Lottery Boy Read online

  Bully felt the crook of Janks’s arm cut into his windpipe and he started making alphabet sounds like he was a little kid. K … k … k … a … a … r … r. His head was thumping because the blood was getting stuck in it but he couldn’t say anything, not even sorry, and he felt faint and his legs began to go, making it worse for him.

  And then suddenly he could breathe.

  “Re-lax … re-lax, man…” Janks was patting Bully hard on his back, like he was helping him to cough something up. Bully pulled away, dazed like he’d been trapped underground for a week. He wobbled a bit and saw what Janks was seeing: a couple of fake Feds in high-vis: Community Support Officers standing away by the footbridge with their backs to them, talking to the beggar man.

  Bully looked back at Janks who was staring right through him. Then he looked down, saw Jack at his feet, blood dripping off her ear, and his anger roared up quick like a paper fire. And while he waited for it to burn out he thought about what he’d do to Janks one day when he was robbing banks or had a job and was a whole lot bigger than him.

  Bully handed the note over and Janks took it without a word. Then he heard a terrible sound: Janks screwing up his twenty quid into a ball, because there was only one thing you did with a ball… And Bully watched Janks walk over to the railings and flick his money into the river.

  “Don’t keep me waiting next time. Mate,” he said, smoothing his bit of hair down, a gust of wind blowing it straight back up again. Bully nodded down at the ground, paid his respects and looked away.

  When Jack stopped growling, Bully picked his hat up, ripped apart and slick with dog spit, and shoved it in one of his pockets. He checked Jack’s ear. It looked worse than it was. Janks’s dog had only managed to take a nick out of it. He used the rest of his water to wash the blood off, then gave Jack a squirt of it.

  “You got to learn when to back down, mate,” he said. Jack didn’t seem to be listening, too busy licking Bully’s face. “Get off,” he said but didn’t push her away. He rounded up some of the spit off his cheek and swabbed the wound on her ear because dog spit was good for cuts, as good as medicine (though he had never seen this printed in the magazines).

  Eventually he stood up, went and took a long look in the river. He thought maybe he could still see it, a spec of blue, his twenty quid, sailing away under the bridge and out into the sea. The tide was going that way. He caught himself thinking about jumping in after it, though he couldn’t swim, not even doggy-paddle. He’d bunked off the school swimming lessons at the leisure centre because he didn’t like the noise there in the pool, all the screaming and shouting. He bunked off school too, for the same reason: having to sit still at a desk, questions and answers from thirty other kids all day, right next to his ears. He could just about put up with it when he had his mum to come home to at the end of it all, but after she’d died it was all just empty noise.

  He looked back towards the footbridge and one of the fake Feds was looking at him. Bully started walking off, whistled Jack to follow him, getting in step with the zombies until he could cut through between the eating places and make for the station. He thought about taking one of the tunnels to be on the safe side but he didn’t like tunnels, even in summer. He didn’t like going under the ground if he could help it. Besides, he’d got used to his route: past the fountain that wet the pavement on windy days, across the traffic lights, through the arch, up the steps where the dead train drivers’ names were scratched into the walls, and into Waterloo.

  Waiting at the traffic lights, he leaned against the railings. He watched a few zombies get ahead of the game, beat the lights, hop and skip between the cars like kids out for the day. He fiddled with one of the red rubber bands he wore on his wrists. He collected them, picked them up off the pavement and at busy times, fired them at the zombies as they raced away. It was a game he played. He’d invented different ways to do it, too – and so far, he’d come up with seven. His favourite, though, was to just ping it off his thumb. And that was what he did … ping. A zombie just stepping off the kerb slapped the back of his neck and looked round. Bully gave him the innocent face.

  “Big Issue… Help the homeless… Big Issue…” A woman with soft brown eyes was standing a few feet away. She was here most days in the summer now. And he had got used to her.

  The green man came and went but Bully wasn’t in a rush. He had all day, what was left of it anyway. He did a quick check for Feds, then started patting himself down. He did this ten, twenty times a day depending on the weather. It had become a routine, going through his pockets, making sure he had all his stuff, that he was all there. And it passed the time when he was bored because his coat had a lot of pockets. He’d robbed it from a bag outside a charity shop, leaving his old one there in its place. It was the best coat he’d ever had. Barbour it said on the label. It was warm and padded like a blanket inside but with a green and greasy skin to it that stopped the wind and rain like a brick wall. It had been way too big for him in the winter but he was growing into it now and the edge of it left a greasy mark on his jeans just above his knees. The best bit about it was the pockets. He’d never seen a coat like it. It had eleven altogether. The biggest one was like a rubber ring with holes cut in it that ran all the way round the bottom inside. And he’d cut holes in the two for his hands so that he could stash stuff in his jeans without anybody in the shops seeing.

  “Big Issue… Help the hopeless … homeless, I mean,” the woman said, correcting herself, but no one heard her except Bully. He laughed – not nasty like he had done at the skateboard park because the lady had her long brown hair in a ponytail, like his mum used to wear it when she was working.

  He started pulling out the usual bits and pieces he had on him all the time: sugar packets, salt packets, paper serviettes, tape measure, Jack’s metal spoon, plastic spoons, two cigarette lighters, penknife, extra elastic bands, sauce packets, towel scrap, Jack’s holdall (bigger and tougher than a plastic bag), plastic bags, biros, crisp packets (empty), Jack’s lead (a proper one too, not a tatty bit of string), chewing-gum (chewed and unchewed), a pack of dog Top Trumps (best of breed) and his receipts. They weren’t his receipts. He just collected them, went looking for them on the ground, sometimes fished them out of bins. He read them out of curiosity to see what it was that people bought in shops, but the reason he kept them was in case he was ever caught outside a shop with something he hadn’t paid for. And then if the guard marched him back inside he could say, “But I’ve got a receipt, mate.” And see how long they spent looking through that lot before they let him off. That was the idea, anyway.

  He examined his plastic spoons and threw away some with splits in, flicking them all into the road and a couple of the biros too. One of the zombies gave him a backwards glance, twisted her mouth a bit and then looked away. He got out his Oyster card from the little pocket near the collar of his coat. He’d found it by one of the machines when the cold had driven him down into the tunnels to ride the Circle line. It was a while since he’d used up the credit and he looked at it as if it was no longer his. He put it back and got his red penknife out. It was his prize possession and he held it in his palm to admire it. Inside were two blades: one big, one small. On the outside was a compass that told you where you were going. And it didn’t matter how fast you turned round trying to trick it, it always went back to pointing north and never let you down. He’d robbed it from a climbing shop. The small blade he used for little odd jobs like cutting up plastic containers for Jack to drink from. The big blade he saved to keep it sharp. He’d never done anything with it except to wave it at an older boy as he was running away.

  He put his penknife back in his jeans and carried on looking, hoping to find a coin, a note, anything with a face on it, and he was almost finished now, pulling things out and putting them away. Finally then, to wrap things up, he got out his card. All the corners were bashed in so that it didn’t look like a card any more but he could still see what it said on the front. There was a picture
of a face – a lady’s face, he’d decided, though it had just a squiggle of hair – whispering to someone inside the card. It made you want to open it. But he didn’t, not yet. He read the words on the front first, like you were supposed to. He always read the words.

  I’ve got something to tell you…

  He moved away from the railings, further back from the road, and opened it up. The face on the front was the same face inside but much bigger with a real-looking mouth cut into the card and a red paper tongue. And he concentrated on the words that were going to come out of this mouth.

  … I love you … I love you so much … I love you more than … more than anyone … more than anything else in the world… Happy Birthday, Bradley! Happy birthday, love… Lots and lots and lots of love from your mummy…

  And then the best bit, the bit he always waited for at the end: the kisses.

  Mmpur, mmpurrr, mmpurr… Mmmmmrrr…

  Her voice was beginning to sound a bit Dalek-y, like the batteries were starting to go, and he wondered if he should stop doing this every time he went through his pockets.

  Bully looked around and one of the zombies waiting at the lights was smiling at him with pity eyes. He gave her a murderous look and clapped the card shut. As he did he heard a little plinky noise above the traffic. He opened the card back up and it said nothing. He frantically flapped it open and closed a couple of times before he could accept it was broken. Something had fallen out. He swore a lot and bent down, scanning the pavement, waving a fresh pile of zombies away like it was a crime scene.

  He saw the little roundness of the battery sitting on the pavement and he picked it up very carefully with the tips of his fingers. The slot where it went must be somewhere inside the card. He put his fingers in the mouth and felt something crinkly behind the paper tongue. It wasn’t money: too papery, too thin. It looked like a receipt when he pulled it out, but when he unfolded it he saw it was just a lottery ticket.

  It must have got stuck there somehow. He didn’t remember finding it. Still, worth checking it out, and it would take his mind off thinking about the money he’d lost to the river.

  The girl at the till inside the station scanned his ticket without interest.

  She was new. He knew all the staff by sight. She stopped what she was doing and pulled a face like the ticket had broken something in the machine.

  “Gra-ham…” she said and Bully palmed a packet of chewing-gum for the fraction of a second she turned her head. An older man came to the till. Bully got ready to run.

  “Graham, what does this mean? Contact Camelot, Watford?” She pointed to the screen.

  “Oh, right,” he said and gave her a little nod to say he was taking over. Bully craned his neck to see and when he caught the girl’s eyes again she was looking at him differently, as if he was someone she thought she should recognize.

  “What? Does it say I won a tenner?”

  “No… It’s not that…” said the manager man and Bully swore and began to walk away.

  “Heh, no! Hold on a sec—”

  Bully turned round and the man surprised him, holding the ticket out, and looking concerned.

  “You’ve won a lot more than that.”

  “How much is more than that then?” The girl smirked and Bully gave her a look.

  “I don’t know, I can’t say, but it’s not an instant cash prize. It’s not something we can pay out of the till. It’s too much,” the manager added when he saw the boy’s face. “That’s all I can tell you really. We just have to go by what’s on the screen.”

  Bully thought about that. How much was too much for the till? He’d seen wads of tens and twenties when they opened it up to give change … must be at least three or four hundred quid in there … maybe a thousand or more.

  “This is your ticket, is it, then?” The man had pulled a look over his face, tried to make it sound like he was just asking, like he didn’t really care.

  “Yeah … someone else bought it though,” Bully said, in case he didn’t believe a boy like him could afford to be buying tickets. And then he remembered. It must be that ticket. And the memory of it, suddenly sharp in his head after all these months, started to hurt again and work him up. He looked round the busy shop to make sure of his exit.

  “Well, someone needs to phone the number on the ticket…” The man slowly handed it back to him. “Or we can phone from here, if you like? If you’ve got I.D.?”

  “Nah, it’s OK,” Bully said. He didn’t want anyone turning up and asking questions, all sorts of questions.

  “You’d better get moving—”

  Bully cut him off. “I’m going, all right!” he said, misunderstanding the man’s tone.

  “No, the ticket, I mean. There’s a claim limit on it.”

  “What? You only just looked at it!” Trying to rip him off.

  “No, it starts from the date of the draw … 180 days … there, see?” The man leaned over the counter and pointed out the faint date on the ticket. “That’s February the 16th,” he said as if Bully was stupid. Bully knew what day that was, didn’t need to look at the numbers to know that day.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to phone Camelot for you?”

  Bully shook his head like he was Jack with a rat in her mouth and then when he was sure he’d said no, out came a question.

  “What happens to it then – to the winnings – if no one phones up in time?”

  “Well…” the manager man said, considering it. “I’m not sure but I think it just goes back into the prize fund or to charity or something.”

  To charity? Why would they want to go and do that? Waste all his money on little kids and wheelchairs.

  The man carried on talking but Bully wasn’t listening now. He was looking at his ticket. What day was it, today? He looked at the green numbers on the till screen. 6.45 p.m. it said one side, 09/08/13 on the other. What day was that though? All of a sudden he couldn’t understand what the numbers meant. He was stupid.

  He turned round and looked at one of the papers to give him a proper day with a name to it. Today was Friday. And it was the 9th of August. He counted the months out on his fingers from February to August. It was nearly six months. So how many days was that? There were some months with more days than others in them and he tried to get a rusted-up rhyme going in his head. February had 28 days except in a leap year, he knew that.

  He looked at today’s date again. It was too complicated to work out so he just did six thirties to average it out. But he couldn’t do that either. So he tried six threes instead which was eighteen and then added a zero. That was 180 already! He was frightened then that he’d run out of time.

  But the man was smiling at him. “It’s five days you’ve got – well, six if you include what’s left of today – that’s how long you’ve got left on the ticket,” he said. He leaned over the till and the look on his face changed: like he wanted to tell him something that he didn’t have to, that wasn’t part of his job.

  “And I’d keep it quiet if I was you … until someone puts your claim in at Camelot…”

  Still in the station, Bully looked at his ticket again, at the numbers. He remembered buying it for his mum a couple of days before she died. She must have put it in his card and tucked it inside the paper mouth because she wasn’t thinking straight on all the drugs.

  He put the ticket away inside his top pocket with his Oyster card and went back to thinking about his winnings piled up in pound coins in Camelot, in Watford. He looked back at the shop, at the sign for the lottery outside. It was a picture of fingers crossed for luck with a stupid smile creased underneath. He knew the sign for the lottery used to be a man on a horse. And he thought about this knight inside a castle looking after this money that didn’t fit in the till. He could do with some of it now, he was starving – that pain in his guts starting up again like roadworks. He might pick up something off the tables along the river or try the bins outside the station. There were eating places he went to inside
the station but he preferred to be outside if the weather was good.

  He walked towards the side exit, through a smaller arch where the taxis picked up passengers. He kept close to the walls, out the way of the CCTV. He didn’t like the idea of people looking at him, looking for him maybe, though he doubted it. Phil couldn’t wait for him to leave the flat after his mum died, had never liked having him around in the first place. And Phil didn’t like dogs, either. It was only down to his mum that he had been allowed to keep Jack when he brought her home from the shopping-centre car park, after grabbing her with one hand from underneath that 4x4.

  He was deep, deep down in his thoughts when his eyes dragged him back to the surface to see what he was seeing: dead ahead of him were Feds, real Feds this time, wriggling around the punters at the taxi rank.

  Bully turned on his heels. And then, walking away from the taxi rank, he ducked left into Burger King, his stomach taking over the thinking in this emergency. As he went in he pulled out a crinkled-up holdall from one of his big coat pockets. He let it skim the ground for a second, didn’t have to say a word and Jack jumped in.

  “Shh,” he said and got his scrap of towel out and laid it over Jack’s head.

  He went straight upstairs, avoiding the eyes of the Whopper boys on the tills. (If you looked at them, they looked at you.) The first thing he did before scouting for leftovers was go to the toilets. The first thing he did in the toilets was to go to the toilet. He only went for a sit-down every three or four days. Personally, that suited him. He didn’t like having to sit still for five, ten minutes. It was like being back at school, waiting for the end to come… And ten, fifteen minutes later the end did come … job done.

  The second thing he did was refill his water bottle. You could live months without food but only days without water. Phil used to go on about it back at the flat: running out of rat packs away from base was no problem – you lost a few kilograms maybe – but you did not want to run out of water in the field. No way. Though all the time Phil had lived with them Bully had never seen him drink water in the flat, let alone in a field.