Somewhere Only We Know (4 page)

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 fierce face and aggressively clacking high heels, she obviously had a heart, and had – like Alex – seen the potential that this particular claimant under Article 8, pointing her towards the Border Agency appeals procedure.

“Okay guys,” called the quiz master through a crackling microphone, “we’re going to make a start with Round One, General Knowledge. Question one…”

The three girls fell immediately silent, dipping their heads together close to the answer sheet, competitiveness kicking in. Alex tried to study Nadia, but her hair was loose and fell across her profile like a veil. There definitely was a touch of the exotic about her that had nothing to do with the slightly blurred accent. She was pale, but the sort of pale that would be classed as “pale and interesting”, rather than a pale that suggested nausea, with light-blue eyes and natural ash-blonde hair like a fairytale princess. Lila – whose blondeness required an expensive six-weekly maintenance programme – was no doubt massively jealous. Holly gave a jokey answer to question two and Nadia laughed, reaching to tuck the fall of hair behind her ear. How weird that she was a real person. It suddenly felt a little seedy that he knew so many intimate details about this complete stranger; Alex decided he wanted some more of his beer after all.

Nadia

The quiz master announced a twenty-minute break between rounds three and four, allowing people to pop to the toilets or – more commercially concerning – top up their drinks at the bar. Nadia scanned back over the answers they’d so far come up with and nodded to herself, pretty impressed. They weren’t doing too badly at all, she reckoned. Hopefully better than Caro and crew, anyway, and the geography round – Holly’s time to shine – was yet to come.

Lila had thawed towards them, if her trip to the bar to bring them another bottle of red wine was any indication anyway. Nadia thanked her profusely, ignoring the now-customary burn of annoyance that this sort of charity meant so much to her these days; she was sure that Lila was doing it because the conversation had wound round to the fact that couldn’t currently earn a wage and how tight everything had become as a result.

“I think it’s disgraceful,” Lila said, as she poured her two new friends liberally large glasses of wine. “I mean, it’s not like you’re here and you can’t speak a word of English. Or you’re fresh off the back of a lorry from Calais. Or you’re a benefit cheat. Or a health tourist come to take advantage of the NHS. I mean,” she looked Nadia up and down, “you are pretty much
English
.” She said it like it was the best compliment she could give; maybe it was. Lila turned to Alex who was rather quieter – and soberer – than she. “Can’t you do something about this?” she asked him.

Alex’s eyes flashed up, wary. “Me? What could I do?”

“Well, I don’t know, you could speak to the Home Secretary, or something,” Lila wheedled.

Alex laughed. “Lils, you have a very high opinion of me and my job if you think I’m desk buddies with the Home Secretary.”

“But you work for the Home Office, don’t you?” Lila insisted. Holly immediately sat up and surveyed Alex with interest. Nadia cringed. Typical! She’d been sitting here bad-mouthing her lot under the British Government in front of one of its civil servants. Fantastic.

“You work for the Home Office?” Holly asked Alex. “Wow! So, come on, spill! What’s the inside track with this Indefinite Leave to Remain stuff, then? What does she have to do?”

Alex visibly squirmed. “I – I don’t really know anything about immigration. I’m just an administrator.”

“Holly, leave him alone,” Nadia scolded. “The guy came to play a quiz, not be interrogated by randomers.” She shot Alex an apologetic smile.

“Two minutes ‘til round four, guys,” called the quiz master.

“Come on, guys, let’s kill it,” cheered Holly, suitably distracted. “We can do it!”

“Yeah!” Lila agreed. “That first prize money has our name on it.”

“It’s only twenty-five quid each,” Alex pointed out, with a smile. “I wouldn’t put in your yacht order just yet.”

“Well, to me,” Nadia said quietly, “that £25 is a couple of days’ worth of food money I don’t have to scrounge from Holly or my parents.” She laughed awkwardly to defuse the pity her words had stirred. Alex turned to look at her, softly sympathetic.

“I am so, so sorry guys,” the tall stranger blustered as he rushed up to the table. Nadia and Holly watched, bemused, as he dipped his head to meet the lips that Lila had offered up to him. Nadia looked at Alex, confused; he was already looking back at her, amusement on his face, obviously well aware that she had thought he and Lila were a couple. The new guy cast around himself for a spare chair, but the pub was still absolutely packed. Seeing his predicament, Lila hopped up, exchanging her own chair for his knees.

Alex leaned forwards. “Nadia, Holly, this is Rory,” he introduced, courteously.

“He got caught up at work,” Lila clarified from his lap.

“Hey, I was only a few hours late!” Rory defended himself amiably. “But I see you’ve replaced me.” He shot Alex a wide grin.

“Round four, question one,” the quiz master called, before Alex could respond to the tease.

Alex

Maybe it was the addition of Rory’s cache of general knowledge. Maybe everyone pushed the boat out a tiny bit more in order to get Nadia her food money. Or maybe they were always on track to win. Either way, win they did, and Rory – all flourishing generosity – declined his fifth of the pot and ordered another round to boot. Holly and Nadia might have been keen to get back to their mates now the necessity of the quiz was over, but the fresh bottle of red kept them anchored where they were, even though Rory immediately started boring them to death after they’d politely asked what it was that he did that had kept him in the office so late on a Friday night.

“But the Home Office,” Nadia said, turning to smile at Alex, leaving Holly to fend for herself in the tedious conversation with Rory and Lila about the dizzying pressures of trainee law. “That must be exciting?”

Alex smiled back. “More exciting than law, anyway,” he threw over his shoulder loudly at Rory, who ignored him. “What did you do, before…?” He trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence; “
before the organisation I work for took away your livelihood and began aggressively vetting you like you’re some sort of terrorist threat?”

Nadia sighed. “Oh God! I’ve been jumping from work visa to student visa and back to work visa for so long, my CV is a total headache. I feel like I really have done it all. From working at an accountancy firm to working in a chippie…”

“A chippie? Did you just try for a really British-sounding job to look good on your application?” Alex teased.

“No, that would be the time I worked at the box office in the Royal Albert Hall,” Nadia laughed. “And anyway, now I volunteer in the Clapham Oxfam.” She shrugged. “I don’t get paid, but at least I don’t come home smelling like vinegar. Mothballs instead.”

“There's always a silver lining, huh?”

“I like to think so.” The pair smiled at one another again. And Alex felt the thought as it arrived – this was the right moment to let Nadia know that he’d been a part of her application process.

“You know, it’s really weird, but…"

“Hey, we’re moving on,” interrupted a dark-haired someone, placing her palms on the table between them, angling her body towards Nadia and Holly and ignoring Alex; she already had her handbag on her shoulder, ready to go.