‘OK, fine, I’m the one who said yes. But you were sitting right there when we talked about it. You didn’t say a word! You definitely didn’t disagree or say no.’
‘Oh, Tilly!’ Paula tuts. ‘I thought you knew I wasn’t listening. It was all too much that day. I thought the pair of you were just talking about – I don’t know! – legal thingys and financial advisors.’ She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t get my head around any of it.’
She stares across the kitchen, feeling hard done by.
Tilly sighs again, but this time with genuine remorse. ‘Oh God, Mum, I’m really sorry. I thought it would be fun, telling the world about your amazing good fortune. You’ve been through so much and I’ve been really worried, I just wanted youto be celebrated!’ She pauses. ‘And I didn’t realise it would be such a frenzy. Amy said there would be one or two journos. I thought you’d get a nice picture taken and a sit-down chat with someone. I had no idea there would be so many of them and that they’d be in your face like that.’ Tilly’s voice sounds a bit wobbly. ‘I’m an idiot. I just thought it might be exciting, and maybe encourage you to finally start spending some of it! Get you in the media! Give you a bit of a distraction from, y’know, losing Dad.’ Paula feels herself softening as her daughter continues. ‘And I wouldn’t have done it, but everyone at the funeral heard about it from the uncles anyway. Amy said the papers had your name and details. I think multiple people leaked it, the bastards.’ Paula takes a deep breath, thinking again of what she’d seen earlier on her Facebook page, what people were saying. Tilly continues, ‘I am sorry, Mum, but I guess there’s no way of getting the genie back in the bottle now. You’ve been in all the papers for the last two days.’ Paula’s heart hammers in her chest at her words, and Tilly quickly adds, ‘Not, like, the front page or anything.’ She pauses, listening to her wife speaking in the background. ‘Misha says it’s page two at the most.’ She takes a deep breath, which sounds suspiciously like another sigh. ‘I was trying to do the right thing and I messed up. You were in a funk, refusing to leave the house. We thought this might help pull you out of things.’
Except now Paula can’t leave the house at all, can she? Because there are journalists in vans lined up out the front.
Behind her, Seb wanders in from the back garden.
Paula only sees her son once a week or so, when he comes foraging for food. He also – very generously – leaves a large pile of washing in the utility room for Paula every now and again. Though, disconcertingly, it is mostly T-shirts, withhardly any pants in the mix. Paula hopes her son is, at the very least, turning them inside out.
‘Is that Tills on the phone?’ he asks, loading up the toaster with four slices of her wholemeal Hovis. He takes a clean plate straight from the dishwasher, ignoring the rest. ‘Are you talking about the famous Lotto winner who threw a strop, screamed at everyone over a notebook, then stormed away from her own press conference and went into hiding? She’s all over the internet, y’know. TikTok loves it.’
He chuckles as a faint sigh can be heard coming from Paula’s phone.
‘Oh Seb! It’s not funny,’ Paula cries, scolding. ‘It’s a disaster. I feel like I’m in hiding from the mob or something. There are journalists calling me constantly, and those photographers are camped outside the house. I can’t even pop to the Londis for a loaf of bread’ – she pauses to look a little pointedly at Seb standing by the toaster – ‘without someone shouting at me that I’m the “sad Lotto widow” and asking me for money.’
Her heart races thinking of the onslaught of messages, calls from unknown numbers and random emails she’s been getting. Yesterday, when the Sainsbury’s delivery driver knocked, she almost had a panic attack thinking of the cameras waiting out the front. It only took about forty seconds to open the door, grab plastic bags out of crates and slam it shut again, but it was enough for the photographers to start. She can still see the flashes when she shuts her eyes.
She frowns, thinking of the other man standing out there with them all. He didn’t have a camera and didn’t seem to be with the photographers. He stood a little away from the rest just staring intensely at the house. Paula didn’t recognisehim, but something about him and the way he stared at her was frightening.
She wonders if this is what it’s like to be Sigourney Weaver. To befamous. Well, no, thank you! Not even if it meant having all that lovely hair.
Seb reaches into the fridge, retrieving butter and Nutella as Paula follows him around, wiping crumbs. ‘Never mind the incessant messages I’m getting from every distant relative I’ve never heard of, needing to borrow some money.’
Seb grins through a mouthful of chocolate toast. ‘Ah, don’t take it all so seriously, Mum. The fuss will die down. I think you should totally embrace all this mayhem – go out there in your new pink jumper and pose for the cameras!’ He sprays crumbs as he talks. ‘Maybe giving them an interview would actually help shake off some of the intrigue, too. At the moment, everyone’s wondering about this mysterious woman who tragically lost her husband in a freak accident and had this incredible fortune with the lottery win at the same time. C’mon, you have to admit, you’d want to hear her story, too.’ He waves the hand free of toast. ‘Tell the world about your amazing luck. Have some fun.’
Paula knows her children are just trying to help, but if they tell her tohave some funone more time, she’ll have them both adopted.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Paula says into the phone, catching some small squawks of protest from Tilly. She hangs up anyway, sinking heavily into a nearby chair. She suddenly feels very tired. Very tired and very small.
How has her life come to this? A dead husband, twenty million in the bank, an adult son living in the shed, and endless days spent hiding away from the internet comment sections.
From the other side of the room, Seb shouts a goodbye through a mouthful of toast, half slamming the back door. It bounces open behind him on its hinges. He never closes it properly. It drives Paula round the bend, but she doesn’t have the energy to stand up and close it this time. Not now. Instead, she picks up the laptop from the corner, sits at the table, and reopens Facebook. It has refreshed itself since this morning, but there are still so many comments about her. So many acquaintances and neighbours she’s ‘added’ over the years, all writing about her lottery win, sharing the same links to the same newspaper stories.
She pauses over one familiar name. An old friend from school, Lily. They haven’t spoken properly in maybe thirty years. Not since the early days of Paula’s marriage when she’d just had Tilly. She fell out of touch with so many people around that time.
On her profile, Lily’s shared a headline about the ‘Lotto widow’, captioning it with a not-so-cryptic, ‘Not everyone gets what they deserve.’
The tone is oddly threatening and it makes Paula’s heart beat faster. Why would she write something like that? What does Lily know? She thinks again of John’s notebook.
She stands up abruptly, shutting the lid of the laptop and going to fetch her coat. She’ll go to work, that’s what she’ll do. They’ve given her indefinite compassionate leave after John died, but she needs something to be normal again. She needs to be busy and occupied. She needs to stop reading comments online and staring at her phone as it rings, wondering who this strange number belongs to. And she needs to prove to Tilly that she’s fine. That she’s getting on with her life.
Paula pulls on her coat and reaches for the front door. As she does so, the doorbell goes. She pauses, her hand frozen in mid-air.
It will likely be the photographers again. Journalists wanting to ask her questions about John and the twenty-one million. The door goes again and after a moment, she opens it, blinking rapidly at the two burly men standing on her doorstep. They don’t look like photographers.
‘Hello?’ Her voice wobbles with uncertainty.
The larger man clears his throat and speaks in a low, growly voice. ‘We’re here to see John.’
She stares at them. They stare back.
‘John?’ she echoes faintly, swallowing hard. The man nods, his head round and heavy-looking.
They don’t know. They haven’t heard. They must be the only people in the country who haven’t seen the headlines.
