It is the Autumn of 1973, shortly after "Walk in the Woods"...
Dora sat in the stable crying. She’d been crying a lot since she’d had it out with Steve that day she thought she’d lost Copper. She ought to be happy, knowing that Copper was home safely and that Steve was staying at Follyfoot. But somehow she felt a failure. Why couldn’t she make Steve love her?
She’d never been very good with human emotions, she reflected. Horses were another matter. She’d always been good with horses. She moved along to look at her charges and came to Bobby. Here was another of her failures. He looked thin and unkempt: despite the care Dora and the others had lavished on him, he seemed to be wasting away. In fact, Ron seemed to be the only one he trusted. Dora patted Bobby’s flank and sat down on the straw, her face buried in her hands.
“Now, now, what’s the matter?” She turned around and saw Slugger. He handed her an enamel mug of thick brown liquid that could possibly have been described as tea.
“Oh, Slugs! I’m just thinking how everything I do turns out wrong!”
“Now, now, Dora. Don’t fret yesself. You’ve done such a lot of good to a lot of people. And I’ve never known anyone who’s as good with ‘orses as you!”
“But look at Bobby - he’s just wasting away!”
“I reckon you oughta go and see young Gavin Foley. P’rhaps if you brought him round here he might be able to cheer up old Bobby?”
“Do you know, Slugger - that’s a good idea. I’ll see if Uncle can drop me off there next time he’s in town.”
Dora knew she couldn’t ask Steve to take her to Lilian Street. He wouldn’t want to waste time visiting Bobby’s former owners. Ron probably would have taken her, but she couldn’t face the thought of riding all the way to Leeds on the back of his unreliable motorbike. Her uncle would understand. Besides, she’d like to know how the Foleys were getting on. She hadn’t visited them since the funeral. She wondered how they were managing now their main breadwinner was no more.
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Minnie Foley had butterflies in her stomach. She’d felt nervous often enough before, usually when Ed had been in one of his tempers, but this was a new feeling. She fingered her new dress and looked in the mirror at her new hairdo. The hairdresser had said it made her look twenty years younger. Perhaps she was right. Downstairs she could hear Brian and Gavin laugh at something on the telly.
Ed would never have allowed a television in the house. He said they couldn’t afford one, and that it was all the Devil’s work anyway. But after he’d died, when she’d been going through his things, she’d found an old sock in his drawer stuffed with five-pound notes. It wasn’t a fortune, but how typical it was of the mean old beggar to claim poverty when he’d been hoarding this money all along! After they’d paid for the funeral, Minnie had enough to buy a small black-and-white TV for the boys, and a second-hand Baby Belling cooker to replace that awful old range. And she’d been to a beauty salon for the first time in her life.
But something else that Minnie had done would have far greater consequences than all of these: she had started doing the Football Pools!
Ed would never have permitted it: he said gambling was evil. He even used to shout at the woman who came down Lilian Street every week collecting the coupons from the other houses. But Minnie thought she might as well have a go. Every Saturday now she would watch the football results on television.
“I never knew you were so interested in football, Mum” Brian had remarked.
“Oh, love - you don’t know the sort of things I used to like before I married your father!”
Before she’d married Ed… Minnie had been a young girl, an only child, quite pretty, fairly clever. But she'd been very shy - Minnie Mouse they’d called her at school - and when Ed had started courting her she thought she was the luckiest girl in Leeds. He was a good few years older than her; he regularly came to deliver groceries to her parents, and they’d started chatting, passing the time of day. Her parents had been quite happy about the marriage: Ed had a steady business, was a good God-fearing man and he’d treat her well. How wrong they’d been. Ed certainly believed in an all-powerful Old Testament God, but he hadn’t believed in moving with the times: latterly the housewives of Burley had forsaken his shabby old cart for the smart new Fine Fare and Sainsburys supermarkets. And as for the way he’d treated her - she still flinched when she thought of the blows, physical and metaphorical.
The kids had been very supportive over the past few months. Little Gavin still missed his father, but he missed the horse Bobby even more. Brian was the clever one. She’d persuaded him to stay on at school to take his O-Levels, but he really wanted to be out earning money. He already had a paper round, and now he was working at Fine Fare on Saturdays, stacking shelves and even doing the odd turn on the tills.
When she’d heard the results she hadn’t believed it at first. She’d stared at the coupon again and again, as if it couldn’t be true. Then she’d nipped out to the phone box on the Kirkstall Road. She’d dialled the number carefully. They’d told her to send a telegram. And so she’d walked up to the sub-post office on North-West Road and filled in the form. Afterwards, she’d called Littlewoods again just to make sure they’d got the telegram. And then she’d asked how much she’d won…
“Two hundred and thirty-four thousand pounds and ninety-six new pence”.
They were coming today to pick her up in a limousine. Some pop star was going to hand over the cheque. She’d told Gavin and Brian they were going out, and to put on their best clothes, but she hadn’t said where they were going. Heading downstairs to the shabby, cramped sitting-room, she swept a pile of clothes from a chair and sat down.
“Hey, Mum, you look great!” Brian looked up from the flickering screen.
“Thanks, love!”
“Where are we going, Mum?” asked Gavin.
“You’ll find out soon enough!” she replied. “Now, I’d like to ask both of you a question. What would you do if you had lots of money?”
“Well, Mum”, started Brian, “I’d have my own greengrocery business, like Dad’s but much bigger. I’d buy the fruit and vegetables wholesale, stack them high and sell them cheap. I’d give the supermarkets a run for their money! I’d have a big shop right in the middle of Leeds. And I’d stock the exotic fruit - like mangoes and avocados - and I’d have a proper delivery van, not a silly old cart”
“How about you, my dear?” she asked Gavin.
“If I had lots of money I’d like to build my own stables, like Follyfoot. And I’d like to have Bobby there and look after lots of other horses, just like Dora!”
Minnie wondered if she should tell them now, but then decided to leave it until the big car came. What would SHE do? She thought about what it would be like have money. Perhaps she would move in the same circles as Dora’s uncle, the Colonel. He’d be a nice catch, she thought. Or of course there was that handsome dark young man she’d seen from Follyfoot. She was sure he wasn’t Dora’s boyfriend. Some young lads liked older women…
She was enjoying a pleasant daydream when suddenly there was a knock on the door…