Lucky Read online

  LUCKY

  Rachel Edwards

  Copyright

  4th Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.4thestate.co.uk

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road

  Dublin 4, Ireland

  This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2021

  Copyright © Rachel Edwards 2021

  Cover design by Jo Thomson

  Cover photograph © Arcangel/Mike Voss

  Author photo © Peter Edwards

  Rachel Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Information on previously published material appears here.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

  Source ISBN: 9780008364564

  Ebook Edition © June 2021 ISBN: 9780008364588

  Version: 2021-05-06

  

  Praise for Lucky:

  ‘Betrayal, blackmail, a marriage on hold, Lucky has all the ingredients of a page-turning thriller or a top-notch noir crime novel and yet Edwards is also writing towards conversations about race and everyday social injustice too. Read Lucky because it embraces the concerns of our everyday humanity in a post-Brexit, post-pandemic world of debt and insecurity. Her protagonist, Etta, is driven by the forces of a world on the edge’

  MONIQUE ROFFEY, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch

  ‘A brilliant portrayal of one woman’s descent into the world of online gambling – I felt every spin of the wheel; the highs of adrenaline followed by stomach-churning nausea’

  NIKKI SMITH, author of All In Her Head

  ‘Addictive! I have been consumed by Etta’s poignant and chaotic world, a tale of gambling and friendship and food and chances and love’

  AMANDA REYNOLDS, author of Close to Me

  ‘Tense beyond belief but impossible to put down. Dark, absorbing and brilliantly terrifying’

  LOUISE HARE, author of This Lovely City

  Dedication

  To my parents, Patricia and Okon,

  for taking a chance on the United Kingdom,

  and each other

  Epigraph

  Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls.

  Henry V, Act 3 Scene VI. William Shakespeare

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Lucky

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Risk I

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Risk II

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part II

  Risk III

  Chapter Nine

  Risk IV

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part III

  Chapter Twelve

  Risk V

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Risk VI

  Chapter Fifteen

  Risk VII

  Chapter Sixteen

  Risk VIII

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by the author

  About the Publisher

  She electrifies the room. Her swallowed fear, her femaleness, the accounts that must soon be drawn from her – fugitive truths flushed out from the dark into the glare of the strip lights. Her difference. They all feel it, even the second policeman standing at the door.

  She knows she is having an effect. Will it help her? Ordinarily, she has the advantage, a physical impact few choose to ignore. Still, her voice cannot grow bold enough, her phrasing stalls.

  She does not like the one questioning her. He has tried to cow her with power talk – no lawyer on the way? – and a drip-drip of innuendo. Where are you from, originally? Your first home, your parents, your past. Her roots feel more foreign than ever in this crushing white room, before these most authorised of Englishmen. When she thinks of the sacrifices that have been made, the paths that have brought her here … Where are you from? He does not get to ask that question. But of course, he does.

  She is under arrest.

  The policeman by the door clears his throat, a fist up against his dark beard. The blond man rises and moves away so his colleague can approach the desk. This other man, PC Howard, who she had assumed to be a junior officer, sits down in the vacated seat, taking his time about taking up space, telling her – with his amused stare, and the entitled set of his arms and chest, stretching back, now leaning close – he is in charge.

  ‘How?’ he asks.

  ‘How what?’ she says.

  ‘How the hell have you got here?’

  She looks up. The losses, and the risks, and the lies; the terrible fun, and the wrong men, and the surprising choices, and the victories; the boundaries breached and the many rivers of cash crossed; the unknowable connections, pathways and turns, a constellation spreading backwards to infinity; all that has brought her to this point.

  ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

  PART I

  Chapter One

  SUNDAY, 1 APRIL 2018

  Today, Easter Sunday, was going to blow their lives wide open. She felt the pressure building, sweet, acidulous and fizzing like fine French wine: the moment she had been waiting for, ready to pop.

  ‘Did you hear me, Etta? Come down here to me, my love.’

  This had to be it, at last. They had already exchanged ostentatious chocolate eggs and now she thought about it, Ola had, for some days, seemed on edge, over-excited, secretive. She scooped the contents of their laundry basket up into her arms and edged downstairs, peering over the clothes heap, the musk of him right under her nose.

  ‘Etta!’ Ola called again.

  ‘I’m here, what is it?’

  ‘Abeg! Oya, come down, woman!’

  ‘Ah! Abeg! Oga, I dey come now!’

  Each one’s laughter reached the other.

  ‘Come down please, my dearest dear. Please. Come through to the sitting room for a minute. I want to talk to you.’

  Yes, a pressing matter. A joyful matter.

  A snatch of Ola’s melodic mumbling, his ‘happy’ tune, drifted through the door. Hm-mm, do-di-do.

  Etta had felt a stirring, then that old horse-kick of hope. Could this be it, this time? Now, as she stood clutching soiled cotton? It would be their ‘anniversary’ in two weeks’ time. The upcoming sham celebration had slammed into her thoughts over and over in recent days: All that fake rubbish again. Nonsense! But now …

  The lounge, vacuumed that morning, was ideal for planned kneeling, better than a cold restaurant floor. He just might.

  ‘I’m coming!’ She dumped their dirty clothes against the newel post.


  Ola looked up at her from the sofa and gave his trademark dazzle. The impact of his bone-white teeth bared from the dark sateen of his face never failed to impress her. She did not smile back with equal confidence. Instead she sat down next to him and adopted the expression of someone you could ask anything at all; someone who was more than ready to swallow any doubts and acquiesce.

  ‘I’ve decided, Etta. We need something to look forward to.’

  This was it. ‘OK.’

  ‘I thought we might start to think ahead, make a few plans.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it’s just … OK. Where would you like to go most, if we could go away?’

  That throb, right at the base of her throat.

  ‘The Maldives. It’s supposed to be gorgeous. But that’s a …’ honeymoon ‘… dream. No way we can afford it.’

  ‘Heh.’

  ‘But …’ Say it, Ola. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think we should think about going there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon enough, God willing. We’re still saving, of course, so it would not be this year, maybe not next year either. But you know … Someday. We need goals to keep us on track, heh?’

  Etta rose from the sofa, holding her arms out before her, as if they still carried stained laundry.

  ‘That’s it?’ she asked.

  ‘Heh?’

  ‘Is that all you wanted to say: we’ll go to the Maldives “someday”? Well, if we’re just making lists, let’s also go to Hawaii, someday, and Antarctica before it melts, someday, and go to hell, someday—’

  ‘Etta! What’s up with you?’

  ‘I thought you meant real plans, Ola, proper plans, not just more silly talk. Tcha!’ She sucked her teeth with virtuoso flair.

  ‘Ah, I understand.’ He leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees, looked grave. ‘Etta, we’ve been through this a thousand times. We need to have a deposit for a house saved up before we can even think about getting married.’

  ‘But Ola, we’ve got savings!’

  ‘Not nearly enough.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Etta. We’ve talked about this. We need at least thirty thousand before we can even think about it, otherwise the mortgage repayments would cut us like a knife.’

  ‘We’d manage, Ola.’

  ‘We’d be broke, I’m telling you. Payments too big, income too small. QED.’

  ‘Don’t give me all your QED, Ola. We would get by. We could make up the money later.’

  ‘Ah! Listen to me o. Why are you trying to make me feel bad?’

  ‘I’m not! But not everything can hang on money.’

  ‘Wah? Everything hangs on money. Ah! If only you understood. On a monthly basis we are battered, Etta. Ba. Turd. If we marry without the funds, it will only get worse.’

  ‘But Ola, it’s you who doesn’t understand!’

  ‘Eh? Abeg! May you no dey vex me! I always understand. I am a great big tower of understanding. Tcha!’

  ‘Always, these excuses! I thought …’

  ‘What? What did you think now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Etta, standing. Ivory chiffon floated way out of sight, confetti went down the drain. ‘Not a bloody thing. I’ve got to get this washing on.’

  ‘Ah! And now you’re bloodying me and everything. I’m going out!’

  He jumped up and walked away.

  ‘Go, go!’

  The door closed just short of a slam.

  Off he stormed, into the badlands of Rilton, their nondescript home town, where he was more likely to die of boredom or be brought down by crimes against fashion than come to any real harm.

  ‘Bloody, bloody hell,’ said Etta.

  It was all ‘someday’ with that man. The contentment with which he browsed the future, lazy and optimistic, as if he owned the deeds to endless acres of time in which their lives might unfold. It was breaking something in her, something more than mere patience. It messed her up, caused her insides to ferment. What was passion without urgency?

  She shoved the clothes into the asthmatic washing machine then returned to the lounge and switched the TV on, too angry to focus on a programme but too angry to sit in silence.

  Easter surprise? Try April Fool. However, she needed to chill, dial it down a touch. They would marry, she was sure of it. Their parents’ traditions carried a certain weight and, between them, they were three quarters Nigerian, after all. She simply had to sort out the financial shortfall.

  Etta knew that their savings stood at around £22,000. But they needed more, faster. What could she do? How could she get the money? She had tried everything. She had looked for work-from-home opportunities, a second job to expand their income. She had surfed and scrolled, finding not one money-spinner that was feasible, legal, or practicable without funnelling her life savings into some fellow Nigerian’s bank account. (At least they all now said they were Nigerian, but that could easily just be a stereotype smokescreen or a double-bluff by others with sinister motives.)

  She had soon given up. It had proven too depressing: so very many people must have bitten to make it worth these stateless hustlers dangling their syphilitic bait. She had blown out the homeworkers’ schemes, the get-rich-quick schemes and every other scheme that had landed in her inbox, cosmetically enhanced to resemble an ‘opportunity’.

  An ad came on, jarring her from her thoughts. This ad, and so many like it, punctuated her day: air-punching carnivals of largely slender Caucasian females, with always one markedly unglamorous black woman widening her eyes like a cartoon as she presumably won that week’s fried chicken money.

  ‘Deposit £10 today and get £50 more to play with!’

  Pink-and-white ads, produced by pink-and-white ad execs to please boards of pink-and-white overlords; ads effervescing with acceptable pink-and-white women; each of them happier than their well-made-up faces could take.

  Despite her distaste, their elation was galvanising. Could this be the answer? She had already made the calculations: £200 per week, that was all. Put by £200 per week and she and Ola would be settled in their first home by the middle of next year. Their roots would then grow together, spreading under the foundations of their home, until they could not grow apart (not even if they fell into negative equity after Brexit); their life would exemplify the quote that someone, someday, would read at their wedding. One life from which adventures, security, babies and as-yet-unthought-of advantages would spring. Real life, at last.

  She was right to start culturing this creamy future: romance died unless you fed it often, with your mind. Ola would never spend his house savings and, during these long unmarried months it had somehow become his money to manage, no matter that she had put in the majority of their savings. Leave it to him and bang went the dress that would break Instagram, the chocolate cupcake tower and the meadow flower confetti.

  Etta tapped on her phone. Into her upturned hands fell a windfall of websites: Vixen Bingo, Leggsy Heaven, Celebration Bingo, Winners.com, Bingo Chat, Heavenly Bingo, Clickety Click, 24/7 Bingo, Happy Jackpots … She licked her lips; she needed a bigger screen and some privacy. She went upstairs to where her laptop waited, in the spare room.

  She clicked and scrolled.

  Cozee Bingo, with its brassy homepage and swollen prize pools, had a certain tarty appeal; you hunched closer to breathe in its heady blend of over familiarity and otherness. Cozee was stacked with an eye-catching Welcome Bonus, doubled today as an Easter Special; the homepage danced with white rabbits and beribboned eggs, Christ’s resurrection celebrated with capitalist gusto. The site did look welcoming for a certain strain of true believer (God Helps Those Who Help Themselves), or the sort of people who had wet dreams about Las Vegas fountains. Etta stared at the hot pink styling and flashing graphics. Was she really going to go there?

  She stared into the screen as it pumped out its jingles and its dancing lights, as mad-bright as the gl
eam in her eye. The laptop was speaking to her and to her alone:

  Come and play.

  Come play.

  Come.

  Etta looked down at her hands on the keyboard. This was it. At last, the answer.

  What if you could consider this sort of gambling to be low-rent and embarrassing, if you could see through all the snazzy tricks and do it anyway? You could study the odds, research, insulate against losses, cogitate, calculate, speculate, win. Had to be worth a try. Each win would inflate their savings and confirm her cleverness, someday, to her grateful husband. How Ola would praise her foresight! Her slaying of snobbery to gain the spoils. Her impeccable judgement. Her devotion. Even if it all went tits up, this would simply be her mistake. He’d had his. He’d had Zagreb.

  Joining took seconds. Etta was assured that she could register any normal debit card, so she chose the one tied to her personal account, not their joint household funds. Other banking methods were cited as acceptable, many of which she had never heard of. You had to admire the democratic principle: everyone deserved a chance to win, even if they lived off luncheon vouchers and benefits cheques.

  Cozee asked you to choose a username, essential for using the chat rooms which appeared in boxes on the main screen, bottom right. There, members typed in their feelings as they played; boasting, begging, bargaining with fate, wishing each other luck. That side of Cozee held no interest for her, but anonymity was non-negotiable. If anyone were to discover her scrabbling around in the underbelly of online entertainment, no Netflix this … No. This was a whole world you were joining; your familiar-other place. You signed up, they protected you, and no one need ever know.

  She clicked ‘Join Now!’

  From here on, she only needed luck. There seemed to be plenty to go around on Cozee: banners shrieked ‘£10,000 Full House Special!’ and ‘New Games, Bigger Prizes!’ and ‘54,716 jackpot winners this year!’ All going to plan – abracadabra! – Etta’s winnings would fly through the air with the greatest of ease and into her overdraft, turning red to black. Ta-da!

  She would win.