Evie lets herself be taken by the arm to the far corner of the hotel lobby. The snug – basically a room cosier than the lobby and smaller than the restaurant – is festiveness personified with a roaring log fire, low-beamed ceilings, and chairs upholstered in worn corduroy and velvet, strewn with throws and pillows. There’s about twenty people huddled off into groups of two or three, pieces of paper between them and Jerry, a fifty-something lighting guy with a ponytail and a microphone, evidently leading the proceedings.

‘Oh, great!’ he exclaims as he clocks their arrival. ‘We’re literally about to start. Evie, can you team up with Billy No Mates there? Katerina, you’re with Daphne she says.’

‘Daphne has good taste in pub quiz partners,’ Katerina quips, breaking away from Evie and crossing the room to a small three-legged table with two wooden chairs, one of which is occupied by a smiling Daphne holding a pen. Evie looks around to see who Billy No Mates is and comes face to face with Duke and the empty chair beside him. She looks to Jerry, who is occupied by flicking through what seems to be a rather extensive collection of questions and answers, and when he finally does look up, he simply gestures again in Duke’s direction – who, for his part, has figured out what’s going on and seems, to Evie’s eye, to be rather panicked about it too.

‘Right, there are several rounds to this: general knowledge, movies, history, science – but no sports or music since the cultural divide between the UK and US reference points means I’ll only be accused of rigging it one way or the other,’ Jerry begins. ‘Ready?’

Evie looks around nervously and makes her way over to Duke. If she walks out now it will feel like he’s won, somehow, like she can’t hack it. And she can. She can take him on. She will not lessen herself for him.

‘I’m very competitive,’ Duke says, by way of greeting.

Evie slips onto the low couch beside him, close enough that her knee knocks his as she settles in to see the scoresheet, telling him: ‘Me too. So … don’t mess this up, okay?’

He sets his mouth in a firm line. The quiz begins.

The pair storm through the general knowledge round, surprisingly passing off answers in quick succession.

‘What is the world’s largest land mammal?’ asks Jerry down the mic.

Duke shrugs and says to Evie simply, ‘Elephant.’ He isn’t conferring with her, he’s saying it to confirm it with himself, but it sounds about right so she doesn’t stop him from scribbling it down. Jerry moves on to the next question.

‘Nostradamus was famous for making what?’ he asks the room.

Evie doesn’t know the answer to this one. Duke looks at her and she shrugs.