Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
TOM
Quiz night at The Ship is a contact sport.
Not literally – although there was the incident two years ago when Bill accused the Harbourmaster of cheating and things got briefly physical – but emotionally. Reputationally. The kind of low-stakes warfare that villages excel at, where the prize is nothing and the glory is everything.
Nina and I have been a team since we were nineteen. We’ve won more than we’ve lost.
‘Right,’ Brynn says, sliding into the booth with three pints balanced on a tray in her hands. ‘The Treloars are here. They’ve brought reinforcements.’
‘What kind of reinforcements?’
‘Cal’s cousin from Plymouth. Apparently she has a degree in history.’
‘We have a degree in history,’ Nina says, pointing at me.
‘You have a degree in veterinary medicine.’
‘There was a history module,’ I say. ‘First year. I got a B.’
‘A B isn’t going to defeat Cal’s cousin from Plymouth.’ Brynn distributes the pints with military precision. ‘We need a strategy.’
‘Our strategy is the same as always,’ I say. ‘Nina does culture and geography, I do science and sport, and we both panic during the music round.’
‘The music round is a hate crime,’ Nina agrees. ‘Who decided that identifying songs from three-second clips was a reasonable thing to ask of people?’
‘Sadists. The answer is always sadists.’
Kit appears at the edge of the booth, Jude trailing behind him with a plate of chips. They both look freshly showered, with Jude’s shaggy hair curling at the corners. He leans down and presses a lingering kiss to Brynn’s mouth.
‘Room for two more?’ Kit asks.
‘Depends. Are you here to support us or spy for the enemy?’
‘Support. Cal’s been insufferable since they won last month. I need him taken down a peg.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Nina shuffles along the bench to make room, and because the booth is not designed for five adults, this means she shuffles into me.
Her thigh presses against mine under the table.
She doesn’t adjust. She doesn’t notice. I notice.
I take a sip of my pint and catalogue the specific amount of pressure along the outside of my left leg and then stop cataloguing because that way lies insanity.
‘How’s Isla?’ she asks Kit, who rubs his jaw, his shoulders slightly slumped.
‘Cross. I’d say she’s definitely cross tonight.’ Kit slides in next to Brynn. ‘She was going to come, but, well, then…’ He pauses, rubs his face again. ‘She decided not to.’
‘It’s the hormones. Don’t worry, apparently they can do crazy things,’ Brynn says. ‘What’s she going to do instead?’
Another rub of the jaw and a slight huff. ‘She said, and I quote, “Why do I want to sit and answer a damn bunch of dumb questions. I’m going to read fairy smut, and believe me he’s better than you.”’
We all whistle through our teeth. Literally all of us.
‘Just the hormones,’ Brynn assures him again just as Jude settles at the end, pushing a portion of chips into the middle of the table. ‘These are for everyone. Don’t let Tom eat them all.’
‘I don’t eat them all.’
‘You ate them all last week.’
‘I was hungry last week.’
‘You’re always hungry. It’s pathological.’
‘It’s metabolic. There’s a difference.’
Nina reaches across me for a chip, her arm brushing mine, the warmth of her skin through my sleeve for exactly one second. She settles back. Her thigh is still against mine. I pick up my pint. Put it down. Pick it up again. Drink deep. Breathe.
‘How’s work going, Jude?’ Nina asks. ‘Kit running you ragged?’
‘Kit’s fine. It’s the customers.’ He pulls a face. ‘Everyone is feeling the pinch financially and wants things cheaper and cheaper.’
‘I know. I had someone ask why my tuna melt was three quid eighty?’ Her leg is still against mine as she talks. Is she even aware? Or am just this invisible barrier, one that’s always there but can elicit no reaction?
Her leg is still against mine as she talks. Is she even aware of it? Or am I just furniture – part of the booth, something to lean against, incapable of reaction?
I am not incapable of reaction. That is rapidly becoming the problem. In a pub. At quiz night. Like I’m fifteen.
I haven’t heard a word anyone’s said for two minutes.
I tune back in, desperate for distraction.
‘Sounds about right for tourist season,’ Brynn says.
‘Last week someone asked me why the lifeboat was orange. I said it was so we could find it in emergencies. They said, couldn’t we paint it something nicer? ’
‘Nicer than orange?’ Nina asks and I count the freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose, the glint of brightness as her amethyst earrings catch the evening light through the window behind us.
‘Apparently orange clashes with the harbour aesthetic.’ Brynn takes a long sip of her pint. Jude’s gaze is moon-eyed as he stares at her. When he catches me looking, I roll my eyes, but he just smirks and glances knowingly at where I’m squished next to Nina.
‘The harbour aesthetic is boats and seagulls. Orange fits fine,’ Nina says.
This is good; talking about harbour aesthetic and the colour orange is reducing the swelling in my pants significantly. Then she shifts and I have to start the whole process again.
‘That’s what I said. They filed a complaint.’
The table dissolves into overlapping complaints about tourists – the eternal summer sport of Sea Salt Bay.
Nina is animated tonight, more present than she’s been in months, her bangles catching the pub light every time she gestures.
She’s stealing deep-fried chips from the basket in the centre of the table with a rhythm so practised it’s almost invisible – one every thirty seconds, never looking down, always mid-sentence.
She’s been doing this as long as I’ve known her.
I’ve been watching her do it for as long as I’ve known her.
I could write a doctoral thesis on Nina Ellis’s chip-stealing technique.
‘How’s your dad, Kit?’ she asks, and the table shifts into the careful recalibration that happens when someone mentions Reuben.
Kit’s expression doesn’t change, but the hardness in his eyes does. ‘Good days and bad days. More good than bad lately. He tried painting.’ Kit’s face folds into a frown. ‘I never thought I’d say the words “my dad tried painting”, but there we are.’
‘Painting’s good,’ Brynn says. ‘Painting’s productive.’
‘Painting’s messy. There’s turpentine everywhere.’ Kit shrugs, the practised gesture of someone who’s learned to hold difficult things lightly. ‘But yeah. He’s okay. Mum and Lily haven’t seen him yet, and I don’t blame them.’
‘Do you think he wants to see your mum?’ Nina asks, and there’s a heavy pause around the table. Kit and Jude exchange a glance and then both shrug.
‘Who knows,’ answers Jude. ‘This is Reuben Harding we are talking about.’
‘Reuben Harding with dementia,’ Kit adds. ‘So who the fuck knows.’
The bell rings – the ancient ship’s bell that signals the start of quiz night – and the pub settles into competitive silence.
Ayo, who’s been running the quiz since I was a sunburnt kid with a packet of crisps and a glass of fizzy pop sitting at the end of the table while the adults played, takes his position at the edge of the bar, microphone in hand.
‘Right then,’ he says. ‘Round one. General knowledge. Ten questions. No conferring with other tables. I’m looking at you, Bill.’
‘That was one time,’ Bill calls from across the room.
‘It was four times. I’m keeping count.’
Nina leans into me, her shoulder pressing against mine, and drops her voice. ‘Ready?’
Always fucking ready.
‘Always.’
‘Liar. You’re never ready for the general knowledge round.’
‘Nobody’s ready for general knowledge. That’s the point.’
She doesn’t straighten back up. She stays leaning into me, our shoulders touching, the side of her arm warm against mine.
This is how we used to do this, before Peter, our heads together, whispering answers, arguing in the space between us.
We sat like this a hundred times, until we no longer did because Peter took up my position and it was his shoulder she leaned against, his head that dipped next to hers as they whispered their answers, while all I did was watch from the other side of the table and smile.
Then I stopped coming to the quiz. It’s only been since January that I’ve tried again.
The questions start and we fall into an old innate rhythm.
Silent communication. Two people who know one another.
Nina writes; I lean over her shoulder and murmur answers.
She crosses out half of what I suggest; I point at the ones she’s crossed out and raise my eyebrows.
She shakes her head. I tap the page. She rolls her eyes and writes it back in.
Her handwriting is atrocious. It’s always been atrocious. I once told her it looked like a spider had fallen into an ink pot and panicked, and she didn’t speak to me for an entire round. It was the quietest twelve minutes of my life.
‘Question seven,’ Ayo announces. ‘Which planet in our solar system has the most moons?’
‘Saturn,’ I say immediately.
‘Are you sure? I thought it was Jupiter.’
‘It was Jupiter. They found more around Saturn last year.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I read things.’
‘You read veterinary journals and spy novels.’
‘I read widely.’
She writes ‘Saturn’, still looking sceptical, her pen pressing hard against the paper in a way that communicates doubt.
Her left hand is resting on the table between us, palm down, fingers tapping the wood in that restless Nina rhythm.
Her little finger is approximately one centimetre from my hand.
I am aware of this the way I am aware of the location of the exit in every room I enter. Constantly. Uselessly.
The rounds blur – history, science.
The music round is every bit the hate crime advertised. Ayo plays three-second clips through a speaker that sounds like it’s having a small breakdown, and the pub descends into collective suffering.
Nina misses the first clip entirely because she’s decided to speak to Brynn.