By the time Colin was born, Tom was already in the English public school system. While the army posted his father around the world, Tom was packed off to be a boarder at a Prep school in Berkshire. It wasn’t an experience he remembered with any affection. He learnt to be independent and self-sufficient but to his mind the austere surroundings had not been a suitable replacement for the family home. He spent most of his school days playing sport at every opportunity and avoiding academia. In the sixth form he was almost expelled for running a book on the Derby, which paved the way for his future career. That he only scraped through his exams was the result of an absence of studying, rather than any lack of intelligence. He could work out the probability odds on any poker hand by the time he was eighteen.
He was in his second year at Portsmouth University, doing a Business Studies degree, when both parents were killed in a car accident. Colin went to live with their Aunt in North London but despite regular holiday visits, the age gap meant they had never really been close. Sadly, a few years earlier the Aunt had also passed away, leaving them with only each other as close family. That was when they had instigated their annual dinner, to ensure they didn’t lose touch. Now Colin was a successful young something in IT frequenting Michelin starred restaurants and Tom was a regular at his local Indian on Tuesday nights, when they did their special offer of everything you can eat for a tenner.
Tom wasn’t in any way jealous of his brother’s success in the corporate world. Even financial security wouldn’t be enough to induce him to spend all day behind a desk staring at a computer screen, or at least not a screen that was used for writing computer software. Tom often spent hours staring at a screen playing poker on one of the Internet sites but it would never occur to him to think of it in the same terms. Anyway, financial security could only ever be a transitory state, as there would always be the poker and the horses to challenge any risk of having stability in his life. It was rather like the search for the Holy Grail. Pursuing financial independence by gambling gave meaning to his barely controlled addiction but in all honesty he couldn’t imagine life lived anywhere except on the edge. The result of a close photo finish, or the turn of the river card when all in for a lot of money, left you in no doubt you were still very much alive.
For a long time he had wondered why the last card dealt in a Texas hold ‘em hand was called the River anyway? He knew he’d felt like jumping in a river a few times, when that last card dealt had yet again not delivered what he needed, and turned to the internet to discover it’s history. The river card supposedly got its name from poker games on river boats. Often cheaters would deal a hidden fifth card from their sleeve to better their hand. When caught, the cheater would be thrown into the river. Tom often wondered if he had lived a hundred years earlier, whether he might have been a river boat gambler, although he couldn’t imagine ever being a cheat. He could see no pleasure in winning anything if you had to resort to cheating.
Colin had announced over dinner that he and Liz were trying for a baby, so there was every possibility of Tom becoming an Uncle, in the not too distant future. Tom greeted the news with a certain degree of apathy. He had nothing against children, quite the opposite but Liz so strongly disapproved of his lifestyle that he doubted he would get many chances to play the role of Uncle. Liz had made it very clear from their first meeting that she did not approve of gambling and gamblers. The frosty reception she gave him, when they did rarely meet, made the current weather seem innocuous by comparison. There was a regular open invitation to visit on Boxing Day but that was one of the busiest racing days of the year and he was needed in his shop. He suspected Liz knew that and it was the only reason he received an invitation. And if he wasn’t needed in the shop, he knew he would instead be at Kempton Park, to watch the racing not sharing the day with Liz’s look of disapproval.
Tom turned left towards the back of Harrods and hoped he might yet avoid the worst of the freeze on the drive back to his small detached home on the edge of Brighton. He would normally have preferred to take a train into London, especially with Colin buying the wine, but he had spent the afternoon visiting his accountant, who worked from home in a very nice house on the edge of Slough, which was virtually impossible to reach by train. There was also the possibility of trains being delayed or cancelled, if the weather deteriorated further, so he’d settled for driving. At least there was little sign of traffic in what was normally a busy part of town on a Saturday night. The only vehicle about was a large noisy beast, owned by the council, moving slowly up the road and disgorging grit from its bowels.
The famous store was closed but he noticed a small group of people emerge from one of the rear entrances. Hands were shaken and then one person quickly returned inside the store. That seemed to leave one broad man and two women,
