THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINXI don’t believe in destiny. I don’t even believe in luck. Nothing is mapped out for us, and there’s no mysterious force outside of us, which touches us with fortune or blights our lives according to its whim. Life isn’t a riddle that has to be solved—life just is. It doesn’t even have to make sense.
Other people called me lucky, of course—and sounded like they were spitting acid when they did it. I was just nineteen years old when I won the National Lottery. I’d only been out of council care for eighteen months, and I’d never had a job. Sure, I bought the lottery ticket with the proceeds of a crime—but it was still my ticket, my numbers. It was my seven million pounds.
I think it was the first time somebody homeless had won the jackpot. I was the first instant mil
