City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

probably picture this – a dark, smoke-filled room with red-velvet chairs, mahogany tables and closed brocade curtains. A crystal decanter filled with Scotch sitting on the sideboard; the sour stench of frustration mingling with over-priced cologne. Yeah. Despite the unpredictability of the cards, we are a predictable bunch.

In theory I could have used my own appearance as a tool to enhance my situation. I wasn’t a child – I hadn’t been a child since that terrible summer evening eleven years ago – but I was still considerably younger than the others in this room. Whereas youth might have once allowed me to be viewed as rash and naïve, however, the advent of online poker matches had attracted a slew of up-and-coming, acne-dappled players to both the physical and the virtual tables. You could potentially clock up more hours of poker experience at your computer in a few months than you could gain at the tables in a lifetime. Age no longer counted for anything and experience couldn’t be measured by the lines on a fellow player’s face. Personally, I didn’t much care for online gambling of any sort. It felt too … removed from the action. If I couldn’t see the whites of their eyes – well, you know.

It wasn’t my relatively tender years that could be considered a potential bonus. I’m cute. I don’t mean that in an American high school kind of way – I’m not a cheerleader. I mean that I really am cute. Believe me when I say that I’m not trying to boast; if I had the choice, I’d rather look like a glowing glamazon instead of a troll. Not that my appearance is similar to the kind of troll you find in old stories, one that lives under a bridge and eats children. No, I resemble the little plastic dolls with big eyes and faintly protruding bellies. I blame my dimples. My blue hair probably doesn’t help either but I love it too much to change it to a more natural shade.

Unfortunately, the two remaining players sitting across from me knew me far too well to be fooled by my winsome, if rather kooky, appearance. They both hated me in their own particular ways. That was okay, though – don’t feel bad for me. I didn’t much like them either.

Arthur, to my right, affected a Cockney accent as if he were some kind of East End gangster who’d wandered a smidgen too far from home. I doubted he’d ever even been to London. I’d bumped into him in a bar a few months ago when he could barely hold his head up. His accent on that occasion had been more country bumpkin than crony of the Krays.

Next to Arthur was Valerie, her ears, neck and fingers dripping with jewels – none of which were fake. She’d tried to take me under her wing once, suggesting that I should do more to flaunt my sexuality and, she assumed, dazzle men into throwing away a good poker hand in favour of pleasing my gorgeous sassy self. She didn’t understand; even if I could bring myself to act like that, I wanted to win by beating the best when they were at their best, not when they were distracted. I didn’t simply want to win, I wanted to be better than everyone else otherwise what was the point? Flashing a bit of boob wouldn’t satisfy my competitive edge. This wasn’t a striptease contest after all.

Valerie tapped a red-taloned fingernail on the worn green felt. She enjoyed giving off an air of impatience, as if everything about the game and her fellow competitors was beneath her. She loved it really. In truth, she was more lonely than anything. The longer and more drawn-out the game, the less time she had to spend sitting on her own at home with only her thoughts for company.

Before you start to feel sorry for her, don’t bother. She’d kicked out her fourth husband a couple of years back in order to start an affair with a bright young thing she’d wooed away from his fiancée. That was after she’d disowned her own kid for the heinous act of falling in love with someone she didn’t approve of. When the bright young thing was diagnosed with MS, she discarded him in an instant and then attempted to ruin her ex-husband’s new relationship in a thwarted bid to win him back. Fortunately he was made of sterner stuff and resisted her repeated attempts of blackmail, bribery and downright nastiness. Now it appeared that no one wanted her. I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about Valerie. She’d find another partner soon enough. She was that sort of person. At the moment, however, nothing waited for her at home beyond silence and solitude. Some people, I reflected, would be jealous of that sort of lifestyle but it didn’t suit Valerie.

‘Darling,’ she drawled, ‘we don’t have all night. Maybe it’s time you folded and let the adults play on.’

I ignored her and glanced at my watch. It was already gone three; if I was going to be at work on time, I had to be showered and dressed and on the bus in only a few hours. I considered the small stack of chips in front of me. I was up – but only by a little. I’d played conservatively for the last few hours, keeping my fingers crossed for the right moment. So far it hadn’t arrived. Given what cards I was currently holding, however, that was possibly about to change. Valerie might be here for the company rather than the competition but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a stiff opponent.

I was almost certain that she had little more than one pair. Her movements were too erratic and her expression too studiously bored for anything else. Arthur was harder to read but he’d been my side of unlucky all night. His eyes hadn’t flickered once, so I doubted anything had changed.

I opened my mouth