smart next to him. ‘Hello, Lottie, hello, Luke. So, are you feeling lucky?’
Luke cracked his knuckles. ‘Luck will have nothing to do with it, Arjun.’ Even though he hadn’t played the game before, Luke seemed irritatingly confident that he could win. Annoyingly, he probably would. He was horribly good at most things. My eyes narrowed as I stared at him, hoping the next time he ordered six Chicken McNuggets they only put in five.
‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ Howard said, already looking over our shoulders at the gathering people. ‘Christ, the whole place has come out for the evening.’
‘Lottie, you OK?’ Luke asked me. ‘You’re in one of your dazes again. Who are you wishing bad things on?’
I had the decency to flush. ‘No one. Let’s find our table.’
Arjun dived behind me as I went to move away.
‘Argh, wait, shield me,’ he whispered. ‘That’s Cindy. She always corners me to talk about politics in Asia and I haven’t the heart to tell her I was born in Lincoln. She treats me like the Voice of the Common Indian and I find myself discussing caste issues and making up facts about the economy.’
A woman nearby with a sharp grey bowl haircut was scouting the vicinity. Her eyes lit up as she clocked someone in the opposite direction.
‘I’d never even heard of the two main parties and I had to google them when I got home last time,’ Arjun was saying.
‘She’s moving away,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth.
‘Right,’ he whispered. ‘I’m making a run for it.’
Giggling, I watched Arjun slink away along the wall, just missing Grandad and Geoffrey, who appeared next to me.
Grandad nodded. ‘That Margaret is a gem. And Paula is . . . ’ He tailed away as if he’d forgotten what he was saying.
‘Paula is . . . ’ Luke prompted.
‘Well!’ Grandad clapped his hands together. ‘It should be a great evening. You two better find your table. I’m playing with Geoffrey tonight so we are bound to lose.’
‘Hey,’ Geoffrey said, ‘I heard that.’
‘Did you turn your hearing aid on?’ Grandad looked surprised.
Geoffrey folded his arms. ‘Do not divert things. I am good at whist,’ he said, bottom lip sticking out.
‘You’re satisfactory.’
‘Good.’
‘Fair.’
Geoffrey glowered and Luke clearly thought it was a good time to move on. Placing a gentle hand on my back he moved me through the clusters of people. Near the small stage at the other end of the hall Howard was perched chatting to a glamorous-looking woman in a silver grey dress.
One of the ladies was already sat at our table, iron grey hair pinned back with two hair clips just above her ears and a shy smile as we took our seats.
‘I’m Luke. You must be one of the opposition,’ he said, deliberately narrowing his eyes at her with a laugh. I felt immediately grateful for Luke and his ability to make strangers feel comfortable.
‘I am,’ the woman said. ‘Margaret.’ She pointed to the name on her chest before fiddling with a silver necklace at her throat.
‘I’m Lottie,’ I said, reaching across to shake her hand.
‘So, are you a bit of a whist expert?’ Luke asked, pulling out his chair.
‘Oh, no, I don’t know about that. I do enjoy it but there is so much luck involved in the cards, you see.’ Her voice was soft and she couldn’t quite maintain eye contact with either of us. She reminded me of a fragile bird that might fly away at the first fright.
‘Well, Lottie and I will no doubt be completely out of our dep—’
A loud voice interrupted him. ‘If you’re partnering each other, you need to sit opposite each other . . . although’ – a large woman with a cloud of hair-sprayed, dyed blonde hair looked down at Luke – ‘I don’t mind you partnering me.’ She lifted a thickly pencilled eyebrow at Luke.
I swallowed a laugh at Luke’s terrified expression. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
‘All right, Mags,’ the hair-sprayed woman continued, pulling out an e-cigarette from a shiny scarlet handbag.
‘Hi, Paula,’ the other woman whispered.
‘Soooo, you’re Luke and Lottie.’ Paula pulled out her chair. ‘Hadn’t heard of you. No wonder, you’re about eighty years too young for this place.’ She took a long suck on her e-cigarette, hot pink lipstick puckered round the end.
‘I’m Teddy’s granddaughter, Lottie,’ I said, unused to seeing Luke so completely lost for words.