Another message came through.
Let me know when you’re settled at Phyllie’s and we’ll organise dinner and a night out. Would love to see you.
Nat sent back an emoji blowing a kiss and slipped her phone into her bag. The one thing Pip was right about was the share house. It had been a shitty experience. She’d been fairly desperate when she’d moved in, having been evicted from her previous apartment, which she’d shared with a work colleague, after missing a rent payment. She’d been sure Angela would have understood that giving the money to a mother with three small kids, who she’d been speaking to while serving meals at Shared’s soup kitchen, was a reasonable excuse for not having rent. It turned out Angela wasn’t as charitable as she’d hoped. She’d moved into the share house with three others and hadn’t clicked with any of them. They were all mature students living off assistance yet they looked down their noses at what she did for a living and her volunteer work. ‘Surely you want to do something better with your life,’ Yani, the oldest in the house, had said. ‘If you went back to university you could do anything.’
Nat pushed open her car door, grabbed her bag and pushed all thoughts of her housemates from her mind as she headed towards Shared.
Nat found it hard to concentrate as she fed the leafy winter vegetables with fertiliser. Her mind kept flitting between the fact that she desperately needed to find a new job and the previous night’s poker and how easy it had been to make money. She had a few days before she moved into Phyllie’s and she’d intended to spend them split between working at Shared and looking for a paid job. Just the thought of a new job made her stomach clench. What was the point? It would most likely end up with the same result; fired for caring too much. But of course she needed an income. Maybe it would be better to invest her time in trying out the online rooms. If she only invested a percentage of the money she’d won the night before then she had nothing to lose really. As she thought about it the excitement that had sat in the pit of her stomach for most of the night before returned. Imagine feeling like this every day! And if she could make money from it, she’d have more time to volunteer. It could give her the flexibility she’d never had before.
‘You look like you’re miles away.’ Robyn pulled her jacket around her as she approached Nat. ‘How are you? You seemed a bit down the other day. Have things improved?’
Nat nodded and smiled. ‘Kind of. I was just thinking through a business idea actually.’
‘That sounds exciting. What type of business?’
‘An online one. I haven’t worked out all the details yet but I’m thinking it might be worth giving it a go. In fact’ – Nat looked around – ‘I’ve finished this area. Do you have anyone else who can do the rest of the beds today? I think I might head home and get a start on it.’
Robyn laughed and held out her hand for Nat’s equipment. ‘I can finish off. It’s great to see you so excited. Once you’re up and running you’ll have to share with me what it is you’re doing. I must say I’m intrigued.’
Nat handed over the equipment, said her goodbyes to Robyn and the two other volunteers working in the garden and hurried towards her car. She was intrigued too. Intrigued to know whether it was really possible to make an income from online gambling. She was well aware of the potential pitfalls and the stories of gambling addiction, but what about the people who actually won? They were out there. What was to say she couldn’t become one of them?
By the next day Nat realised she could!
Her heart raced as she stared at the screen. She’d arrived home the day before from Shared and familiarised herself with the online poker sites Matt and Damien had mentioned. She started, as Damien had suggested, playing a few of the free tables first. She very quickly got a feel for how it worked and realised that a number of her competitors were complete amateurs. It was comforting to know her knowledge was superior to many she was playing against. She played five games, placing in all of them before moving on to a paid game. The buy-ins were only a dollar, so it wasn’t much to lose, but Nat’s hands had trembled throughout the game. Adrenaline surged through her each time she won a hand and she was euphoric when she won her first paid game. She spent the rest of the afternoon and evening increasing the amount she was betting until she found herself on the ten-dollar tables. By the end of the first day she was over a hundred dollars ahead. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it was a profit. She’d found she was capable of having two tables open at a time, which increased her investment but also her potential payout.
She’d got up early that next morning and had done her best to smile at Ricky and Yani, who were in the kitchen drinking their morning coffee.
‘When are you moving out?’ Yani asked.
‘Thursday, why?’
‘Just thinking if you wanted to go earlier, we could give you a hand, that’s all. Not that we’re rushing to get rid of you, of course.’ The two men exchanged a look and then laughed.
Nat chose to ignore them. She made herself a coffee, grabbed a banana and hurried down the hallway to her bedroom. Not for the first time she was grateful for the lock on her door. She locked it behind her and sat down at her small desk. She powered up her computer, excited that her workday was about to begin.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nat sat back and stared at the screen. She was going to have to start packing her belongings soon, ready to move to Phyllie’s the next day. She’d played poker almost non-stop since returning from Shared on Sunday. Her plans to split her day between volunteering and looking for a new job hadn’t come to fruition. Time had disappeared. She was winning enough to see the potential and know she could make poker work, but she was losing too. In fact, she’d managed to lose some of her winnings from the poker night. She wasn’t too concerned. Like any new job, there was always a training period and that was what she considered this to be. She had to play with her head and follow the strategies Phyllie had taught her, not give in to her gut and go all in, as she’d done many times. Caught up in the excitement and thinking she knew better she’d been furious with herself when on more than one occasion she’d listened to her gut over strategy and lost the hand and the game. What was exciting, though, was she knew deep down she could win. Once she was at Phyllie’s she intended to really commit her time and energy to the game. The potential upside was incredible. If she could make it work, she’d be able to pay off her credit card and her debts to her father, restart her charitable contributions and prove Hannah wrong.
Her credit card was linked to her account, which made it easier to transfer her winnings, and she intended to use them to pay off the small credit card debt she’d accumulated in the last few months. She owed just over five thousand on her fifteen-thousand-dollar limit. She didn’t usually let it blow out like that but there had been a number of expenses she hadn’t allowed for and she had donated a month’s salary to UNICEF after watching a documentary on the Red Zone Hunger Crisis. Part of her knew she should stop giving her money away, but another part told her not to be selfish. There were people who needed her money a lot more than she did. She’d get by and had family to fall back on. She was incredibly lucky.
She turned off her computer and pulled her suitcases from her cupboard. She didn’t have much to pack, just her clothes and the belongings in her room. Surprisingly, Yani had offered to help her move the next morning. He had a small van and assured her they’d be able to fit her bed, chest of drawers, desk and everything else. She was grateful for his offer, even though she was fairly sure he just wanted to make sure she actually moved out. It only took her a couple of hours and she was packed and ready to go. She sat on her bed, excited by the prospect of a new start. While her poker playing was still in the teething stages, she knew it had potential. Potential to replace her income if she was smart. Things were definitely looking up.