I Dreamed the Winning Raffle Number, Then Refused It

The dream came three nights running, which for me is unheard of; my dreams are usually gone before my feet hit the floor. This one stayed. The number 88, in red, huge, and then fire — a house fire, at night, a specific house with a blue door and a rowan tree in the garden, and a feeling of catastrophe tied, in the dream's dream-logic, directly to the number. Win the 88, the dream insisted, and the fire follows.

I don't organise my life around sleep. But a few days later I was at a hospice fundraiser, and there was a raffle, and the tickets came off a cloakroom roll, and I bought a strip without looking, and when I looked, one of them was 88. Red 88, the exact red of the dream.

I sat with it through the tea and the speeches with my heart doing something unpleasant. And when the raffle came, I did a thing I still can't fully justify: I gave the ticket away. Pressed it on the woman next to me, a stranger, said I had to leave early, wouldn't hear of taking it back, and I left before the draw with a lightness that felt like escaping.

88 won. The star prize, a weekend somewhere. I heard later, from the friend who'd brought me. The woman I'd given it to was thrilled.