The Lucky Number Bid

Dear Nella,

Okay so you know how Caleb and I have been in that rut lately, the one where our biggest argument is whose turn it is to descale the kettle, well I found us a way out of it and it involves a dusty old stained glass window and a dare that I honestly cannot believe he agreed to. I've been grinning about it all week and he keeps asking me why I'm smiling and I won't tell him because that's part of the fun, is that mean? It's a little mean. He'll live.

Here's how it happened. Saturday, the town hall ran their annual lost-and-found auction, which in the off-season is basically the biggest social event Saltwick has, which tells you everything about Saltwick in November. Half the shops on the high street are shuttered, the chip place is only open Saturdays, and the whole town turns up to bid on umbrellas and single wellies and someone's grandma's biscuit tin. We go every year mostly for something to do, and this year somebody had donated a stained glass window, an actual window, all faded blues and greens with a seagull in the corner, dusty as anything and leaning against the stage like it was ashamed of itself.

I fell in love with it the second I saw it. Caleb fell in love with it about four seconds later, which was a problem, because we only had so much money in the "silly purchases" envelope and one window between us. So somewhere in the middle of the auction he leaned over and whispered that whoever won it should have to wear whatever outfit the other one picked, for a whole day, no chickening out. And Nella, I said yes before he'd even finished the sentence. I don't know what came over me. Three years of marriage and suddenly we're playing truth or dare in a town hall full of pensioners. It felt so good to want something silly again.

I'll tell you what I picked for him in the next letter, because it ends with him standing in the hardware shop in it, and that's a story he'd want to tell himself. Write back soon, I need someone to be smug at who isn't married to me.

Love, Yasmin

* * *

Dear Nella,

You wrote back in four minutes demanding the outfit, so here is everything, in order.

The texts started that evening, once we were home and the window was leaning against our bedroom wall looking pleased with itself.

**Caleb:** I still say you played dirty, bidding in the last three seconds like that.

**Me:** All's fair in love and lost-and-found auctions. You had four rounds to outbid me.

**Caleb:** I was SAVING. That's called strategy.

**Me:** It's called losing. Seagull's mine. X

**Caleb:** Fine. A deal's a deal. Go on then, ruin my life.

**Me:** Don't be dramatic, you'll love it. Probably.

**Caleb:** That "probably" is doing a lot of work.

So here's what I picked, and I want you to appreciate that I thought about this for a full evening. There's a little vintage shop on the corner that somehow stays open all year, run by a woman named Dot who keeps a rack of things in the back that nobody has bought since the seventies. In it I found a black sheer mesh crop top, long-sleeved, fully see-through, the kind of thing that leaves absolutely nothing to anyone's imagination, and a pair of jeans ripped so badly down both thighs that they're barely legally jeans anymore. The whole outfit together is maybe four square inches of actual fabric.

I texted him the description at half nine and then lay there listening to the three dots appear and disappear about six times.

**Caleb:** The JEANS are ripped? The top wasn't enough?

**Me:** It's a coordinated look. I have a vision.

**Caleb:** My vision is trousers.

**Me:** Well your vision lost the auction, didn't it.

**Caleb:** I hate how much I love it when you do that.

**Caleb:** Fine. Friday. But I'm setting terms. No laughing. No photographs that leave this marriage. And you have to carry all the shopping.

**Me:** Deal, deal, and absolutely not. You carry the shopping, that's the price of the jeans.

**Caleb:** You're the worst person I've ever married.

**Me:** You married exactly one person, so your sample size is useless. X

He sent back a thumbs up, then a thumbs down, then another thumbs up, which I've decided is the correct emotional response to being married to me.

The thing is, and I haven't told Caleb this part yet, I didn't pick the outfit just to be wicked. Well, mostly not to be wicked. We've been married three years, we met in that pottery workshop when I was twenty-four and he was twenty-five and I came home covered in clay and grinning like an idiot, and somewhere in the last couple of years we got very good at being comfortable and very bad at being surprised. The window was the first thing either of us had fought over in months, and even that fight was more fun than we'd had in ages. So if the price of a beautiful dusty seagull is Caleb parading down the high street in a mesh top, then everybody wins, is what I'm saying. Mostly him, obviously. He has the better body anyway, it would be rude of me not to share it with Saltwick.

Friday came around faster than he wanted and slower than I wanted, which is how Fridays work when one of you is dreading something and the other one has been up since seven laying the outfit out on the bed like it's a museum piece.

**Caleb:** It's colder than a witch's tit out there. This top has the thermal properties of a spider's web.

**Me:** Beauty is pain. Also I put a coat in the car for you, you can wear it between errands, I'm not a monster.

**Caleb:** You are precisely a monster. A monster who loves me. Okay. Going in. If Dot's shop is open I'm telling her everything.

**Me:** Dot already knows. I told her when I bought it. She said and I quote, "about time someone livened up this town."

**Caleb:** Betrayed. Betrayed in my own home.

Ten minutes later my phone buzzed and it was a photo, and Nella, I need you to picture this properly. He's standing in front of the mirror in our hallway, arms crossed over his chest in that way men do when they've surrendered but want it noted that they surrendered with dignity, wearing the mesh top and the shredded jeans and a face on him like a man being photographed for a crime he did commit and regrets. The morning light through the landing window is doing him all kinds of favors, which he knows, which is why the arms are crossed, because if he let them hang loose he'd have to admit he looks good. He looks ridiculous and he looks gorgeous and I have stared at that photo so many times my phone has probably logged it as suspicious activity.

**Caleb:** There. Achieved. You owe me a window and also possibly my dignity back.

**Me:** You can't sell dignity back, it doesn't work like that. Also you look incredible and you know it, stop crossing your arms.

**Caleb:** The arms stay. They're load... they're structural.

He nearly sent me something he shouldn't have there, I think, because the message just stops. Anyway. He's out there now, doing the hardware shop run in that outfit, and I'm at home with my seagull window and a cup of tea, waiting to hear what Mrs. Pendarvis at the hardware counter said to him, because she says something to everyone, and I have a feeling the whole town will know about Caleb's jeans by teatime.

The voicemail came in at 11:42 that