by Caroline Wigley

'It can't lose.' How many times has she heard that? She watches him as he sprawls in the chair with the seat the stuffing is spilling out of, his arms flung wide across the Formica topped table that is chipped and cracked, posing like a big-shot businessman proposing some sharp, sure-fire deal. She notices his hair grows greyer than his stubble. 'You need a shave,' she tells him.
        'Why? To look neat for work?' Les takes another cigarette from the pack clutched in fingers that jitter.
        Paula sees his eyes are tense.
        'It's our chance, Paula,' and he slams his fist down onto the table, making their coffee mugs jump.
        'No, Les,' Her voice is shaking, 'I saved that money for a deposit on a house.' She sees him wince. Perhaps she was too heavy on the 'I'. 'Jobs are hard to find, I'm not blaming you,' and as her voice softens Les springs.
        'Give me this one last chance, Paula, It's a dead cert. We can buy a house outright. Forget about a mortgage—we'd be paying that off the rest of our lives,'
        Paula walks down to the house she grew up in, A deadness has always hung over the streets round here, she thinks.
        The houses haven't changed. They're shallow boxes with flat fronts and walls that keep no secrets and shudder as doors shut, although Paula notes some now boast satellite dishes, exhibited like trophies, Paula has scrimped and gone without to afford a house like one of these.
        She lets herself into her old home. She tries not to see the nicotine clouds on the ceiling or the wallpaper mapped with damp.
        Her mother is out. Gone to the shops, the note says. Paula puts the kettle on. She's relieved. By the time her mother returns, Paula may have lost the need to talk. She knows how the conversation will go, anyway. The way it always goes.
        How is he then? Her mother has never referred to Les by name. Still no job?
        That's not fair, Mum. Paula will keep her voice light, pretend she doesn't hear the distaste in her mother's. You know what it's like round here.
        I know you work every hour God sends and still can't manage. Where does the money go, Paula?
        But Paula will keep in her head, It goes on the horses, on the match on Saturday, on whether it will rain the second Sunday in Lent—on anything you can win or lose. And our win always just around the corner.
        Why don't you leave him? You 'd be much better off—and the children. What sort of example is he? That was always her mother's last line of attack.
        He's their father, and that's all Paula can ever reply,
        But it wasn't always like that, she remembers. They'd both wanted to get out of those streets—Paula with her head full of dreams, Les with his jaunty grin and Burton suit.
        Paula starts. She hadn't heard the back door open. Her mother puts down her shopping bag and pours out before she takes off her coat. 'Put down that deposit?' she asks.
        'Not yet,' and Paula cradles her cup in her hand, and avoids her mother's eye.
        'How is he then?'

Paula passes the King's Head on her way home. A group of men queue to get through the door. They're all alike from the back—hands thrust into the pockets of identikit donkey jackets, collars turned up against the squalls that scud down from the docks. But Paula recognises Les, You know the back of a head after twenty years of marriage, she reflects.
        She considers going in too, and having a drink with Les, But she sees them sitting stiff and self-conscious at a table in a corner, while his mates hang doleful expressions and hold off conversation until she's gone. She walks on. Wives go to the pub in the evening, if they're asked. She knows too that if she did join him, her leaving for work later would only remind Les of the real world the fug of male bravado and a pint glass shut out.
        When the dockyard closed Paula had thought Les would easily find another job, but he was picky. He was skilled, he said. And there were thousands who weren't so fussy.

When she gets home Paula finds the money has gone.
        She'd withdrawn it the day before and tucked it inside the back cover of her passbook. She looks back through the entries, to the first for £100, an unexpected bonus one Christmas. She'd kept the notes in a shoebox at the back of the wardrobe while she'd made up her mind. They could have used the money at the time, what with Christmas and unpaid bills, but Paula had seen an advert for a building society on the wall by her bus stop. She'd stood next to the poster every morning, and in the end had taken the shoebox down to the city centre and opened a deposit account. She'd felt guilty not telling Les, but knowing how he'd wheedle sums from her had quietened her conscience.

Paula has done her shift on the supermarket till, and now has to walk past the dockyard to where she works evenings. She skirts the wire fence that protects the deserted yards and buildings with windows that are grey and reflect only grey, A crane straddles the skyline, cuts in half the wasteland between two warehouses.
        A flock of seagulls breaks the stillness and a boat comes into view on the river, churning a wake of sallow frills.
        Paula thinks back to showing Les the letter from the Housing Association and to when she took her passbook from its hiding place in the old biscuit tin, 'Hey - good girl!' He'd surprised her with his enthusiasm.
        The boat is level with her now, A man on board bends to pick up a rope. Slowly he straightens and winds the rope into a thick coil. Paula envies him his lack of urgency. She is always hurrying, rushing from one job to another. Deliberately, she slows her steps. The tug chugs on.
        She remembers what Les said next, 'Great idea, Paula ... Although …' and that was when he'd held up his hand in an extravagant gesture. 'I've got an even better idea,' and he'd whistled through his teeth.
        Paula stops walking altogether and sits on a bench set in a scrap of grass that's crunchy with broken bottles, There's a pause in the seagulls' clamour and Paula can hear the drone of the boat's engine.
        She pictures Les in the betting shop, and the cocksure swagger with which he'll go up to the counter. She imagines the flamboyant flourish that will produce the money from his inside pocket and how he'll slap it down while turning at the same time so the whole shop can see his grin.
        The boat carries on up river, trailing its stream of scummy bubbles.
        Paula plans. It will be a squeeze, she realises that, with her and the children at her mother's but she can't drift on hope for always.
        She's about to get up and continue on to work, when it strikes her that she's never considered Les might win this gamble. But even if he did win, she evaluates the prospect, what would the future hold? Perhaps they would buy a house, but would Les change his way of life, find a job? Would he learn to resist the lure of the easy buck? Or would she slog on, juggling jobs, while Les continued tossing money away like the litter skittering across the concrete in front of her.
        The boat is out of sight and Paula must get on, but as she gets to her feet a new thought occurs. What if Les took the money in order to pay the deposit? A new hope begins to buzz inside her. 'Yes, that's it,' she hears herself cry as she leaps to her feet.
        She sets off, but not towards work. She'll give that a miss today, she decides. She'll phone in sick. One day won't matter. She's usually so conscientious—even when she had the flu she didn't let them down.
        This time she doesn't mind she's hurrying.
        When she leaves the river the sun is going down, spiking the sky with butterscotch and poker-red and by the time she reaches home the sky is slate with only a few rosy twists left to it. She climbs the four flights to their flat, puts her key in the lock. As the door swings open Paula sees Les. The flat is in darkness, but by the light from the landing Paula sees he's in the kitchen, slumped in the chair with the slashed seat, his elbows on the Formica table with the chips and cracks, his head in his hands.

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