Did I Mention I Won The Lottery?

by Julie Butterfield

  And that was another conversation ended as he turned the TV back on and was soon immersed back in the mechanics of car repairs.

  Chapter 11

  Rebecca parked her small cream coloured Fiat by the front door and started unloading the shopping bags into the hallway. The weather had improved marginally. The rain had stopped and the sun was making more of an effort to make an appearance during the day but even as the month rolled into May it was still cold and miserable.

  Inside it was warm and cosy. The heating was rarely off and in the evenings Rebecca would light the fire in the corner of the living room and watch the flames flicker. She carried the bags through to the kitchen. Stocking up a house from scratch was a long business she had realised and today had involved a visit to the supermarket to stock up the freezer and her kitchen cupboards. She flicked on the coffee machine smiling as she remembered how long it had taken her to produce her first cappuccino and started to unload the bags.

  She had spent the last 3 weeks dividing her time between Leeds and Darlington. The weekends were long and full of Daniel pontificating about Peter Thompson’s failures, the failure of White’s not to give the job to Daniel in the first place, the failure of the sales team to allow themselves to be taken in by Peter Thompson. But he was happy. Happier than Rebecca had seen him in a long time so she smiled and agreed and nodded and waited for the final announcement which was going to take place at any moment.

  And then? Her mind veered away from the next step. Of course once Daniel knew that he had the job, he might welcome Rebecca’s news. It may be that being offered the job was enough and he didn’t actually need to say yes. Maybe he would still want to accept their offer but wouldn’t feel the need to stay in Darlington. Rebecca really couldn’t think any further than the present and she lived one day at a time trying to minimise the number of lies she was telling as she lived her double life.

  As far as Daniel was concerned she was in Leeds looking for a replacement home for Gwen. The same story had been offered to Carol and Susie although Rebecca could tell from the glance they shared that they still felt Rebecca was hiding something. Little did they know just how much.

  In Leeds the story Rebecca gave Gwen, Mrs Wendover, Helen and Emma was that she and Daniel had decided to move back to Leeds and that she was staying in the area partly because she wanted to keep an eye on Gwen and partly because she was looking for just the right place to buy.

  She couldn’t tell the children the same story because they would know instantly it was a lie. They knew of Daniel’s absolute refusal to even consider moving back to Leeds. And although Sarah and Toby rarely spoke to their father these days it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that they would pick up the phone to say hello and then hear his version of Rebecca’s absence. So Rebecca stuck to the Parklands story for them both and Toby, knowing that their father would do anything to avoid having Gwen stay with them for any length of time, had accepted the reasons for Rebecca’s extended stay in Leeds.

  Sarah was slightly more problematical. More than once Rebecca caught her staring and she had asked Rebecca outright again if she and Daniel had split up.

  ‘I’m a big girl Mum, I can take the news,’ she had declared after confronting her mum outside the pizza restaurant.

  ‘Don’t be silly! Of course we haven’t. I would tell you.’

  ‘But you look so different. Happy, relaxed. And you’re spending money, on yourself. Not that I think that’s wrong, in fact it’s been far too long coming if you ask me. You’ve done without ever since we moved to Darlington whereas it had no impact on Dad at all!’

  Rebecca had explained about Daniel’s new job and the increase in pay but Sarah was still suspicious.

  ‘But he hasn’t got the job yet has he? And Dad is always cautious about money, particularly about anyone else spending it. How come he’s OK with you being down here staying in hotels etc. before he’s got the first pay cheque? I presume you are staying in a hotel?’ And Rebecca had to work hard, reassuring Sarah that all was okay, avoiding telling her exactly where she was staying whilst convincing her that there was no secrets being kept.

  The lying was undoubtedly the worse thing she had decided. It was exhausting and unpleasant.

  She really just wanted to tell them all the truth, let family and friends share in her good fortune and let them all know that any money worries they had were now over. And she would, once she had broken the news to Daniel.

  Helen had asked why Rebecca didn’t look at her old house and Rebecca had to constantly come up with new reasons; that they had already found another house they loved, they were on the verge of making an offer, they both felt a different house would be better. Helen had surprisingly agreed that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to come back to the same street they had left 5 years before.

  A bonus to being back in Leeds was the time she could spend with Helen and Emma who was now back from her exotic holiday.

  They met regularly, had lunch and generally caught up on 5 years of gossip.

  ‘I really didn’t think Daniel would ever let you back to Leeds you know,’ Emma had announced cheerfully one day. ‘But I’m glad the miserable old bastard finally realised he couldn’t keep you away for ever.’

  They were sitting in Emma’s lovely living room with its polished wooden floor and huge leather sofas. Rebecca caught the admonishing glance Helen threw at their friend but she shrugged it off. She didn’t care what they thought of Daniel. She didn’t care that Susie thought she was having an affair or that Emma thought Daniel was a controlling miserable man. She was back where she belonged, that was the main thing.

  Rebecca also met up with Annie again, taking her out for lunch as a thank you for her help with the house exchange and the two women sat and chatted for a long time as they talked furnishings and gardens and lampshades and locations.

  And in an effort to validate the lies as much as possible, Rebecca had rung Mrs Wendover and they’d had another chat about Parklands. Mrs Wendover, who asked Rebecca to call her Brenda, hadn’t take exception at all to Rebecca’s rather direct questions about how much longer Parklands was likely to stay open and instead she had poured them both a cup of tea and admitted that she really didn’t know.

  She’d explained that the home was actually owned by a Mr Hammond who had bought it several years earlier. He left its management entirely to Brenda and as long as he could take a profit from the business at the end of every month, he left her pretty much too her own devices. But the profit had been getting smaller and harder to come by. Repairs and renovation were needed. The central heating needed updating, the plumbing needed work, decoration was necessary.

  ‘And,’ sighed Brenda, ‘as I told you before some of the residents are getting a little behind with their payments. Dolly for example, she’s been here for years and when she sold her house there was no question that the money would be enough to keep her somewhere comfortably for the rest of her life.’

  But with a steady increase in rates over the last few years Brenda knew that Dolly’s money had now run out and her family couldn’t afford to keep her at Parklands.

  ‘Dolly has been her for over 20 years. She’s 93, I can’t evict a 93 year old woman and tell her to spend the last few years of her life somewhere else, without her friends, the room she thinks of as her home.’

  Rebecca sipped at her tea.

  ‘What do you think will happen?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ replied Brenda tiredly. ‘Well actually, I do, I just don’t like to think about it. Sooner or later, and I think it may be sooner, Mr Hammond is going to decide that the profit simply isn’t there anymore and he’ll sell Parklands. Then new owners will come along and ‘renovate’. They’ll probably sell off the gardens to a developer, they’ll cut the size of the bedrooms in half, cover everything in easy clean plastic, get twice as many residents in, reduce the number of staff and make sure the place turns a profit. That’s what’s going to happen.’

 
When Rebecca had left Mrs Wendover she’d thought long and hard about Parklands. The very reason Gwen had chosen it was because of the gracious, almost old fashioned living it offered. The original architecture was still present in most of the rooms, the huge bedrooms were more like suites and the large bay windows gave the residents a view of the beautifully kept gardens. They all had their own bathroom and the communal rooms would not have been out of place in the local manor house. How sad if the sale did happen. How sad if people like Dolly were evicted at a time of their life when continuity and routine was paramount to their wellbeing.

  And the news hadn’t improved. Since Rebecca’s last conversation about Parklands, Mr Hammond had actually had the business valued which had further convinced Brenda Wendover that he was about to sell. The house itself had a worth, in addition to the business and the valuation had come in at 3.8 million pounds.

  It was a lot of money thought Rebecca, but there again she had a lot of money. But this wasn’t an investment. The lottery people had explained to her that she needed to put her money in the right investment plan so that it could produce even more money. They had talked to her of high risk and low risk, of commodities, stocks and shares and bonds. About how she had to be careful not use all her capital without getting some kind of return for her investment. A lot of what had been said had gone over Rebecca’s head but she didn’t need a team of trained investment specialists to tell her that buying Parklands was not an investment. It wouldn’t be a case of making money, simply spending money to make people happy. She could carry out all the work Mrs Wendover had listed, put in place a grant for residents like Dolly and make sure that Gwen and her friends didn’t have to worry about their home closing. But there would be no profit to be made.

  So Rebecca chewed on the problem of Parklands and felt better about the lies she told to Daniel because now she’d had her suspicions confirmed that Parklands was about to close and she would have to find Gwen a new home. Or Rebecca could spend a considerable amount of her money making sure that Parklands would survive.

  Rebecca went home at the weekend, as reluctant as ever to leave the warm comfortable house that she had fallen in love with. She didn’t bother to catch the train this time, now she had a reliable new car to drive. But of course she couldn’t go home and park it on the driveway so she made her way to Darlington train station and parked the Fiat there before hailing a taxi to take her home. She took very little with her. She had of course shopped like a professional over the last weeks and the wardrobe of clothes she left behind in Leeds each Saturday morning reflected the amount of money in her bank account. In Darlington she was a different person. The downtrodden wife of a grumpy, belligerent man. It was getting harder and harder to play the role when she returned. The confidence that had crept back into Rebecca’s life when she had the ability to make her own decisions again wasn’t easily hidden when she opened the door of her 4 bed executive house. She knew that Susie was convinced Rebecca was having an affair. Maybe she was right in a way. Rebecca was giddy with the excitement of being her own person again.

  The house was relatively tidy, Daniel was making more of an effort than normal and the over whelming feeling of guilt that Rebecca carried with her had prompted a return to making him meals for every day she was away.

  Daniel was in the living room when she arrived, just packing his small golf bag.

  He looked up guiltily when she walked through the door.

  ‘I know you’ve been away all week and I should be happy that you’re back but I need to set up some meetings over the next few weeks, start getting everybody back on side.’

  Rebecca held up her hand smiling from the feeling of utter relief of not having to spend a day with Daniel and listening to his long term business plans yet again.

  ‘Go! Go on - don’t worry. I need a few hours to relax anyway.’

  Relieved, Daniel could afford to be generous. ‘Well I’ll try not to be too late and perhaps we can go out for a meal, go round to the pub again? Or I’ll bring a take away home?’

  Rebecca agreed and shooed him gently out of the house closing the door behind him with a soft click.

  She wandered back into the living room. There really was nothing about this house that she liked and nothing that she wanted to take with her. When they had moved she had been so angry with Daniel for taking the decision away from her that she simply refused to engage with him, about the house or the move. She shrugged when he suggested the choice of wall colour, ignored him when he talked about a new suite and refused to let him take her around Darlington so that she could get to know it better.

  If she’d at least met him half way maybe they’d have had a better life thought Rebecca. She had taken such pride in the house they had left behind in Leeds. There wasn’t a corner of their old home that wasn’t designed and decorated exactly as she wanted. She could have done the same here, she could have tried to be happy.

  Then she shrugged. It wasn’t really the house. That was just a symptom of how bad things had become between Daniel and herself. No, the real problem had been the complete and utter change in Daniel’s character. He had transformed almost overnight from a loving husband, a good father and a capable provider to a bad tempered, over bearing man, obsessed with his job and what he saw as a lost opportunity. He no longer seemed to see Rebecca as his best friend and wife, just someone who was supposed to keep his life in order while he struggled with the injustice of a system that gave Peter Thompson the job Daniel Miles should have had.

  Rebecca sighed and made her way upstairs. Opening the wardrobe door she unearthed the glossy brochures she had collected the day she checked her lottery numbers. Exotic holidays on deserted beaches with nothing to do but lay in a hammock or drink a cocktail by the sea. Exactly the sort of holiday that Daniel had said he didn’t want to have. She threw them on the bed. She would get rid of them later, before Daniel came across them and they had another row. Reaching onto the top shelf she pulled out the boxes of photos and albums. Their wedding day, albums of the children’s early years, it was all there and Rebecca wanted to have them with her in Leeds. She put them in a pile on the bed before flicking through her clothes. Most of them she put back in the wardrobe, just one or two items joined the photos and she did the same with each of her drawers. In the end there was a small pile of photos, very few clothes and a selection of bits and pieces such as the mother’s day cards that the children had made at school, the pottery pencil holder that Toby had made and which Daniel said was like deformed whale and the badly stitched handkerchief that Sarah had spent weeks finishing.

  Collecting an empty box from the utility room, Rebecca packed up the few possessions and put them back in the bottom of the wardrobe. The brochures she put in a plastic bag.

  Then brushing her hair and throwing a scarf round her neck she went into town to visit Carol and Susie at the Deli taking the plastic bag of brochures with her and dropping them in a bin as she went.

  True to his word Daniel came home at a reasonable time clutching a bag full of Chinese take away. Rebecca was glad they weren’t going out. If they did they would have to talk to each other whereas this way they could sit on the settee, Daniel could watch TV and Rebecca could retreat into her own world which she did until Monday morning finally came and she waited for Daniel to leave before calling a taxi to take Rebecca and her single box of possession to the train station and to her small cream car.

  Within a couple of hours she was back in her own house, sighing with relief as she kicked the door shut behind her and feeling a whole new persona begin to cloak her shoulders. This was the Rebecca she loved. This was the real Rebecca.

  Chapter 12

  The week passed as the previous ones had. There was little to shop for now, the house was almost as Rebecca wanted it to be. She had wondered if she would get bored when shopping was no longer a day to day necessity but the truth was that Rebecca just felt content. The pile of books on her coffee table grew as did the DVDs and Rebecca wa
s at her happiest on an evening when she could snuggle down and lose herself in a good story. She met with Gwen, Sarah, Helen and Emma. She met Annie again for coffee. The rain had stopped and the weather was almost verging on the spring like and Rebecca spent a wonderful afternoon wandering around her new garden and getting to know what lived there. She decided a gardener would be necessary. She loved gardening and had every intention of planting herbs in the courtyard by the kitchen and maybe even vegetables down the side of the house. But there were some large trees that would need cutting back and lots and lots of grass to cut.

  She re-organised all the photos, choosing a few to put out on display in the lounge and on the hall table. She went to the market and bought armfuls of fresh flowers to put in every room. A waste of time Daniel always said of fresh flowers but Rebecca loved the welcoming scent every time she entered a room.

  She also went to visit her bank manager and spoke to him about trusts for the children. Probably the hardest part about keeping quiet thought Rebecca was not being able to put Toby and Sarah’s minds at rest. She knew Sarah was already having sleepless nights about the growing total of her student loan and to be able to tell them that they needn’t worry was a moment Rebecca was really looking forward to.