At home, Sammy checked the lottery website. The date corresponded. The numbers too! He double-, then triple-checked. Three million! How would so much money change Mrs G.’s life? Not much, at her age. It’d probably go straight to her family. She’d mentioned a daughter who hardly ever visited.
What would he spend it on? He couldn’t imagine. His uncle had once shown him a fifty-quid note that had caused great suspicion in the village. In the end, he’d had to change it at the bank in the next town.
Then it occurred to him. That money could be his. It’d be more use to him than to Mrs G. She seemed happy enough as she was, and besides, what was she thinking of, anyway, playing the lottery at her age? She’d clearly forgotten all about the ticket.
He fell asleep that night thinking of a world in which Mam could pay the rent on time. They could go on holiday, get a wide-screen TV. A smart phone!
#
‘You’re up early,’ his mam said, still in her curlers and a threadbare dressing gown. She yawned. ‘Found yourself a proper job or something?’
He rolled his eyes, spooned up another load of Cheerios. ‘Sure. They’ve taken me on as manager at HSBC.’
‘Funny!’ She picked up the milk carton and sniffed. ‘When they gonna make you full-time?’
Sammy added a new dressing gown to his imaginary shopping list. A silk kimono, perhaps, or a soft, thick towelling number with a hood. Mam’d like that. Course, if he started spending too much, people would guess he’d been the winner. Everyone would be sponging off him. He’d have to buy a house elsewhere. He wondered if Betty Hodgkins might have more time for him if he became rich. The thought of sharing a mansion and a four-poster bed with Betty Hodgkins put such a spring in his step, he arrived earlier at Mrs G.’s than he’d intended.
‘Morning, Mrs G.,’ he shouted, letting himself in.
It wasn’t Mrs G. in the kitchen, but the pernickety nurse, Mrs F., cutting up bandages and looking down her aquiline nose at him. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She returned to the cutting. Her freshly-dyed hair, curled in a tight perm, framed her long, plain face.
‘What you gawping at?’ she said. ‘You’ll have to wait. I’m bandaging her legs.’ She shuffled past with the strips of bandage over her forearm.
He put the kettle on, and as it hissed into life, studied the Lotto ticket. It seemed ridiculous how this insignificant piece of paper had the power to change his life so dramatically. More daydreams: Mam could live next door, or in an annexe. He and Betty would look after her.
From the corridor, Mrs F. bade farewell to her patient. ‘I’ll see you again next week, Muriel. Don’t forget to wiggle your toes every now and then.’
The click of the front door was Sammy’s cue to pour hot water onto the teabags.
He had a cuppa with Mrs G. again, and ad-libbed another naughty-but-not-too-naughty tale about the actress and the bishop. He loved how she laughed. The mischief in her eyes suggested she’d have been loads of fun in her youth.
Sammy’s heart started beating faster as he washed the dishes. He dried his hands, took the ticket from the board. Then put it back, and marched out. At the front door, he told himself not to be such a wimp, returned to the kitchen and with a deep breath, removed the ticket from the board and tucked it safely into his wallet. He waved to Mrs G, while avoiding eye contact, and scuttled out.
#
