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.

I could have left it there — a dodged superstition, a nice prize passed to a stranger, no harm. But I am, apparently, a person who checks. I got the winner's first name from my friend and, over some weeks and more nosiness than I'm proud of, I learned where she lived, because I needed to know, because the dream had shown me a house.

Blue door. Rowan tree in the garden.

There was no fire. I want to be clear: nothing burned, nobody was hurt, the woman enjoyed her weekend away. But her house has a blue door and a rowan tree, exactly as the dream drew it, and she won the 88 I was shown three nights running alongside a fire, and I gave it to her, and I have spent a long time since not knowing whether I dodged a disaster or handed one to a stranger, or whether the dream was a warning I answered correctly by refusing the number, so the fire never came.

I sent her, anonymously, a smoke alarm and a note that just said 'a gift for a lucky winner, stay safe.' It's the only thing I could think to do with a warning I half-obeyed. I hope it was enough. I hope there was never anything to be enough against.