They Thought I Was Dead, page 4
Poor Roy made the mistake of feigning interest in my father’s model aircraft. He bored Roy for hours on end with stories about his own father’s exploits in the war. Re-enacting dogfights he’d had, shooting down Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Dorniers and Heinkels, notching up his kills. He acted these out like pageants, swirling his little aircraft through the air, reeling off the ammunition and bomb loads each plane was armed with – and had left.
Because it was early days in our romance, it was a while before Roy, who had worked it all out the first time he had met my father, told me he had actually done the maths and realized that my father was making it all up. Fortunately, it amused Roy. I’d been scared he might run a mile after meeting my parents, but he didn’t, he recognized just how very different from them I was. I later learned that one of the attributes of a good detective is to be able to read and understand people. Emotional intelligence. And curiosity.
He never truly warmed to my parents, but he was always scrupulously polite to them, and always curious about them. I admired that about him, and that he was non-judgemental.
Which was just as well as they are complete cheapskates. Like, for example, my mother would buy all her Christmas cards for the following Christmas in the January sales. Not that they had many people to send them to – a few cousins and Joan and Ted. So far as I knew, the only friends they had. But hey, she must have saved at least £2 doing this. Then, oh boy, the night Roy came round and did the traditional thing, of asking my father if he could marry me. My father cracked a bottle of sweet sherry, then after two glasses, which clearly went to his head, effusively declared we must all go out to dinner the following weekend to celebrate – and it would be their treat.
So the next Saturday we went to their local, which my father said had something of a reputation as a good food pub. My father, Roy and I ordered our starters, which was fine, although my mother, frugal to the bitter end, said she couldn’t manage one and would just have one course. But then it came to ordering the mains. Roy went for a T-bone steak, which was the most expensive thing on the menu – not by a huge margin – maybe £7 more expensive than the other mains. My mother, quite appallingly, holding the menu up, turned to him and said, ‘Do you really need that steak, Roy?’
‘Actually,’ he replied calmly, ‘yes, I do.’
If I had to pinpoint the moment when the first fissure in Roy’s relationship with my parents appeared, it was then. A T-bone steak.
And my pathetic father, as if to appease my mother by economizing on the wine, ordered just a half-bottle of house red, to last the four of us all evening.
I loved Roy for his stance over the steak. Loved him so much for that.
10
Early July 2007 – Looking back
When did it start to really go south? My dissatisfaction with my life began soon after I met Tamzin and envied her so much. When I realized I wanted so much more than I had – and unless I made some changes, so much more than I would ever have. I know now that I matured through my twenties, my hopes and dreams became more cemented, and I could see that my life dragging out as it was would bore me. I needed more.
Looking back, there were a few things building up that on their own might not have led to me leaving Roy but together they created a monster that eventually whacked me in the face and left me with no obvious alternative. One sad little building block happened on a wet Tuesday in May. I’d gone out in my lunch hour, at the medical practice where I was then working in reception, to buy a copy of the Argus newspaper. Roy had texted me that there was a big piece in it about a murder he was working on.
He was newly promoted to DI and this was the first case on which he was the Senior Investigating Officer, and I was proud as hell of him. And there on page five was a very handsome photograph of him, with a quote beneath it. Something about being on the verge of a breakthrough with the case. We kept all his cuttings in a scrapbook.
While I was in the newsagent, not a gambler by nature, I bought a lottery scratch card on a whim. I’d never bought one before, and I hadn’t realized there was such a range of choices. The lady behind the counter was really helpful, actually – scratch that, no pun intended – she was just a brilliant saleswoman. I’d gone in to buy a newspaper and came out having spent £40 on scratch cards and a bunch of lottery tickets – at a time when money was tight for us. We’d just bought the house we loved, close to the seafront, for more than we could really afford.
We had overstretched ourselves with the cost of furnishing and decorating it but the house really was in a dilapidated and sad state. It needed more money spending on it than we had. I just suddenly thought, you know, if I could get lucky with a scratch card or a lottery ticket, then all our financial problems would be over. And, on the third scratch card, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Five hundred pounds!
Seriously.
I went back to the newsagent to make sure I hadn’t got it wrong. She gave me ten fifty-pound notes, with a big smile. I was walking on air! I bought a bottle of Champagne on the way home, planning to crack it open when Roy had finished with his case and was no longer on call. But I couldn’t help telling him the moment I saw him, excitedly. He wasn’t excited, not really, not in the jump-up-and-down way I’d hoped. Sure, he was pleased about the £500 we suddenly had, but he told me it was beginner’s luck, to be happy with that and to forget doing it again.
But I couldn’t. The lightbulb was burning brightly inside me. This could be my path to a lifestyle like Tamzin’s. I bought a bunch more scratch cards and lottery tickets the following week. And I won again, incredibly, first £25, then £100 and then another £500! I bought a pond for the house from a garden centre, but this time I didn’t let on to Roy it was out of my gambling winnings – I told him my parents had given it to me. I’m not sure he believed me, because he knew what tightwads they are. As another example of that, for last Christmas my father’s present to Roy was a rather horrible golf club tie, which, I found out, he’d won in a tombola at his golf club. And, worse still, it had a tiny bit of egg inside the tip – which meant someone had worn it – OMG.
So anyway, I figured I was on a winning streak. By sheer chance, that Saturday I was going with Roy to an evening of greyhound racing. It was in support of a charity we really cared about as dog lovers, the Brighton Retired Greyhound Trust. And it felt special to go back to the place where we had first met.
It’s a three-course sit-down dinner, during which you get to bet on six races – all very civilized and easy, smiling servers bringing betting slips to the table. I knew nothing about greyhounds at all, other than that I think they look beautiful. Somehow, I picked five of the six winners, and at the end of the evening, with my £270 profit in my purse, was kicking myself for not placing bolder bets.
But what I did know was that I was really beginning to like this gambling malarkey. I felt signs – whatever – something telling me I had what it took to be a winner.
Not that Roy was impressed. A few weeks later he was rummaging through our kitchen bin, looking for a receipt he’d thrown away by mistake, and found a whole bunch of scratch cards I’d bought, where I’d won nothing – just a temporary losing run. A few hundred pounds, no big deal. But he was furious, partly because I’d hidden it away but mostly because he added up the amounts and was shocked with what he saw as my frivolity, when we were in a financially tough time. He just looked so exasperated, and it made me feel guilty. I can still see his face now. An expression not of anger, but disappointment. The worst kind.
I tried to make myself feel better by reminding him that he played a regular game of boys’ poker with his chums, every Thursday evening that he was free. He pointed out that they set a limit, so no one could lose more than £100 in any poker evening, and repeated to me that the scratch cards he’d found totalled over £500.
Paraphrasing Shania Twain, that didn’t impress him much.
To tell you the truth, that wasn’t impressing me much either. But I knew it was just a passing glitch. From now on I would keep my gaming to myself, then one day soon I would surprise Roy with our solution out of this financial crisis. We didn’t need millions and millions, but a big enough win to lift the stress from ourselves and live in our lovely home and be happy together. Be a little bit more Tamzin. That’s how I liked to describe it.
I’d got the bug. The BIG WIN was out there, waiting for me. I just had to find it. And I would. I was convinced of that. Me and – well, let’s just say a lot of other hopefuls.
I was smarter than all of the other hopefuls. I really did think so.
Although I’d had a dismal school record, the one subject I was good at was maths. And I reckoned I’d worked out a winning formula.
I was going to be the one. The modern version of Charles Wells – the Man Who Broke the Bank of Monte Carlo.
Bring it on!
11
Early July 2007 – Looking back
I realized there was a whole world of gambling beyond just scratch cards. So I opened an account with a firm of bookmakers and had a go at the horses. I began secretly reading Sporting Life as well as the racing pages in the daily newspapers, and looked up a number of websites that told you how to win – or at least to have the best chance of winning.
Factoring in my skills at maths, I had three wins, seven places and forty-two losers in the following month. Not great, I had just £800 left in my dwindling savings. Then I came across a piece online about a guy, calling himself the Cincinnati Kid, who reckoned he made £100K a year at online poker. He played the time zones. He figured out, for example, that at 3 a.m. in Los Angeles it was 11 a.m. in London. People playing a poker game, especially an amateur one, say in LA at that time, were likely to be tired and a little drunk, whereas he was fresh and alert. Smart.
Roy had taught me how to play some of the varieties of poker when we’d been on holiday in Mykonos one summer. I boned up on it online, then put it into practice, in the hours between the end of my shift at the medical centre and Roy getting home. But winning wasn’t as easy as the Cincinnati Kid made it sound.
I favoured Texas hold ’em, but after another month working the time zones – Australia was perfect for me, with games going well into the small hours in just about every major city – my £800 had increased to just £1,152. Although they might be tired and drunk, one thing I learned about Aussie gamblers – they were still pretty sharp. Five weeks later, and although I’d had a few good wins, I was down to £731. Wherever that BIG WIN was lurking, it wasn’t in the dens of lone Aussie gamblers.
I was beginning to think that initial run of luck had been just what Roy had said it was all along, and nothing more. Beginner’s luck. That I was chasing a dream. But then something happened that was to change my thinking. And, ultimately, change the direction of my life.
12
Spring 2007 – Looking back
A charming guy of about thirty came into the medical practice. He had grey eyes, shiny hair and a really calm aura. He walked up to me with a confident smile.
‘Hi, I’ve an appointment with Dr Mair.’ He locked eyes with mine.
I couldn’t help smiling back. Not that I was looking to get his approval. But. You know, he had a presence about him, and I liked it.
His name was Jay Strong. He asked me if I lived locally and did I have a few spare minutes to tell him about Brighton; he was looking to buy a flat with his husband, and he wanted to know where the good areas were and where to avoid – from a local, not an estate agent. He told me he worked as a croupier at a posh gaming club in London, in Mayfair, where the clientele were mostly rich Middle Eastern visitors to the city. He didn’t know anyone here and, to be honest, he seemed a little lost. Well, that got my interest! I knew I could help him with some local knowledge, and I love nosing around streets looking at houses. I hesitated just for a moment, checking in with myself. ‘Sorry, no. I can’t tell you about Brighton,’ I said. ‘But I can show you!’
We arranged a time to meet, obviously outside of my work hours and, although I knew he was gay, I still felt a little guilty. I’d definitely tell Roy about him later so nothing to stress about, though he’d probably be a bit jealous if he saw him and wonder why I’d said yes. But this random, some might say fateful, connection was too good to be true and I was excited to learn more about this world where I was destined to be successful. For now, though, it was my exciting secret. My new career.
And for the next two months, Jay made up for the something that was missing. This friendship – and the attention – that I realized I craved. He was like a ‘brother from another mother’, I’d say, the sibling I never had. To outsiders we may have looked like a couple, but I was careful where we met and always had an alibi lined up. Learned that from the best! I wholly believed that Jay and his husband, who I’d not met, would be people I could eventually introduce Roy to once I’d won big. How could Roy not like them after Jay showed me how to make us thousands of pounds?
What Jay didn’t know about gambling wasn’t worth knowing and I lapped it up, learning about this new world and finding a way to bring in some well-earned money. A tip he gave me, on the promise I would keep it to myself, was how to win in a casino.
‘Look for a bored croupier at a roulette wheel,’ he said. Simple as that.
He explained that most casinos require the croupier to spin the wheel every few minutes, regardless of whether they have punters at the table or not. The ones that don’t have anyone at the table, or just a solitary punter, relieve their boredom by aiming for a target – and the easiest target is zero because it stands out from the alternate red and black by being green. And it has the added bonus of being the casino’s advantage. Anyone can bet on zero, but most punters don’t. The croupiers practise their spin of the wheel and toss of the ball, seeing how close they can get that little ball to that green slot.
Jay told me to find a quiet table and a bored croupier, and lay my bets around the numbers either side of zero. He said that’s what he does when he goes gambling himself – and he almost always wins.
I discovered there’s a casino in Hove, close to where we live, called the Casino d’Azur and I tried out his advice the very next day. I was made to feel instantly welcomed there. The atmosphere was exciting, with chandeliers hung from high ceilings, all the different gaming tables, the cashier behind a barred window, the smart serving staff. It felt a privilege to be there, although in reality just about anyone could walk in off the streets, buy some chips and start gambling.
I imagined myself in a Bond movie, but as I walked into the main gaming room, instead of glamorous people in tuxedos and elegant dresses sipping Martinis, I saw a couple of little old ladies perched at slot machines, a solitary Chinese man in a rather tired-looking suit placing chips at one of the three roulette wheels, and two men in jeans and T-shirts at a blackjack table.
Only one of the two other roulette wheels had a croupier, and just like Jay had said, he was spinning the wheel at his empty table. I wandered over, with £50 in chips. And guess what?
Jay’s advice won me a shitload of money!
That first afternoon, anyway.
Beginner’s luck?
13
Spring 2007 – Looking back
There was something I found deeply seductive about the roulette table and had done since I first started. About the whole casino experience. The way the staff pamper you, bringing you drinks, charming you, making you feel you’re a somebody, that you are important. That you are part of an exclusive family, the fraternity of real players.
This was some difference from the rather bland experience of buying scratch cards in a newsagent’s. Every time I had done that, even when I had that first sizeable win, I felt a little like some kind of closet gambling addict. But here in the casino it was so different. There was a sense of magic in the air.
I loved the rituals and the sounds. The calm of the room; the focus all around us at the poker and blackjack tables; the quiet punctuated by the occasional shout of joy from another group at a roulette table.
I started small, tentatively, gently, testing my maths. And I kept winning, I couldn’t help it. It was like I had the Midas touch, as if I wasn’t following that little ball but it was following me. I walked away just before Easter with over £2,000, and another day with nearly £3,000. And I felt liberated. So powerful!
And said nothing to Roy, not yet. But truly they were happy days.
And even better, the casino was almost exactly halfway between work and home. My commute on foot – which I did when it wasn’t raining – took me almost past the casino’s entrance, luring me inside. And especially since I won a bucket load that very first time: £740 – to me that was big – and I was winning even bigger every day.
I left work at 1 p.m. and Roy was rarely home before 7 p.m. That gave me the whole afternoon at the roulette wheel. And the brilliant thing, I realized, was that this was a pretty dead time for the casino.
Playing the bored croupier strategy served me brilliantly in those weeks. But after my early surge I hit a losing streak and, a few months on, my careful records showed I was now up by a princely £132. Not exactly the jackpot I knew was waiting for me.
There was a Chinese guy of about fifty, whose name I learned from overhearing the croupier addressing him respectfully as Mr Yuchi. He wore a neat suit and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and had taken to joining me at my table, which annoyed me because it meant the croupier was no longer so bored. But Mr Yuchi played the roulette table like no one I’d ever seen.
He literally covered vast areas with stacks of chips – and these were high-value ones; some I could see were £50, others £100, and on some numbers they were six, eight, ten deep.
