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Rich in Small Things
Rich in Small Things
Rich in Small Things
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Rich in Small Things

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What do you do when you owe the Ukrainian mafia a huge amount of money that you don’t have? Drive a twenty-year old ambulance ten thousand kilometers from London to the remotest country in the world, of course. Not to run away, you understand, but to bag your share of a million pound cash prize.

Melissa, a suddenly unemployed City trader, finds herself stunningly in debt to Victor, a leading light in the Ukrainian mafia following an unlucky hand in an underground poker game in East London. Escaping to her grandmother’s flat in Hammersmith, she is reunited with old school mate Julia, who offers her the chance to take part in the Ulaanbaatar Cup – where competitors drive to the capital of Mongolia in chase of a one million pound cash prize.

In the high-pressure atmosphere of challenge, sabotage, espionage, misinformation and unmitigated disasters with Melissa’s future up against the clock, against all odds she finds herself having more fun than she can remember, forging friendships that will last for life and falling head over heels in love. But what will happen when she returns to London?
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateFeb 1, 2013
ISBN9781909354050
Rich in Small Things

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rich in Small Things by Helen J Beal is a story focusing on how much the small things in life actually mean to us.First Paragraph:"I am horizontal, mid-air, my feet planting into his chest. He sprawls backwards and the anger knotted inside of me bursts out of my mouth in a shout as he thumps down onto the mat. He scrambles to his feet and comes at me again and in my mind I see myself yesterday, stood up against the window in the office with its view out across the docklands, along with the rest of the trading floor, suited and booted, being told we no longer have jobs and as he tries to jab me my bile rises and I block him, sweep his feet from under him and hop from foot to foot, arms raised and ready. I turn from my waist and switch my front and back feet and then back again."PLOT Melissa had was she considered her perfect job. Working as a city trader she made more than enough to get by, and enjoyed the finer things in life. Now her decade of service has gone down the tube, as the economy hits the company and thousands of employees are made redundant. Luckily she has enough saved to last a few months, but a new job is top priority on her now considerably empty 'To-do' list. Especially with her hobby.Melissa enjoys online poker, and she's very good at it. But now that she's unemployed, she realises just how little social life she actually has. No friends and the only person she sees on any regular basis is her grandmother- Babu. Desperate for some face-to-face company, she decides to try her luck at a poker game downtown- resulting with her being scouted by a less than scrupulous character. Her poker skills get her noticed by his boss- Victor, who invites her to a private high-stakes game. Despite the fact that he is clearly the type of man you never want to owe money to (and is probably pretty much a sure bet to win) she buys in- for £25,000. Six players, and her confidence is her downfall. She makes a mistake and ends up £175,000 in debt- more than three triple what she has in the bank, plus interest. Victor makes her a deal. He likes her. If she joins his team he will clear the debt. She declines, realising the kind of men they are, but is now spectacularly indebted to a Ukrainian mobster. With very little options, she takes any work she can find. In this case, a waitress at a small cafe- where she bumps into an old school friend- Julia- who tells her all about the Ulaanbaatar Cup- a kind of car race from Hyde Park to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia- with a prize of £1,000,000. Melissa sees her chance, however slim it may be, and she and Julia decide to give it a try. Meanwhile, a couple other teams are preparing for the same race. Some for the experience, others for the cash. One of the teams is one of Victor's- who has the race on the books. He's determined his team wins- not only for the large gambling sum that will come his way, but also to force Melissa to work for him.Slowly the groups all begin to interact. They discuss the race, the riddles they are given for bonus points, and what they would do with the money. And slowly, bonds are formed. There are (of course) more than a few mishaps along the way- some accidental, some not. With very few rules regarding sportsmanship and such a large prize to be had, there's plenty of hijinks and some sabotage. But soon each character will realise just what a difference five weeks can make.REVIEWThis is a book with interesting, fallible characters- and none of them are clear cut. There is no black and white. Each character can forgive or be forgiven, and those that start off seeming like the antagonists are just people by the end. Neither right or wrong, capable of both good and bad. One of the recurring themes of the story is that everybody has the ability to change, given the right incentive. Likewise, the characters can make mistakes. There are areas where occasionally a character seems to have inexcusably poor judgement, but you can let it slide, not because it isn't stupid (because let's face it, it is), but because sometimes people do, say or believe stupid things. The story focuses on its title, managing to deliver a realistic path that leads the characters to each of their own revelations and the beginnings of change. We know from the start how the book will end (or at least can make an educated guess), but like the plot that draws each character in, we're along for the ride. As the old saying goes, "It is not the destination, but the journey."I thoroughly enjoy road-trip based stories. They offer all the usual things characters go through to reach the people they become by the end of the story, but add in some adventure and sight-seeing. All the different locations and their descriptions, never fail to entice and enthral me. Not only that, but these types of plots help the reader feel like they've travelled the distance with the characters. It makes the 'journey' seem longer and more real- so we experience some its the length too. Not anywhere near as much of the characters, of course, but enough to give us a taster of the weariness, or the sense of triumph and accomplishment once the end is reached. The only criticism I have is understandable, but slows the story down. A lot of the information is repeated again and again. Each group of characters discuss the Ulaanbaatar Cup in their own times and places, going over a lot of the things we already know. It makes sense that they would each discuss the race, but we don't need to see it for each group. The race doesn't even get going until around two hundred pages in.Another minor issue was some of the writing- or rather spelling and grammar. Some of the wording can seem a little off- as though it's a bad translation. There are also a few grammatical/ spelling errors or inconsistencies, but overall I don't really count them as common enough or severe enough to be problems. I was still happily able to enjoy the story.OVERALLA fun, entertaining read. Part adventure, part romance and part comedy. Perfect to take along on any adventures you may be planning yourself, or to relive the memories and emotions of a past excursion. It left me with an overwhelming sense to start my own month long road-trip.Disclaimer: I received this book from the author through a giveaway. This is not a sponsored review. All opinions are 100% my own.

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Rich in Small Things - Helen J Beal

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Chapter One

I am horizontal, mid-air, my feet planting into his chest. He sprawls backwards and the anger knotted inside of me bursts out of my mouth in a shout as he thumps down onto the mat. He scrambles to his feet and comes at me again and in my mind I see myself yesterday, stood up against the window in the office with its view out across the docklands, along with the rest of the trading floor, suited and booted, being told we no longer have jobs and as he tries to jab me my bile rises and I block him, sweep his feet from under him and hop from foot to foot, arms raised and ready. I turn from my waist and switch my front and back feet and then back again.

I wipe the sweat from my upper lip with my knuckles as he lifts himself up and shake my head slightly. There's a rattle in my brain and I think back to the bar, that naturally followed the collapse of our company, and the moment where, against my better judgement, I knocked back a shot of tequila, my stomach already bloated with champagne. Commiseration, not celebration. We used alcohol to try and numb the shock. It made me cry. Suddenly the world had seemed an infinitely sad and empty place and my colleagues had cheered at me. All of them laughing as the ice-queen melted.

A searing pain shoots through my head but it's not enough to distract me from him, who's up again now and this time trying a kick. There's a look in his eye I haven't seen before. I've riled him. He's losing some of his cool. I jump backwards but he keeps up his attack, a volley of kicks, until, when I'm nearly at the wall, he tries a punch at my head and I duck and dart past him. He may have the weight advantage, but I have the speed. I am nimble, I am quick. I keep my distance and wait for him to turn back to me.

I recall stumbling home, drunk, dishevelled, tear stained, carrying my box of things from my desk. The detritus a decade in a job collects. A photograph of a sandcastle I made on a beach in Costa Smeralda in Sardinia years before, attempting to access my inner child, decorated with crab claws, mussel and razor shells and tessellated fragments of glass, their sharp edges smoothed and their surfaces polished by the waves and constant caresses of sands. Awards, a file of crystal pyramids bestowed upon me in return for turning in great performances. An emergency manicure kit, a spare pair of flat shoes, a dusty umbrella, a calculator with the numbers worn off by the insistent friction of my fingertips. A pot plant; a lopsided, hairy cactus I called Olivia.

I dumped the box in a skip halfway home. For a millisecond I feel deflated, but then I remember my braying colleagues in the bar and once again I am overtaken by my fury. How much time I have spent, how hard I have worked, how easily it was taken away from me, completely helpless in the face of it.

He is waiting for me to do something, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He looks at me questioningly. I aim a kick at his chest. He leans back out of my way and I try another, higher, at his head but he's fast and flexible and flicks out of my reach. I remember my tears much later last night, private, pathetic and out of control. Rib wracking, jaw juddering, apocalyptic sobs all the while despising myself for the weakness. I narrow my eyes at him and twist my body into a round house, loving the feeling of my body spinning in the air and I brace myself for the impact as my flexed bare foot smashes into his neck, knocking him straight down to the floor. Where he doesn't move.

I stand over him and tug at the Velcro strap under my chin and pull off my foam head guard. Hair that has come loose from my ponytail falls onto my face, sticking to the damp film that clings to my skin.

'James?' I ask, on the verge of dropping to my knees with concern. He lifts himself up onto an elbow marrying the movement with a crooked smile.

'Seriously, Melissa,' he gasps, still slightly winded, 'what is with you today?'

I shrug and loosen my body protector. I guess we are done for this morning.

He sits up. 'You're tense as a coiled spring at the best of times, but where's this aggression coming from, tiger?' He slips off his own head guard, cricking his neck to one side and giving it a little rub. He pats the mat beside him, indicating me to sit down. 'You want to talk about it?'

I shake my head and remain standing.

'Fair enough,' he says, pushing himself up off the floor and standing opposite, close, reaching for my wrist. He looks searchingly into my face, deeply concerned. I turn away, pulling my wrist out of his gentle grip.

'I have to go,' I say.

'Sure,' he says. 'Another day, another billion dollars to be made.'

I don't smile as I walk out of the dojo, through the changing rooms, pulling my unlaced trainers on and dumping my sparring gear. I storm into the lobby of the apartment block, into the lift and sweep into my penthouse apartment.

It is serene in here. Light, sparsely furnished, sleek, dark wooden floors. I kneel backwards on the white leather, Scandinavian sofa, scattered with sheepskin cushions, fluffy, comforting, and I lean my chin on the backs of my hands, stretch my elbows out along the top of its back. The white muslin drapes at the window shudder slightly in a draught and I watch as the sun rises apricot and peach over the cluster of towers that make up Canary Wharf.

It's not yet seven. Usually I would be rushing into the shower and out to my desk to be prepped by the analysts before the market opened, fuelling myself with high fibre oatmeal, seeds, blueberries and a wheatgrass shot to power up for the gruelling day ahead.

Today though, I have nowhere to be, nothing to do. It's an enormous hole yawning massively in my path, but I won't be intimidated by it. I will not let it see my fear. I put the kettle on and run a bath.

I shampoo and rinse my hair and slather on thick conditioning cream, scrub my face and carefully smooth on a moisturising mask. I lie there in the steam and I think. I have lost my job, along with thousands of others as the economy has gone into freefall. They're saying it's just the tip of the iceberg, that the global economy as we know it is on the verge of total collapse. We have broken the bank. The stirrings of worldwide hatred for us, the money-mongers, mammon worshippers, can be felt, like the first rumble under your feet belying an impending volcanic eruption. The spewing loathing, molten and white hot, is imminent.

Right now, there's no chance of finding another job like the one I had. But I have savings, enough to allow me to sit tight for a while, wait until the recovery, that will come, that must come. I can find gainful employment again then, when this mess has been cleared up. How long will that take though? And how long have I got? The rent on this apartment is astronomical but this is my home. I wanted to live here for so long, spent many hours, days, weeks, heavens, years, fantasising about this place, how I would decorate and furnish it. I think I have sufficient funds for twelve months, probably, that should do it. The economy will bounce back soon enough for sure, I think optimistically. Probably the media is overhyping it. It's unthinkable that a system this complex, this sophisticated, fine-tuned and with so much reliant on it, could actually collapse, isn't it? The media are trading on fear, yet again, I conclude convincingly to myself.

I sink under the water and scrape the gloop off my face, rinse out my shoulder length hair. I step out of the bath, ignoring the blackness that descends across my vision, the glitter that whirls momentarily before my eyes as a result of the combined effect of the heat of the water, my haste to raise myself and my lingering hangover. I dry myself off, sweep vanilla scented lotion along my limbs and into the circles of my abdomen, my breasts, wrap a fluffy white towel around my head and slip on my cream cashmere bathrobe.

Padding barefoot through the hallway back to the kitchen with my empty mug, I stop by the table there and look into the mirror. My skin is flushed from the heat of the bath. Despite my morning bout with James, my eyes are still puffy. Like any normal day, I carefully put on my make up and blow-dry my dark brown hair so it's straight and glossy.

In my dressing room I run my fingers along the rack of tailored dresses and suits and wonder what on earth to wear. I pull open a drawer and slip on some white silk underwear and then, from another, a bright white cotton vest, a pair of navy jersey jogging pants and a pale grey cashmere hoody. I don't put any diamonds in my ears or around my wrists and I leave my gold Rolex where it is on my bedside table. I won't need to know the time today. I put the kettle on again.

Out on the roof terrace, I clutch my newly brewed mug of green tea. The spring morning is still cool, the decking damp with dew beneath my feet. I look out at the buildings, shards of glass shimmering in the sun. I perch on the wall and look down at the streets, swarming with workers bustling to their days. I sip at my tea, savouring its bitterness, until it's all gone and I hear a clock chime eight. On my way back in, I brush my hand over a cushion of thyme I have growing in a pot and breathe in the fragrance it leaves on my palm. I wonder when the lavender will start to bud and when the mint will start going wild again. The days have been getting longer for months now and the nip has been gone from the air for a while. It's time for everything to start again. Time for renewal, I think.

Inside, I retrieve Babu's lucky nutmeg from a green glazed bowl that sits on the white kitchen worktop reminding me of seaweed, and slip it into the pocket of my hoodie. The nutmeg's shell is coloured the same deep brown of my eyes, or so Babu said when she gave it to me. The thousands of rubs of my fingers and thumbs have burnished it. It's a luck token, a talisman.

I settle down onto the sofa and flip open my laptop on the low, glass topped table and fire up an online poker programme. Automatically logged in as my avatar Stardust, I browse the tables and check my account balance. It's looking pretty healthy so I join a table of three with a fifty dollar minimum stake and carefully watch the action, getting a feel for the game and the play before I pile in. There's no rush; it's going to be a long day's gambling. Not all that different to every other working day for the last ten years then, just a bit less shouting.

Chapter Two

Carter was hunched over his desk in the dark, eyes fixated on the screen glowing the blue of haunted, foggy, midnight graveyards in front of his face, the light reflecting off the pallor of his skin. An instant message box popped up with a ping.

'What's she doing?' the typed message from Spookster, his best buddy, asked. At that moment they were sat mere metres away from each other in their own rooms in the halls of residence at Imperial College where they were both mathematics undergraduates. Spookster a.k.a Spooks, real name Neil Gray and Carter were both logged into the same online poker game, Carter under the name bamford81, Spooks as Spookster, naturally. On the virtual table with them were two other players, Stardust and hrharris. Carter had been on the site for most of the day, had missed his lectures because of it. He wouldn't have a problem catching up with what he had missed; in fact he probably knew it already. Spooks had recently returned from the student union where he had been chasing skirt whilst downing four pints of cheap lager.

Carter ignored Spooks' question. He didn't know the answer and was watching the game very closely. Stardust, usually quick to fold, had just raised the stakes with an enormous five thousand dollar bet. Hrharris was quiet, unmovable, unreadable in the face of this. Although playing poker on the internet meant you couldn't see the other person's face, there were behaviours and patterns you could learn by watching players online, analysing their stats. Carter had to work especially hard at the best of times to read people, to recognise their emotions. He'd had to learn appropriate responses that came naturally to most people. It was easier for him online. He could apply mathematics to game play, probabilities of folding, bluffing, tendencies to raise in what ratios. He'd been watching Stardust and hrharris play for most of the day.

Her approach to the game was pretty conservative, betting infrequently on what proved each time, when revealed, to be strong hands. She didn't seem to bluff. She wasn't afraid to fold and rarely raised the stakes. When she did, you knew she had something good. And she rarely lost, was infrequently unlucky, or stupid. He'd watched her win around ten thousand dollars over the course of the previous fifteen hours or so on fifty-dollar bets. To see her bet half her winnings on one hand, in contrast to her steady behaviour for all the preceding time was a surprise indeed. She must have a pretty exceptional set of cards, at least a full house, probably four of a kind or something, Carter thought, looking at the cards on the table where there was a pair of aces and also rather a lot of clubs. There was a possible flush in there too. She was running the odds.

The seconds ticked past. Hrharris in contrast, at first glance, appeared to be an erratic player - quick to bet, slow to fold. He'd been online since lunchtime and the three of them had played this table together for hours now, a stream of other players coming and going, always busting out to one of the three of them. A few of them had bought back in but it was never long before they limped off out of there. Carter had started to spot patterns in hrharris' game too though, after a while. It wasn't quite as random as it first appeared. He was bombastic - typically the player setting the stakes. Sometimes the bets were trifling, almost small enough to be pointless but often pretty large causing players all around him to tumble to fold. His game was actually fairly meticulous, although he seemed to bully and bluff a high percentage of the time. Bang. He matched Stardust's bet and now it was Carter's turn. His hand was pretty promising, but he folded straight away and Spooks followed him.

'She's a mentalist!' Another message from Spookster popped up on Carter's screen. Carter wondered if, in fact, she was a girl. The name was unarguably feminine, but there were no rules in the virtual world and a surfeit of anomalies. When Stardust played it was with what most would typically term a male attitude. Testosteronetastic. Balls out. Knob on the block. No messing. Stardust, whoever he or she was, was not a nurturer. Not a noun likely to win you much poker. And Stardust was very definitely winning.

Perhaps she was an obese sixty something dental nurse sat wrapped in a towel in a trailer in Idaho with a pet monkey hanging around her neck, Carter mused. Or maybe she was a forty-year old lawyer in Moscow, sitting in his boxers, picking his pocked nose, hair matted and greasy, his stubble begging for attention. Or a bin man dressed up in his one suit, shiny and inherited from his father, just in from his mother's funeral, sat in his poky room in his shared apartment looking out over Sydney opera house, nursing a small sherry. The screen flickered as Spooks vanished from the virtual table. Carter wondered how he could bear not knowing what happened next.

He pulled the cuffs of his charcoal coloured hooded fleece over his hands and rested his chin in them, his elbows on the scuffed wooden surface of his desk. He jumped at a hammering at his door but remained seated, engrossed in the action.

'Mate! You know I know you're in there!' Spooks' voice boomed through the door.

Carter reluctantly tore his eyes from the screen, stood and strode across the room and turned the doorknob popping it open. Spooks pushed his way in and made a beeline to Carter's bed where he lay on the creaseless duvet, hands behind his neck, elbows splayed, wiggling his socked feet. Carter sat back down in his chair.

'She busted out yet?' Spooks asked, looking at Carter's back, bent over his laptop.

'Nope,' said Carter, not turning around, gaze glued to the screen.

'But Hrharris has just raised her again. They're both all in.'

'Great,' chuckled Spooks. 'This should be fun.'

He rolled off the bed, leaving a human shaped crumple on Carter's pristine covers and went to peer over his shoulder. Carter leaned away from him slightly, finding his proximity discomforting despite the closeness of their friendship. Spooks, several pints to the wind, did not notice. Carter could smell the beer on his breath.

'Whoa! He was bluffing! Nice full house. Bravo, Stardust,' Spooks said. 'Goodnight hrharris. Game over! Loser!' He made an 'L' shape with his thumb and forefinger at the screen and waggled his tongue at it. 'Ha,' he said and sat in the armchair Carter kept next to his desk, precisely so visitors did not feel the need to impinge unnecessarily on his personal space or, indeed, his bed. 'Right,' Spooks said. 'Shut that down, mate.' He nodded at Carter's computer. 'We've got a lot to cover.' He leaned forward onto his knees and made a temple of his fingers.

'But,' said Carter as another hand was dealt. He had a pair of tens.

'No buts,' said Spooks, bossily. 'You've been on that all day and we have a shitload to do. We leave in less than three months. Eleven weeks and two days to be precise.'

'One thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four hours, and twenty eight minutes and twelve seconds,' Carter murmured. 'Or six million, seven hundred and eighty four thousand and ninety two seconds...'

'And between then and now,' interrupted Spooks, raising his voice a notch, 'we have our finals to sit, which, it goes without saying, dude, we will both cruise. But still, we've got to get our arses in gear, get organised. I want to win this thing.' Carter swung around in his chair to face him. 'Log off,' commanded Spooks. Carter grudgingly twisted back round and hit a couple of keys and slapped the laptop screen down.

'Happy?' he said as he swung back once more to face Spooks, who had flicked on the tall reading lamp beside him, so he was sat in a pool of light in the gloom of the room, spot-lit as if centre stage. He was wearing a t-shirt proclaiming 'I don't know what I'm doing' and skinny grey jeans with a studded belt that was fighting a losing battle to keeping them up at waist height so the hair that curled at the base of his spine poked up in tendrils as if it were a particularly invasive vine. Unusually, he wasn't wearing his beanie and his thick, curly hair sprang away from his head, in an unexpected and entirely inappropriate halo.

'Yep, good stuff, mate. Now,' Spooks said, leaning onto one buttock and lifting the other hip, pulling a crumpled, haphazardly folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans. He squinted at the scribbling on it. 'I've written us a list.'

'Great,' said Carter, pulling a folder from his neatly stacked and colour coordinated shelves.

'Item number one,' said Spooks. 'Our car.'

'Yep,' said Carter, pulling a sheet of paper out from the folder. 'According to the Ulaanbaatar Cup rules, cars with a one point three litre engine or less gain an immediate two thousand point bonus. Here's a list of one point three litre or less vehicles for consideration. I did some analysis on roadworthiness and reliability. You can see the scores and price ranges there to the right. The Suzuki Jimny came out top.' He placed the sheet on the corner of the desk nearest Spooks and pulled a stapled bundle of print outs from his folder. 'Here are some examples of vehicles for sale over the past week or two.'

Spooks picked up the information Carter had laid out for him. 'If we took an emergency vehicle we'd also gain the two thousand point bonus,' he said.

Carter shook his head. 'Too unreliable. Although we could have a bigger engine size then without being penalised. And theoretically we could pick up another thousand points if it were over ten years old. But no, on balance, too many potential problems unless we spend a lot of money, but even then the best kind of vehicles would be at least ten if not twenty years old. At that age there are just too many things that could go wrong. We'll pick up another five thousand points by leaving the car in Mongolia to be auctioned by charity.'

'Okay,' said Spooks. 'And these Jimny's you're looking at are only four grand or so. You think they'll make it?'

'Certainly. As long as we choose carefully, prepare it well and maintain it properly throughout the journey. They are simple enough for you and me to manage the mechanics. We might struggle with that on the emergency vehicles and I'm not sure how they would handle the terrain out in the desert. Any rivers or mud and they could easily become unstuck. The Jimny's a four by four, relatively high wheelbase. Small, easy to get out of trouble.'

'Okay, so when do we go and pick it up?' Spooks nodded slowly, flicking through the papers.

Carter leaned back to his laptop and flipped it open. The operating system greeted them noisily.

'Er, we're not finished,' said Spooks, waggling the papers Carter had passed him.

'I know,' said Carter, firing up a browser. 'I'm just getting onto eBay so we can put a bid on the white 2003, down in Kent. I think that's in the best condition and not too far away.' He hit a few keys, bringing up some search results, scrolled down and selected one of the items for sale and set some bid parameters and swung back to face Spooks. 'The auction ends in three hours and thirteen minutes. We could go and pick it up at the weekend if you want? It's only thirty odd miles away. We have to think about where to leave it between now and the start though… I was thinking of your parents' place.'

'Good plan. My old man will be on board with that and there's plenty of garage space now me and the bro's have all flown the nest. She's pretty cute, huh,' he said, studying the picture closely. 'We'll need to keep him from tinkering with her though, the old rogue. Let me know how it goes and how much money you need me to bring when we go fetch her.' He put the picture back down on the desk and referred again to the scrap of paper residing somewhere about in his lap. 'Agenda item number two: visas.'

Carter selected another folder from his immaculate shelf and flicked the switch of the ancient and battered Anglepoise lamp, that had originally been a gift to his mother on her own embarkation of university, and sat on the far left hand side corner of his desk. He twisted the shade until the burst of illumination fell upon a map pinned to the wall. A map of Europe and Asia; huge, rippling brown and beige landmasses, ringed like the raw trunk of a severed tree with lines denoting heights, spattered with the odd blue puddle of ocean or land locked seas.

'Since we don't know how the actual competition will operate as yet, although I know you are working on that,' Carter said, standing up to look at the map, his back to Spooks, folder hanging from his hand, 'and therefore have no firm idea at this stage of the route we will take to get to the finishing line in Ulaanbaatar, the only thing we are certain of right now, and the start line at Hyde Park of course, I have compiled a list of visas I think we should obtain. There are quite a few.' He took another sheet of paper from the new folder and passed it to Spooks who was now standing behind him, surveying the map.

'Where's Ulaanbaatar?' he asked. Carter tapped on a pin on the far right hand side of the map. 'I see you've marked Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia as essential,' Spooks said, looking at the red pins and interpreting the key that Carter had detailed on the bottom left hand corner.

'Yup,' said Carter. 'This is the route as the crow flies.' He ran his finger along the map. 'France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Russia again and then into Mongolia. But there's a more southerly route and I don't know if we will need to take it.'

'Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China,' Spooks read out. 'Blimey, that's some set of visas. Are you sure we need them all? Will we even have enough room in our passports?'

'We won't need them all, but, as I said, unless you manage to obtain some intelligence that we currently don't have, we don't know which ones we'll need. I am covering all bases. Here are your application forms,' said Carter, taking another bundle of papers enclosed in a plastic sheath from the folder. 'Please have them back to me, completed, along with your passport before you go to the union by the end of the week, unless you find something out, and I'll coordinate the rest with the visa application company. The cost is pushing a thousand pounds. Each.'

'Ok so we, and when I say we, I mean you, are better prepared than I had thought,' Spooks said, flicking through the papers thoughtfully, cross checking with his list. 'Kit, good. Modifications and extras to the vehicle, rally lights, tick, jerry cans for fuel and water, excellent. This is darned comprehensive, buddy. Leaves just the pre-race intelligence capture and surveillance equipment in my court.'

'I work on it when you're out drinking. What are you planning, by the way? Hacking the organiser's email? Would be really useful if you could do that before we apply for our visas. We may not need them all,' Carter said just as there was a soft knocking at the door. 'Oh, no,' he said, rolling his eyes.

'Aren't you going to open it?' Spooks asked.

'Nope,' said Carter.

'Ok,' said Spooks. 'I will then.' Carter tried to grab his arm to stop him but within a couple of seconds Spooks had the door open. Stood there, back lit by the glare of the florescent tubes in the corridor was a short girl, yet to lose her puppy fat, with a piercing in her nose and a streak of pink through her grubby black hair. She had three blue stars tattooed nastily up her wobbly and pimpled left upper arm. Despite all of this, she had rather a pretty face, a sweet smile and disproportionately large breasts squeezing out of a bra which was at least a couple of sizes too small.

'Oh,' she said. 'You're not on your own.' Stepping in to the room, she looked straight past Spooks at Carter who remained standing by the map but was now staring intently at the carpet. Spooks looked back at him, amusement spreading across his face.

'No,' he said. 'He's not. But he needs to be.' Carter flung him a look of pure gratitude. 'I, on the other hand,' Spooks said, taking the girl by the elbow and steering her out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him, giving Carter a little goodbye wave, 'hate being alone.'

Chapter Three

What's the worst time in the world? Monday morning, gloomy with the week's work stretching ahead of you, an obstacle course of towers of tedious paperwork to scale, problems supposedly disguised as opportunities to fly-wire down and the overbearing frames of obstreperous colleagues to barge out of the way? Or the end of New Year's Day with your hangover still blubbing even though it was a shit night out, the festivities finished, overindulgence quivering about your midriff with nothing but bleakness stretching forwards, springtime yet too distant to spy blooming on the horizon? Or landing at a drab airport in drizzle, bloodshot and jetlagged having just spent a fortnight immersed between the covers of trashy novels, rehydrating regularly with piña coladas, wearing not much more than a bikini at any time, certainly no shoes?

No, it's 4am. Not the 4am when you and a lover are still awake having been talking and playing with each other for hours, unable to sleep so intoxicating and stimulating you find one another's company and bodies. Not the 4am when the club is heaving and the music's pumping and it's dark and it's loud and you're tingling and you're alive knowing that outside soon the sun will be coming up and you will be walking home barefoot in the dawn, your high heeled shoes dangling from your hand, the ground bouncing beneath your elated, exhausted feet.

It's the 4am when you have been asleep for hours but you have woken alone, lonely and indubitably terrified about something.

My head springs into action and I flip over in my bed and open my eyes in the direction of my alarm clock, its numbers pulsing faintly. And there it is: 04:00 blinking at me. The almost bottle of wine I had drunk solo, fast, had initially knocked me straight out. I'd left the dregs of half a glass in the bottom of the bottle just so that I didn't quite have to believe I'd drunk a whole one, on my own. Without company, as Babu might say. She doubtlessly wouldn't disapprove though, her boundaries being wider than most.

At least I hadn't tried to play poker whilst I drank. I don't think. I've been playing consistently well for the past couple of weeks or so, give or take a couple of pieces of pure bad luck and my account is standing at nearly twenty thousand dollars. Not a bad return on a five hundred pound initial investment.

What had I been doing as I drank, as the sips turned into slurps, as the pouring became glugging? I'd been taking stock. Melissa Lavender, unemployed, resolutely if not entirely intentionally single, with a seriously unsociable, if apparently profitable, gambling habit.

I hadn't always been single. There had been Tom who I met virtually on my first day as a fresher on my Economics degree at University College London. Tallish, darkish and very nearly handsome, Tom liked rugby, tequila and me. We embarked on a short courtship, mainly played out over the pool tables in the union where he would start out strong, could even beat me left handed, but, after he was on his fourth or fifth pint of lager, and I was still on my first vodka and tonic that I wouldn't ever finish, I would start to take my revenge. Not that he would ever admit to remembering it in the morning.

Following graduation we took a room in a house with some of our other college mates and as they, one by one, moved out to make homes with their partners, some of them even to marry, Tom and I found a place to live together too. By this point I was working all hours on the trading floor, proving my mettle, proving my sticking power, proving that being a girl was by no means a disadvantage.

Tom was not having so much fun, if you could call it that, finding it difficult to find his footing with his politics degree in the corridors of power in Westminster, subject to the ebbs and flows of resources for electioneering. I often came home from work, late, to find him slumped on the sofa with a six-pack, staring at the television, on another planet. Or sometimes I would wake in the early hours of the morning to an empty bed and find him sat cross-legged on the living room floor glued to a computer game, a stuffed ashtray to his side, the air fuggy with fags.

And then, gradually, he wasn't there. And there weren't flowers and a take-away waiting for me on a Friday night any more. And then he wasn't there when I woke on a Saturday morning. And then, one Saturday night, when we'd been out in Covent Garden for a friend's birthday, he took me home and went out again and didn't come home until late into Sunday evening. And then, from the next morning, he wasn't there at all. That was four years ago now, around the time I started dreaming of this penthouse apartment. Work was even better for me after Tom went. I was like an automaton, single-mindedly going after every dollar. Utterly focused.

This apartment, my nest, feels cold and empty now, at this time in the morning. It's my home but it lacks homeliness somehow. I think of all my old school friends and how they have probably spent the last decade or so husband hunting and are probably shored up in country cottages in the home counties, replete spouses gently snoring by their sides in cosy blanketed beds, a baby in a cot, a toddler in another room, an Aga beating in the heart of their homes.

I must be really bored, I think. I've never harked after that life. Wasn't that one of Tom's criticisms, that I found work more interesting than home? Haven't I heard that a thousand times from my fellow traders in their suits and braces: 'Oh, Mel. You are not the marrying kind. You're a career girl.' I never heard them use the phrase 'career boy'. But they were right. Even though they said it in the vague hope I might sleep with them, or worse, become their 'mistress'. The very word makes me gag. It sounds prehistoric. But it's true that I don't see the advantage for me in marriage. I want to be financially independent and thank whatever deity you want to have faith in, or coincidence itself, that I live in a time and a place where it is completely acceptable, positively encouraged even, for me to earn my own, lucrative, living. Even though I am of the female persuasion.

I don't have a desperate yearning for children and if I do at some point, I certainly won't deem marriage necessary to embark on the messy and expensive process of procreation. Or even, necessarily, a man.

And who'd marry for love? You'd have to be some kind of fool to do that, as far too many fools can testify. I see the lights going out on love all around me all the time. It saddens me sometimes that something so highly revered proves itself to be undeniably fickle and feckless. Love, I think, yet another one of nature's cruel tricks.

But it's four in the morning and tedium is making me wretched and as lonesome as George. The night is cold and vast and I don't know who I am anymore. How do I define myself without my job? What else do I actually have? Tom was my social life and since we split up I haven't found a new one. All our friends were shared, our University cronies, and I didn't keep up with them, didn't relish the reminder. It was easy to escape. Easy to disappear off the radar, pretend I was making a new life. I was sure they were breathing sighs of relief, not having to choose, not having to split and fragment their loyalties. That way I would never have to meet any of Tom's new girlfriends, any girl that might become his wife. Wouldn't have to decline the invitation to their wedding. None of them needed to know, or ask, whether I had 'met someone'. And I didn't.

I login to the online poker. But as I see the virtual names on the virtual tables the unfathomable emptiness swallows me up again and I feel a deep and unexpected draw towards some real human interaction, contact with my own kind. I want to see faces, feel the warmth of peoples' hands, hear their voices and laughs, smell them, even.

I fire up a search engine and type in 'london live poker' and click on the little magnifying glass. I start scrolling.

On page four of the results there's a link to a post that draws my tired eye. It's titled 'Live Games in London 2008' in a forum from someone called Hezario. It says:

"Howdy,

I've been running live Poker games in London for just over a year and am always trying to encourage players to come along to my venues. I offer a genuine experience, not just poker in a pub. But something more intimate than you'd find in a casino. We use proper round poker tables, 100% plastic cards, tourney chips with denominations, and the coolest cash chips around.

The Flagship game is the Tuesday night in the Eel on Brick Lane. 1930hrs kick off, the buyin is £25 +£3 donation. With 1 Rebuy for

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