job in the office of a transport company. It was pretty dull, but it paid well. Jenny and I got married on a perfect summer's day and moved into an affordable but comfortable flat, lulled into a kind of sleep where we couldn't contemplate that all this could be as fleeting as a dream. Things were to change.
When I was called into my boss's office along with five other people I knew something wasn't quite right. The depression was at its height and firms were going bust right left and centre. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and it was through gritted teeth that he explained to us that there was no longer any jobs for us. Before we even knew what was going on we were packing our things into cardboard boxes and taking them out to our cars. On the drive home I felt sick, but I kept telling myself that I would think of a way to pay the mortgage. I had good grades and a friendly face, after all.
When I got home I looked for Jenny, but I couldn't find her. I sat on the sofa and was about to switch on the TV to numb my sorrows when I heard a retching sound coming from the bathroom. It was Jenny being sick. I rushed to the door. “Are you all right?”
“Do I sound all right?” she managed between heaves. At last she stopped being sick and opened the door. She was very pale. “I took a test this morning,” she said. “I'm pregnant.”
That hit me like a brick, and I fell back into the living room and onto the couch. I sat there trying not to look at Jenny, who came and sat next to me. There was silence for a long time.
“I lost my job,” I said.
Jenny looked at me, then nodded slowly. “What are we going to do?”
Drink, that's what I did. I met Carl and explained the situation to him, and he quite correctly prescribed me a night out on the tiles. By midnight we could hardly stand when the bar we were in closed. We didn't know what to do. I couldn't face going home and crawling into bed next to Jenny smelling of drink. We racked our brains for somewhere that would still be serving booze, then Carl had a flash of inspiration.
“Let's go the casino,” he said. “They'll sell drinks. They do free sandwiches too to keep the punters happy. How can you be miserable when there's free sandwiches?”
It seemed like a good idea. We stumbled into a taxi and slurred the name of the casino to the driver, who laughed at how drunk we were and drove us there. The bouncers eyed us suspiciously, but in the end they parted and revealed the plush interior of the casino, which was lit subtly from soft lights sunk into the ceiling. There is a certain smell to casinos which derives from that sweat men produce when they are winning or losing large amounts of money. That's exactly what they were doing. We got some drinks and some sandwiches and hit the tables. Carl got hooked on the roulette pretty quickly, and I left him there after he had lost his first hundred. I browsed around, not spending much, mainly hitting the cards.
Then something drew me to the corner of the room. The table was empty, save for a haggard old woman in the uniform of the casino. She gave me a cracked smile as I neared the table.
“What's this?” I asked with the bluntness of drunkenness.
“Craps,” replied the lady.
“It dushn't look very popular,” I said. “What d'you do?”
She explained it to me with professional patience. In craps there are two types of bet, “Pass”, or “Don't pass,” which you have to choose at the start of the game. Each round has two phases: “come-out” and “point”. The “shooter” (the person rolling the dice) makes a “come-out” roll. If he rolls a two, three or twelve he has rolled “craps” and anyone who bet on “Pass” loses. If he rolls a seven or an eleven then that's called a “natural” and “Pass” wins. The other numbers (four, five, six, eight, nine and ten) are called “point numbers” - if these are rolled on the “come-out” roll then the “point” starts and the shooter has to roll again. If the same number he rolled on the “come-out” roll comes up again, the “Pass” bets win. If a seven comes up before then, the game ends and “Pass” loses. Each time the dice are thrown they must bounce off the back wall of the table.
I had to have her go over the rules about ten times before I even had the faintest idea of what was going on, but then it clicked. If I bet on “Pass” and rolled a six twice, I would win every time. Even in my drunken stupor I could hardly stop shaking. If I rolled a pair of threes each time I could walk away with as many chips as I could carry.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “I'll put twenty quid on 'Pass'.”
“Twenty on 'Pass',” said the woman, gesturing to the place on the felt where I should put my chips. “Your throw.”
I threw the dice. Double three. I smiled as coolly as possible. “Beginner's luck,” I said.
It went on from there. I threw double threes every time and won two grand. The casino worker changed the dice, watched like a hawk at how I rolled, even patted down my sleeves and pockets for hidden dice. In the end I felt a heavy hand on each shoulder and two hulking great Neanderthals loomed over me.
“Time to go, sir,” the one on my right said.
“But I was just...”
“You've been lucky tonight, sir, but I'm afraid it's time to go. You can cash your chips.”
I was escorted to the pay desk and then I just managed to grab Carl before we were marched out of the casino. On the walk home I could hardly stop smiling.
“You smug bastard,” said Carl. “I lost over five hundred quid. You're a natural born gambler.”
I nodded. “I don't think I need to worry about money for a while,” I said smugly.
Jenny was awake and pissed off when I got home at four in the morning. She looked like she had been crying and the moment I came in she gave me a look of disgust.
“You smell like a brewery,” she said. “Is this how you're going to spend your redundancy money, pissing it up against the wall?”
“Don't worry about it,” I said, falling onto the sofa next to her.
“What planet are you living on? We've got no income, a mortgage to pay and a baby on the way, and the only thing you can think to do is get drunk?”
“I said don't worry about it,” I said, reaching into my inside pocket. I pulled out a fistful of notes and bundled them in a crumpled heap onto the coffee table.
It was pretty difficult trying to explain to Jenny how I got the money, and she didn't believe me until the next day I went out and bought a pair of dice. She watched with an open mouth as I rolled six after six on the coffee table in front of her.
“We're rich!” she said at last. Then she looked serious, a look that I hadn't seen in her before. “Don't let anybody know about this,” she said. “You'll get in all the papers, then you'll never be able to make a bet again. We need to be clever about this - I'll be your manager. You can hit different casinos every time, put one big bet on and then leave.”
Something about the way she changed after that made me feel uneasy. She really did become my manager, planning tour after tour of the country's casinos, being careful never to hit the same one twice in the same month. We creamed in the money like it was nothing, and pretty soon we had our own house. Jenny could wear nice clothes, and I could drive a BMW.
As our fortune grew, so did our child. Jason was born in August and as soon as I saw him I knew that my life had changed forever. I knew that I had to keep hitting the casinos, because buying the best for my kid was the most important thing in the world. But as I kept gambling, I couldn't help but notice Jenny was changing. After a few years she became obsessed with buying the best clothes, the best furniture, the best toys for little Jason. She started increasing the schedule for casino trips and became increasingly more paranoid that someone would notice the trick.
“You're going to have to go to America,” she said. “Las Vegas. The maximum stakes are bigger there, and there's more casinos.”
“Okay,” I said, “we can go as a family.”
Jenny shook her head. “Jason is just starting at toddler group. I can't move him now. You'll have to go alone.”
I nodded relucta
ntly. We sat up for hours that night, planning the trip in minute detail. We got a map off the internet and plotted all the casinos on it and how much the stakes were in each. Jenny kept drumming into me how important it was never to hit the same casino twice.
“If they catch on, the game's up. They have a system in Vegas where if they think you're cheating in one casino you get banned from the lot. Whatever you do, only make one bet, then move on.”
Everything about America was big. The people always seemed to have a smile for an Englishman, but in a place like Vegas smiles mean nothing. It made me sick watching as old ladies piled dime after dime into slot machines that were guaranteed to take your money. I almost felt a sense of justice that in my case, for once, the odds were stacked in the gambler's favour, not the house's. I was careful, just like Jenny told me to be, and after the first couple of days I had a fat profit. In a good mood, I got drunk in one of the bars, making a point of paying with hundred dollar bills just for the hell of it. The barman looked decidedly unimpressed, but this wasn't the case for the girl who sat next to me, who acted like she'd never seen a hundred dollar bill in her life.
“Wow,” she said. “Someone's been lucky.”
I smiled drunkenly back at her. “That's me.”
She skilfully swept her hair back with one hand, then rested it gently on my leg. “Let's