Ride the Wave Read online

  Natalie faked a laugh.

  The quizmaster slapped her hands together. ‘Right! First off, I’m gonna flip a coin for the chance to pick the category.’ She tossed a fifty pence piece, and Eden said, ‘Tails’ and Natalie said, ‘Heads.’ The coin came down heads. ‘OK, Natalie, pick a category.’ The woman checked her notes. ‘So we can either go with food and drink or movie quotes-’

  ‘Movie quotes!’ Natalie cried out. Eden gave her a small nod, happy. Natalie smiled back, but she was thinking that if Eden thought this category was going to be an easy win, Natalie was going to do her best to show her she could hold her own.

  ‘Right, Natalie, here’s the first quote. “My Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.”

  Natalie was disappointed by how stupidly easy that question was. ‘Forrest Gump,’ she said.

  ‘Point to Natalie.’

  Her team whooped excitedly. Natalie thought they were being a bit too supportive considering anyone could have answered that, even Florence, probably.

  ‘Eden?’ the quizmaster said, turning to her. Eden smiled, ready. A few appreciated whistles went up from the crowd, Natalie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘Here’s your quote. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

  ‘Dirty Dancing,’ Eden said with a bored sigh.

  ‘Correct!

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Natalie muttered under her breath. Or it was meant to be, only Natalie had a mic in her hand. The whole room heard her, including the quizmaster. The woman raised an eyebrow at Natalie. Natalie couldn’t meet her eyes, looking instead at Eden. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.

  ‘Apparently, Natalie considers these a bit easy,’ the quizmaster said with an angry smile. ‘So why don’t we raise the game a bit?’

  Shit.

  ‘OK, second quote. “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,” the quizmaster said with an evil glint in her eye.

  But Natalie only smiled and said, ‘All About Eve.’

  The quizmaster’s grin slipped. ‘That’s correct.’ She turned to Eden. ‘Eden, who said this? “There’s no place like home.”

  So that’s how it was. Only Natalie’s questions were being upped, not Eden’s.

  Eden frowned. ‘Well, that’s obviously Wizard of Oz.’

  The quizmaster shouted, ‘Correct. Right, Natalie, identify this quote. “There’s no crying in baseball.’

  ‘A League of Their Own,’ Natalie said casually, pissing the quizmaster off again as she gave her the point. This was getting silly now. Sure, her questions were getting slightly harder, but this woman couldn’t challenge her because she didn’t know enough to pick something genuinely obscure.

  It was Eden’s turn again. “You Talking to Me?”

  Eden looked pissed off. ‘OK, firstly, that’s Taxi Driver, and secondly, can you please make my questions a bit harder too? If Natalie gets a proper challenge, I’d like one as well if you don’t mind.’

  Natalie couldn’t believe it. Eden clearly didn’t like being one-upped and was trying to make her own life harder. How silly. She could win in a couple of questions if she played her cards right.

  The entire room did an irritating, ‘Oooooohhhh,’ noise in reaction to the controversy, and the quizmaster’s cheeks pinkened. ‘Oh, we’ve got a couple of experts up on the stage, have we?’ she said with a poor attempt at nonchalance. ‘Right, we’re changing the game a bit.’ The quizmaster leaned down into a box at her side and took out two bicycle bells, handing them to Natalie and Eden. ‘It’s going to be a lightning round. I’ll give you both a quote and the first to ding their bell gets to answer. First right answer wins.’ She began to pour over her quiz sheets. ‘Gonna give you something really hard now.’

  ‘You don’t expect to hear that on a lesbian cruise ship,’ Natalie said, and the room laughed, no one more than Eden. Natalie tried not to care about that. The quizmaster tossed a dry look at the room and went back to work. After a moment, she looked up, satisfied. ‘Ready? Here we go. “I could have been a contender. I could have been some-’

  Natalie slammed her hand down on her bell. But so did Eden at the exact same moment. Neither waited for a ruling. ‘On the Waterfront!’ they both yelled. Natalie realised she’d underestimated Eden. She did her know her movies after all, and not just the basic stuff.

  The quizmaster looked between them. ‘OK, another one. “I am big. It was the pictures that got small.”

  Ding! Two bells went again in perfect unison, and two voices cried together, ‘Sunset Boulevard!’ Eden laughed, and Natalie was unable to not join her. But she was starting to feel like she really wanted to win now.

  The quizmaster shuffled her papers furiously. ‘How about this? “I want to be alone.’

  Two dings, two voices. ‘GRAND HOTEL,’ they both screamed.

  ‘For fuck’s sakes!’ the quizmaster muttered, shuffling again. ‘Can you see my pages?’ she asked.

  Eden snickered. But Natalie wasn’t laughing now. She’d thought this was something she could beat Eden at, finally. Damned if she wouldn’t.

  “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” the quizmaster said, visibly sweating.

  Natalie knew the quote, of course. And she fully expected that Eden would bang her bell again at the same time Natalie did. But as Natalie’s hand came down on her bike bell, she saw Eden go to press hers. And slip. She dropped the bell with a clang onto the stage as Natalie’s ding sounded out clear. ‘Goodfellas!’ she said, her voice alone. Eden was scrabbling for the bell, but it was too late. It was over.

  ‘We have a winner,’ the quizmaster said, worn-out and angry.

  Max, Angelique, Caz, Saz, and even Florence jumped to their feet and screamed with delirium. The quizmaster leant down to her box and grabbed a bottle of champagne and an envelope. ‘Free passes for the spa, two free treatments each,’ she said, shoving the stuff at Natalie resentfully. Natalie took that as her cue to get the hell off the stage. She stepped down, joined by Eden. ‘Well played,’ Natalie was compelled to say. She didn’t know how Eden was going to take this beating. But Eden was smiling, genuinely. ‘You too. Well done.’ And she walked off gracefully to join her table, where many back claps of consolation were given.

  Back at Natalie’s table, the vibe was triumphant. Everyone grabbed their spa vouchers. ‘I’m getting literally everything waxed,’ Caz said joyfully as Saz popped the cork.

  Angelique raised an eyebrow. ‘That might not be as fun as you think.’

  Everyone poured a glass of champers, and Natalie took a glug. Over at Eden’s table, they were all laughing and joking, Eden included. Eden might have lost, but she’d done it so graciously that somehow, Natalie still felt like a loser.

  Ten

  The quizmaster had just asked for a sacrifice on the altar of general knowledge.

  ‘Eden, you should go,’ Steph declared immediately.

  ‘Don’t you think it should be Maggie?’ Eden argued.

  ‘No fucking chance’ Maggie said. ‘I’ll crack under the pressure.’

  ‘She definitely will,’ Isabella snarked. Maggie’s lips tightened, but she didn’t react other than that.

  ‘OK, Mary, Beatrice, how about you?’ Eden implored.

  ‘Oh, no thanks,’ Mary chuckled. ‘I’ve only got two expert topics, the bible and nineties pop. And so far, I’ve never been to a quiz where anyone had a question on Revelations, so that limits me even further.’

  Beatrice nodded. ‘She’s right. It seems like maybe you’ve got a broader general knowledge than anyone else.’

  Eden wasn’t at all sure if that was true, but she could see that she wasn’t getting out of this. ‘Alright, I’ll do it.’

  Up on the stage, she wasn’t surprised to find herself eyeball to eyeball with Natalie. The woman was a smart cookie, her team had demonstrated good judgement in sending her up. Eden prepared herself to get a mullering.

  Until the category was chosen. Movie quotes? Maybe t
he game wasn’t over after all… Eden began to relish the challenge. Until they were given rubbish softball questions, stuff anyone could get. If they went on like this, this round was going to go on ad infinitum.

  Then Natalie went and pissed off the quizmaster, and Eden watched as she tried to stump Natalie while taking it easy on Eden. Eden didn’t like that on two counts. Firstly, and obviously, it wasn’t fair. Secondly, why should Natalie get to have all the fun? She was naming quotes left and right, the kind of stuff everyone might recognise but not necessarily know the origin of. Natalie knew her shit. Eden found herself wanting Natalie to know that she did too.

  Then that last question. Eden was hanging on by her fingernails anyway, so when she dropped the bell, she felt a bit of a klutz but ultimately, she was just happy to have held her own. After all, she was never really going to beat Natalie, was she?

  Back at the table, people were very kind about her loss. Beatrice was slightly less generous. ‘You nearly had her!’ she said, half compliment, half reprimand.

  ‘What can I say?’ Eden apologised. ‘The better woman won.’

  ‘But that might have been you if hadn’t dropped that bell!’ Beatrice said with deep regret.

  ‘Well, would you have known half the answers she did?’ Mary chastised.

  ‘Well no, probably not,’ Beatrice admitted. ‘I suppose you did quite well.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s nice,’ Eden said, trying to be magnanimous. But she had done alright. She hadn’t made a fool of herself in front of Natalie. It was its own win.

  There was a cough, and everyone turned to see Saz standing over the table. ‘Hi, I’ve been sent to share our coupons. Natalie reckons it was too close of a call to be tight with the prize, and we’ve got two each anyway. Anyone up for getting waxed with me?’

  Everyone pretended they hadn’t heard that last question, but they heard the first part and they were all surprised and delighted. ‘Whoa, that is some serious generosity, nice one!’ Maggie said, taking the vouchers and passing them out.

  ‘Is the spa still open?’ Isabella said. ‘I could do with a hot stone massage.’

  ‘Actually, I think it’s open until eleven. And they do drinks!’ Saz said excitedly.

  And that was how everyone ended up semi-naked in a steam room about half an hour later. All twelve of them, sweating together while they waited for treatments. Caz and Saz had somehow acquired an entire pint of gin and were passing it around, everyone sharing like naughty teenagers.

  ‘So that’s when I said to the man that if he didn’t like how I baked a potato, he was welcome to leave the caravan!’ Caz said, finishing a story Eden had only been half paying attention to.

  ‘And what did he do?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Took his goat and fucked off,’ Caz said. People laughed.

  Eden turned to hear Angelique next to her, talking to Natalie. She was in the middle of telling her about someone she’d split up with just before she’d come on the cruise. ‘I thought we were going to get married, but when I proposed, she said she wasn’t ready, that she wanted to wait a bit.’

  ‘How long?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘She said she wanted to wait until we’d been together at least a year.’

  ‘And how long had it been?’

  ‘Three weeks,’ Angelique said. ‘But I told her, when you know, you know. You know? But she didn’t know. So I said, it’s now or never. She picked never.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Natalie said.

  ‘I need a pee, back in a minute,’ Angelique said, tucking her towel tighter as she left. Now there was nothing separating Eden and Natalie. Eden gave Natalie a nervous smile. ‘Thanks a lot for sharing. I think everyone really appreciated it.’

  Natalie shrugged. ‘If that bell hadn’t slipped, it could have easily gone the other way, so it seemed fair.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Eden said. ‘You were so quick.’

  ‘So were you,’ Natalie said. ‘I didn’t know you were a movie buff.’

  ‘Yeah, always have been, thanks to my dad. He was obsessive about movies, and he wanted me to have a ‘well-rounded education’ on the topic,’ Eden told Natalie. She was pretty sure this was the longest conversation they’d ever had that wasn’t about work. She wondered how long it could last before Natalie did her usual impression of Usain Bolt. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Yeah, always been into it. I thought I might make them, films, when I was younger. But then, you know, life.’

  Eden was positively thrilled to get this insight into her enigmatic workmate. Finally, Natalie was letting her in. ‘Wow, really?’ she asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her left ear had always been a bit dodgy, and her hair blocked even more of what little went in. She wanted to hear all of this.

  ‘Yeah. Just a kid’s dream, though.’

  ‘What kind of thing did you want to make?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe like little indie dramas?’ Natalie said. She was starting to look a bit pink, even by sauna standards.

  ‘That sounds really cool-’

  Natalie suddenly stood up. ‘God, it’s too hot.’ She walked out. Eden was left open-mouthed by the exit, abrupt even by Natalie’s standards.

  Later, when it was time to get her massage, she looked for Natalie around the spa, but she’d gone. Eden cancelled her treatment and went back to her room. She wasn’t in the mood anymore.

  Eleven

  That bloody gin. She shouldn’t be saying any of this to Eden about her dumb dreams of youth. She blamed the quiz. She wished she’d never found out they had a shared interest.

  And then, to end up in a towel with Eden. Her and the boss, sweating side by side. How the hell she was going to talk about social media impression numbers at the Tuesday morning catch-up after this, she didn’t know. She’d never been comfortable with nudity. She hadn’t had that kind of childhood. She was pretty sure her mother had kept her eyes closed while she was changing Natalie’s nappies. This entire situation was everything she was afraid of. Being naked in front of Eden, in the whole sense. She didn’t want Eden to know her, not like this. She was happy for Eden to think of her as the sarky cow who worked for her. She couldn’t let her see beyond that; it would only embarrass them both. But the circumstances of the evening had seemed determined to lead Natalie to do absolutely everything her instincts were screaming at her not to do. Tell Eden who she really was.

  And Eden had listened to her oh so intently, so earnestly, like Natalie had watched her do in the office with other people. The head tilt, the tucking of that blonde hair behind one ear, all the better to hear you with my dear. It was probably something learned on a managerial course. Let them think you’re really listening.

  She started to feel overheated, silly, self-conscious. She wanted to stop what was happening, but she couldn’t think of a non-weird way to do it, so she’d walked out practically in the middle of Eden’s sentence.

  Once she was outside and she could get a bit of air, she knew she’d been rude. What was it about Eden that always made her want to run like this?

  ***

  Next morning, Natalie stood looking into the breakfast room with trepidation. Eden was in there, eating what looked like a very sensible breakfast. Natalie thought she might skip out, grab something somewhere else. But then a voice from behind her said, ‘Well, what happened to you last night?’

  Natalie spun around to see Max. ‘The evening was winding down, and I was a bit tired, so I…’

  ‘Winding down? You’re kidding, aren’t you? We all had treatments and went back out. I slithered into bed about three-ish.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have missed such a big night,’ Natalie fibbed. She was even more thrilled to have gotten out of it. Three in the morning was not her time. Getting into bed at seven with a movie and a pizza was more her speed.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be more such nights, I can guarantee it,’ Max said, looking quite pleased with herself.

  ‘Did you pull, by any chanc
e?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘Who me?’ Max said, pretending to look at her watch. ‘Wow, we better get in, or the place will be completely pillaged.’ She shoved Natalie into the room, toward the table that contained just about everyone looking like warmed-over crap. Except Eden. She looked like health itself.

  Natalie wondered if she should address her behaviour last night. She could just say, ‘I was weird, I’m sorry,’ and it would be done with. Unless Eden decided to ask what was up. The trouble with that was, Natalie didn’t have a good answer. So instead of doing that, she went over to get coffee. Only a minute later, Eden was right beside her. ‘Hey, Natalie?’ she asked.