Odds

Odds by Chris Green

Having worked at BiggerBet, Harry Chance knows his way around bookmakers’ odds. Harry knows, for instance, the odds of Watford winning the FA Cup are 1,000 to 1. The odds of being dealt a straight flush at five-card draw poker are 72,192 to 1. The odds of winning the jackpot on the six-ball lottery by getting each number correct are roughly 14 million to 1. But the odds of ten-year-old Billy Friend turning up on his doorstep in his Tottenham Hotspur strip bouncing a football are incalculable. Harry last saw Billy thirty years ago. He heard Billy met his maker when his Sierra Cosworth came off the road at Fiddlers Elbow, a notoriously dangerous bend that over the years has claimed many lives.

If Billy is dead, he doesn’t seem to realise it, because he wants to know if Harry is up for a kick-around in Farmer Flynn’s field. This is not going to work out as Farmer Flynn’s field has long since been built upon. It is now a development of three and four bedroomed houses with a sprinkling of deceptively spacious starter homes. In any case, Harry’s rheumatoid arthritis means that kicking a ball around is all but impossible these days. He has a doctor’s appointment to review his medication later.

‘You’d better come in, Billy,’ he says, hoping that something will come to light to help solve the mystery.

‘It looks different,’ Billy says in the hallway. ‘What happened to the poster of Gazza?’

Billy doesn’t look different. He is exactly how Harry remembers him all those years ago. The same ginger hair parted harshly at the side. The same scar on his left cheek, which has not quite healed, this from the scrap he had had in the playground with Johnny Keating. He isn’t sure how he should play it. There is too big a gap between logic and what is happening here. Can Billy not see that he, Harry, is no longer ten years old? That things have moved on? Harry tries to explain to him that this is not the old house he used to visit. That all happened a long time ago.

‘Oh! I see. You’ve moved, have you, Harry?’ Billy says. ‘When was that?’

Harry tells him in the simplest way he can that he has moved several times. And furthermore …..

‘If you like, we could go along to the double bridge instead,’ Billy says.

Harry recalls they used to go trainspotting in the old days. The double bridge was the best place to see the trains coming in both directions from a long way off.

‘No. I don’t fancy that, Billy,’ he says, hoping he will not need to explain railway developments over the decades.

‘OK,’ Billy says. ‘But I think I’ll go along. The express will be coming through soon. I’ll leave the ball here for later then, shall I?’

With this, Billy is gone.

……………………………………….

‘Too much sitting at a desk,’ Dr Baccarat says. ‘You need to get more exercise, Mr Chance. But I have an under-the-counter spray that I think might help. And I’ll see what I can do about that other matter.’

Harry is pleased he was able to see Dr Baccarat. He is more helpful than Dr Doonican or Dr Swift. They usually send him away with a flea in his ear.

After the appointment and a blast of Dr Baccarat’s spray, he stops off at The Gold Cup for a beer. He has a chat with his former colleague, Dean Runner. Dean has also lost his job at BiggerBet. Dean says the problem is you can bet on anything. The discovery of life on Mars, when the end of the world will be. Anything. How can you honestly offer objective odds on unusual bets? It is easy to see how Harry made a mistake offering odds on the winner of the Home Counties Conker Semi-Finals. While he probably shouldn’t have accepted such a large bet at such long odds and certainly not to someone he was acquainted with, BiggerBet could afford the payout. Besides, they themselves had not done too badly. Both Harry and Dean had taken advantage of insider knowledge and backed unlikely winners.

When Harry returns home, he finds a Fiat Uno parked on the drive. A rare sight these days, but the car seems somehow familiar. He assumes it must belong to a friend of Amy’s. Amy has probably returned from work early. Since the disastrous budget last year, there has been reduced demand for eyebrow tinting. People can no longer afford such luxuries. Odd though that there is no sign of Amy’s Mini.

Inside the house, he becomes aware of a sweet perfume he doesn’t immediately recognise. Someone is shuffling about upstairs.

‘Is that you, Harry?’ a female voice calls down. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I let myself in.’

It takes him a while to recognise the voice. He has not heard Donna’s voice for a long time. But it certainly sounds like her. It is then he remembers Donna had a Fiat Uno back when he used to see her. As he recalls, it kept breaking down. He hasn’t seen Donna for years. What can she possibly be doing here?

He goes up to the bedroom. Donna is slipping out of her dress. She looks exactly as she did years ago. Lithe and youthful.

‘Shall we get in?’ she purrs, gesturing towards the bed.

Dr Baccarat’s under-the-counter spray has offered some relief to Harry’s arthritic limbs, and the Special Brew has perked him up. But an under-the-sheets romp with a twenty-something Donna is an altogether different proposition. He remembers she was always what one might describe as lively. Also, it might be difficult to get Amy to be understanding if she comes home early from the salon. Meanwhile, it is difficult for him to understand what is going on. This isn’t merely a question of the odds being incalculable. They have somehow entered the realm of impossibility.

To buy some time, he tells Donna he is going to take a quick shower. He needs to gather his thoughts.

‘Don’t be too long,’ Donna says. ‘I’m feeling frisky.’

Harry goes into the spare room and calls Amy, this on the pretext of asking her to drop by Tesco on her way home to buy plum jam as they have run out. She tells him she is meeting Nicky after work. She told him this morning. Doesn’t he remember? He tells her not to worry, he will go out and get the jam. On the plus side, she isn’t going to suddenly come through the door.

When he goes back into the bedroom, he discovers Donna is no longer there. He hears the sound of a car starting up outside. He looks out the window and sees the Fiat disappearing up the drive.

……………………………………….

Years ago, Harry’s psychotherapist, Hoagy Platt taught him the 4-7-8 breathing technique to tap into his inner calm. Remembering this, he uses it now. It seems to work. As the minutes pass, he feels more centred. He questions whether either of today’s curious visits actually happened. Perhaps he was simply mistaken. This has happened before. The mind can sometimes play tricks. If you give it free rein, imagination is apt to run wild. Perhaps the visits were nothing more than illusions brought on by stress.

He checks the bedroom again. At first glance, nothing appears to be out of place. It looks as it usually does, bed neatly made, pillows on either side correctly stacked and the sheet folded over the duvet at the top. But then he notices a large pink hooped earring on the floor. This is not the type Amy would wear. She only wears studs or discreet dangles. This is a younger person’s jewellery, and pink is Donna’s colour. There are traces of perfume lingering in the air, the same one he caught a whiff of earlier. While neither of these things in itself is conclusive, together they present a strong case for Donna’s having been here. Billy’s football on the floor by the coat-rack in the hallway suggests that he too was here.

Weird though the day has been, Harry tells himself that no actual harm has been done. Whether real or not, these were his own private experiences, and so long as he can put them behind him, life can return to normal. He has overcome lapses of reason before. When you consider it, life itself is strange. Many things happen every day for which there is no plausible explanation. Why would he be exempt from the whims of unpredictability and strangeness? Who can tell what is real and what is imaginary anymore? What is genuine and what is fake?

‘How’s the job hunting going?’ Amy asks when she comes home.

Harry tells her he has applied for a senior position at YouBet. He hasn’t. He had thought about putting in an application, but with everything else happening, this had taken a back seat.

‘That’s good,’ Amy says. ‘All this sitting around at home is not good for you. Haven’t you noticed you are putting on weight? By the way, someone called Donna came in to have her eyebrows done earlier. She said she remembered you from years ago. Knew you quite well, apparently. It seems strange you’ve never mentioned her. Around fifty, I’d say, although she dressed much younger. Skimpy little dress, bleached blonde hair, lots of make-up. Mutton dressed as lamb, to coin a phrase. Ring any bells?’

‘No,’ Harry says. ‘I don’t think I know anyone like that.’ The Donna that Amy is describing seems to have little in common with the vision he caught a glimpse of earlier. And yet ……

……………………………………….

‘I wonder who that creepy old fellow is that’s been hanging around outside,’ Amy says at breakfast the next morning.

‘Who?’ Harry says. ‘I haven’t noticed anyone.’

‘The one with the long ginger hair and the scruffy white football shirt,’ she says ‘Every time I go out, he seems to be there. He talks to himself. He’s definitely strange.’

‘No. I can’t say I’ve seen him,’ Harry says.

‘Mutters to himself, Gazza’s the greatest, or something like that,’ Amy says. ‘I give him a wide berth. Perhaps you might have a word.’

‘I can’t see him,’ Harry says, going over to the window. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s doesn’t seem to be there at the moment, but he was first thing when I got up,’ Amy says. ‘Look. I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did that football in the hallway come from?’

‘Don’t know,’ Harry says. ‘Your nephew, Adrian?’

‘But Adrian hasn’t been here for months.’

‘Don’t know, then. Perhaps it’s that crazy old man’s, and he’s been looking for it.’

‘Very funny! Anyway, I have to get to work. Hope you hear about that job.’

Hoping for a less traumatic day, Harry settles down to do some research. He isn’t sure what terms to use, but time shifts and false memory seem like good starting points. He finds pages and pages of results, each repeating the same things, no matter what he types in as qualifiers. Time shifts are more related to science fiction than hard science, and false memory is a self-explanatory psychological phenomenon. Not exactly revelations. The internet is so frustrating. He is glad he has the cat to keep him company.

But wait, they don’t have a cat. Amy must have accidentally let this one in when she left for work. Yet Harry can’t help thinking the cat looks like Zorro. But don’t all black and white cats look the same? And Zorro died over twenty years ago. He would be about forty now. That would be two hundred and eighty in human years. The cat has the same red collar that Zorro used to have. With a name tag. It is called Zorro. The odds against there being more than one black and white cat called Zorro with a red collar would have several noughts on the end.

Granted, these are short odds compared to the appearances of Billy Friend and Donna Betts. But still. This can wait until later. The cat is not doing any harm. It is time to find out what he can on Billy and Donna. He is about to try some targetted internet searches when he is interrupted by the arrival of a white van and a knock at the door.

‘You’ll have to give me a hand with this one, guv,’ the delivery driver says. ‘You’ll see why.’

The package turns out to be a re-enforced cardboard box. It is addressed to Harry, but he feels he would remember if he had ordered anything this bulky. It is clearly not the windcheater jacket he bought on eBay or the DVDs from Amazon. The package has no return address. Harry is reluctant to accept it, but the driver hovers over him threateningly and mouths something about having come all this way. Between the two of them, with a lot of huffing and puffing, they get it inside the house, and Harry signs for it.

Nor is it simple to open the box. Harry has to call upon most of the items in his toolbox. To his puzzlement, despite its immense size and weight, the box appears to be empty. He tries to turn it on its side, but it takes all his strength just to move it a few inches. How can an empty cardboard box be so heavy? Science and sensibility are out the window.

As Harry sits staring at the box wondering what to do with the thing, the hidden contents emerge. Slowly at first. A smell, a taste, a pattern. Then a trickle. A song here, a picture there, a candle, a potted plant. A flip-top mobile phone, a new book about a boy wizard, a family pack of Honey Nut Clusters. Soon there is a settee, a chair, laughter and chatter. A card table, beer cans, a stack of newspapers, open at the sports pages. A TV in the corner with a chef shouting abuse at the others in his kitchen. Someone buzzing about, saying something about taking the children to see Shrek. The news channel showing pictures of planes hitting New York towers. The desktop computer is slow and clunky, but it has the Internet and the facility to bet online. There are bets being advertised concerning the terrorism taking place. You can get odds of 6 to 4 of a plane hitting the Pentagon. A good price for a certainty. A no-brainer, Harry thinks.

He attempts to place a bet. The site won’t accept any of his credit or debit cards. Is this a bad thing or a good thing? He cannot decide which. If, on the one hand ….. But, there again ….. The box in the room is still regurgitating the past. More clutter. The room is filling up with stuff. Tables and chairs, a backgammon set, half-empty coffee cups, discarded clothes, wine bottles, overturned ashtrays. The dog is barking. He doesn’t have a dog. Alarms are sounding. There are intruders. Everything is closing in. He feels claustrophobic. There are more shots of the burning towers on the TV. He finds it difficult to breathe from the smoke inhalation. He needs to go outside to get some air.

He makes his way out onto the street. To his relief, there are no suspicious people from the past hanging around. There are no unexpected cars on the drive. The traffic on the street is flowing in an orderly fashion in both directions. A normal day here. A number 28 bus passes. It has an advert for YouBet on the side with their tag-line, you’ll get the best odds.

Copyright © Chris Green, 2026: All rights reserved