’? What’s going down?” he said in a voice that was not exactly his.

  “Listen, listen…” said Chris. Bully unconsciously lowered his head a little. “You got to get out of town, man.”

  “Yeah, I know. I seen Janks and—” He paused, left out what Janks had done to the man in the park.

  “Did yer? What you been up to, Bully?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Must be something. If he’s after you.”

  “What? Who?”

  “You, man… You.” said Chris. He got his phone out and showed Bully a text.

  Stray gone missing $$$$ reward. JANKS

  Bully couldn’t work out what it meant. And then he realized he was the stray.

  “What’s that about?” said Chris.

  “I owe him.”

  “OK…” said Chris. “What? Back tax?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Back tax.”

  “How much? What you been doing? Partying it up?” Chris laughed like he didn’t really think that but Bully shook his head anyway.

  “Nothing,” he said. He didn’t need to tell Chris or Tiggs about his ticket now – he could cash it in himself. He would keep it quiet until he got to Camelot. No publicity. He’d learned that now.

  “All right. Whatever. You don’t want to tell, but it’s all over town. That’s all I’m saying. You gotta get out.”

  Chris nodded to Tiggs, who untied Jack’s lead, and they began to walk Bully away from the shop.

  “Where you going?”

  “This way. Come on, we got a motor.”

  This was good news! Chris could just drive him there and drop him off at Camelot and he could give him something later, for petrol.

  “It’s down here,” Chris said. Bully took the lead off Tiggs because he could walk his own dog. And they started walking back towards the house, down Swain’s Lane.

  “Can you drop me at Watford?”

  “What? Watford? What you want to go there for?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” echoed Chris. “Must be something, Bully boy…”

  “I’m meeting up.”

  “Oh yeah? Who with?”

  He tried to think of someone, to catch up with his lie running ahead of him. “My dad. My dad lives there. In Watford.”

  “Oh right. We didn’t know you had a dad, did we, Tiggs?” Tiggs was nodding but only to what was playing out in his head, now he had his ears on. “Oh right, Tiggs knows all about it. Anyways, we’ll get you there, won’t we, Tiggs? We’ll get you sorted.”

  “Yeah?” said Bully.

  “Yeah. No problem, my man.”

  They went past the corner of Jo’s street and Bully looked down in case anyone was watching from the window. He was pleased that the blue van was gone, didn’t want to see John. Bully stopped right where it had been parked.

  “I just got to go and drop this off.” He lifted the plastic bag up in the air.

  “What?”

  “I been shopping for some people.” He pointed across the gardens.

  “Whatever, we haven’t got time for that. You know if Janks gets hold of you he’s going to set the dogs on you? You know that’s what he does to late payers? Come on! We’re parked up.”

  Bully stopped again. “I’ll just drop it off.”

  “Drop it! Dump it, man, come on! We gotta get movin’.”

  “Hold on…”

  Chris gave him the dead look to show he was getting impatient. “We ain’t got time.”

  Bully ignored him, eyed up the distance to the wall three houses away and started to loop the plastic bag round and round in a circle, to wrist-rocket it into their garden.

  “Come on…”

  Round and round the plastic bag went, faster and faster, but Bully didn’t want to let go.

  “Bully! Hurry the f—”

  The bag flew up, cleared the first fence, carried on rising over the second, but he didn’t wait to see it fall. When he heard the thump he remembered that Jack’s dog food was still in the bag. He would come back wit
h the change later, with lots more money. Lots more bread too. As brown as he could get it.

  The car was a big old Granada estate, with loose leather seats cracked and messed up by the sun, and they reminded Bully of the old Davey in the hospital. Bully sat in the back, cleared a space in the rubbish, and kicked green and brown bottles underneath the seat. Tiggs didn’t sit shotgun with Chris but sat next to him and Jack. He kept his headphones on.

  “We’ll get there before tonight, yeah?” asked Bully.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Chris.

  They drove down Swain’s Lane, back down towards the city. Bully had never seen anywhere in London in a car before, just in a bus. And he decided he liked being in a car in London because it wasn’t the same as crossing roads on your feet. He kept stretching his neck to take in the unfamiliar view of the road between the seats – still missing bits of where they were going – had to keep leaning from one side to another, with Chris throwing the car about in the corners and going whooah…

  After a while, despite all the twists and turns, he still couldn’t help noticing something about their direction. The little arrow on his compass was pointing almost exactly the wrong way.

  “It’s north, Chris. Watford’s north. We gotta go north,” he said.

  Chris looked round. “What you got there? You a little boy scout? Let’s have a look.” Bully passed the penknife over and Chris put it where he kept his cigarettes, in the ashtray, not looking at all.

  “You can tell your little compass that we’ve got to get on the motorway first, yeah? And the motorway is south, yeah? We’re gunna pick it up at Brent Cross.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Bully. He’d always wanted to go to Brent Cross. And now he still just about had time.

  “Can we stop off?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Chris.

  He could get his photos done there. He wasn’t going to tell Chris why if he asked, but he didn’t seem to want to know.

  A bus went past, putting out the sun. He looked up to the top deck, and suddenly wished he was up there, seeing more. He wound down the window so that Jack could poke her head out. She had never been in a car either. Not in London, not anywhere. And then Bully remembered that she must have, at least once, because of where he’d found her, under the 4x4. He didn’t know how someone could leave a dog like that, dumped in a car park, all ready to be run over.