Did I Mention I Won The Lottery? (14 page)

All, that was,
apart from Daniel. He had been adamant that he would have been
offered the job had he lived closer to head office. He had refused
to support Peter in any initiative he had launched. He had refused
to be re-educated and insisted on sticking to his old and tired
marketing routing with a determination and misguided self-belief
that wouldn’t be shaken even as his own pay packet dwindled and
dwindled with every month that rolled by. He was bombastic and
deliberately high handed in all his dealings with Peter and so
determined to prove that Peter was wrong going down the eco route
that Daniel made a point of doing the exact opposite. Of course,
everything Daniel did actually proved Peter right and that’s why
Rebecca was now struggling to believe that with Peter’s departure
White’s would be rushing to offer Daniel the job.

‘Have they
actually offered you the job? I mean have they actually said that
you will replace Peter?’

‘They didn’t
need to - it’s someone in house, who else could they possibly offer
it to?’

Just about
anyone in the sales department thought Rebecca.

‘But they
haven’t actually said it will be you?’

Daniel’s smile
disappeared.

‘What is wrong
with you Rebecca? I’ve told you that I’m getting the job. Why do
you have to make such a fuss over everything? Why can’t you just be
pleased for me. Why…’

Rebecca jumped
up, putting her hand gently on Daniel’s arm to stop the tirade.
‘I’m sorry Daniel! It’s just, well I think it must be the
shock!’

The smile came
back, stretching into a grin. ‘It is a bit of a shocker isn’t it!
And things round here will change, no doubt about that.’

Rebecca
stiffened. ‘Change?’

‘Well I’ve done
a bit of digging and you wouldn’t believe how much that waste of
space was stealing from the company. The wage they were paying him
to write sob stories about trees and the environment - it’s bloody
criminal! Anyway, it will mean a huge increase in my wage,’ Daniel
said smugly. ‘We’ll be much better off.’

‘I see.’
Rebecca answered slowly.

‘So it’ll be a
new car, a new house - I think we should even have a holiday don’t
you?’

Rebecca closed
her eyes and sank back onto the settee as a whistling Daniel
wandered into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

More money, a
new car, a new house, a holiday. If only Daniel knew. She chewed
her lip. He was so happy, so confident. There was a little glimmer
of the old Daniel in his eyes. He needed this, he really needed
this.

She was still
sitting there when Daniel came back into the living room a few
minutes later carrying tea and biscuits. He had put a handful of
digestives on a cracked plate and Rebecca stared at them with tears
in her eyes as he placed it on the small coffee table.

It was the most
considerate thing Daniel had done in the last 5 years.

‘Thought you
might need one,’ offered Daniel gruffly. ‘You look done in.’

And at that
point Rebecca realised that she couldn’t tell him about the
millions sitting in her bank account. Not right now, at this
minute. How could she look him in the eye and explain that it
didn’t matter about the job that he wanted so badly and the extra
money he would be earning because weeks ago she had won millions of
pounds but just hadn’t gotten round to telling him? So Rebecca said
nothing. She said nothing and instead she smiled, sipped her tea
and ate one of the digestives from the chipped plate.

Later that day
as Rebecca finished cleaning the kitchen, she heard the door slam
to signal Daniel’s return. He had told her he needed to pop out and
desperate for some time to herself Rebecca had been quite relieved
and told him to be as long as he needed.

She put some
washing in, vacuumed the living room floor, ran a duster over the
conservatory and cleaned the kitchen. And all the time her mind
whirled with Daniel’s news.

Why would
White’s give Daniel the job she wondered. They had a team of
excellent sales men, all trained and groomed by Peter Thompson to
understand the new direction that packaging plants needed to
follow. Only Daniel had refused to take Peter’s instruction on
board and as a result he was by far the worst performing sales man
at White's. But Daniel seemed so sure about the job. And not just
sure but so positive and so like his old self that Rebecca just
couldn’t bring herself to burst the bubble. She had to let him
enjoy his moment.

‘Bec,’ he
yelled as he walked into the living room. ‘Come and see what I’ve
got.’

He was grinning
from ear to ear as he guided her onto the settee.

‘I know you’ve
never really liked it here Bec. It was all a bit of a rush, the
move and everything and you didn’t really get chance to choose
exactly what you wanted.’

A bit of a
rush! Daniel had come home one evening and announced that the house
had been sold and they were moving in four weeks. As Rebecca had
stared at him open mouthed he had thrown details of two houses in
her direction and told her she could make the final decision.
Neither were houses that Rebecca and the children wanted to live in
and they had eventually chosen the one closest to the new school
the children had just discovered they would be attending.

‘We’ll be able
to buy a new house now Bec so I thought you might like to start
looking.’

Rebecca looked
down at the pile of glossy A4 leaflets on her knee. Houses, houses
and more houses. Several looked identical to the one they were
sitting in, a couple had mock Tudor fronts, some had exposed stone
stuck to the front and one seemed to have a field for a garden. But
the theme was the same. They were moving from a 4 bed executive
detached into a luxury 4 bed executive detached. And every last one
of them was in Darlington.

Rebecca flicked
through them slowly.

‘Do we have to
stay in Darlington?’ she eventually asked, looking up at Daniel who
was hovering in front of her.

He stared at
her in disbelief.

‘Stay in
Darlington? Of course we bloody well have to stay in Darlington!’
he puffed. ‘Are you mad? Why would they give me the job if I didn’t
live in Darlington? I need to be close to Head Office that’s the
whole bloody point. If I lived somewhere else the whole bloody saga
would start again. Of course I need to ...’

‘Peter didn’t
live in Darlington.’

The silence in
the room was heavy, Rebecca dropped her eyes back to the
leaflets.

‘I need to stay
in Darlington,’ ground out Daniel his hands shaking with anger.
‘I’m offering to buy you a new house and all you can go on about is
moving back to Leeds. Listen carefully Rebecca. We are not moving
back to Leeds. Not now, not next year and not the year after. We
are staying in Darlington.’

Neither of them
spoke for a few minutes until Daniel made a visible effort to
regain control.

‘Anyway,’ he
added with something of a forced smile, ‘you can have a look
through those and this time you can decide which one we’ll have,
eh?’ and he left the room.

Rebecca sat
very still. Was this why she hadn’t told him about the money she
wondered? Because she knew that he would have his own ideas about
where to live, what to do with it. Maybe she had been trying to
avoid this all along. What was Daniel going to say when she finally
broke the news, not only that she had won millions of pounds and
neglected to tell him but that the first thing she had done was buy
a new house, in Leeds?

The weekend
seemed never ending. Daniel’s good mood soon returned and he even
insisted on giving Rebecca a break from cooking after her traumatic
week and they went to the local pub and had a lovely meal. He could
barely contain his excitement as he spoke about how he would change
things for White's, how he would improve sales figures, make them
the number one in the area.

Rebecca smiled
and nodded and tried to be encouraging.

On Sunday she
discovered that she was not the only one with hidden stashes of
magazines as she opened the drawers of the sideboard to find dozens
of brochures for new cars. Great big 4X4 cars. Cars that seated 7
people, that could go up and down mountains, that could switch in a
moment to allow driving in fields and across lakes.

‘Great aren’t
they?’ asked Daniel grinning as he found her looking through
them.

‘But won’t you
still get a company car?’

‘Of course!
These aren’t for me. About time we got rid of that rust bucket of a
car you’re driving round in. These are for you!’

‘Me!’ Rebecca
looked down in alarm. ‘But I don’t want anything as big as this
Daniel. I’ve actually been thinking about a new car and I’d like
one of those new Fiats. They look a bit retro and so sweet
and…’

‘Rubbish,’
declared Daniel. ‘You’ll be much happier in one of these.’

And the
conversation was over.

The next batch
of brochures were all for holidays. And every one of them featured
golf.

‘No point doing
without,’ declared Daniel stroking the front of one of the
brochures. ‘We need a holiday.’

‘We could go to
somewhere exotic, where we can just relax all day, maybe snorkel,
walk along the beach. Maybe be in one of those little huts on the
edge of the sea.’

Daniel stared
at her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said as though she had lost her
mind. ‘Who wants to do that? We’ll go to the Algarve and I’ll play
golf and you can…read.’

And that was
another conversation finished.

By Sunday
evening all Rebecca wanted was to be back in the quiet, peaceful
luxury of her new house. She longed to curl up on one of the
kitchen settees with a cup of tea as she watched the rain pour
outside. She watched TV with Daniel, another programme about cars
being rescued and made to look like something completely different
and she thought about which of her DVDs she would watch if she were
at home. She would curl up under the rich red throw with a glass of
wine and the heating turned up. It was no good, she had to go
back.

‘Daniel.’

‘Mmm?’

He didn’t take
his eyes from the TV and Rebecca waited a few more minutes until
the adverts came on.’

‘Daniel.’

This time he
half turned in her direction although his eyes were still fixed on
the TV.

‘What?’

Rebecca took a
deep breath. ‘The thing is Daniel I do have something important to
tell you. If you remember I tried to tell you yesterday when I came
home but you had your own news. Daniel!’ and in exasperation
Rebecca snatched at the remote control and flicked off the TV.

Now she had his
attention.

‘Bec! What are
you doing?’

‘Daniel please
listen to me for a minute. I have something really important to
tell you.’

Grumpily he
turned to face her.

‘Well make it
quick, I don’t want to miss the rest of the programme.’

Rebecca
stretched out her fingers, trying to stop them shaking.

‘The thing is
Daniel…’

‘Oh my God this
isn’t going to be one of those I need to tell you how I feel chats
is it?’ Daniel’s nose was turned up in disgust. ‘Can’t it wait Bec.
I am in the middle of watching something.’

‘Well if you’d
stop interrupting I could tell you and you could get on with
watching whatever you wanted,’ snapped Rebecca.

‘I need to tell
you that… well I need to stay in Leeds for a few weeks.’

Daniel stared
at her. ‘What the hell for?’

‘Because
there’s a problem with Parklands. I think it might be on the verge
of closing. And if it does we need to find somewhere else for Mum
to stay.’

‘It’s
closing?’

‘Well it’s not
official, not yet. But they’re struggling and I don’t think it will
be much longer.’

‘Then wait
until it closes and then find somewhere for Gwen,’ offered Daniel
with a shrug.

Rebecca
tightened her hands into fists.

‘But you know
how long it took us to find somewhere she liked the first time
round. If Parklands suddenly closes and we can’t find anywhere for
Gwen, well... she’ll have to come and live with us for a
while.’

‘What! But
surely…’

‘Daniel, it
took 6 months of looking before we found Parklands. Mum can stay
with us for 6 months, that’s not a problem but the sooner we start
looking the quicker we find somewhere.’

Daniel rubbed
his face. There was a definite glimmer of panic in his eyes. ‘Well
how long are you going to be there, where will you stay? I haven’t
got the job yet you know, we can’t afford hotel bills while you
wander round Leeds for weeks on end.’

‘Don’t worry, I
can stay with Sarah, or maybe even at Parklands or...maybe with-
well I don’t know but I’ll find somewhere.’ Rebecca had been about
to mention Helen or Emma but Daniel hated the fact that she kept in
touch with her old friends to the point where he would actively try
and stop her from meeting with them. Rebecca had long ago stopped
telling him when she was going to Leeds for lunch with her two
friends.

He was still
looking unsure.

‘And I’ll come
home at weekends of course,’ offered Rebecca reluctantly. ‘So you
can bring me up to date on what’s happening with the job.’

Daniel sighed.
‘I suppose, but what about your job?’

Rebecca stared
at him. Of course he didn’t know that she had already left the
Deli.

‘Well, I can
ask Carol for time off,’ began Rebecca. ‘I’ll explain that…’

‘Why don’t you
just hand in your notice?’ said Daniel unexpectedly.

Rebecca stared
at him open mouthed.

‘I don’t like
you working with those common women anyway. Susie!’ he spat out,
shivering in disgust. ‘You won’t need a job soon, take some holiday
and then tell them I’ve been promoted and you’re leaving.’