‘You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!’
The Midnight Bell was a beautifully preserved art deco pub, its wooden panelling intact, the sunburst tiling in the loos often Instagrammed, a plaque on the wall outside boasting of its Grade 2 listed status.
But it was also cosy enough that it was a second home to the Happy Ever After staff. They congregated in their usual corner of the saloon bar, annexing banquettes and stools and arguing over what to drink and how many portions of cheesy chips to order.
Tom and Noah were despatched to the bar to procure a bottle of red wine and whatever the two of them were drinking, Posy texted her younger brother Sam to come down (even though it was a school night and his all-important GCSE year) because he was their only hope in the sports round, and Verity and Nina paid their quiz subs to Clive, landlord of The Midnight Bell, who told them that he expected a good, clean game.
‘Tell that to Big Trevor,’ Nina muttered because Big Trevor had just arrived with his posse of computer-repair colleagues, all of them wearing orange T-shirts with the name of their team, The Battering RAMs, emblazoned across their chests. ‘They look like a gigantic bunch of Wotsits in those T-shirts.’
‘Now, now, young lady, let’s have a friendly quiz,’ Clive said, as he handed over the envelope with the quiz sheets in it. Opening them before Clive gave permission, at exactly seven thirty sharp when the quiz officially began, meant instant disqualification. ‘Now give me your mobile phones.’
When Clive said it was a nice, friendly quiz what he actually meant was that The Midnight Bell Thursday Night Pub Quiz was an event with so many rules and regulations that, by comparison, it made the Brexit negotiations look like a sweet little cake sale.
Tom and Noah returned with the drinks, Sam arrived with a put-upon expression on his face, which disappeared as soon as Posy said he could have a very weak shandy as long as he had a bowlful of cheesy chips to soak up the negligible amounts of alcohol.
Nina sat happily on the banquette, Sam next to her, cheesy chips in front of her, humungous glass of red wine in her hand and, for a moment, she felt that all was right in her world.
‘Is there room for me?’ Noah asked and before Nina could force herself to purr, ‘There’s always room for a little one,’ he squeezed in on her other side so Nina no longer had room to spread out.
She wriggled until Sam shifted down a little bit but she was still aware of Noah’s leg brushing against hers as he reached forward for his pint of lager. ‘Hi Sam,’ he said easily. ‘How’s the Hackintosh project coming along?’
‘You two know each other?’ Nina asked a little stiffly, because there had been a time a few months ago, before Posy got married and she and Sam moved out, when she knew everything that went on in Sam’s life. She had seen him every day when he got home from school, usually accompanied by his friend Pants, who had an out-of-control crush on her. Now, she hadn’t seen Pants in weeks and Sam, like everyone else, it seemed, was moving on, and Nina was stuck in exactly the same place.
‘Well, Noah’s mates with Sebastian,’ Sam said diffidently, though he adored his new brother-in-law. He shook his fringe out of his eyes. ‘So, we hang sometimes.’
‘And what’s a Hackintosh?’ Nina persevered.
‘Sebastian and I are building an Apple Mac on a regular PC,’ Sam replied, though Sebastian was rich enough that he could go to the Apple store and buy a hundred MacBooks without breaking a sweat. ‘You get the parts online, depending on the modifications you want, and then you put it together …’
Nina smiled and nodded but she was sure that her eyes were glazing over. Across the table, Posy and Verity were now arguing about what their team name would be, while Tom sipped his wine and looked as if he’d much rather be at home, wherever that was, wrestling with his bibliography.
‘… then we were going to turbo-boost the processor,’ Sam was explaining to Noah, who seemed riveted by this blow-by-blow account of extreme nerdiness. Go figure.
‘Oh really? I reckon you could get up to two point nine gigahertz,’ he said. ‘Providing that you’re modifying a standard Intel Core M processor.’
‘Sounds fascinating, boys,’ Nina said, even though it sounded the exact opposite. ‘Talking of computers, Sam, have you managed to remember the shop Instagram and Twitter login details yet?’
Immediately Sam shook his head so his face was obscured by his fringe once more. ‘I haven’t had time. This is a very important year for me academically,’ he said sanctimoniously even though he was in a pub drinking shandy on a school night talking about his Hackintosh project, which seemed to be taking up an awful lot of his waking hours.
‘Sam, what is the point of you being in charge of the shop’s social media if you never update any of our accounts?’ Nina demanded.
‘Sophie’s meant to update the Twitter account,’ Sam said in a small voice. ‘But …’ his voice got even quieter, ‘she can’t log in because I used this random program to generate passwords for all our accounts, and it turned out it was infected with a virus and I managed to sort that out – don’t tell Posy, she’ll freak – but now we’re locked out of Twitter and Instagram.’
‘Oh Sam, you muppet!’ moaned Nina. ‘Isn’t there a way to reset it?’
‘Shut up,’ Sam hissed. ‘Posy’ll hear you.’
‘Aren’t the accounts linked to a mobile phone number for verification?’ Noah asked. ‘Or an email address?’
‘Probably.’ Sam frowned. ‘Maybe. Perhaps.’
‘Why don’t we sit down tomorrow and figure it out?’ Noah suggested. ‘I bet we can find a way in and then Nina can take over the accounts for you.’
‘So I can post pictures of new stock and quote from books and stuff,’ Nina said.
‘Boring! Who wants to look at that?’ Sam sneered.
Nina poked him in the ribs until he squealed. ‘You do realise that I work in a bookshop owned and run by your sister? And that people who visit the shop’s Instagram account might want to look at pictures of pretty books?’
‘And you could post a picture of your Valentine’s window display?’ Noah said as Sam made a big deal of rubbing his side though Nina had barely touched him.
‘I could,’ Nina agreed. ‘That reminds me, I think there are some heart-shaped fairy lights in a box in the coal hole.’
Noah smiled at her and she smiled back and oh God, she hoped they weren’t going to get into that whole smiling thing again: she really didn’t want Noah to get the wrong idea.
In the soft, very flattering light of The Midnight Bell, Noah’s hair made Nina think of marmalade and autumn leaves. And his green eyes were very twinkly, though that could just be the reflected glint of the candles that landlady Carol dotted about the place.
But mood lighting or not, Noah’s smile was the same as it always was: friendly, warm, inviting. A bit like a hug.
Nina shook her head. She wasn’t a hugger. She’d just have to tell Tom that Operation Pimp Nina Out was aborted.
She stopped smiling and Noah’s smile fell off his face too, and not smiling at each other was even more awkward than smiling. So awkward that even Sam, who was a teenage boy and oblivious to emotions and feelings and similar things, felt moved to say, ‘Why are you two being weird?’
‘Nobody’s being weird,’ Nina said crisply and she’d never been so relieved to see Mattie who’d also been summoned for quiz duties but had had to finish doing her prep for the next morning first. ‘Mattie! There you are!’
‘Yes, Nina, here I am,’ Mattie agreed with a slightly perturbed expression at Nina’s enthusiastic greeting. ‘Everyone all right for drinks?’
‘I’ll help you,’ Nina offered, anything to get away from Noah and smiling or not smiling at him.
‘No, you’re all right.’ Mattie flapped a vague hand at Nina then wafted over to the bar in the languid way that she did everything, even dealing with the lunchtime rush.
‘What’s the matter?’ Noah asked Nina quietly. ‘Sam’s right. You are acting weird. It’s OK, we’re off the clock, I can be an active participant rather than just an observer, so things needn’t be awkward.’
‘Nothing’s awkward. Everything’s cool,’ Nina said, and Posy and Verity were still going on about the bloody tote bags and Tom was now talking to Sam about Sam’s revision techniques and Sam was looking as if he wanted to die and Mattie was taking forever at the bar and Nina was racking her brains for something to talk about with Noah that was non-controversial and she’d never been so relieved to hear a little squeal of feedback as Clive switched on his microphone so he could start the quiz.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you know the rules, I know you know the rules, but I’m going to go over them anyway,’ he began and everyone in The Midnight Bell gave a collective groan and Nina could relax, knowing that they were about to get their quiz on.
Although The Midnight Bell Thursday Night Quiz wasn’t often that relaxing. Posy always insisted on being in charge of the pen and writing down the answers, but she always got side-tracked and would lose her place and Verity would have to keep a keen eye on her to make sure that she didn’t write down the answers for the previous round in the wrong place.
Then Tom would get cross when they all looked to him to supply the answers in the sports round because Sam only knew about football and only from 2012 onwards. ‘So heteronormative to insist I know about sport just because I’m a man,’ Tom would hiss if anyone dared to ask him who the captain of the England rugby squad was.
To make matters worse, there would be the smug hoots of glee from The Battering RAMs in the opposite corner as they made short work of each round, when there were very few questions on literature or baked goods for Team Tote Bag to excel at. (Though being a vicar’s daughter, Verity really came into her own if there were any questions about saints or religious holidays.)
So, the quiz was not usually an enjoyable experience and as Clive led them into the first round, Inventors, Nina feared the worst.
‘One for all the ladies,’ Clive declared. ‘Who invented the first bra?’
‘Oh, I actually know this,’ Nina exclaimed excitedly. ‘Wasn’t it Jane Russell, the actress? She was in a film called The Outlaw and …’
‘Actually, it was a New York socialite called Mary Phelps Jacobs, who was granted a patent in 1914 for what we now know as the modern bra,’ Noah interrupted. ‘She used two handkerchiefs and a pink ribbon to create what she called The Backless Brassiere.’
‘My hand’s cramping and it’s only the first answer,’ Posy complained while everyone stared at Noah, who blushed a fiery red for knowing so much about the history of women’s underwear.
‘Second question, who invented the first flush toilet?’
Team Tote Bag looked at each other. ‘Thomas Crapper?’ Verity ventured, as The Battering RAMs high-fived each other and Big Trevor wrote the answer down on their quiz sheet. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Thomas Crapper sometime in the nineteenth century.’
‘I think it was a bit earlier than that,’ Noah said apologetically. ‘Between 1584 and 1591, Elizabethan poet John Harrington designed and installed a flushing toilet in his new house, The Ajax. Queen Elizabeth was so impressed that she ordered him to make one for her too.’
‘Oh my goodness. How do you know this stuff?’ Posy asked in amazement.
Noah shrugged. ‘I just have one of those memories. Every single thing I read or hear stays in my brain. Quite useful when I’m doing a crossword.’
It was also very useful when doing The Midnight Bell pub quiz. There was no question that fazed Noah. No answer that managed to elude him. Whether it was classic British sitcoms, political dissidents or the infamous cheese round, Noah came through for Team Tote Bag again and again and again.
When the last question had been answered (‘Beaufort. It’s a French Alpine cheese, quite similar to Gruyère, very good in a fondue.’) and the quiz sheets collected, the Happy Ever After gang turned to Noah with matching expressions of awe.
‘You’re like the god of pub quizzes,’ Posy sighed dreamily in a way that would have had Sebastian challenging Noah to a duel if he hadn’t been in San Francisco doing techy entrepreneurial things. ‘This is what you’re doing on your Thursday evenings from now on until the end of time.’
‘We don’t know that all of my answers are correct,’ Noah said modestly and he bashfully smiled into his pint glass, which even Nina was forced to admit to herself made him look cute. Mattie and Verity seemed to think so because they both made silent ‘ah’s in appreciation. ‘The political dissidents round was very hard. All those foreign names! You don’t really expect to find a political dissidents round in a pub quiz.’
‘Ever since Clive was on Fifteen To One, he’s had delusions,’ Nina explained. She dropped her voice to a whisper because it was still a sensitive subject. ‘He fumbled a really easy question about ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest and ever since then, he’s had a point to prove.’
‘1974 with “Waterloo”,’ Noah said immediately, then slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry, I’m in full quiz mode now.’
Nina was keen to rise to the challenge. ‘OK, name all of the Strictly Come Dancing winners in chronological order.’
Noah thought about it for a second, green eyes almost crossing with the effort. ‘Right, um, Natasha Kaplinsky, Jill Halfpenny, Darren Gough …’
Sam muttered something about how they shouldn’t treat Noah like a freakshow, but Noah wasn’t a freakshow. He was Wikipedia in human form. Google made flesh. Ask Jeeves but not a butler. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Clive came over to them with their answer sheet and made them promise on their collective mothers’ lives that they hadn’t sneaked a rogue mobile phone past him.
‘You got one hundred and seven out of a hundred,’ Clive admitted at last. ‘Had to give you some extra points for additional information supplied.’ He shook his head in disbelief then stared at Noah with a slightly bitter expression. ‘You should think about going on Mastermind. You’d clean up.’
‘Oh, I was just having a good night,’ Noah muttered.
Noah was very respectful of other people’s feelings. Not once had he made any of his teammates feel bad about their own general-knowledge shortcomings. Nina mentally scrolled through her list of exes to see if any of them would have behaved in a similar fashion. Not that a single one of them would have been able to correctly answer a question about political dissidents or cheeses of the world and if they had, they wouldn’t have been very gracious about it either.
And if they had single-handedly led their team to victory as Noah had, none of them would have ducked their heads and insisted that everyone had contributed as Clive announced Team Tote Bag as the winners, to stunned disbelief then a smattering of applause.
‘We couldn’t have done it without you,’ Nina told Noah, having to raise her voice over a commotion in the corner where The Battering RAMs were not taking the news of their defeat quietly. ‘Honestly, we usually manage second from last. This is all down to you.’
‘It is,’ Posy agreed fervently, waving the envelope with their winnings in it. ‘And now we’re rich! Rich beyond the dreams of avarice!’
They’d won the princely sum of ninety-eight pounds and seventy-six pence, some of which they immediately spent on more alcohol and cheesy chips. Nina liked to think they were good winners, calm and composed, unlike The Battering RAMs.
Big Trevor stormed over to demand a recount, then he pored over their quiz sheet to query each answer and finally demanded that Clive disqualify them for bringing in a ringer.
Clive was having none of it. ‘The quizmaster’s decision is final and abiding,’ he insisted and Nina could take it no more.
‘Hey! Big Trev! Nobody likes a sore loser!’ she called out. ‘Now, stop bellyaching and show a bit of dignity.’
It wasn’t often that Nina got to lecture people on their lack of dignity. Usually it was the other way round, she thought as Trevor slunk back to his corner.
‘My God, I thought it was a pub quiz but it seems to have turned into some kind of blood vengeance,’ Noah said. ‘Is it always like this?’
‘No, because The Battering RAMs always win.’ Tom shuddered. ‘We’ll have to leave together in case they’re waiting outside to jump us.’
‘Talking of leaving, it is very late for a school night.’ Posy looked flinty-eyed at her younger brother. ‘And just how many shandies have you had?’
‘This is my second,’ Sam replied with a slightly hurt intonation to his voice, like he couldn’t believe that his sister was implying that he’d broken her ‘two shandies on a school night and any other night, come to that’ rule. It might even have been convincing if Nina didn’t know for a fact that it was actually Sam’s fourth shandy, which was why he’d been getting increasingly giggly. ‘I’m not even a little bit drunk. Anyway, it’s only nine. It’s still early. Let’s stay for a bit.’
It seemed a pity to break up the party but Nina had an elsewhere to be. ‘Actually, I have to bail,’ she said with genuine regret because it was very comfy on the banquette, even though she was still thigh to thigh with Noah, and she could easily go another bowl of cheesy chips. ‘Got a hot date with that guitarist I met the other night.’
There were blank looks.
‘Come on! I told you all about him. His name’s Rob, he plays guitar in some whiny rock band and he broods beautifully,’ Nina told her colleagues again.
Tom shook his head. ‘No, doesn’t ring any bells. But there have been a lot of brooding guitarists in your life.’
‘Well, I’m sure he’s lovely,’ Posy said supportively and Nina pulled a face. She didn’t want lovely. Lovely brought to mind the kind of men who gave you teddy bears with ‘to the world’s best girlfriend’ printed on their stomachs and wanted you to meet their parents before you’d even had sex with them.
‘I don’t want lovely,’ she insisted, as she got to her feet and began to gather her belongings together. ‘But I do want my very own Heathcliff and, like I said, Rob is very good at brooding.’
To her slight horror, Noah was on his feet too. ‘I’ll walk you out if that’s all right. Time I was going home anyway.’
Nina shrugged like she wasn’t bothered one way or another and tried to ignore Tom’s pointed look, which implied that he was very disappointed at her failure to flirt with Noah.
Noah held the door open for her and adjusted his quick stride to a slower pace to accommodate Nina who could only hobble over the cobbles of Rochester Street if she was wearing anything with a heel.
‘Which way you heading?’ he asked.
‘Camden, so just to the nearest bus stop,’ Nina said and as they turned the corner into Theobalds Road, the bus stop was in sight.
‘I’ll wait with you,’ Noah said even though it wasn’t even nine thirty and it was perfectly safe. ‘See you on the bus.’
Noah was as lovely as Posy wished Nina’s suitors to be. Even Nina’s mother would love him and she was a tough crowd. But not my type, Nina reassured herself, as they lapsed into an awkward silence. Still, she’d been on enough dates to know what to do with an awkward silence and it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in a little light flirtation. If nothing else, it would limber her up for her date.
‘So, you really do have some amazing pub-quiz skills,’ Nina said, because everyone liked getting compliments. ‘When you’re short of cash do you hunt around for a pub with a general-knowledge quiz machine so you can win a few quid?’
‘It never crossed my mind but now that you mention it, it could be a lucrative side gig.’ Noah smiled. ‘Although there are whole areas that I’m patchy on.’
‘Like, what?’ Nina challenged. ‘Seemed to me like you knew everything.’
‘Hardly everything. I’m not good on all sorts of things. Insects. I always get my Greek and Roman gods mixed up. And ice-skating. I know nothing about ice-skating.’
Damn it! Nina was smiling. At Noah. Again. ‘I don’t believe you. I bet you have tons of facts about ice-skating stored away up there.’ She almost but not quite touched his forehead.
‘I don’t. I really don’t,’ Noah assured her.
‘I’ve seen you in action now. You know everything. You know it all.’
Know it all. Noah. Know it all.
Oh God, that was it! Of course she knew him! How could she ever have forgotten? He was Know It All Noah!
Nina had the look of a cartoon character a split second before something heavy fell on them from a great height. Her eyes bugged out, mouth hung open as she continued to stare at Noah in utter disbelief, so it was no wonder that the smile gradually faded from his face.
He took a step back from Nina, his expression slightly bewildered.
‘I can’t believe … Ow!’ Nina had to bite down hard on her tongue to stop herself blurting out her unexpected revelation because now she also remembered why being called Know It All Noah wouldn’t hold many happy memories for him.
‘Sorry, I was, um, you know, er, first-date nerves.’ Nina grimaced – as excuses for acting like a total loon went, it was a pretty weak one. She tried out a sheepish smile that Noah did not return. ‘Normally I don’t get nervous before a date, but this guitarist, he’s a feisty one! Grrrr!’ And yes, she had just fashioned her hands into claws and growled. What was wrong with her?
‘I see,’ Noah said, his eyes fixed at a point somewhere beyond Nina’s shoulder. ‘Look! There’s your bus. Wouldn’t want to miss it and be late for your hot date.’ Nina turned to see the 168 trundling towards her.
She turned back to Noah to say goodbye, maybe apologise again, crack some lame joke, but he was gone. Striding away from her as if he couldn’t wait to put as much distance between them as possible.