That’s gone and torn it

Agolden opportunity lost – and at considerable cost. We all say things we regret. Some of my own can make me sit up straight in the middle of the night.

None, however, has cost me half a million bucks.

This is the story of a halfmillion-dollar remark. I don’t know whether it has a moral.

I got an email this week from an old friend in Canada. He had been head of physical education when I taught there in the 1980s.

A former first-class rugby player who threw a lovely discus, he was fond of rum and Coke, and he made me laugh a lot and I liked him. I’ll call him Mike.

I liked his partner, too. Mike called her The Jailer, though rarely to her face. I’ll call her Kay. She was a fiery, handsome woman.

Kay and Mike had never married or had kids, but they’d been together a long time. I haven’t seen either of them for 25 years.

One weekend Mike and I took school teams to play in Vancouver. When we returned on the Sunday evening Mike found his house empty. Kay had left him.

He wasn’t greatly upset. She’d left him before, several times. Somehow they always got back together.

A few days later, Mike learned that while we’d been in Vancouver Kay had won the state lottery. The prize was a million bucks. Our screens are awash with ads for lotteries. They tap into our preference for the hope-overprobability theory.

They prompt us to believe we have been singled out for good fortune – that the great finger in the sky is pointing at us, and us alone, and eager to tip bounty into our lives.

It’s a financial ‘‘Jesus loves you’’.

At the same time, every lottery ad ignores the twin truths that you are less likely to win than to be struck by lightning, and that within a decade most lottery winners are back where they started.

But all things pass. Mike is now retired, the father of two sons by another woman and to judge by the email he sent me he is happy. While Kay, I am told, married a millionaire.

And no lottery ad ever suggests that if you win you’ll become enmeshed in a fierce legal dispute.

That’s what happened to Mike and Kay.

For as soon as he heard of Kay’s good fortune, Mike totted up how many rum and Cokes there were in a million dollars and went to see a lawyer, who said the case hinged on timing.

If Kay left the de facto home before she knew she was a millionaire, then she was in luck and Mike was out of it.

But if she left after she knew, then Mike might have a claim on half the loot.

Kay went to a lawyer, too, of course, a rather more expensive one. His judgment differed.

So Mike and Kay began to recruit supporters and witnesses. Those of us who were friends with both of them found it difficult. Only the lawyers enjoyed it. At the end of the year, the school ball was held in a swanky hotel.

It was no different from any other school ball. The girls dressed up eagerly and wanted to dance. The boys dressed up less eagerly and wanted to drink.

The staff milled around wondering how early they could leave.

Then, to universal amazement, Kay walked in. Or rather she swept in.

She looked stunning. Her dress clung to her figure and shimmered. It looked to have been made of beaten gold.

Mike went up to her. Kay smiled. It looked like the rapprochement that we all hoped for. We pretended not to watch as they headed for the dance floor.

Mike put his arm about her waist. They were both smiling. Kay was born to dance and Mike was no slouch.

Then they stopped in mid-dance. Kay was no longer smiling. She put a hand to her side. A seam on the golden dress had split asunder. The rent ran from breast to hip.

She spoke urgently to Mike. Mike spoke back. Kay looked at him in rage, turned on her heel and fled the room. She never returned.

We all say things we regret. Some of my own can make me sit up straight in the middle of the night.

None, however, has cost me half a million bucks.

But all things pass. Mike is now retired, the father of two sons by another woman and, to judge by the email he sent me, he is happy. Kay, I am told, married a millionaire.

As for Mike’s costly words, well, it didn’t take long to winkle them out of him.

Kay, in her distress, had begged him to find a seamstress.

Mike took one look at the tear in her golden dress and said it wasn’t a seamstress she needed. It was a welder.