Although, obviously, I don’t listen to gossip. Nor imagine the pair of them brushing away his infidelity with twig brooms, every time I see them. (Believe me, if it was Dan’s infidelity, I’d want to do a lot more than brush it away with a twig broom. Thrash it with a mallet, maybe.)
‘What’s your specialist subject, Sylvie?’ demands Tilda as I sit down. ‘I’ve been boning up on capital cities.’
‘No!’ I say. ‘Capitals are my thing.’
‘Capital of Latvia,’ rejoins Tilda, passing me a glass of wine.
My mind jumps about with a little spark of optimism. Do I know this? Latvia. Latvia. Budapest? No, that’s Prague. I mean, Hungary.
‘OK, capital cities can be your thing,’ I allow generously. ‘I’ll focus on art history.’
‘Good. And Simon knows all about football.’
‘Last year we would have won if we’d played our joker on the football round,’ Olivia suddenly puts in. ‘But Simon insisted on using it too early.’ She regards Simon with stony eyes and I exchange glances with Tilda. Olivia is so not here for the fun of it.
‘Our team is called the Canville Conquerors,’ Tilda tells me. ‘Because of living on Canville Road.’
‘Very good.’ I take a gulp of wine and am about to regale Tilda with my day at the office, when Olivia leans forward.
‘Sylvie, look at these famous landmarks.’ She pushes a sheet of paper towards me. On it are about twenty grainy, photocopied photos. ‘Can you name any of them? This is the first round.’
I peer at the sheet with a frown. It’s so badly reproduced I can’t even see what anything is, let alone—
‘The Eiffel Tower!’ I say, suddenly spotting it.
‘Everyone’s got the Eiffel Tower,’ says Olivia impatiently, ‘Look, we’ve already written it in. Eiffel Tower. Can’t you get any others?’
‘Er …’ I peer vaguely at the sheet, passing over Stonehenge and Ayers Rock, which have also been written on. ‘Is that the Chrysler Building?’
‘No,’ snaps Olivia. ‘It just looks a bit like the Chrysler Building, but it isn’t actually it.’
‘OK,’ I say humbly.
I’m already feeling a bit hysterical. I don’t know anything and nor does Tilda and Olivia is looking more and more like a headmistress with pursed lips. Suddenly she sits bolt upright and nudges Simon. ‘Who are they?’
A team of guys in matching purple polo shirts walks in and sits down. Half of them have beards and most of them have glasses and all of them look fearsomely bright.
‘Shall we not do the quiz?’ I say to Tilda, only half joking. ‘Shall we just be spectators?’
‘Welcome, everyone, welcome!’ A middle-aged guy with a moustache mounts the tiny platform and speaks into the microphone. ‘I’m Dave and I’m your quizmaster tonight. I’ve never done this before, I’ve stepped in because Nigel’s ill, so go easy on me …’ He gives an awkward half-laugh, then clears his throat. ‘So, let’s play fair, let’s have some fun … please switch off your phones …’ He looks around severely. ‘No googling. No texting a friend. Verboten.’
‘Toby!’ Tilda gives him a nudge. ‘Off!’
Toby blinks at her and puts his phone away. He’s trimmed his hipster beard, I notice. Excellent. Now he just needs to get rid of his million grotty leather bracelets.
‘Hey, that’s Iguazú National Park,’ he says suddenly, pointing at one of the grainy pictures. ‘I’ve been there.’
‘Ssh!’ says Olivia, looking livid. ‘Be discreet! Don’t yell it out for the whole room to hear!’
At the next table, I hear someone saying, ‘Put “Iguazú National Park”,’ and Olivia practically explodes in rage.
‘You see?’ she says to Toby. ‘They heard! If you know an answer, write it down!’ She jabs furiously at the paper. ‘Write it!’
‘I’m getting some crisps,’ says Toby, without acknowledging Olivia at all. As he gets up, I shoot Tilda a collusive grin, but she doesn’t return it.
‘That boy,’ she says. She presses her hands against her cheeks, hard, then blows out. ‘What am I going to do with him? You won’t guess his latest. Never.’
‘What’s he done now?’
‘Empty pizza boxes. He’s been keeping them in the airing cupboard, can you believe? The airing cupboard! With our clean sheets!’ Tilda’s face is so pink and indignant, I want to laugh, but somehow I keep a straight face.
‘That’s not good,’ I say.
‘You’re right!’ she says hotly. ‘It’s not! I started to smell herbs every time I opened the airing cupboard. Like oregano. I thought: Well, it must be our new fabric conditioner. But today it started to smell rancid and quite vile, so I investigated further and what did I find?’
‘Pizza boxes?’ I venture.
‘Exactly! Pizza boxes.’ She fixes a reproachful gaze on Toby, who sits down and dumps three packets of crisps on the table. ‘He was disposing of them in the airing cupboard because he couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs.’
‘I was not disposing of them,’ Toby responds laconically. ‘Mum, I’ve explained this to you. It was a holding system. I was going to take them to recycling.’
‘No you weren’t!’
‘Of course I was.’ He gives her a rancorous glare. ‘I just hadn’t taken them yet.’
‘Well, even if it was a holding system, you can’t have a holding system for pizza boxes in an airing cupboard!’ Tilda’s voice pitches upwards in outrage. ‘An airing cupboard!’
‘So, on with the Space and Time round.’ Dave’s chirpy tones boom through the microphone. ‘And the first question is: Who was the third man on the moon? I repeat: Who was the third man on the moon.’
There’s a rustling and muttering throughout the room. ‘Anyone?’ says Olivia, looking round the table.
‘The third man on the moon?’ I pull a face at Tilda.
‘Not Neil Armstrong.’ Tilda counts briskly off on her fingers. ‘Not Buzz Aldrin.’
We all look at each other blankly. Around the room, I can hear about twenty people whispering to each other, ‘Not Neil Armstrong …’
‘We know it wasn’t them!’ snaps Olivia. ‘Who was it? Toby, you’re into maths and science. Do you know?’
‘The moon landings were faked, so the question’s invalid,’ says Toby without missing a beat, and Tilda emits an exasperated squeak.
‘They were not faked. Ignore him, Olivia.’
‘You can live in denial if you like.’ Toby shrugs. ‘Live in your bubble. Believe the lies.’
‘Why do you think they were faked?’ I ask curiously and Tilda shakes her head at me.
‘Don’t get him started,’ she says. ‘He’s got a conspiracy theory about everything. Lip balm, Paul McCartney …’
‘Lip balm?’ I stare at her.
‘Lip balm causes your lips to crack,’ says Toby dispassionately. ‘It’s addictive. It’s designed to make you buy more. You use lip balm, Sylvie? Big Pharma’s using you like a puppet.’ He shrugs again, and I gaze back, feeling a bit unnerved. I always have lip balm in my bag.
‘And Paul McCartney?’ I can’t help asking.
‘Died in 1966,’ Toby says succinctly. ‘Replaced by a lookalike. There are clues in Beatles songs everywhere if you know where to look for them.’
‘You see?’ Tilda appeals to me. ‘You see what I have to live with? Pizza boxes, conspiracy theories, everything in the house rewired …’
‘It wasn’t rewired,’ says Toby patiently, ‘it was rerouted.’
‘Question two!’ says Dave into the microphone. ‘Harrison Ford played Han Solo in Star Wars. But what character did he play in the 1985 film Witness?’