Don't Tell the Groom by Anna Bell

Author:Anna Bell [Bell, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2014-01-14T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I’ve hit rock bottom. I really have. I’m sitting in a coffee shop and looking at my hands as they’re visibly shaking.

‘Are you OK?’ asks Josh.

He sits down opposite me with his coffee and for a minute I just want to lean across and hug him. I’m sure it’s the leather jacket that he always wears; it makes me think that he could wrap his arms around me and protect me from anything.

He said something, didn’t he? I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, because I’m too busy looking at his shoulders as he slips off his jacket. Focus, Penny, focus. He was just asking if I’m OK.

‘I’ve been better.’

‘So your text said that you gambled again,’ says Josh.

I wince. There is something so awful about the G word when it’s said out loud. It makes me feel like I’ve done something truly, truly heinous.

‘I bought five scratch cards yesterday. I hadn’t planned to do it, but I was getting some milk from the corner shop and I thought that I could just do with a little boost. I’d wanted to buy a lottery ticket but it was past seven thirty.’

Josh is nodding as if he understands. See, this is why I texted him.

‘I just felt so dirty. I mean, I bought a scratch card. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as I watched myself hunched over the kitchen table and desperately scratching off the grey boxes. And then I got really paranoid that Mark would see one of the grey specks that I’d rubbed off and work everything out. I ended up hoovering the kitchen table just to get rid of any trace of them.’

‘Did you win?’ asks Josh.

‘What?’

What does winning have to do with it? Surely the focus here should be on the fact that I gambled?

‘Did you win or did you lose?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘What, did you throw them away before you looked?’

‘No, I couldn’t work out if I’d won.’

I reach into my pocket and dig out five slightly crinkled scratch cards and I pass them over to Josh.

‘You need a flipping degree to understand if you’ve won,’ I say, to make myself feel better. I can’t tell whether it was the scratch cards that were complicated or if I was flustered that Mark might come home and catch me, but I honestly couldn’t work out if I’d won.

‘You haven’t won,’ says Josh.

‘Really? Not even a pound? What about the one with the diamonds?’

‘Nope, your stones don’t match.’

I don’t know why I am surprised that I’ve lost again. It wasn’t like I’d had a whole lot of luck in the first place with gambling.

‘Well, there’s another waste of five pounds. It just feels so much worse than the bingo,’ I say.

‘How come?’

‘Because I could see the mess I’d made afterwards. I’d scratched like I was a fox savaging a carcass. I couldn’t help it.’

‘In the grand scheme of things a few scratch cards are no worse than your online bingo.

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