Free Life's Lottery by Kim Newman Page A

turn-downs on the house – which you still think of as home – that you worry less about Chris and the Marriage thing. James sets up camp in Somerset and sends reports about organised resistance.
    However, the M thing starts to grow in your mind. It’s not so much the decision that bothers you – though you still aren’t sure – but the actual showdown. How are you going to manage it? Who goes first? Is this like scissors-paper-stone, where you count to three and come out with it? If so, then it’s fine if you both come out with the same thing. But if there’s a split decision, if one of you wants the open road and the other wants to settle down, it could get nasty.
    More and more, you want just to carry on – living together, when you’re both in London, going out together, thinking maybe about a family when you reach that unimaginable age of thirty (this year, gack!). It’s perfectly comfortable and works for both of you, so why change?
    Why change anything? You like things as they are.
    It’s the same with the house. You’ll never move back, and Mum and Phil certainly won’t have kids to take over the three extra rooms, but you like the idea of the family home being there. It’s as if, because the site is preserved, your childhood and adolescence are accessible to you, still there on some level. The marbles are still buried so you’re not a proper grown-up. And that’s what you want.
    Which would be worse? If you voted for a split and Chris wanted to get married? Or the other way round? If you voted for a split and Chris agreed, would you still feel you’d been chucked? If Chris voted for marriage and you agreed, would you feel trapped? Whose idea was this six-month guillotine anyway?
    * * *
    The house goes. Mum caves in and accepts meagre compensation. She and Phil pool their savings and buy a smaller place in Sutton Mallet, a little way out of town. With the housing boom, they find themselves back on the mortgage hook in their fifties, working harder at Phil’s business to make payments. James says they should have fought on but Mum always hated conflicts. Sean Rye, Laraine’s old boyfriend, is now bank manager. He eases things a little for Mum, but James reports he’s firmly in the Hackwill camp and probably gets a kickback for forcing the deal through.
    The house isn’t knocked down at once. There’s a delay in the road-widening. It sits empty. Windows are broken by kids.
    James reports this is Hackwill’s real victory. Taking the house and not doing anything with it is worse than knocking it down. He says he is going to take the war to the enemy. Then, he sends you a cutting from the local paper. Robert Hackwill’s Jaguar was stolen and driven into a ditch. There’s a picture of the councillor looking stern next to the crash site, and a report of his speech against joy-riding thugs. In the picture, you see James leaning against a fence in the background, grinning. A band of hippies, including Graham Foulk, another of Laraine’s exes, squats your vacant house. Hackwill condemns the invading wasters.
    You’d worry more about James’s war but the decision deadline is coming up.
    * * *
    You love Chris. Don’t you? And, despite straying, she you?
    Think about it.
    Which do you decide?
    If you decide to vote for marriage, go to 108. If you decide to vote for a split, go to 121.

15
    W hen your Eleven Plus results come through, your parents think there has been a mistake. So does Mr Brunt. After negotiation, to which you are not party, you are called on a Saturday morning for an interview with Mr Brunt and an Exam Person.
    None of the other children in your class who have failed is treated this way. You’ve a feeling you’ve been found out. The Exam People saw into your mind and knew you were deliberately getting sums wrong or picking the wrong word in a string from which you had to chose the odd one. Shane and Mary passed, and are on their way to Dr Marling’s and the Girls’ Grammar. Vanda