Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella Page B

“is that the witnesses were not sufficiently—”
    “Dad!”
    “Where’s the television guide?” he says impatiently. “There’s got to be something better than this.”
    “There’s the lottery!” I almost scream. “I want to watch the lottery!”
    I know strictly speaking that whether I watch it or not won’t affect my chances of winning—but I don’t want to miss the great moment, do I? You might think I’m a bit mad, but I feel that if I watch it, I can kind of communicate with the balls through the screen. I’ll stare hard at them as they get tossed around and silently urge on my winning numbers. It’s a bit like supporting a team.
Team 1 6 9 16 23 44
.
    Except the numbers never come out in order, do they?
    Team 44 1 23 6 9 16
. Possibly. Or
Team 23 6 1
. . .
    Suddenly there’s a round of applause and Martine McCutcheon’s finished her song. Oh my God. It’s about to happen. My life is about to change.
    “The lottery’s become terribly commercialized, hasn’t it?” says my mum, as Dale Winton leads Martine over to the red button. “It’s a shame, really.”
    “What do you mean, it’s
become
commercialized?” retorts my dad.
    “People used to play the lottery because they wanted to support the charities.”
    “No they didn’t! Don’t be ridiculous! No one gives a fig about the charities. This is all about self, self, self.” Dad gestures toward Dale Winton with the remote control and the screen goes dead.
    “Dad!” I wail.
    “So you think no one cares about the charities?” says my mum into the silence.
    “That’s not what I said.”
    “Dad! Put it back on!” I screech. “Put-it-back-on!” I’m about to wrestle him for the remote control when he flicks it back on again.
    I stare at the screen in utter disbelief. The first ball has already dropped. And it’s 44. My number 44.
    “. . . last appeared three weeks ago. And here comes the second ball . . . And it’s number 1.”
    I can’t move. It’s taking place, before my very eyes. I’m actually winning the lottery. I’m winning the bloody lottery!
    Now that it’s happening, I feel surprisingly calm about it. It’s as if I’ve known, all my life, that this would happen. Sitting here silently on the sofa, I feel as though I’m in a fly-on-the-wall documentary about myself. “Becky Bloomwood always secretly knew she would win the lottery one day. But on the day it happened, even she couldn’t have predicted . . .”
    “And another low one. Number 3.”
    What? My mind snaps to and I stare perplexedly at the screen. That can’t be right. They mean 23.
    “And number 2, last week’s bonus ball.”
    I feel cold all over. What the hell is going on? What
are
these numbers?
    “And another low one! Number 4. A popular number—it’s had twelve appearances so far this year. And finally . . . number 5! Well, I never! This is a bit of a first! Now, lining them up in order . . .”
    No. This can’t be serious. This has to be a mistake. The winning lottery numbers cannot possibly be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 44. That’s not a lottery combination, it’s a . . . it’s an act of torture.
    And I was winning. I was
winning
.
    “Look at that!” my mum’s saying. “Absolutely incredible! One–two–three–four–five–forty-four.”
    “And why should that be incredible?” replies Dad. “It’s as likely as any other combination.”
    “It can’t be!”
    “Jane, do you know
anything
about the laws of probability?”
    Quietly I get up and leave the room, as the National Lottery theme tune blares out of the telly. I walk into the kitchen, sit down at the table, and bury my head in my hands. I feel slightly shaky, to tell you the truth. How could I lose? I was living in a big house and going on holiday to Barbados with all my friends, and walking into Agnès b and buying anything I wanted. It felt so real.
    And now, instead, I’m sitting in my parents’ kitchen, and I can’t afford to go on holiday and I’ve just spent eighty