Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery (21 page)

‘Of course,' said Dr Flint, ‘for those of you who have grown up knowing that you would inherit
money, the situation is different from those who have come into money unexpectedly. Why don't you tell us, Luke, about your upbringing, and the attitude towards money?'

Luke had the kind of accent that you usually only hear from the Royal Family and in Hollywood films starring Hugh Grant. So posh it's almost Australian.

‘Erm . . . I don't really know. . .' he said, running his hands through his floppy blond hair.

‘Was there an assumption that you always had money to meet your needs? Did you ever hear anyone talking about money worries?'

‘I really never thought about it,' said Luke. ‘I was off to prep school at seven. . . Never spent much time with my parents in the holidays. . . They liked those hotels with kids' clubs, y'know, and the nanny always came with. . . Anyway, I've got a trust fund, right, and so have all my friends.'

‘And how does that make you feel?'

Luke blinked his blue eyes. ‘Ummm . . . good? I can't really imagine life without it.'

I wasn't exactly sure what a trust fund was, but everyone else seemed to know, so I didn't say anything.

‘Pathetic,' snapped Sayeed, right behind me. ‘My father was taking me into his shops from the day I was born. He was getting me ready to take over his empire, training me in the business. He made sure I could read a balance sheet when I was still at primary school. That's how to bring someone up to understand money. You, Luke, will waste so much money when you inherit it, just partying and playing around and not knowing the meaning of hard work. And as for you,' – he gestured towards Marcus, Darryl and me, the New Money kids – ‘you'll probably be on benefits by the time you're twenty-five. Easy come, easy go.'

Oh! Ouch! ‘My dad was taking me into his shop from the day I was born, actually,' I said, indignantly.

‘OK, you'll be serving doughnuts behind the counter of your dad's one and only shop,' said Sayeed, with a sneer. His dad owned a chain of DIY stores across the north of England, and had diversified into property development. Sayeed was heir to the hardware millions. He acted like he was fifty-eight and he'd built up the business all by himself. We'd only been on the weekend for half an hour and I could already feel the group uniting against him.

‘I ain't going to be on benefits at twenty-five,' said Darryl.

‘When you're forty, then. Before, if you get injured, or dropped, or lose form. It's not exactly a long career, is it, football?'

Darryl snorted. ‘Easy come, easy go, my arse,' he said. ‘Let's face it, Sayeed mate, you never built up that business, did ya? The only people here because of our own talent and effort are Marcus and me.'

You might just about remember Marcus. He won
X Factor
a few years ago, but he only had the one hit. When we'd introduced ourselves, he'd told us all about how Simon Cowell had dropped him after his contract came to an end, and since then he'd had to get by on reality TV contracts.

‘My agent's pushing me for
I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here
next year,' he told us, ‘but really, I'm here for advice on making the most of what I've got.'

Darryl was being a bit kind, really, saying that Marcus had got rich because of his talent. Actually, he won
X Factor
because everyone felt sorry for him. He wasn't that good-looking, had big, sad, brown eyes, had suffered from cancer when he was a child. Of course everyone voted for him.

And he wasn't that rich, either. He'd made about two million, plus he had a nice flat in Chelsea.

‘But the service charges are murder,' he explained.
‘Sometimes I think I'd better go back to Rotherham.'

‘Good idea,' said Sayeed. ‘My dad's got a new development there – we can sort you out with an apartment.'

‘How about you, Lia?' said Dr Flint. ‘This must have come as a bit of a shock to you.'

‘It's great,' I said, ‘I love it. I'm just beginning to get used to it.'

‘No problems?' asked Dr Flint, looking at me over his glasses.

‘One or two,' I said. ‘People being jealous, mostly. Bitchy girls.'

Sayeed snorted loudly. ‘Do you think we didn't see your friend's mum in the papers after you threw a pie in her face? You've had a bit of money for a few weeks and you're completely out of control.'

‘Leave her alone,' said Olivia. ‘Lia's incredibly generous. Did you see what she'd done for that little boy Alfie?' She turned to me, smiling. ‘I wish I could do something like that. You must feel wonderful.'

‘Why don't you?' I asked.

She looked a bit startled. ‘Well, I would never meet anyone like that. And I don't think my parents would let me just write a cheque for eight thousand pounds.'

‘I do what I want,' I said.

‘This afternoon's session is about philanthropy,' said Dr Flint.

‘That's giving to charity,' explained Sayeed loudly, looking at Darryl and Marcus.

‘Do you want to get punched in the face or the stomach?' asked Darryl.

‘Now, now,' said Dr Flint.

‘Well, I'm really looking forward to that session,' said Olivia. ‘I did use to feel guilty about being rich. Really guilty. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it because, you know, I thought they'd think I was mad.'

‘Too right,' muttered Sayeed.

‘All the girls at my school are from wealthy backgrounds and they just take it for granted that they're better than people at state schools, people who don't have our advantages. No one ever questions anything,' said Olivia. She'd gone a bit pink.

‘Very good, Olivia,' said Dr Flint.

‘And everyone's very competitive – you've got to get good grades, look good, be thinner than the other girls, but it's all for the sake of competition. There are about three girls who want to be doctors or whatever, and the rest are just going to live off their trust funds until they find rich husbands.'

I'd have to Google trust funds when I got back to my hotel room. Clearly they were good things to know about.

Darryl rolled his eyes. ‘Where I come from, and where Marcus comes from, and Lia too – we haven't got time for stuff like this. We know we're lucky to have money. My mum's worked all her life, cleaning up other people's shit. She got paid less than the minimum wage. Hear that, rich boy? Now she's living in a bungalow in Alderley Edge and she's got a cleaner three times a week. Why should I feel guilty about that?'

‘You could,' said Olivia. ‘You could feel guilty because a footballer gets paid so much more than a cleaner.'

‘Well I don't,' said Darryl.

Dr Flint intervened, started talking about self-esteem . . . relative values . . . finding purpose in life. . .

‘Lia – what do you think?' asked Dr Flint.

‘Errr . . . sorry?'

He looked pained. ‘I was talking about the purpose of money. Can we find meaning in our affluence? All too often it strips away ambition and leaves people feeling empty.'

‘Oh,' I thought about this. ‘I don't feel empty. I'm
just a bit confused. I'm not sure that I ever really had any ambition to start with. Now, it's almost like I've got too many choices.'

Marcus said, ‘I achieved everything I wanted to achieve in life when I won that final. Now . . . now I feel like my journey's over.' There was a tear running down his cheek.

‘Now then,' said Dr Flint, shoving a box of tissues to him. ‘That's exactly the kind of emotion we want to hunt out this weekend.' He made it sound like we were going on safari and our emotions were rare animals that we were going to shoot.
Wham!
That's a guilty tiger.
Bam!
A depressed antelope.

The whole thing was beginning to piss me off. After all, we'd paid plenty for this weekend – a cool one thousand five hundred pounds each – and the whole thing seemed to be a complete misery-fest.

‘Look,' I said, ‘we're all the same, actually. We've all got lucky. Some of us are lucky in our parents, and some are lucky with the sporting or musical genes and I just got lucky with some random numbers. But we all got lucky. There's no need to feel especially guilty about that. I mean, I never felt guilty before, but I was already lucky just by being born in the developed world. Even if you haven't got much money in Britain,
you're probably better off than kids in other countries who don't get an education and have to work in sweatshops and their homes get flooded and stuff. It's not fair, sure, but it's not my fault. I don't have to feel guilty.'

And then I said it. Those words that I'd heard so often before. Mum's words. Dad's words. The most annoying words in the world.

‘After all,' I said, ‘life's not fair.'

Chapter 22

The world is full of worthy causes. The problem is choosing who and where and how much
.

Mario lives in Colombia. He runs a barber shop. He supports his three younger brothers. A loan of one thousand five hundred dollars would buy him the equipment he needs to take on an assistant, grow his business.

Chantou lives in Cambodia. She's twenty-four and she supports two younger brothers and her disabled father. Two thousand dollars would help her buy rice to plant and a motorcycle to take goods to market.

Mario and Chantou were on a DVD all about different ways we could give, international ways – the amazing things we could do with what felt like relatively small amounts of money.

‘Just one hundred and fifty dollars buys a water
pump,' said Martha, the woman running the Philanthropy session. ‘That money could save countless lives in Africa and South-east Asia. Have you ever thought about what it's like living without a clean water supply? There are millions of people who do that, and children who die unnecessarily.'

I'd never thought about living without a clean water supply. I didn't even think I could live without hair products. Olivia's eyes were gleaming – I thought she was about to cry. I was thinking about Alfie Lord, swimming with the dolphins. His eight thousand pounds could have bought hundreds of water pumps. Mum's new boobs, our designer clothes – why didn't I realise? Why didn't I know about this?

Why did anyone in rich countries have anything at all, apart from the basics? Why didn't we all make do with loads less stuff and save the lives of thousands of suffering children?

On the other hand, Alfie was a suffering child. He really was. So why not give him a chance?

Martha was very into helping people help themselves. If we put money into micro-finance – loans to people like Mario and Chantou – then we were treating them as equal partners, she explained.

‘I'd suggest finding a project or a country in which
to take a particular interest. It's incredible how satisfying it is when you see the difference you make to people's lives.'

Maybe that was what being rich was all about – becoming a global fairy godmother, helping other people. But what about my life? Where was my fairy godmother? Had she been and gone?

We had a session on trust funds, which turned out to be how people with loads of money in their families share it out to their kids. Luke had a whacking great trust fund. Olivia had one too.

‘It's cool, yeah,' said Luke. ‘I never need to get a job or anything.'

‘So what are your plans when you finish Eton?' asked the guy leading the session, another one of these private banker types.

‘I'm going to Ibiza for a while,' said Luke. ‘Then I thought I might get a higher level scuba diving certificate . . . maybe travel a bit. . .'

What a loser, I thought. But I envied Luke's freedom. Because he'd always had money and a nice place to live – a stately home in Wiltshire – he didn't feel that he had to rush into buying a penthouse flat or tons of stuff for it. He could just drift around, go where he wanted, travel light.
He knew he'd never run out of cash.