Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

Noah thought about it for a second, green eyes almost crossing with the effort. ‘Right, um, Natasha Kaplinsky, Jill Halfpenny, Darren Gough …’

Sam muttered something about how they shouldn’t treat Noah like a freakshow, but Noah wasn’t a freakshow. He was Wikipedia in human form. Google made flesh. Ask Jeeves but not a butler. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Clive came over to them with their answer sheet and made them promise on their collective mothers’ lives that they hadn’t sneaked a rogue mobile phone past him.

‘You got one hundred and seven out of a hundred,’ Clive admitted at last. ‘Had to give you some extra points for additional information supplied.’ He shook his head in disbelief then stared at Noah with a slightly bitter expression. ‘You should think about going on Mastermind. You’d clean up.’

‘Oh, I was just having a good night,’ Noah muttered.

Noah was very respectful of other people’s feelings. Not once had he made any of his teammates feel bad about their own general-knowledge shortcomings. Nina mentally scrolled through her list of exes to see if any of them would have behaved in a similar fashion. Not that a single one of them would have been able to correctly answer a question about political dissidents or cheeses of the world and if they had, they wouldn’t have been very gracious about it either.

And if they had single-handedly led their team to victory as Noah had, none of them would have ducked their heads and insisted that everyone had contributed as Clive announced Team Tote Bag as the winners, to stunned disbelief then a smattering of applause.

‘We couldn’t have done it without you,’ Nina told Noah, having to raise her voice over a commotion in the corner where The Battering RAMs were not taking the news of their defeat quietly. ‘Honestly, we usually manage second from last. This is all down to you.’

‘It is,’ Posy agreed fervently, waving the envelope with their winnings in it. ‘And now we’re rich! Rich beyond the dreams of avarice!’

They’d won the princely sum of ninety-eight pounds and seventy-six pence, some of which they immediately spent on more alcohol and cheesy chips. Nina liked to think they were good winners, calm and composed, unlike The Battering RAMs.

Big Trevor stormed over to demand a recount, then he pored over their quiz sheet to query each answer and finally demanded that Clive disqualify them for bringing in a ringer.

Clive was having none of it. ‘The quizmaster’s decision is final and abiding,’ he insisted and Nina could take it no more.