An Offer You Can't Refuse

by Jill Mansell

  ‘I’m Tony, history and politics,’ the tall man announced. Gesturing towards the others he said, ‘Alice is biology and Greek mythology. Jerry’s Egyptology and maths. And this is Bob, whose specialty is—’

  ‘Trying to swim the Channel with his arms and legs tied up?’ Lola couldn’t help herself; when she was nervous, stupid stuff just came out of her mouth.

  Tumbleweed rolled past. Quite deservedly, no one laughed. Tony cleared his throat and said, ‘No, Bob’s specialty is classical music.’

  ‘And cricket,’ said Bob.

  ‘Great,’ said Lola.

  ‘How about you?’

  Crikey, how about me?

  ‘Um… well, literature.’

  ‘And?’ Tony eyed her beadily; it appeared everyone was required to be an expert in two subjects.

  ‘And… er, sumo wrestling.’ That would be safe surely?

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’ As he rubbed his hands together they made a rasping, sandpapery sound. ‘So which should we be hoping for this evening, hmm? Kachikoshi? Or makekoshi?’

  Bugger. And his lip was curling again. He knew.

  ‘OK,’ said Lola, ‘I was lying. I don’t know anything about sumo. I only have one specialist subject and I’m sorry if that’s not enough, but I’m only here as a last-minute replacement. It’s either me or an empty chair.’

  ***

  ‘Don’t worry about Tony, he’s a pompous twit.’

  ‘Is he? I mean, I know he is.’ To Lola’s relief, not everyone in the group was unfriendly. With the quiz due to start in five minutes, she beamed at the girl redoing her make-up in the ornate gilt mirror in the cloakroom. ‘I just didn’t realize people would be taking it so seriously.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. God, this skirt’s killing me.’ The girl, whose name was Elly, straightened up and gave her stomach a disgruntled prod. ‘I’ve put on almost a stone over Christmas, nothing fits any more. I’m going to have to join a gym before I turn into a complete hippo.’

  ‘I hate gyms.’ Lola pulled a face.

  ‘I thought of giving Doug’s a go. He says it’s all right.’ Disconsolately tugging down her corrugated skirt, Elly said, ‘But they’ll still make you suffer, won’t they? What I really need’s a magic wand.’

  Lola carefully untwiddled a strand of hair from around one of her silver earrings. ‘Is that Holmes Place?’

  Yhooooosh, Elly sprayed Elnett Ultrahold wildly around her head like a cowboy twirling a lasso. ‘No, Merton’s in Kensington—ow, sod it!’

  She’d sprayed Elnett right in her eye. ‘Here,’ Lola passed her a clean tissue; the thought of Dougie working up a sweat on a rowing machine was enough to send any girl’s aim wonky.

  ‘Thanks. And just ignore Tony.’ Elly’s smile was encouraging. ‘We’ll still have fun; you don’t have to try and impress him.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Lola didn’t tell her that the person she really wanted to impress was Doug.

  ***

  Their table was doing well in the first round; everyone was getting their chance to shine. Rivalry between the thirty or so teams in the banqueting hall was intense. Having answered a fiendish question about the last rugby World Cup, Doug (specialist subjects sport and economics) was so elated he actually grinned across the table at Lola before realizing what he was doing and abruptly reaching for his drink instead. But the moment was already imprinted in Lola’s mind; for a split second there, it had been just like old times. Fresh hope surged inside her; please please let him be weakening, let him realize that the attraction was still there. From what she could tell, this thing with Isabel was pretty shallow, hardly the romance of the century. Isabel might be beautiful but her personality wasn’t exactly dazzling; in fact she was like an irritatingly chirpy child, tugging Doug’s arm for attention, giggling, and endlessly whispering in his ear. Basically she was nothing but an airhead…

  ‘And now,’ boomed the question master, calling the noisy room to attention, ‘the penultimate question in Round One. Pay close attention, ladies and gentlemen, because every point counts.’ He paused for effect. ‘And this question is in two parts. The first part is this. What is the speed of light?’

  Lola’s spirits sank; she was desperate to show Doug she wasn’t a deadweight, that she could be a useful member of the team, but how was anyone supposed to know—

  ‘Three hundred thousand kilometers per second,’ Isabel whispered.

  What?

  What?

  ‘Good girl.’ Tony wrote down the answer without blinking.

  ‘And now for the second part,’ the question master announced. ‘In order for any object to escape the earth’s gravitational pull, it must be flying at or above the earth’s escape velocity. The question is, what is that velocity?’

  Everyone at the table turned their gaze on Isabel. No, Lola wanted to yell, no, you can’t know the answer to that, you just can’t…

  With a self-deprecating smile Isabel murmured, ‘Eleven kilometers per second.’

  Smirking, Tony scribbled down the answer on their table’s card.

  ‘OK, time’s up, please raise your cards.’

  All across the room, cards were lifted and checked. The question master announced, ‘The answers are three hundred thousand kilometers per second and eleven kilometers per second.’

  A great cheer went up around their table. Isabel took a sip of iced water and continued to look modest. ‘And Table Sixteen, the Sitting Tennants, were the only ones to get both parts of that question right. Well done, you Sitting Tennants!’

  Lola, leaning over to Elly on her left, said incredulously, ‘How did she know that?’

  Elly said, ‘Who, Isabel? Oh, she’s mad about stuff like that. She went along to evening classes last year, just for fun. Got an A in A-level physics.’

  Lola’s stomach clenched as she observed Isabel, with her dinky little nose and perfect smile. Geeky boffins were supposed to look like geeky boffins, not swan around like Grace Kelly in slinky sea-green silk with strappy Gucci sandals on their feet.

  ‘And now, the final question of the first round.’ Up on the dais, the question master tapped a knife against his glass to regain everyone’s attention. ‘Ready? This is one for all you book lovers out there.’

  Lola’s heart promptly broke into a gallop. Now she was the center of attention. Adrenaline buzzed through her veins and her knees began to judder. Across the table, only slightly patronizingly, Isabel said, ‘Come on, Lola, you can do it!’

  ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, your question is this.’ As the question master paused for further dramatic effect, Lola concentrated on looking serious, focused, and super-intelligent. ‘What word appears one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five times in the Bible?’

  Oh, for bloody crying out loud.

  ‘Lola?’ demanded Tony when she shook her head and sat back. ‘Come along now, what is it?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know the answer to that?’

  He looked at her as if she were an imbecile. ‘Because it’s a literature question and books are your specialty.’

  ‘It’s the Bible!’ Stung by the unfairness of it all, Lola cried, ‘Even if I had read the Bible, I promise you I wouldn’t have counted how many times each word appeared!’

  ‘Quick!’ shouted Jerry.

  ‘Um, OK… “and.”’ Lola blurted the word out in a panic, aware that across the table Isabel was writing something on the back of one of the programs.

  AND, Tony scrawled on the answer card.

  ‘Time’s up,’ called the question master. ‘Raise your cards please. Ah, I see lots of you got it right this time. Well done, all of you who knew that the correct answer is Lord.’

  ‘Oh, bad luck, Lola.’ Isabel smiled sympathetically.

  The others d
idn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. Then Jerry, peering at the program by Isabel’s elbow, exclaimed, ‘You wrote it down! You knew Lord was the right answer.’

  ‘Shh, it doesn’t matter. Questions about books are Lola’s field of expertise. I didn’t want her to feel I was muscling in.’

  Intrigued, Sally said, ‘But how did you know it was Lord?’

  ‘Same way as everyone else who got it right, I expect.’ Isabel dimpled prettily—dammit, she even had dimples. ‘It’s a Trivial Pursuit question. Once you’ve been asked it, it’s not the kind of answer you forget.’

  Chapter 30

  The four-course meal, each course served between rounds of questions, was sublime. The glittering ballroom with its mirrored walls, opulent décor and hundreds of tethered gold and white helium balloons was beautiful in every way. By concentrating on the good parts and reminding herself that she never had to see the ultra-competitive contingent again, Lola chatted to Elly and Sally and began to enjoy the evening. It was, after all, a far cry from warm beer and burst eardrums at the White Hart.

  By the beginning of the fifth and final round they were joint leaders along with the Deadly Dunns, a team from another management consultancy. The rivalry was intense now; there might be laughter on the surface but, deep down, reputations were at stake.

  Sally got them off to a flying start by knowing the whereabouts in the body of the islets of Langerhans, which Lola privately felt should be found not in the pancreas but somewhere off the west coast of Scotland in the vicinity of Barra, Eriskay, and Skye.

  The questions continued and their table’s points continued to mount up. Bob knew something ridiculously obscure about the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and earned himself a round of applause. Jerry the Egyptologist preened, having correctly answered a question about the identity of the tekenu. Elly dithered a bit but finally guessed correctly that David Hockney had attended Bradford Grammar.

  Lola began to wonder if she was actually the least intelligent person in the entire room. Even people who didn’t look remotely clever were getting things right whilst she was still struggling to break her duck.

  Isabel let out a shriek of delight and smothered Doug in kisses when he correctly answered that David Campese was the player who’d scored the most tries in test rugby.

  Lola helped herself to more wine. One booky-type question, that was all she asked, a question that nobody else knew the answer to. And when she answered it correctly, everyone would break into wild applause and Dougie would give her one of his heart-melting smiles…

  Finally it was the penultimate question of the quiz. Doug’s table and the Deadly Dunns were still neck and neck. It’s only a game, Lola told herself, it’s only a game. But she felt sick anyway; it felt more important than that.

  ‘Right, here we go,’ said the question master. ‘James Loveless, George Loveless, John Standfield, Thomas Standfield, James Brine, and James Hammett are the names of…?’

  Lola, busy knocking back wine, froze in mid-glug. She knew who they were. Bloody hell, she actually knew an answer!

  Everyone else looked blank. Sally whispered, ‘Is it the Arctic Monkeys?’

  ‘Soldiers who won the VC?’ guessed Bob.

  History was Tony’s specialist subject. He was shaking his head, gazing in turn at the others in search of enlightenment.

  ‘Are they footballers?’ hazarded Jerry the Egyptologist.

  Tony looked at Isabel, then at Doug, before glancing briefly in Lola’s direction. Hastily swallowing her mouthful of wine and keen not to let anyone at nearby tables overhear, she mouthed the answer at him.

  Tony frowned and mouthed back, ‘What?’

  Tingling with excitement, Lola mouthed the words again, more slowly this time. ‘The Tolpuddle martyrs.’

  Tony turned away as if he hadn’t seen her. Reaching for the answer card he scrawled a few words and, leaning across to Isabel, whispered in her ear.

  Lola watched open-mouthed as she cried, ‘Oh Tony, you’re brilliant.’

  ‘Everyone raise your cards,’ called the question master. ‘And the correct answer… is… the Tolpuddle martyrs!’

  ‘Yayyyy!’ Everyone else on the table let out a huge cheer. Bob and Jerry clapped Tony on the back and Lola waited for him to announce that, in fact, she, Lola, was the one who’d known the answer.

  But he didn’t. He just sat there looking smug and lapping up all the congratulations. Lola gazed around wildly; had none of them seen what had happened? Not even Doug?

  ‘Damn, the Deadly Dunns got it too,’ said Doug. ‘We’re still level. It’s right down to the wire.’

  Bloody Tony, what a cheater! Lola was so busy being outraged and glaring at him that she barely listened to the final question.

  ‘… famous writer died in eighteen eighty. Her nom de plume was George Eliot. But what was her real name?’

  This was it. Lola sat up as if she’d been electrocuted. Ha, and it was a trick question! Everyone else was going to think the answer was Mary Ann Evans. More importantly, the Deadly Dunns were going to think that. But the clue was in the way the question had been phrased, and seven months before her death at the age of sixty-one, Mary Ann Evans had married a toyboy by the name of John Cross. So the question being asked was, in fact, what was her real name when she died…

  ‘Well?’ said Bob. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘Of course I know it.’ Lola signaled for the answer card and a pen. With a flourish she wrote Mary Ann Cross. Oh yes, was that a flicker of respect in Doug’s eye? About time too! She was about to win his team the competition!

  ‘Raise your cards, ladies and gentlemen.’

  Trembling with excitement, Lola held it above her head.

  ‘Hmm.’ Doug was looking at the other raised cards.

  Oh Dougie, have faith in me, would I let you down?

  ‘And the correct… answer… is…’ the question master strung it out X Factor style, ‘… Mary… Ann… Evans!’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ groaned Bob.

  ‘No,’ Lola heard herself blurt the word out, shock prickling at the base of her skull. Shaking her head in disbelief, she said, ‘That’s wrong!’

  Jerry’s tone was bitter. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘YEEEAAAHHH!’ Realizing they’d won the competition, the Deadly Dunns were cheering their heads off.

  ‘But I’m not wrong. Mary Ann Evans married a man called John Cross… she did…’ The words died in Lola’s throat as she realized it no longer mattered; the game was over and she’d lost it—irony of ironies—by trying to be too clever.

  Bam, went the cork as it flew out of the Deadly Dunns’ triumphantly shaken bottle of champagne. Everyone else in the room was applauding them. They rose to their feet and bowed, before breaking into a boisterous chorus of ‘We Are the Champions.’

  Bob shook his head in disgust.

  Tony said, ‘Shit, they’re never going to let us forget this.’

  Lola was bursting for the loo. If she left the table now, they’d all talk about how rubbish she was. Oh well, who cared? If she didn’t leave the table now she’d really give them something to talk about.

  The ladies’ loo was blessedly cool, a calm ivory marble haven from the babbling crowds in the ballroom. Having touched up her make-up and enjoyed five minutes of peace and quiet, Lola was just putting away her lipstick when the door swung open and Doug said, ‘There you are.’ His miss-nothing gaze checked out her face. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ As one of the loos was flushed behind her, Lola said, ‘You aren’t allowed in here.’

  ‘Come outside then.’ He held the door open and ushered her past him. In the corridor he said, ‘I thought you might have been upset.’

  ‘You mean crying?’ Lola was glad the whites of her eyes were still clear and white. ‘I woul
dn’t give your friends the satisfaction. And I’m not upset, I’m just sorry I let you down.’

  Doug shook his head. ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter. It was only meant to be a bit of fun. I had no idea Tony was going to take the whole thing so seriously. They’re not my friends either,’ he added. ‘Tony works for me. Jerry and Bob are friends of his. Tony was the one who persuaded me that coming here tonight would be good PR. He can be a bit of an arse. Well, quite a lot of an arse. Tony takes his quizzes very seriously.’

  ‘He’s a cheating arse,’ said Lola; it was no good, she couldn’t not tell him. ‘I gave him the Tolpuddle martyrs answer. I did,’ she insisted when Doug look amused. ‘That was me! He just couldn’t bear to admit it.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’m glad you’re all right. And I’m sorry about Tony.’

  Touched by his concern—that had to be an encouraging sign, surely—Lola smiled and said, ‘Thanks. Not your fault.’

  Doug hesitated. ‘I was going to ask you, how’s it going with your father?’

  Yay, another encouraging sign! ‘Pretty good. I’m trying to fix him up with my mum but she’s digging her heels in. I won’t give up though. When you know two people would be perfect together, if one of them could just forgive the other for some silly mistake they made years ago, you have to persevere. Otherwise it would just be a terrible waste,’ Lola said innocently. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Dougie gave her that look she knew so well. ‘Maybe your mother really isn’t interested.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the thing. Deep down, I think she still is.’ Lola gazed at him, longing to touch his face. ‘Remember that weekend we went to Brighton and you took loads of photos of me on the beach?’

  Doug paused, clearly wondering if there was any point in trying to say no. He shrugged. ‘Vaguely.’

  Vaguely, right. Which meant he was definitely lying. He’d been eighteen, she’d been seventeen and they’d made love at midnight on a lilo on the beach. How could any red-blooded male fail to remember a weekend like that?