Life's Lottery (51 page)

She wipes a strand of hair from her face.

‘Here’s the deal, Keith. Death is going to happen in this room. Soon. Either we kill you, or we kill wife and two-point-four. It’s your choice. Think about it.’

She begins to whistle the theme to
Top of the Form.

You look at Chris’s wide, horrified eyes. You look at the twins, flesh of your flesh, your genetic future. You try to conceive of a world without you in it.

Mary finishes whistling.

‘It’s make-your-mind-up time,’ she says. ‘So?’

If you say ‘Me’, go to 139. If you say ‘Them’, go to 153.

I
n 1982, the week after your father’s funeral, you’re in Sedgwater, hurrying to the Lime Kiln. You’ve arranged to meet friends you haven’t seen in a while. The country is about to go to war over the Falklands. From the Corn Exchange steps, a shaggy, outsize young man harangues passers-by. You quicken your step and hurry on past him, eyes down. You spend the evening arguing about the Falklands War. For the first time since Dad died, you feel the numbness wearing off. You get heavily into an argument, pointing out that Galtieri wouldn’t have invaded in the first place if Thatcher’s defence cuts hadn’t pulled the fleet out of the South Atlantic and practically run up a flag on Goose Green saying, ‘Invade, why don’t you? We wouldn’t mind.’ Warmed up by beer and argument, you all go for a curry afterwards. You pass the ranting loony again, but are so deep in criticising Paul Mysliwiec’s patriotic trigger-happiness you don’t even notice him.

Read 7, and go to 9.

V
anda never says she’s sorry. She resents you for being weak enough to take her back. You tell her it’s for the children, but she knows you’re lying.

One night, two months after she comes back, she tells you the worst thing. ‘I forged your signatures.’

You had guessed.

‘Aren’t you going to explode?’

You shake your head. You don’t want her to see your tears.

‘Keith,’ your wife says, ‘you’re
pathetic
.’

* * *

You are promoted to assistant manager. Proudly, you tell Vanda.

‘Warwick’s only approved the promotion because you’re no threat to his job.’

Since she came back, Vanda communicates only in isolated sentences, sharp and calculated as a boxer’s jabs.

She won’t make love with you. You can’t remember the last time she did, before she went away. You didn’t notice at the time that your love-making had become infrequent, but it must have.

She is good with the kids.

* * *

It’s not much of a comfort, but you hear Sean is almost wiped out on Black Monday by the stock-market crash of 1986. He has to scrabble around for a job in the ruins of the City, his dreams ashes. Vanda is quietly exultant. She hates him because he threw her over for a skinny teenager.

You congratulate yourself on not getting into Sean’s schemes. If you had, you’d now be the one who got wiped out.

The recession affects you, though. Escalating mortgage payments start to bite badly. The preferential package offered to bank employees turns out to be nastily structured. Hidden penalties come into force and snap like man-traps.

Warwick orders you to get tougher on customers who default on loans. And to sign up those who don’t to pension plans and all manner of insurance, taking advantage of the general panic to bind customers to ever-heavier regular payments.

It’s hard. You understand each and every sad story you hear. Lost jobs, negative equity, evaporated savings, the recession, split families. You feel you’ve lived through all the tragedies.

* * *

That’s what it’s like. Vanda at home with her icepick insults. Warwick at work with his overseer’s whip.

But people like you. Candy, who you think might feel a little sorry for you, takes care to be kind. And your customers, especially those in trouble, appreciate the consideration.

The world divides. People with power over you treat you with casual contempt, but people over whom you have power are genuinely fond of you.

You wonder who you are. You feel hollow, defined only by the contempt or indulgence of others. You yourself have ceased to matter.

* * *

Sean, you hear, has tried to kill himself; but botched the job. So he’s worse off than you.

If you’d done something, he’d be better off. You’d all be better off.

And so on.

J
ames, despite his leg, takes the lead. After all, he’s been in battle before. He’s the only one who knows what to expect.

You and Victoria follow.

You’re feeling hyper. You’ve seen death and it’s terrifying, but you’ve rarely felt so alive. You can taste life. It’s almost sexual. And almost pure, like your feelings for your children. You’re doing the right thing. No compromises. You might not live past sunset, but you’ll have made a difference.

You make it to the fourth floor. Smoke is all around, filling the stairwell. James moves into Hackwill’s open-plan office suite, firing rounds.

You follow him, keeping an eye out. There are monsters here.

James kicks away a desk. Someone in a suit is curled up, snivelling, trouser-crotch stained. He puts up shaking hands and can’t get out a coherent sentence. It’s Sean.

James cocks his gun, but doesn’t fire.

Sean squirrels out of the way, back towards the stairwell. As he passes, he pulls out a knife and sticks it into Victoria’s leg. Running at a crouch, he tries to get to the door. You shoot him in the back of the head.

Without thinking, without making a conscious choice, you have killed. You are a killer. You can’t afford to think about that now.

Victoria extracts the blade from her leg and throws it away. Sean has stuck her in a muscle. Her leg seems to contract. She’s obviously in a lot of pain. Bastard Sean.

Mary steps out of a store-room, arms wide. She has her gun but it isn’t pointed at any of you.

‘We have to talk,’ she says.

James nods.

‘The place is on fire. Unless we stop this, we’ll all die.’

The smoke is thick, stinging your eyes. Victoria coughs badly.

‘So?’ says James.

‘I don’t want to die,’ Mary says.

‘Should have thought of that when you threw in with Hackwill.’

‘You weren’t hiring then,’ she says.

The strangest thing about this is Mary’s uniform. It’s not an outfit you associate with guns.

A door at the other side of the open space bursts and flames run in.

‘Hackwill’s in there.’ Mary nods towards the store-room. ‘You can have him.’

‘She killed Graham,’ Victoria protests, through pain.

James is focused. This is about Hackwill.

‘And you killed Gompers,’ James says.

Mary beckons to him.

The fire is spreading. Air pours in through the shattered windows, feeding the flames.

‘You bitch,’ someone shouts, exploding out of the store-room. Mary shoots him in the heart. He falls. It is Shane Bush, a long way from Ash Grove playground.

‘Come out, Hackwill,’ says James.

The councillor does, hands up. ‘I surrender,’ he says.

James laughs and chambers a bullet.

‘Get on with it,’ says Mary.

This isn’t battle. This is murder.

Do you say anything?

If you protest, go to 138. If you let James continue, go to 164.

A
s Vanda walks away, leaving her suitcases on the doorstep, you know she’s silently sobbing. There’s no place for her anywhere in the world.

You harden your heart.

You have to.

* * *

Within a year, you’re married again. Candy turns out to be a super mum to Jason and Jesse, and you have a daughter together. You want to call her Janet, but she insists on Kim.

You become assistant manager. Candy tells you Tristram Warwick is afraid of you.

‘It’s your dad. Customers still ask for Mr Marion and he thinks they mean you. He’s self-conscious about being an outsider. Probably because he’s gay.’

You are surprised. You didn’t know Tristram was gay.

‘Keith, you’re so sweet,’ Candy says. ‘You’re like someone from the fifties.’

‘I was born in the fifties.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘I know.’

You’ve had to live with cradle-snatching jokes. Actually, you’re only twenty-eight to Candy’s twenty-one.

‘It’s that you still know all the customers’ kids names and their aches and pains. You treat the bank as if it were a corner shop. Tristram can’t understand that. He’s like Sean, really, juggling money and reporting to head office, squeezing the pound. He knows the depositors count, but also that they’ll never like him the way they like you.’

She kisses you. Since Kim was born, you’ve made love at every opportunity. Jason and Jesse make jokes about you being ‘at it again’.

You don’t care.

* * *

Sean was wiped out on Black Monday by the stock-market crash in 1986. Vanda is working in the DSS, and since the divorce has been seeing Ben McKinnell, a builder. You genuinely hope both of them can put their lives back together.

As the slump begins to bite, you become more important. Warwick’s schemes to modernise the bank take a back seat as you have to extend help to those struggling with the recession. You discover his boyfriend is Kay Shearer, whom you manage to save from bankruptcy with a last-minute restructuring.

At the bank, they call you ‘Dr Kildare’. When cases seem terminal, you find a way to save the patient. Customers save their homes or businesses in consultation with you. Because of Kay, Warwick keeps head office out of it.

You can do some good.

* * *

When you hear Sean has killed himself, you get drunk. Candy finds you downstairs after midnight, openly crying. She takes you in her arms and strokes you.

‘I could have done something,’ you say.

‘No you couldn’t. Sean was responsible.’

‘I stood by. I could have stopped him.’

‘Whatever you did would have had the same upshot. It wasn’t your fault, darling.’

She gentles you out of despondency. You make love slowly on the rug. Candy conceives again and you call your new daughter Suzanne.

* * *

Eventually, you are made manager. In Sedgwater, you are someone. Mum tells you that Dad would have been proud of you.

And so on.

Y
ou attach the blue wire. ‘There,’ you say. ‘Done.’

Soon, they’ll pay. The Lottery fuckheads. All of them.

But wait, what about the innocent people? The studio audience, the technicians, the passers-by? The presenter, the celebrities? Mystic Meg? Bob Monkhouse? Are they dupes or monsters?

Sometimes, dupes have to be sacrificed.

If you can live with the sacrifice, go to 144. If you abandon the project, go to 157.

J
ames thinks about what he has just said. You see he is on a knife-edge.

‘Nahhhhhh,’ he concludes, chuckling.

‘Hackwill is going down,’ you say. ‘Down, down, down.’

You and James slap hands in the air.

Go to 163.

S
ean and Laraine are invited to a reception at Councillor Hackwill’s home. You get to tag along. You assume the host won’t be too pleased to see you, since the last time you got together he wound up with stitches. Laraine has been before and seen something you want to borrow. Hackwill is proud of his collection of shotguns and makes great play of taking business associates shooting in spring and summer.

Once you’ve done away with Sean, you’ll be tempted to have Hackwill blow his own head off in an accident– You cut that thought there. Murderers get caught because they get stupid, let murder take over from motive. The way to get away with it is to set a target, hit it, and retire undefeated from the homicide game.

At the door of Hackwill’s graft-funded mansion on Cliveden Rise (Sedgwater’s Snob Row), Helen, Hackwill’s wife, greets the guests. Laraine introduces you: it’s clear ‘my brother Keith’ doesn’t ring any bells with Mrs H.

Hackwill’s smile freezes a bit when you come into the room, but political instincts kick in. He comes over to pump your hand sympathetically and tells you he was sorry to hear about your brother. You suspect Hackwill threw a party when James was killed.

Before you can be smarmed silly, Hackwill is called away by the ever-sidekicking Reg Jessup. The councillor makes an excuse about business, then has Reg drag Sean into another room. They proceed to have a hushed but embarrassing argument. Helen talks loudly to cover the row.

You and Laraine slip away from the party. She knows where to go.

In the hall, you overhear a snatch of argument.

‘The shortfall has to be filled,’ Hackwill says.

‘I’m not Old Man Marion,’ Sean replies. ‘The bank needs to be coaxed.’

You’ll be doing the town a favour.

Laraine tugs you upstairs, to the gunroom. It’s not even locked. The councillor is a megalomaniacal pillock. Rows of weapons are racked in display cases. Directional lights bring up the metal shine of the killing instruments.

‘Penis substitutes,’ Laraine declares.

Hackwill brings guests here sometimes – which means you have to be quick now – to pose as a Bond villain, elegant and sophisticated, worldly and filthy rich. You pick a gun at random. A double-barrelled shotgun. The case is locked, but Laraine opens it with a hairpin. It must be illegal to store deadly weapons this sloppily.

The gun (you have no idea of the make and model) is lighter than you expect. You break it in the middle to check that it isn’t loaded. Even Hackwill isn’t that stupid. Laraine locks the case again. The gap isn’t too noticeable.

‘Bullets,’ you say.

‘Shells,’ she corrects.

She pulls out a drawer and takes out a pack of shotgun shells, like a brick of disposable lighters wrapped in blue paper.

‘Are these the right bore?’ she asks.

You can’t afford to be wrong, so – though seconds tick and sweat trickles – you tear one corner of the pack open and slip out a cartridge. It fits perfectly in the breech. You take it out again and put it in your pocket.