‘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 kilometres 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 kilometres per second and eleven kilometres 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 centre of attention. Adrenaline buzzed through her veins and her knees began to judder. Across the table, only slightly patronisingly, 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 speciality.’
‘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 programmes.
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 didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. Then Jerry, peering at the programme 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 decor 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 aboutthe 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.
