Lila raised her eyes as Alex reached her and pulled the chair opposite out from underneath the table. “Hey!”
“Hey,” he replied, with a smile. “Wow, it’s busy in here!” he said, before cursing himself for his usual inanity in pointing out the obvious. “Do you want a drink?” he offered, by way of trying to recover, despite the fact that Lila had a full glass in front of her. Two, in fact.
“No, thanks,” Lila answered. “In fact, you might as well have Rory’s beer.” She nodded towards the second drink on the table. “He just texted me to say he’s going to be stuck at work.”
“Oh.” Alex realised he was still standing and hurriedly dropped down on the chair. “How late?”
Lila thumbed the condensation off of the swell of her wine glass. “Late,” she answered, flatly.
“Oh.” Alex reached for the beer. “Well, do you still wanna…?”
Lila shrugged. “Yeah. Well, I mean, I’ve already paid entry for a team. We might have a bit of an uphill struggle, though, a team of two against all these teams of six.” She gestured around them at all the small groups of clearly quiz-hardened folk.
“We can do it,” Alex smiled at her. “I have faith.” Lila smiled back and took a sip of her wine.
They had made a good start on their second round of drinks by the time the quiz master came around with blank answer sheets and a selection of lidless biros. “Just the two of you?” he asked.
Alex looked up, mildly annoyed; he’d forgotten that the actual quiz part of the pub quiz evening would eventually crop up and spoil his alone-time conversation with Lila. “Yeah.”
The quiz master looked awkward. “Well, we say that the teams should have a minimum of three members and a maximum of six…” He pointed to where this was helpfully stated in the small print on the bottom of the answer sheets, which of course they were only just seeing for the first time.
Lila sighed. “Really?”
“Well, we are waiting for a third, but we’re not sure when he’ll get here…” Alex added obligingly. The quiz master looked sceptical.
“Do you mind if I put you with another loose two in the meantime?” he asked. “They came in a team of eight.” He gestured across the bar to where a large, loud group of people were crowded around a small circular table on an assortment of chairs and stools.
Lila looked across at Alex for him to make the decision. Alex sighed. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”
“Great!” the quiz master beamed. “I’ll send two of them over. Thanks guys!” He left them a mildly chewed pen and moved off in the direction of the large group.
“Well, we’ve just doubled our chance of winning, at least!” Lila said optimistically.
“And halved the potential prize money,” Alex pointed out. Lila laughed.
“Who knows? Think positive. They might be rocket scientists.”
“Brain surgeons, actually,” the brunette who’d appeared at the side of their table cheerfully interjected as she set down a half-empty bottle of red wine; a blonde carrying their two wine glasses brought up the rear.
Alex laughed awkwardly. “Hi.” He really wasn't that great with strangers.
“Hi,” echoed the brunette. “Cheers for letting us cramp your quizzing style. We’ll earn our keep, I promise.”
“Does anyone want any wine?” offered the blonde. She had the slightest burr of a European accent, soft against her vowels.
“No thanks, I’m on the white,” Lila declined politely, indicating her own glass. Alex watched her size up the newcomers, although the smile never wavered on her face. “I’m Lila.”
“Alex.”
“Holly and Nadia,” introduced the blonde, indicating first her friend and then herself.
Nadia
Nadia tried not to take offense that she and Holly had been jettisoned from their team by immediate collective consensus. But it did make it important that – even if this new team couldn’t win outright – they at least needed to place higher than Caro and her merry band of fellow art students. It was a matter of pride.
Trying to sound suitably competitive, but a couple of shades under scary, Nadia explained the situation to the other half of the dream team. The guy was nice and full of shy smiles, with reddish brown hair, attractive in a preppy way with his square-framed glasses and slim-fit suit. His girlfriend was pretty, honey-blonde, with dark eyes and eyebrows. She was also ever-so-slightly abrasive, but – then again – Nadia guessed that the girl had just had her date crashed, so she should probably cut her some slack.
“Nadia, your accent.” The Lila girl tilted her head to one side like a curious bird. “It’s cute. Is it Welsh or something?”
Holly guffawed with laughter. Nadia dipped her head slightly, hoping that her wine glass would conceal her own bad-mannered smirk. “Not quite!” she managed, after a moment.
“That’s a new one!” Holly laughed. “Usually she gets French. Or Polish.”
“I come from a city called Perm,” Nadia explained. Holly snorted again; the name of Nadia's hometown was always a point of great amusement for her. Lila continued to look blank. Nadia sighed. “Russian,” she clarified. “I’m Russian.”
The guy, Alex, came to an immediate pause, his beer held halfway to his mouth. “Russian?” he repeated, as if it was a nationality he’d never ever heard of. “Russian?”
Nadia and Holly exchanged a look. “Yup. Rrrrrussian.” Nadia drew her rolling R out in the standard Bond villain accent, rolling her eyes to match.
“She’s lived here like, her entire life, though,” Holly jumped in, immediately defensive. “She should be getting her British citizenship soon.”
“Citizenship?” Lila echoed.
“It’s not citizenship, not exactly. Not yet.” Nadia shot Holly a look; that girl had no filter and a tendency to massively exaggerate. “It’s technically called your ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’. You know, as in you can remain in the country.” She shrugged her shoulders depreciatively in a “you know how it is” gesture; not that any of them would know how it was.
Across the table, Alex placed his pint glass back squarely on the table; he hadn’t taken a drink from it.
Alex
A Russian girl, called Nadia, living around Clapham, with a slightly eccentric-seeming friend called Holly, midway through an application for her Indefinite Leave to Remain. This was – let’s be honest, more than likely – THE Nadezhda Osipova come to life in front of him, casually drinking red wine; for a city of several million people, London sure was a bitch for this type of thing.
As the girls steered the conversation towards what their team name should be called, Alex surreptitiously tilted his head to better remind himself of the name of the pub he was in by reading the header of the bar snack menu. The Bellevue. “If Nadia is removed from the country, you will be breaking up an epic pub quiz team. We win the Bellevue’s quiz almost every week and would have serious trouble finding a replacement with Nadia’s niche knowledge.” Hmm. For such an epic pub quizzer she sure had been palmed off by her team pretty bloody quickly!
As anticipated, his boss, Donnelly, had taken one look at Nadia’s immigration history and rejected her. If there was such a thing as a huge Home Office rubber stamp that stamped a big red ink DENIED onto paper applications, Alex was pretty sure he would have used that. But Nadia Osipova had somehow struggled on. Her application was reviewed as part of the quality control system by Donnelly’s own line manager. Although you wouldn’t know it from that woman’s