Risk

Risk

Bored bored bored. Martin was sick to death of his room. Why on earth had he picked that puke-green shade of paint? His parents had warned him he’d get tired of it – but even they could not have foreseen a time when he’d be spending fourteen hours a day in here. Every waking moment, apart from the one hour of exercise that they insisted he take outside. And meals, of course.

Meals were a bit of a problem. Not that he wasn’t hungry; it was just that mealtimes involved sitting across the table from his dad and watching him not eat. He got it that his dad was worried about his gran, but what good would it do to starve himself? Martin felt a bit badly, though, asking for seconds. Made him look like a heartless pig.

Funny how hungry he was. There wasn’t much you could do in an hour of exercise – especially since his parents refused to let him join the game of footy that he knew his friends were having most days on the field -- so it wasn’t that. Must be the boredom. 

Martin went downstairs for a snack. It was something to do.

His dad was at the kitchen computer, pretending to work. He was a chef in a local restaurant, being paid most of his wage to stay home and ‘develop new menus’. Well, it kept him busy for maybe a quarter of every day. The rest of the time he spent ringing his mum, reading up about Covid, and worrying. He was growing visibly thinner.

‘How’s Gran?’ Martin forced himself to ask.

His dad shook his head. ‘I didn’t like the sound of her breathing when I rang her just now.’

Martin began to pay attention. ‘You mean she’s getting worse?’ 

His dad’s mouth opened and shut again. By some marital magic that Martin had never quite understood, his mother appeared at that moment in the kitchen doorway.

‘Perhaps a little,’ she said calmly, ‘but this disease has a certain trajectory. It gets worse before it gets better.’

Trajectories. That was his mum all over, thought Martin. If there was a graph or a number involved, everything was manageable. Well, in her job that was probably true. Martin’s most fervent desire for his own future was not to follow his mother into accountancy.

Back in his room with his sandwich, Martin logged on and checked his assignments.  Damn it  – three more tasks! What was with these teachers, anyway? You’d think they’d be glad of the break, and instead here they were loading themselves down with marking – if, that is, anybody bothered to do the work. He knew for a fact that neither Harry nor Ethan had turned in a single thing since Lockdown began four weeks ago. Maybe they didn’t have a mum who checked several times a week. Martin sighed, and opened his English task.

Right – this looked easy. All he had to do was join the online library, and produce a borrower number as evidence. Oh, and borrow an ebook. Nobody said he actually had to READ it. 

Martin scrolled idly through the catalogue, looking for a book that might not send him to sleep should he happen to crack it open. Something on gaming, maybe? 

The search brought up more than gaming. What was this? Gambling: A Study in Risk. Now that looked intriguing. Martin was quite interested in risk, although he’d never told his mother. He got his ability with numbers from her, but his interest in risk must have come from somewhere else. Maybe from his Gran, who had ‘had her fling’, she’d told him with a twinkle in her eye, before she’d met his sober grandfather and settled down. Martin vaguely remembered that worthy man, and was glad that Gran had had some fun before marrying him.

‘My real heart-throb was Harold,’ she’d told Martin once as they made fudge in her kitchen. ‘Oh, he was such fun! Crazy, but fun. Used to gamble on the horses, he did. Promised me a diamond necklace if he ever had a big win.’ 

‘Did you ever get the necklace?’ Martin had asked curiously.

His Gran had laughed. ‘Fat chance! But we danced until dawn, many a time…’ Her voice had trailed off into memory.

And now she was lying in bed ill, and her dancing feet were still. On impulse, Martin clicked on the book and downloaded it. Might be interesting to figure out why her Harold had never had any luck on the horses.

Martin borrowed another book as well – with a title that wouldn’t startle his English teacher into reporting him as a Safeguarding concern.

The whole subject was fascinating. It was no wonder people lost, the way some of them gambled. Picking a horse for its name, for God’s sake. You had to be scientific about these things. 

His mother put her head round the door. ‘Still up? It’s nearly midnight!’

‘Just doing my English homework,’ said Martin.

His mother eyed him. ‘Lights out,’ she said, and Martin decided not to argue.

At breakfast the next morning, his father ate nothing at all. His mother was unusually gentle, not even remarking on the perils of coffee on an empty stomach.

‘Your Gran called the ambulance last night,’ she explained to Martin. ‘She – she was struggling to breathe… The hospital’s just rung.’

His father got up abruptly and left the table. Martin could feel the blood draining from his face.

‘I thought – I mean, people have been saying it’s just like the flu –’  He stopped. He remembered his father’s obsessive internet surfing, and realised that he had not been paying attention. 

‘Can we go see her?’

His mother shook her head. ‘Martin, have you spent the whole of the last month under a rock? Haven’t you heard about Covid restrictions in hospitals?’

Martin stared at her in horror. ‘Are you saying even Dad can’t go? But – she’s his mum!’

‘Not unless – not until –’ His mother stopped, and covered her mouth with her hand.

Martin pushed his chair back and ran, leaving his breakfast unfinished on the table.

Back in his room, he tried to make his smarting eyes focus on the book. At first the words swam and danced – and then suddenly, they snapped into focus.

Why shouldn’t he try it? If he won, he could use the money …how? His parents would wonder where he’d got it. He’d need to spend it on something they’d never know about.

It came to him like a burst of light. He would buy his Gran her diamond necklace.

Martin started small-- just amounts that he could bear to part with. He followed the advice in the book, although with actual sports cancelled you had to proceed a little differently. He surfed madly for tips. He submitted no schoolwork at all.

His first few bets yielded a modest return; he only lost once.  He was good at this! He had his mother’s skill with numbers plus his Gran’s flair for risk. He was a combination of winning factors.

           He saw Gran a couple of times on Facetime, but to be honest it was a bit grim. They were trying to keep her off ventilation, which Dad said was a good thing. Too many people who went on ventilators died. But the little oxygen tubes that were helping her breathe didn’t seem to be doing much good, and she couldn’t say much without gasping for air.

           ‘Don’t you give up, now, Ethel!’ said her mother fiercely, and his Gran had smiled weakly and promised to go on fighting.

           Martin went upstairs soberly. His Gran needed a reason to keep on living – something that would give her a lift. Surely a diamond necklace would do the trick – but his winnings, gratifying though they were, were building up very slowly. He’d googled the cost of diamond necklaces, and while he had no idea how much the long-vanished Harold would have been willing to spend, he could see that in order to buy anything more than the tiniest pendant he would need a much bigger win. That would need a bigger stake – more than he had in his account. And time was running out; he could hear that in his grandmother’s laboured breathing.

           Well, there was a way. He’d proven he was good at this. So he would take the money from his Gran’s account, which was lying unused at the moment. He knew her access details; he’d overheard his dad talking her through transactions dozens of times. And as soon as he’d bought the necklace, he’d replace the money. Simple.

           Martin logged into his grandmother’s account, chose his virtual horse carefully, and made a substantial bet. 

           The next six and a half minutes were the longest of Martin’s life. He wondered if a person’s heart could actually take this much exercise without coming to harm. He could smell his own sweat. And then -- the feeling as his horse pulled away from the rest of the field, the rush of elation as it crossed the finish line first -- Why would anybody do drugs? Why didn’t everybody just bet? There was no rush like it. And there were his winnings, nicely tucked away in Gran’s account.

           That was Sunday. The next day, Martin bet on another race. He bet on two races on Tuesday, and three on Wednesday. He never staked his whole winnings – which was just as well, because he lost one of Wednesday’s races. But his lucky streak remained, largely, unbroken. Or his skill, as Martin preferred to think.

           On Thursday, Martin placed the order for the necklace.

           It was a collar-type necklace – more expensive than a pendant, but more suitable, Martin felt, for a grandmother. He gave the shop his grandmother’s hospital and ward number, and added a card – for an extra £4.00 – saying simply, ‘From an admirer’. That should give his Gran a new lease on life!

           And now the need for money was over – but he still had to replace the original stake. Martin played more races. And more.  He wasn’t winning all the time now. He refused to come out for any more daily walks with his mother. He had to repay that money….

           On Sunday morning, his dad was woken by a call from the hospital. He should come in now, right away. Martin’s mother steered his dad to the car and drove him off, calling out to Martin that they’d ring him. Then Martin was alone.

           He’d not quite believed it – not really. Not even after seeing her with those oxygen tubes. Not his Gran. She was too – too alive, too full of fun. She should be making fudge and dancing until dawn, not gasping out her last breath in some hospital ward.

           Martin knew it didn’t matter now, but he wished he could be sure she’d got the necklace.

           ‘She knew me,’ his father said, gripping Martin’s hand tightly. ‘She kept trying to talk. I think she knew she was going …  She said your name, a couple of times.’

           There was a lump the size of a racing saddle in Martin’s throat. Speech was impossible. 

           His father took a shaky breath. ‘After she was …gone,’ he said, ‘the nurse gave me her things. And you’ll never, never guess what was in them.’ He looked over expectantly at his wife and son. Neither of them – for differing reasons – made any attempt to guess.

           ‘This!’ said his father, producing an elegant box like a rabbit from a hat. He opened it reverently, and there, nestling on blue velvet, was the diamond necklace. ‘See the note? ‘From an admirer’! Imagine that! The nurse said she was chuffed to bits when she opened it – wore it for most of the next day.’

           ‘But who on earth could have sent it?’ asked his mother.

           Martin said nothing. He was seeing a picture of his Gran, propped up in her hospital bed and smiling, with a diamond necklace around her neck and a flood of memories inside her head. 

           His father sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better get onto all the business side of things,’ he said. ‘Registering her death, stopping her account – all that weary palaver.’

           Martin’s heart stood still.  He excused himself in a whisper and went up to his room. He sat at his computer and took a deep breath.

           The picture of his Gran rose before him. Smiling, on her last day on earth, because someone had given her – at last – her diamond necklace. He did not regret a thing. But now –

           Martin switched on the computer and began, with grim desperation, to try to cover his tracks.