006

Hannah is sweating. A cool thin ridge of sweat has burst out of the top of her forehead. She can feel an uncomfortable prickling sensation in her armpits. Her heart pumps with abnormal ferocity. The adrenaline coursing through her veins makes her extremities tingle. This isn't right. Something is definitely wrong. She looks around at the other tables, hoping to see similar levels of concern and panic on the faces of the people sat there but at worst a couple of them are just staring off blankly into the middle distance. Most mutter to each other or scribble down an answer. How can they possibly know? She was UK Mastermind 2011, had been the captain of the victorious Only Connect team in 2009, had captained the Balliol – Oxford team that had been crowned champions of University Challenge 2008, and now here she is at the Southampton Arms pub quiz on Highgate road, stumped by a question on which former member of Boyzone died in 2009.

She knows the answer. She knows she knows the answer. So why won't it come to her? Where in her memory is it buried, and why can she not excavate it? She's never had this problem before. She's been called the Human Encyclopedia by the press, and the human Wikipedia by one paper that didn't see it as a backhanded compliment, like she did. YouTube views of her record-breaking performance in Mastermind, where she scored a total of 44 points and answered every single question correctly, have reached five figures. Jeremy Paxman had taken her aside after their semi-final against the University of Edinburgh, in which she had personally accounted for 215 of Balliol's 260 points, and told her that she had one of the most impressive brains he'd ever come across. Victoria Coren had wanted to be friends with her. So why. Why. Why why why why why can't she remember this useless bit of information?

She stares at the answer sheet, willing the answer to come to her. Her pen hovers a millimetre away from the paper in anticipation of the answer. Beads of sweat drop from her head and onto the sheet, smudging the answer to question three. This is only question four. What if there are other questions that she can't answer? The thought increases her panic levels tenfold. For the first time in her life she wishes she had a team with her. They'd always held her back in the past, offering up ignorant and simplistic answers to questions they simply didn't know the answer to, and for a year she's been quite happily touring the pub quizzes of London solo, taking on other teams and winning with ease. It pays for the beer. But now, what she wouldn't give to have someone sitting with her who knew the answer to this basic and foolish question. She starts to feel a hatred building up inside her for the idiotic quiz master who's come up with such a moronic question. Who cares about some bloke from a shitty boyband? She's answered questions concerning the philosophies of history's greatest thinkers, on the chemical equations of existence, on mathematical concepts so dense that Paxman had stared at her open-mouthed when she'd got the answer (287) before he'd finished the question. So why the fuck has her brain decided that the name of some dead singer is too difficult to recall?

Then she realises that she's been so caught up in her anxieties that she's missed the next question. She heard the sound of the quiz master shouting, but she didn't hear what he'd said. She waits to see if he's going to shout it again, but when it becomes clear that he isn't the panic goes into overdrive. She leans over to a nearby table to ask them what it was and as she does so she considers sneaking a peek at their answer sheet. Cheating. The thought is anathema to her. She's never done it once in her life. She's been proud of the fact, and proud that she's always reported copiers and people checking their phones to the nearest authority as soon as possible. And now she finds herself so desperate for the answer that she has to close her eyes as she's asking the fat gentleman sat closest to her what the question was for fear that she won't be able to control herself.

'Which British Prime Minister was assassinated in 1812?' Oh easy. She knows that. Doesn't she? Doesn't she? Why can't she remember? Where has that information gone? And so it is for the next question. And the next. For all 50 questions. Her first three answers turned out to be wrong. And as she leaves the pub, distraught and lost, she suffers a massive stroke and dies on the street. Because the simple answer is that Hannah's brain didn't feel it necessary to know anything anymore.