I pressed the button again. And again, and again. I fetched a bar stool and some more coins. The light, the sounds, the flickering screen all made me nervous. I jiggled my legs and chinked the coins in my pocket. ‘Come on,’ I said to the reels in front of me. ‘Get on with it!’ Then I won nine times the amount I’d put in. The machine went crazy, everything blinked and flashed and it played a shrill fanfare. I burst out laughing. My heart was racing; it felt as if the wooden floor was swaying under the stool, and my hand shook as I pressed the button for another go.

Later, Regnier appeared at my side. ‘It’s time,’ he said.

‘I’m staying,’ I said.

Regnier sighed. ‘Listen,’ he said, with an effort, as if chewing on a tough lump of food. ‘Listen.’ But he didn’t say anything else, and when I didn’t say anything either, and pressed the button, which felt warm and familiar now, he turned and left.

My winning streak came right at the start, and it was fantastic. As soon as I finished work I would head for the Moon, and I’d take home winnings almost every night. I couldn’t believe it: for the first time in my life I felt that I’d found something. It may sound strange, but the moment I stood in front of the Lucky Deal I felt right.

I think it felt like love.

They weren’t huge sums of money, but I won so often that one day I bought Louise a necklace of polished red stones. I don’t know what kind of stones they were, but they looked as if they were glowing from the inside out. I put the necklace around her neck, and she looked at me with a gaze that pierced my heart. That evening, I was convinced that nothing else could hurt us.

But the Lucky Deal soon began to bore me. I fancied something new, and I wasn’t winning as much, either. I’d heard there was an amusement arcade in the leisure centre they’d built on that field on the outskirts of town. I took the bus and went there.

The centre was a massively oversized glass and concrete box, and I didn’t mean to stay long. But when I found the casino in the arcade in the basement and stepped through its doors, I got a shock. Everything in there was excessive: the flashing, blinking, shining, humming, beeping, yowling and screeching, an inconceivable chaos of lights, sounds, voices and music. I stood on a carpet peppered with cigarette burns, feeling like the Rocket Man in a film I’d seen with Louise: lost and secure at the same time in the infinite loneliness of the universe.

I went almost every night. Sometimes I borrowed the van and drove out there still in my work clothes. I’d been bitten by the bug. During the day, standing in the greenery somewhere, I was already thinking about the slot machines: the Six Bomb, the Cash Crazy or the Diamond Seven. I’d be hoeing the weeds and the corn poppy would start blinking in front of my eyes like the lights on the big Lucky Chambers.