Free Life's Lottery by Kim Newman

remarries, to a bloke called Phil Parslowe, an antiques dealer. Laraine gets divorced from someone called Fred whom you never liked and floats around, a brittle thirty with a too-frequent sour expression.
    The big upheaval in the Marion family is a road-widening scheme. In 1989, Mum receives a compulsory purchase order for the family home. It’s an end-of-the-row house, the only one in the street scheduled for demolition. You and James converge on the old home to give support. Phil has got hold of maps and plans and shows you exactly what will be done. The planned extra lane on the Achelzoy road will cut through your living-room and completely demolish the garden.
    Will the workmen find those marbles? Phones the cat, in his grave under the forsythia bush, will be disturbed by the spread of the road on which he was tragically run over in 1972.
    You can’t understand why the road is to be widened on your side. Across the way is a scrap of parkland hardly worth keeping. There was a swing there when you were kids; now it’s a hollow where rubbish collects. The council claims it is favouring community resources over individual ones.
    You and James agree there’s something bent about this. It turns out that behind it all is Robert Hackwill, district councillor, chairman of the Planning Committee. The road-widening is supposed to cope with the extra flow of traffic anticipated when Hackwill Properties finally gets its Discount Development – a major, controversial project – finished.
    ‘He has a long memory,’ you say.
    ‘Well, we have too,’ James replies.
    * * *
    As part of the on-going re-evaluation of your relationship, Chris insists you have monthly truth-telling sessions. This sounds to you like an infants’ kissing game, but it turns out to be her way of admitting to you that on one of her trips to Dublin she has had an affair with another graduate student, someone her own age. It is over, she insists. She says she loves you. You almost wish you had an infidelity to match hers – there have been crush-struck jailbait temptresses on your courses, but you’ve stayed away from them – but all you can talk about in the sessions is Sedgwater. As you are explaining about James and Hackwill, she bursts into tears. You end up in bed, but you are still not sure which way you’ll vote. If anything, the truth-telling has made you less certain how you feel.
    * * *
    James is staying with you in London for a few days. You’re going through the action plan. Chris doesn’t understand.
    ‘You think this Hackwill is knocking down your mum’s house because you wouldn’t let him buy you a pint?’
    ‘Essentially, yes,’ you say.
    James nods.
    ‘That’s silly,’ she protests.
    You and James remember the copse.
    And all the other times. All through school, Hackwill was there. After the copse, it was less concerted, but if either of the Marion brothers got a boot in the back or a thump on the head, Hackwill was there.
    After primary school, he didn’t even do it himself. He had his sidekick Reg Jessup for that, and a coterie of hangers-on: Mack McEwan, Pete Gompers, Shane Bush.
    ‘He was the school bully,’ you say.
    ‘And you two were heroes. You stood up to him. Good for you.’ Chris is being sarky.
    ‘We just looked out for each other, Chris. Tried not to take any stick.’
    ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you ought to be grateful to him?’
    This is hideous heresy. You and James both blurt out, ‘What?’
    ‘If you hadn’t learned to take care of yourselves, Jimmy’d have been killed in the Falklands, and you’d have broken your neck hauling some kid out of a well. Your bully forced you to become the macho, outdoors, competent, capable Super Marion Brothers you are.’
    ‘Fuck off, Chris,’ you say.
    ‘Them’s fighting words.’
    She biffs you with a cushion. James laughs and she batters him too. By now, you’re all a bit drunk.
    * * *
    Weeks dribble away. You’re so caught up in appeals and