Chapter 30
Arthur
My parents had dropped me back off at Twerton earlier and although I was in exactly the same situation I was when they dropped me here on my first day, being left alone in the confines of my bedroom as I watch them walk out the door, I feel about a world away from how I did then. Even the fact that I could practically taste the cannabis fumes that were pervading the corridor couldn’t get me down. With the way I was feeling, George could smoke it directly in my face and blow it and I’d probably say thank you. I head down the corridor to see Sam, his door wide open and clothes covering every inch of carpet. I gently knock on the door, not wanting to jump-scare him, and he turns around to flash me a smile, “hey mate, good Christmas?”
We’d kept in contact a bit over the holidays, but I guess it’s easy to get carried away with other things whilst you’re at home. I’d missed him to be honest.
“Yeah great,” I smiled. “Got firsts in my all of my assignments, dad wasn’t a dick for once and I probably gained a couple of pounds on Christmas snacks, so I’d say it was good.” Although Sam and I always joked around, everything just seemed to flow easier today, like a weight had been shifted.
He grinned in response, tapping his stomach, “you and me both. If you can’t eat like a horse around Christmas, when can you?, and well done on the firsts. I only got 2.2’s and mum got me a bottle of champagne to celebrate,” he chuckled. Talking of food, my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t had my second instalment of my student loan yet, so was saving the rest of what I had left for bills, and I didn’t start my first shift at Waterstones until this Saturday. It didn’t help that I’d also spent quite a large chunk when we went ice skating and had a few treats from the shack. Bath was expensive at the best of times, but at Christmas, it was tenfold. The growl of my stomach churned even louder. I knew I had a few tins of baked beans lying around in the back of my cupboard, but I didn’t have much else. It was even more difficult to quench my hunger now that I’d been home for 2 weeks with a kitchen that was essentially open all hours, eating and drinking anything and everything whenever I wanted. I still hadn’t told my parents that I’d been struggling for money, I didn’t want to rain on the Christmas parade.
Noticing the grumble, Sam snorted, “hungry?”
I shook my head, playing it off as best as I could, but his eyes grew more serious, the same look of concern that flashed in his eyes when I was pulling all-nighters. “Shall we get a food shop? I have absolutely nothing in my cupboard or fridge right now.” In a moment of weakness, I revert to fumbling about like an idiot, trying my hardest to think of an excuse as to why I didn’t need to do a food shop. Reading me like a book, he says the very thing I really didn’t want him to say, “I’ll get it.” I wasn’t some charity case, I was on a win right now, money was the only thing holding me back, but it wouldn’t even be the case for long. Sensing my discomfort, he shrugs, “if you want, no pressure.” My stomach chooses now to sound like a dying cat and reluctantly, I give up the ghost and nod.
◆◆◆
We walk up the street towards Lidl and Sam obviously chooses this time to start playing a game of 20Q about my love life. “So, been chatting much with Ember over the holidays?,” he’s trying to act nonchalant as he looks at the floor, kicking a few stones in his stride, but I know his true antics.
“Yep. We were talking about our presentation results, I called her for a bit,” I reply, immediately regretting my decision to share that we spoke on the phone knowing I’d just given him bait.
As predicted, he starts to smirk. “Oh really?,” “Arthur mate, I don’t want to seem really invasive and I’m not acting like a jealous ex-girlfriend, but you didn’t even tell me about it. The fact that you called her first is interesting. Sure that there’s not any chance you might maybe like her as more than a friend?,” his eyes slitting into two thin lines of suspicion.
The problem was, as much as I wanted to say no and not give him any satisfaction, I’d thought a lot this holiday about my feelings. I knew that they hadn’t been wholly platonic for a while, but the more we spoke on the phone, the more we texted stupid little things, the more she supported me and made sure that I knew how proud and happy she was for me, the more I fell for her charm, hook, line and sinker. I wanted to be around her. I know it sounded cringey, but my life seemed to be better since meeting her. Every little win seemed so much more significant because of her. I’m not saying I was going to get down on one knee, I wasn’t sure if it was even the right time to let her know how I felt, but I couldn’t keep hiding it from Sam when it was likely written all over my face. It was probably less exhausting just to let him have it. Taking a breath, I turn towards him, “okay, maybe I do. A little bit. But don’t you dare say anything, especially to Poppy. No offence, but if she found out, she might as well be zipping her mouth up and throwing the key directly into Ember’s hands.”
Sam lets out a huge laugh before replying, “fair point there, fair point. I also called it a long time ago anyway,” he tightens the buttons on his jacket, looking really smug with himself.
“As I said, please don’t say anything. I don’t even think that I want to tell her yet,” I insist, my palms beginning to sweat.
“My lips are firmly sealed,” he says, holding his index finger to his lips.
As we head closer to the entrance, I can’t help but notice the wind begin to pick up. My hair starts flailing about in all directions, my hood flies up over my head and a great pile of leaves swarm over my feet like a wave. It’s the kind of wind where you can barely move without running the risk of popping up your umbrella and being whisked away into the air like Mary Poppins.
“Fucking hell!,” Sam shouts as the wind grows stronger, planting both of our feet firmly to the ground. There’s a woman with a trolley desperately trying to make it to her a car, but looks like she’s on one of those Japanese gameshows where the floor is tilted. The wheels are flaring round, various items are flying out of the cart and she’s clutching onto her flowy silk skirt for dear life. I don’t blame her for not wanting to give anyone a striptease in a Lidl carpark. Just as I try to edge forward to help pick up a multi-bag of ready salted crisps that have flung out of her trolley and onto my feet, another gust comes out of nowhere and something smacks me directly on the face, temporarily sticking to my eyes and impairing my vision. I feel a sense of relief as Sam grabs it and rips it off my face and as quickly as the wind came, it stops. Sam passes me the item responsible for my near-blindness, a scratch card. One that hasn’t been scratched yet. You can’t even buy them from any of the shops on this retail park, so it must have fallen out of someone’s pocket during the brief storm.
“That was mad!,” Sam says, fixing his hair, “you should definitely scratch it and see if you’ve won anything,” he says looking down at the card that is currently in my hands.
“See if I’ve won anything?,” I ask, “I didn’t buy it. Isn’t it illegal to claim it if I win anything?”
Sam shakes his head, “that’s lottery tickets. There’s no way to trace back for a scratch card. I’m intrigued now,” he begins to pull a shiny 2p coin out of his pocket. I didn’t even know people still carried those, unless you were planning to have a field day on the slot machines at the local arcade, I guess. He hands it over to me.
“Why am I the one scratching it?”
“Because it flew onto your face. It’s yours to claim,” he responds, as if it were as obvious as two plus two.
I still didn’t feel right about stealing someone else’s scratch card, but I’ll admit, I was curious. We walked into the entrance and found a surface, with a 2p coin in one hand and scratch card in the other, I started rubbing. It’s one of those ‘lucky lines of 10’ where you need to get a matching row of symbols in order to win a prize. I get to line number 7 and there’s been no matches so far, “these are so stupid”, I say, manically scratching away, “no one ever wins anything anyway, you end up spending more money on the card itself”.
Sam looks over my shoulder, “well it’s a good job you didn’t buy it then isn’t it.”
I get to the last line and no. No way.
Staring back at me are 3 horseshoe symbols. 3 matching horseshoe symbols. I quickly gaze my eyes down the prize list and see that it equates to, ￡1,000.
I feel like I’m going to throw up. I’ve just won ￡1,000!
“No fucking way!,” Sam shouts at full volume, causing the woman pushing her kid around in a trolley next to us to give him the filthiest of daggers.
My whole body feels numb. I shake my head in disbelief as I stare at the winning scratch card. I’d never won anything before, I mean, maybe except from that Aliens poster at the Christmas market. But the line between a poster and ￡1,000 cash was definitely huge. As awestruck as I was, I still felt somewhat guilty for whoever bought this card. Imagine discovering that you lost out on ￡1,000 because the card fell out of your pocket.
“As soon as we’ve bought some food, you’re cashing this in!,” Sam demands, manically waving the card around in the air like he’s trying to welcome someone at the airport. My palms begin to sweat at the thought of someone stealing it from his hand, so I quickly take it from his grasp, fold it up and tuck it inside my wallet. There, now I can at least breathe a bit easier.
We must have definitely beaten some world record at how fast two men can complete a food shop. Sam was bombing it down every isle and lobbing stuff into our trolley from every shelf like he was a contestant on supermarket sweep. I could tell he was bursting at the seams to go and cash in the card. I know he kept saying that technically it blew onto my face and so the money was mine by default, but there was no way that I wasn’t going to share some of the earnings with him. Sam had been nothing but supportive towards me since I’d first met him during freshers week. I came with a lot of baggage, but he never seemed to mind and never ever judged. As we headed towards the city centre, I caught myself smiling. Smiling at the fact that I was going to be able to eat, and have a bit of play too. My luck was changing for the better and it was taking everything in me to squash down that niggling voice in the back of my head that worried about all of this being too good to be true. That’s the thing about struggling with anxiety, you don’t ever feel like you’re worthy of anything good, and if anything good does happen, you fear that there must have been a mistake or that suddenly, the wind will change and everything will start to go wrong again. Today though, I chose not to listen to that part of myself. I turned the volume well and truly down as we walked in to the first newsagents we could find. Sure, it looked a bit dodgy and the guy behind the till watched our every move like a hawk, as if we were some sort of juvenile student delinquents, but even that couldn’t throw me.
Beating me to it, Sam marched in front towards the till, eventually placing both his palms casually on the counter, “you alright mate?” I don’t know why he’s amping up the charm as if he’s talking to Poppy and not some middle-aged man with a beer gut and who stank of stale tobacco. The man grunts in return, looking like he’d enjoy nothing more than for both of us to leave.
“Uh- we’d like to cash in a scratch card please,” I mumble, awkwardly scrambling around in my wallet. I don’t know why this feels like theft. I know it’s not, but I still can’t help but feel like a criminal. Through shaky hands, I pass him the card. The man’s eyes do an unimpressed once over, like it’s just another day at the office and he’s expecting to give me a ￡2 coin, but then I notice the bomb drop and his eyes practically pop out of his head.
“It’s definitely yer’ lucky day bud,” the man says through a really thick Bristolian accent. He speaks. “But obviously we can’t just give you ￡1000 in cash from the till. I’ll need yer’ bank details to make a transfer.” Sam had already prepped me on this on the walk here, not that I thought they’d willingly give me a thousand crisp notes anyway, so I’d got my bank details jotted down and my app armed and ready. Handing the sheet of paper over, the man uhmms and ahh’s before finally exclaiming, “that’s all done bud! Should be with you in yer’ account in about give or take, 24 hours.
As we leave the shop, Sam nudges me on the shoulder with a grin plastered all over his face, “so, moneybags, what you going to spend it on first?” I don’t want to literally say, ‘food,’ as I’m nearly 100% sure that Sam’s already clocked on to my bare-ass cupboards in the flat, but I definitely might have a few ideas up my sleeve.