‘Thank you for coming,’ Sasha said. ‘You can only ask a sibling at really short notice. Evie’s boyfriend got a migraine. We couldn’t really ask anyone else because it would have sounded rude, like they weren’t our first choice.’
‘I can only say I’m honoured,’ Dan said, rolling his eyes at her, more pissed off than he should be at being the stand-in for Evie’s boyfriend.
‘Yeah, you should be,’ Sasha said. ‘We could have decided an empty seat was better than you.’
‘Might well be,’ Dan said. ‘I might feed you all the wrong answers.’
‘I’m Josh, Evie’s flatmate,’ said a man on the other side of the table. ‘We have beers, red and white.’
‘A beer would be great, thanks.’ Dan remembered Evie talking about Josh at a picnic last year.
‘Sorry, I should have introduced you,’ Evie said, passing a bottle of beer and a glass to Dan. ‘This is Josh’s partner, Tom. And these are my colleagues and friends Priya, Claire and Sara. How are you on dingbats?’
‘I want to say I’m a genius but I can’t actually remember what they are and I’m fairly sure I’m not.’
‘You have to make well-known phrases from pictures,’ Evie said, pushing a piece of paper towards Dan. ‘Josh is really good at themifthey involve sex.’
‘I’m really good at anything if it involves sex.’ Josh did a suggestive pout in Evie’s direction and she laughed and made a face back at him, looking a lot more relaxed than she had just now talking to Dan. Maybe she’d sensed his initial irritation about the boyfriend.
‘Okay.’ A sound like gunshot came over the speakers and a lot of people, including most of their table, half-screamed. ‘Apologies. I’m Dr Blue, your quizmaster, and apparently I just clapped too loudly. Time to start the questions.’
Three rounds out of eight down, they were coming third out of about twenty tables, they werealltaking it a lot more seriously than possibly any of them had been expecting, and Dan waslovingEvie’s quiz persona.
‘No, no, no,’ she was saying, waving both her forefingers at the others for emphasis. ‘We need to think it through. We can’t justwasteour joker. This could be the difference between winning and losing. I mean, it probably will be.’
‘I just think sport’s safer than music,’ said Dan. ‘Music could beanything. It could be classical. It could be country and western. Can we cover all of that?’
‘But can we cover every sport?’ Evie said. ‘Like, who here knows who the current dodgeball world champions are?’ They all shook their heads. ‘Exactly. I think we go music.’
‘Or,’ said Dan, ‘and I know this is controversial, but maybe we go world capitals.’
‘Dodgy,’ Evie said.
‘You’re a bloody geography teacher,’ Josh said. ‘What do you teach kids at school now?’ Evie glared at him and he said, ‘Sorry.’
‘I think we should go music,’ Evie said.
* * *
Music turned out to have been a good call – although they’d done equally well on sport, Dan kept reminding everyone – and two hours, a very nice chicken biryani followed by choc ices and a lot of questions later, they were the winners.
‘This is literally like a village pub,’ said Sasha when they piled out with their victory case of wine. ‘Apart from the planes. It’s lovely.’ It was near Kew Green and surrounded by a surprising number of trees. ‘I’m going to hug you and leave you so that I don’t get home too late.’
‘Text me when you arrive,’ Evie said.
‘And me,’ Dan agreed. Sasha was driving back to Melting this evening. It should be fine, under two hours, on a Sunday evening, but you wanted to make sure that people were okay.
‘We’re going to head off too,’ Josh said. ‘I’m staying at Tom’s tonight, Evie.’
Priya, Claire and Sara were walking to the train station together.
‘Evie must be pretty much on your way back, Dan,’ Sasha said, jiggling her own car keys.
‘Yes, pretty much,’ Dan said. Not really. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’ He wasn’t totally keen, if he was honest. He’d enjoyed her company this evening, as he always did, but there was something intimate about being alone in a car with someone, and they hadn’t been alone together since Vegas, and she had a boyfriend.
‘No, honestly,’ she said, looking about as thrilled as he felt, ‘I can get an Uber.’
‘Really not a problem,’ Dan told her insincerely. No option, because Sasha was looking at him.
