Licence to Dream (8 page)

‘I won!’ she said aloud, her voice hoarse and scratchy with shock. It was impossible odds, but she’d won! She stood up and walked round the room, feeling jerky and uncoordinated, then flopped down on the couch and said, ‘I won!’ several times more. She thumped a cushion to emphasise her words, before picking it up and tossing it in the air.

Then she shook her head. ‘I must have made a mistake.’

She checked the numbers again, not realising she was holding her breath until she had to let it out in a whoosh. There was no mistake. Six numbers. All in one row.

She sat staring at the ticket till everything ran into a blur. How much had she won? It could be anything from a couple of hundred thousand dollars, if the prize was shared between several people, to over a million. According to Rosanna, who had once won fifty dollars, you didn't find out how much you'd won until late Monday afternoon. Meriel groaned aloud. Over a day to wait! How was she going to bear it? She might – she really might be quite rich. Well, rich by her standards, anyway.

The thought that followed seemed to etch itself into her brain in letters of fire –
rich enough to give up work and try to become a full-time commercial artist.
She caught her breath on a gasp, then told herself to get a grip. She shouldn’t count on anything till her win was confirmed.

She made another cup of coffee then wondered whether to open a bottle of champagne, but it was no fun celebrating on your own. She rang Rosanna to share her news, but her friend’s mobile was switched off. The coffee was stone cold by the time she took a sip, as she tried to come to terms with the thought that she might be able to stop working as an accountant.

After a while, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her, she grabbed her shoulder bag and went out, driving into Perth then going for a brisk walk along the river. The beauty of the day gradually seeped into her bones and she could feel herself relaxing. Blue water reflected even bluer sky, its movement chopping up the reflections of the buildings on the southern shore into a million fragments that nonetheless formed a pleasing whole. The ferry chugged slowly across the river like a prim spinster aunt then chugged back again.

She felt better out in the open air. She always did.

Hunger drove her home again and the evening crawled past at an agonising snail's pace. She kept trying to phone Rosanna’s mobile and getting no answer. She kept looking at the clock and finding that only a few minutes had passed. She kept staring into space, hoping, praying that she would win enough money to escape being an accountant – for a while at least.

* * * *

When she went to work on the Monday morning she said nothing to anyone, not even her friend, because Rosanna would be bound to shriek for joy and Meriel didn’t want anyone else knowing about her win yet.

‘You don't look well,’ Rosanna said. ‘You should have stayed at home.’

‘It's just a – a touch of the collywobbles.’

Rosanna chuckled. ‘You don’t have much of a pommy accent but you do use some funny words sometimes. Collywobbles! What does that mean?’

‘Australian translation: I've picked up a stomach wog.’

Meriel spent most of the day locked in her office, pushing papers to and fro, but getting nowhere. Thank goodness she had no client appointments today. She couldn’t concentrate properly on anything.

In the afternoon, heart pounding, she rang the Lotteries Commission hotline to see what this week's prizes were worth. A mechanical voice told her that the first prize was shared between two people and would amount to just over a million and a half dollars each. She stood there, frozen in shock, with the recording still droning away in her ear.

What you gonna do when you win Lotto?
The silly jingle from some TV adverts she’d seen a while ago began to pound through her brain again and she had to take several deep breaths before she could move. Setting the receiver down with extreme care, she left her office. She had to share the news with someone, just had to.

She made it along the corridor, then the world started tilting and she had to clutch the doorframe. ‘Rosanna, I – ’ Everything started to whirl around her and the next thing she knew, she was staggering across the room.

When she collapsed into a chair, her friend stared down at her, plump arms akimbo. ‘Did you eat any lunch today?’

‘Er – no. I wasn't hungry. Rosanna, I – ’

‘What did you have for breakfast?’

‘I don't remember.’

‘Meriel Ingram, I don't know what's got into you lately. You aren't looking after yourself. If you get any thinner, you'll fade away. Are you turning anorexic on me?’

‘No. It’s not that.’ Meriel sat down in a visitor chair and told herself to calm down.

Rosanna stopped scolding and perched on the desk beside her, asking in a gentler voice, ‘You feeling better now?’

‘Mmm.’ But she didn’t tell her friend the real reason for her faintness. She didn’t want the rest of the office to know anything yet. The Lotto coupon was tucked away in her handbag and she wouldn’t feel certain about the money until she had presented it to the Lotteries Commission and had her win confirmed.

Rosanna's voice was still blaring in her ears. ‘I'm going to take you home, feed you and put you to bed. This can't go on.’ And from that decision she refused to be moved.

Meriel trailed back to her office, worrying about how badly she was handling this.

Her boss, John Repping, came to stare at her and insist she go home ‘And let someone else drive you. You’re as white as a sheet.’

‘All right. Thanks.’

A few minutes later Meriel buckled herself into the passenger seat of her own car and directed Rosanna to drive her north to Osborne Park. ‘I have some things to pick up. It’s urgent.’

When they got near the Lotteries Commission, she told her friend to stop for a moment, then got out of the car. ‘We need to go into the Lotteries Commission. The reason I nearly fainted this morning, Rosanna, is that I think I've won Lotto.’

‘Yeah? Which Division?’

‘Division One. All six numbers.’

Rosanna's shriek stopped two passers-by dead in their tracks, but the sight of her beaming face reassured them and they went on their way, smiling. She grabbed Meriel and gave her a big hug. ‘Hey, that's marvellous! Congratulations! Oh, wow!’

Then she held her at arm’s length. ‘Look, I'm coming inside with you. You might faint again when they confirm it! Are you sure you double-checked all the numbers?’

‘I must have checked them fifty times, at least.’

Inside, Rosanna took the Lotto ticket from Meriel's shaking fingers and brandished it in the receptionist's face. ‘My friend just won the First Division.’

The woman beamed at them and pressed a button. ‘That’s wonderful. Let me show you to the Winners’ Room.’

The ticket was validated then Meriel was asked whether she wanted a cheque or the money paying into her bank.

‘Paying in directly, please.’ She didn’t want to risk anything happening to a cheque.

Once she’d given them her details, a woman came up to her. ‘I’m a member of the Corporate Communications Team. Would you mind having a chat? We like to find out about our winners. And we need to know whether you want to remain anonymous.’

‘Definitely.’

‘Do you have any idea what you’ll do with the money?’

‘Yes. Give up work and become an artist. I’ve been training part-time and saving to take some time off.’

They chatted for a while and Meriel was given a pack with guidelines on making the most of her good fortune.

Rosanna chuckled when they did that. ‘She’s an accountant. I think she’ll know how to look after her money.

The woman smiled sympathetically. ‘That’s good. Take the pack anyway. Some of our past winners helped us put it together. The main advice we offer is not to rush into anything.’

‘I won’t.’ Meriel closed her eyes for a moment. Coming here, being fêted, had made it all feel real and she felt overwhelmed. She stood up. ‘You’ve all been very kind, but what I need now is some peace and quiet to get used to it all.’ She’d won enough to give her the freedom to do what she wanted with her life.

As she and Rosanna walked outside, she stopped to say firmly, ‘You're not to tell anyone about this when you get back to the office.’

‘But . . . ’

‘I mean that!’ She spoke fiercely. ‘I don't want anyone at work to know about my win until I've decided what to do with the money.’

‘They're bound to find out sooner or later.’

‘Let them.’ She had to swallow hard before she added, ‘I'll be gone by then.’

‘Gone?’

‘Yes, gone. I'm going to do what I've always wanted.’ She spoke in hushed tones, feeling like someone standing at the gates of paradise, scared to tiptoe through them. ‘Rosanna, I’m going to buy myself a little house somewhere in the country and paint.’

‘You can't mean that!’

‘Oh, I do. I'll phone John Repping tomorrow and give in my notice.’

After depositing the cheque in her back, she let Rosanna drive her home, where she ate a sandwich to appease her friend then pleaded weariness.

After the door had closed behind Rosanna, the quietness seemed to fold itself around Meriel and the rocking chair beckoned to her like a dear friend.

‘So,’ she said to it, stroking the silky wood of the arm-rest, ‘I really did win Lotto.’ She wished this had happened while Grandpop was still alive. She'd have taken him on a world trip. He’d always wanted to travel.

And why she should suddenly remember Ben Elless again, she couldn’t imagine, except that he had walked in and out of her thoughts all weekend. Sure, he was a good-looking guy, but he wasn’t the first attractive man she’d ever met. Only, none of the others had haunted her like this.

Perhaps she should have accepted his dinner invitation. That might have got him out of her system. He probably had a million faults which would have put her off him if she got to know him better.

She remembered how he had questioned her capabilities as an accountant. It was a long time since anyone had made her so angry. Then she grinned as she suddenly realised that someone else would now have to work on the Elless account. Someone else would have to put up with that man's rudeness.

Her grin became a beam of delight and she forgot Ben Elless and accounting completely, as she bounced to her feet and began to dance around the room. Her childhood dreams were about to come true.

Well, she amended mentally, her dreams were going to come true if she had enough talent. That remained to be seen, but her tutors had praised her and the publisher had already talked of giving her other book cover commissions.

And now – now she would have all the time she needed to develop her skills. She smiled wryly. She’d thought she wanted to paint, but the course had taught her that what she really wanted was to become a commercial artist and work on a whole range of different things that stretched and challenged her imagination.

Meriel went in to see her boss the next day to tell him what had happened.

‘Goodness me! Well, er, congratulations.’

‘I want to give notice, to leave as soon as possible.’

‘Oh dear. We’d be sorry to lose you. Are you quite sure?’ Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Of course! Your art. Well, why don’t we go through your client portfolio and see where you stand, then you can start passing your client list on to others here. I’ll take one or two of them as well until we can find a replacement for you.’

‘Thank you. I really appreciate your being so understanding about this.’

He began to fiddle with his pen. ‘Did you ask to remain anonymous about your win?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good. We don’t want the firm linked to gambling and games of chance.’

She finished work two weeks later, endured a going-away party and then went back with relief to the quiet of her villa. The only work she had now was designing the book covers and she enjoyed that enormously, but it wouldn’t bring in enough to live on and she didn’t want to fritter away her winnings.

She tried to remember when last she’d had so much time to herself but couldn’t. She seemed to have been rushing to get things done ever since her father left her mother, first at school, then at university and then looking after Grandpop.

Now she could do exactly what she wanted – or do nothing at all if she felt like it.

The main decision she’d already taken was to live in the country. The idea of owning a few acres of land appealed strongly to her, now that she had a big of money.

Maybe that was a reaction to her childhood in the crowded terraces of a Lancashire mill town. She’d always loved going for walks on the moors with Grandpop.

The problem of finding somewhere to live had her making lists as methodically as she had once done at work.

First of all she bought a newer car, a small four-wheel drive suitable for country roads, but not a brand new one, which would lose too much value the minute she drove it out of the sales yard. It was only a couple of years old, silver with grey upholstery, a huge improvement on her elderly runabout.

Next she spent some time exploring the country districts near Perth, because she didn’t want to live too far away from the capital. She enjoyed these outings enormously, setting off at dawn with a flask of coffee and a map, going wherever the fancy took her, staying the night if she wanted to.

She invited Rosanna to come with her one weekend, but her friend declined to be parted from Karl for a whole day. For a fleeting moment as she put the phone down, Meriel wished she had someone to share things with. No, with her track record with men, she was better off on her own. Much better.

The more she searched, the more she enjoyed the open spaces, with only wind and rustling leaves, or the humming of insects and sudden bird calls to break the silence. But she wanted to live somewhere with a strong sense of community, as well. The isolated five-acre blocks of land in the outer suburbs didn’t appeal to her at all. She concentrated on various country towns, though ‘town’ was a grandiose word for some of the places she visited, which would not even have merited village status in England.