Ed hadn’t won his ‘one more game’. So he’d played another. And another. And another.
Now he ached all over from sitting for hours on end, a headache pulsed behind his eyes and he was harbouring murderous thoughts towards catalogue man.
‘I’ve got to pee,’ he said, as he failed to win another game.
He walked up the huge sweeping staircase. He mustn’t feel despondent. He still had £1,000 more than when he’d walked into this place six hours earlier, shaking the rain off his jacket. (Rain? Daylight? Such things felt like a distant memory.) For a lot of people, winning a grand would constitute a good day. Hell, who was Ed kidding? He wasn’t exactly used to making that kind of dosh in a day.
It was just bloody annoying that earlier he’d had nearly double that. But now he didn’t have enough to buy Emily a wedding dress on Saturday.
The men’s toilets smelled of pee and artificial jasmine. Lift muzak pumped from the speakers and there was a uniformed man providing the wholly unnecessary service of handing you a towel that was sitting right in front of you.
It was tempting to try to win back the money he’d lost. But he wanted to be there when Emily got home from work, cook her a nice dinner and look after her a bit. Anyway, he was tired now. He’d come back tomorrow when he was feeling sharp again.
Tomorrow was another day.