Page 23 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

‘Don’t be daft. Who cares about the quiz? I’ve heard the mojitos here are amazing.’

‘Go on, then. I’ll have a mojito.’

Jo sat in a corner and played on the WordPals app whilst Kate fought her way through to the bar. She returned a few minutes later with four mojitos.

‘Saves queuing later,’ she said, placing them down on the table.

Jo had intended to have only one drink but had to admit that Kate was right about how good the mojitos were. They were also strong and her head was already spinning a little by the time the host for the evening tapped the mic with his finger, and then began to speak.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Can everyone hear me all right?’

A few people shouted, ‘Yeah,’ and he continued. ‘Are we all excited for the speed-dating?’

This time no-one replied, but he carried on regardless. ‘There are sixteen women and sixteen men.’

Sixteen first dates, Jo thought. Great.

‘Now, I’ve forgotten the name badges this evening, so you’ll have to do that old-fashioned thing of introducing yourselves. There’ll be eight rounds of quiz questions: two general knowledge, a current affairs round, music, history, sports, food, and arts and culture.’

He explained how the evening would work: one pair of men would join Jo and Kate’s team for the first round, and then they’d move on to the next table for the second round, and two more men would join them. And so on.

‘It’s a bit of a lottery,’ Jo said to Kate, surveying the blank answer sheet. ‘If we happen to get men who have Sky Sports for the sports round and men who listen to the Today programme for current affairs, we’ve got a good chance. But knowing our luck, we’ll get the Today programme listeners for the sports round and the Sky Sports guys for the current affairs.’

‘And that matters because…?’

‘We won’t win the quiz.’

Kate gave Jo a withering look. ‘It’s about the men, not the quiz. The quiz is an ice breaker. Whilst we’re discussing what the answers might be, we suss the guys out and decide if we like them.’ She waved a piece of paper. ‘This is the important thing that we’re filling in tonight.’

Alongside the blank sheet for their quiz answers, they each had a second sheet numbered one to sixteen with a tick box alongside each number. If Jo ticked ‘yes’ to a man, and he ticked ‘yes’ to her, the speed-dating company would email them each other’s contact details, so they could arrange to meet up again. If either – or both – of them didn’t tick the vital box: no exchange of details.

Jo and Kate had been among the first to arrive so were numbers three and four. Men numbers three and four would join them for the first general knowledge round; they wouldn’t meet numbers one and two until the end of the evening.

A bell sounded and the men began to head for their first tables.

Two tall guys, both balding, both wearing jeans and rugby shirts, sat down opposite them. Kate smiled coyly. Jo was about to ask their names but the quiz began.

‘Zn is the symbol of which chemical element?’

Jo had the pen and the answer sheet, but as soon as the question had ended, Number Three grabbed them from her and scribbled down the answer. Neither Jo nor Kate got the chance to say who’d co-written Gavin and Stacey with Ruth Jones, what a Geiger counter measured or which type of wood a cricket bat was made from. Not that Jo knew that last one anyway, and she felt pretty certain that Kate wouldn’t either.

‘So much for the questions being an ice breaker,’ she whispered to Kate, looking over at Number Three, who was zealously guarding the answer sheet.

‘What is a zax?’ said the host.

Jo leaned over and peered at the answer sheet. Number Three had written ‘musical instrument’.

‘He said zax not sax,’ she said, pulling the answer sheet back across the table. She held her hand out for the pen. For a second, it looked as though he wasn’t going to relinquish it, but then the bell rang and he couldn’t get to the next table fast enough.

They each put two crosses on their ‘men’ sheets, next to Numbers Three and Four. Number Four might have been a lovely guy but they hadn’t had the chance to find out.

Jo crossed out musical instrument and wrote tool for cutting slate tiles. She’d looked it up once; it was a useful little word in Scrabble if you happened to have both the Z and the X, and would score a respectable 19 points, though she’d never actually played it. Or seen anyone else play it, come to that.

It was sport next – Jo’s weakest subject by far.

As Kate and Number Five answered questions about who’d won which medal in the last Olympics, Jo made polite small talk with Number Six about what they thought of the evening so far. They quickly reached a consensus: not much.

As the host read out the last question of the round, Jo wondered whether she should tick his box. He was a little pasty-looking, but perhaps he’d look better in daylight, and he seemed like a pleasant enough guy.