Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery (2 page)

Mum tutted. ‘You really are horrible; I don't know what's happened to you.'

My mother's decided to hate me, that's what's happened to me, I thought, but I couldn't think of a way to say it that didn't make me sound pathetic. Instead I studied
Heat
. It's incredible how rubbish you can look and still achieve celebrity status.

‘Anyway, Lia, it's cheeky of you to be asking for more cash because I think it was you who nicked that tenner from my purse on Thursday. I'm not made of money, you know.'

I yawned. What a fuss about nothing. How dare she accuse me of
theft
when I fully intended to pay back that trifling sum? I needed that money. I'd run out of lip balm. It was practically a medical emergency.

There didn't seem to be any hope of extracting any cash from her padlocked purse, so I went on the counter-attack just for the hell of it.

‘You're the selfish one. What's so special about this party, eh, Paula? Crushing on a random pensioner?'

I'd been experimentally calling my parents Paula and Graham recently, instead of Mum and Dad. It was working quite well, I thought. It certainly got their attention. That's possibly because their real names are Sarah and Ben.

‘Don't
call me Paula,' she snapped. And then she yabbered on and on, and the lottery results came on the telly. And I listened with half an ear because I had a ticket. In my school bag. I couldn't be arsed to go and find it, because I knew you never win these things.

‘I've had enough,' said Paula. ‘You're just taking the piss the whole time.'

‘Thirty-four!' said the announcer. My bra size. Or my nana's house number, as I told the press.

‘Yeah, right,' I said.

‘You treat this place like you're staying at the Ritz and you've got a load of personal slaves. You treat my purse like a hole in the wall machine.'

‘Number seventeen!' said the announcer. My friend Shazia's house number. It sounded right. Yes. Seventeen.

‘You're foul to poor Natasha.'

‘It's character-building for her,' I muttered. In the background the ball marked 23 rolled down the tube. Twenty-three. My dream age.
No more education and free as a bird.

‘Other girls don't treat their parents like you do. Other girls are nice to their mothers.'

‘Mmmm . . .
really?
' I asked. Forty-one rolled into place. Paula's next birthday. And she thought I didn't care.

Four numbers. Four numbers correct. That's got to be good, I thought. That's got to mean something. Maybe I'll win a couple of hundred. But I needed to check . . . find the ticket. . .

So I said, ‘Look, Paula, could you shut off the chit-chat for a mo?'

That's when she started screaming. She slammed her Burgundy down on the glass coffee table – could've been a bloodbath – and shrieked, ‘That's it! I've had enough! Apologise!'

I hardly noticed. I sat frozen, eyes glued to the telly, watching three little balls roll into place.

Thirteen. Raf's birthday. A personal triumph of detective work to find that out – Raf wasn't the sort for birthday celebrations. When it all became public I had to pretend that I'd chosen it because we used to live at Flat thirteen when I was a kid.

‘Number eight!' Jack's birthday. September eighth. I was sure I had eight.

Seven. My lucky number ever since I joined the Brownies on my seventh birthday and decided that it was the happiest day of my life. Kind of ironic because the Brownies housed a secret terror cell that made my life hell for the next two years. They were the Pixies and they hated little Gnomes.

‘You're just ignoring me! You've got no respect!' she was bellowing, while I stopped thinking about the poxy Pixies and started checking and rechecking the numbers frantically in my mind. Oh my God. Oh my
God
. Oh
my
God. Oh. . .

‘Umm, Paula. . .' I said, cautiously.

By now she was yelling and pointing, telling me she'd Had Enough, Could Take No More. And I couldn't find the words to tell her what might have happened, and I couldn't stand the embarrassment if it turned out that I'd got the numbers wrong. What if I'd picked Poor Little Natasha's birthday instead of Jack's? What if I'd forgotten my own bra size?

So I said, ‘Fine. All right. I'm going, I'm going.'

And I grabbed my denim jacket and pulled on my fake Uggs and picked up my school bag.

And I left home – me and my potentially golden ticket.

Chapter 2

Apparently ninety percent of female lottery winners keep their ticket in their bra until they can get it validated.

Outside, I scrabbled around in my school bag for the ticket. The Ticket. Of course I couldn't find it. My fingers grabbed at random objects – passion fruit lip balm, a furry unwrapped tampon, fossilised satsuma peel, crusty used tissues – until I remembered that I'd folded it into my purse. I pulled it out and squinted at the numbers in the dusty orange glow of the street light. But I couldn't think what I'd seen on the telly. Numbers swirled around my head . . . eight . . . twenty-three . . . fifteen? Forty-four? Twelve?

If I had. . . If it was. . . A huge flat of my own with a home cinema and a games room, an Apple Mac. A car and a driver until I was seventeen and passed
my test. Driving lessons. I could skip GCSEs, AS levels, A levels, uni. Fast forward to the age of twenty-three. Oh my God. Oh my God.

I'd never really known what I was going to do with my life. I used to panic whenever I thought about the future. Latimer's Loaves was waiting for me, and I'd kind of accepted that I'd probably go and do a degree in Business Studies (yawn), but sometimes I dreamt of rebelling, doing my own thing.

The problem was, I didn't really know what my own thing was. Should I travel . . . or run a stall at Camden Market . . . or do a degree in Film Studies? I mean, it all sounded vaguely interesting and way cooler than baking cakes, but not definite enough to actually make a choice and say, ‘That's me. I'm a traveller,' or, ‘I sell vintage clothes,' or, ‘I study old movies'.

Now, maybe, just maybe I was free! Forget baking, forget decision-making. I was a multi-millionaire! I didn't
have
to do anything ever again!

Possibly.

I turned around. I needed to go back in. Check my numbers. Surely Mum would understand . . . be OK?

But what if I'd got it wrong? What if this was the biggest disappointment ever? She might even be
sympathetic . . . comforting . . . nice. I couldn't bear it. No. She threw me out, she chucked out my ticket too. Wouldn't that look great in the papers?

I was still holding the ticket in my sweaty hand. What if I got mugged? What if I lost it? So I stuffed it in the safest place I could think of, my bra – which was a personal favourite, a great bargain from Primark, turquoise satin with bubblegum pink ribbon trim and massive uplift. The ticket was scratchy next to my skin.

I started trudging down the hill, working out where to seek refuge. Which lucky friend should I share the moment with? Jack and Shaz were the obvious ones to pick from. But Jack was planning a night out with the lads – it'd have to be Shaz. Friday was mosque day, but maybe she could clear a few aunties out of the way for me.

It was hard to know what to text, though. In the end I put:
Hi. Can I come round? Might have won lottery.

A text pinged back right away. It read:
More than £100??? Enuff 4 yr jacket? Now not gd, big family dinner. c u 2moro?

Personally, if my best friend had hinted at a lottery win in a text I'd have thrown in a
squee
or two, a
smiley and a load of
!!!!!!!!!
But Shaz wasn't like that. She utterly despised girliness. I think that's why I liked her so much. She was different from the crowd.

Tithe Green was a pretty normal, boring London suburb. All the interesting shops and stuff in London were in places where rich people lived – Hampstead, Notting Hill – and we got left with the tedious old rubbish. The shops ranged along the Broadway were really dull – charity shops, a hairdresser's, a café, the Hard as Nails salon and our shop, Latimer's Loaves.

A little way down the hill there was a sign reading ‘Internet Café', which had appeared about a month before in what used to be a clothes shop called Lalla's Treasures. Mum almost bought a cardigan there once, until she realised it cost one hundred and fifty pounds.

Dad was pleased when the internet place opened, because Lalla had given up on her business six months before, and moved to Madagascar to do animal conservation.

‘It's not exactly upmarket,' he said, ‘and I'm not sure how long it'll last – I mean, surely most people don't need anything more than Wi-Fi – but it's better than leaving it untenanted. Nothing kills a high street faster than shuttered windows.'

‘Nothing kills a high street faster than a huge shopping mall opening up less than three miles away,' pointed out my mum.

Dad shrugged. ‘We've got a very loyal clientele,' he said. ‘People who've been coming to Latimer's Loaves for sixty years.'

‘That's what I mean,' said Mum.

Anyway, normally I'd have had no special interest in some internet café, but a few days before, on the way home from school, I'd seen Raf going in there. Perhaps it was a regular hang-out for him. Unlikely, but worth a look.

You really wouldn't expect to see Raf there. He lived in a massive house in Melbourne Avenue – I'd secretly trailed him home from school one day – Tithe Green's most expensive road. He probably had a huge bedroom kitted out with a Mac and flat-screen wall-mounted TV and a state of the art iPod deck.

He'd joined our school earlier in the year – weirdly, halfway through GCSEs – and no one knew what to make of him. The boys thought he was a snob who'd been expelled from some private school.

‘Drugs, probably,' said Jack. ‘He always has shadows under his eyes, and they've got that sort of blank look.'

We girls had a different idea altogether. We thought he was classy, mysterious and drop dead gorgeous, not to mention stylishly elegant yet totally masculine – not an easy combination to pull off.

We were all obsessed with paranormal romance books, films and television series. We wanted our own tasty vampire or cuddly werewolf – especially a sensitive, poetry-reading, emo type. Normal boys just didn't match up. They were just too . . . well . . . normal.

When Raf turned up – tall, with a tense, thin body, and dark hair falling over his hard, grey eyes – the female half of year eleven buzzed with excitement. There was something about him . . . something different.

‘Gay,' said Jack, dismissively, but we sensed magic. We sniffed supernatural. We watched the way he avoided eye contact, sat alone at lunch, and we recognised the signs. Raf was an angel. Or a vampire. Something special, anyway.

I mean, he wasn't even on Facebook. He'd been spotted going into the old cemetery. Clearly there was something paranormal about him.

Girls plotted to become his Science partner – not that we actually have partners in Science in the UK,
it must be a special American thing – and spat with envy when Mr Pugh seated him next to lucky, lucky me. Every Science lesson I got an incredible adrenaline rush – normally school was so boring that I spent my hours there in a hypnotic trance. But I hadn't achieved anything. We hardly ever did practical stuff in pairs. I don't think the people who wrote the National Curriculum even
thought
about the romantic potential of Double Science GCSE.

In America, according to loads of books I'd read, people could have whole long conversations while they're supposed to be doing experiments. In England we have to keep our eyes on the whiteboard and our ears tuned to the teacher. No wonder we're a complete national mess. I think I'd managed to speak to Raf twice in class, and both times I got told off by Mr Pugh. I did spend a lot of time looking sideways at Raf's lush, dark eyelashes and gunmetal eyes, the way his long fingers cradled a test tube. I'd found out his birthday by peeking at the class register. October thirteenth. But that day he was as reserved as ever.