The Flip Side Read online

  “My resolution? I’m going to run the London Marathon,” she says, far too keenly for someone committing to that kind of torture.

  “OK, well, that’s still somewhat crazy, but it’s a lot more normal than flipping a coin for every decision,” he replies.

  “What’s this about flipping a coin?”

  And now Jessie knows too. Great.

  “Haven’t you heard yet about this mad idea Josh has to flip a coin for every decision he makes this year?”

  “No, I haven’t. Have you gone crazy, Josh?”

  This seems to be the stock reply.

  “What I can’t believe is, we don’t see you for a few weeks, and in that time you manage to propose, break up, lose your job, move back home, and decide to entrust your whole life to a coin. Is this what happens when I’m not here to advise you on everything?” Jake rolls his eyes dramatically. As he says this, I realize my Christmas does sound as cheerful as a character’s on EastEnders.

  “It worked OK for Hewlett-Packard. Did you know they flipped a coin to see which way round their names should go?” I retort.

  “That’s true” says Jessie. “Packard-Hewlett does sound more like an upmarket law firm than a tech company. But that was one decision, they didn’t keep flipping the coin, their computers aren’t designed by what the coin says.”

  “So you’re going to flip it for literally every decision? What socks to wear? What sandwich to eat? Flipping hell, that’s mental. Excuse the pun.” Jake laughs.

  “Yes,” I say, as I simultaneously realize I might not have thought all of this through properly. “I guess I just feel I’ve clearly not made the best decisions so far, so why not let fate guide me for a bit? Maybe the coin might actually be able to help me find myself, and love. What have I got to lose?”

  “Your dignity.” Jessie sniggers under her breath.

  “No, no, Jessie, don’t ridicule him. It all makes perfect sense now he has explained it to us.” Jake is being as sarcastic as ever.

  “I read last night that the average human makes approximately thirty-five thousand decisions a day; that’s over one million a month, or twelve million a year. Think how long I deliberate about each of them, how much time I’m wasting and ultimately how many of them I’m getting wrong.” The other two sip their drinks politely while I rant.

  We are waiting for the weekly pub quiz to start at the Cricketers’ Arms; it is back on after the festive break. We all met when we started working at the hotel at the same time and use our weekly meetup as an opportunity to catch up. Jake left the company a few months ago and is now managing another hotel in Bristol. It sounds good until you realize his hotel is ranked thirty-fifth of thirty-six in the city on TripAdvisor. Jessie left a couple of years ago and retrained as a primary-school teacher. Apparently even five-year-old kids are less annoying than hotel guests. They are both a year younger than me, which they never let me forget.

  “This coin flipping is all to do with Jade, isn’t it?” Jessie has been stirring the straw in her drink for a while before she suddenly looks up as if she has just solved a great mystery.

  Why does it have to become a therapy session? It’s got nothing to do with Jade. It’s about me wanting to do something different. Something better with my life.

  “It’s not about Jade,” I tell them firmly.

  It’s clear they don’t believe me.

  “Sorry, who is Jade?” asks Jake’s new boyfriend as he takes a seat at our table.

  This is the first time we’ve met. He is short, with light-blond scruffy hair, and works in social media marketing. He looks like someone who would go to a festival and wear the wristband for the rest of the year.

  My breakup with Jade has had wider repercussions. Not only have I lost my girlfriend, but we have lost our fourth quiz team member. Josh, Jade, Jessie, and Jake. We had been “the All-Jays.”

  She gets to keep the flat, I get to keep the quiz team. Great.

  It turns out that replacing her on the quiz team is much easier and quicker than replacing her in my life. Just like that, we’ve managed to find someone else whose name begins with J.

  Jake.

  Yes, Jake’s new boyfriend is also called Jake. It’s very confusing. I had been perplexed for the last few weeks as to why (original) Jake had started referring to himself in the third person. I would ask what he was doing over the weekend, to which he’d reply something like: “Jake has got a play on, so will go to that,” or “Jake has to work, so nothing much.” I presumed he had just developed a habit of talking about himself in the third person, and I began to mimic him in reply: “Oh, that’s a shame, because Josh was wondering if you fancied meeting up.” It is only now, as he is introduced and leans across the table to shake hands, that the realization dawns on me.

  “So because you think you made the wrong decision with Jade, you’re going to flip a coin from now on for every choice?” Jake’s Jake offers.

  No, no, no. It’s not about Jade.

  I don’t like Jake’s Jake already. I’m not sure why he, or the other two, are having such a tough time processing what I have told them. It surely isn’t that difficult to understand.

  I’m going to flip a coin for every decision I make in life. What is strange about that?

  “Welcome back, guys. Presume you’re all quizzing tonight?” Little D asks as he goes table to table collecting entry fees. Little D is Big D’s son and the quizmaster. Ironically, he is two feet taller than his father and has lost all of his hair.

  “Here you go,” I say, passing over our pound coins.

  “You’ve changed your team lineup?” he asks.

  “Yep, something like that.”

  Do I have to explain my breakup to everyone?

  As Little D hands over the picture round, three bespectacled men in their twenties saunter past us, smirking.

  “I was hoping they’d still be on holiday,” Jessie whispers.

  “They’re always here. They’ve literally never missed a quiz night in the last three years,” I reply as they take their usual table by the bar.

  “Who are they?” Jake’s Jake asks inquisitively.

  “Our main rivals. The Quizlamic Extremists. Three Bristol University astrophysics PhD students who win the quiz every single week, and I mean every single week. In the three years we’ve been competing, we have only ever managed to come in second,” Jake explains.

  Our combined knowledge of Disney (Jessie has never grown up), Beyoncé (Jake goes to Beyoncé dance classes every Thursday) and my specialist subject of Bristol City Football Club circa 2001 to the present day is never enough to topple the Quizlamic Extremists’ all-conquering trivia skills.

  “Is this a fierce rivalry? What have you got me into?”

  “No, they barely ever acknowledge us. That’s the worst part. Clearly they don’t think we’re even rivals.”

  “Are you guys any good?” Jake’s Jake continues.

  “I don’t think we’re bad, I just think they’re unbeatable,” Jessie replies.

  “Like, I mean, if we went elsewhere, we’d probably win,” Jake says.

  “Definitely,” I concur.

  I look over at their table as they hurriedly jot down all the answers to the picture round, while we struggle to put a name to any of the faces.

  “I reckon this is their main source of income. They just go around different pub quizzes each night of the week and rake in the winnings.”

  “It’s not very fair for everyone else,” Jessie bemoans.

  “Let’s just hope they actually graduate soon and move somewhere else,” Jake says hopefully. “Although it is funny each week how annoyed Josh gets that we don’t win.”

  “Jake, have you heard the story about Josh getting kicked out of a children’s party for being a bad loser?” Jessie loves to repeat this tale to everyone.

  What Jessie neglects to mention every time she tells this anecdote is that I was a child when I was kicked out of a children’s party. I am not an adult who s
till attends kids’ birthday parties and is asked to leave when I lose Pin the Tail on the Donkey. It is a somewhat subtle but extremely crucial difference that I have to pick her up on every time.

  “OK, guys, we are going to get started. Everyone ready? Question one . . .” Little D stops Jessie from embarrassing me any more.

  “IN REVERSE ORDER, we have Big Fact Hunt with forty-seven points”—Little D is careful with his pronunciation of that one—“Universally Challenged with fifty-two, Trivia Newton John with fifty-four . . .”

  Has he forgotten to mention us? Surely we dropped significant points on the music round. Little D performed the songs on a kazoo, and we couldn’t tell if he was playing Jim Morrison or Van Morrison.

  “And we have a tie for first place!”

  We’re leading? Surely not.

  “The All-Jays and the Quizlamic Extremists are level on fifty-nine.”

  He must have miscounted!

  The Quizlamic Extremists look across at us, most disturbed.

  “OK, give me two seconds. There’s going to be a tie-break question to see who wins this week’s jackpot.”

  Little D clearly hasn’t come prepared for such an outcome and is frantically trying to find a tie-break question on his phone. An awkward silence descends on the room, with the only noise coming from the kitchen. Despite the smell of the cooking drifting across the pub, I’ve yet to get my appetite back after the shock of the breakup. Jessie, meanwhile, has been nibbling away at her fries all night, and Jake’s Jake has devoured his quinoa burger.

  Of course, he is vegan.

  “OK, so . . . Please, can you write down your answer on a scrap of paper and remember it’s the team who gets the closest wins . . . On average, how many euros are collected from the basin of the Trevi Fountain in Rome every year?”

  Tricky.

  We look at each other, nonplussed. I think we are all still slightly shocked that we are even in contention to win. After a year of attending week in, week out, this is our chance to bask in the glory we witness the Quizlamic Extremists enjoying every Wednesday.

  “What do you think?” Jessie whispers, leaning across the table which is now covered with empty pint glasses and plates.

  We discuss our thoughts in hushed tones, not that it really matters, as we have no idea what the actual answer is and are struggling to even think of a ballpark figure. Jessie suddenly picks up the pen and starts scribbling some numbers down.

  “What are you adding up?” I ask

  “I’m just working out how many euros I think would be left each day and then multiplying that by 365.”

  “Such a schoolteacher.”

  “So a thousand euros a day would be 365,000 euros a year. Do you think that sounds about right?”

  “Did you need to write that sum down?” I joke to her.

  “I don’t know, I think it might be more,” Jake’s Jake chimes in. “Think how many tourists must go there every night and throw a coin in. It’s the thing to do in Rome, isn’t it?”

  “But do they throw a euro in each time, or just a few cents?”

  “Not everyone is as tightfisted as you,” Jake fires back at me, with a cheeky grin.

  I look across the room at the Quizlamic Extremists, trying to lip-read what they are saying.

  “OK, so let’s go slightly higher, then?” Jessie gets to work on a new sum. “Shall we say half a million?”

  “I’m happy to go with that.” I nod.

  “No, I think it’s more like 1.5 million. I feel as if I’ve read this somewhere before.” The two Jakes look at each other in agreement.

  “Surely it can’t be that much? Shall we go for something in the middle?” Jessie hovers with the pen.

  “I will give you ten more seconds, guys. Ten, nine . . .” Little D bellows.

  We all look helplessly at each other.

  “Seeing as the question is about coins, why don’t we try flipping your coin, Josh?” Jake suggests.

  Finally, they’re coming around to my plan.

  “OK. Heads we go with 500,000 euros and tails 1.5 million. Everyone happy?” I say hurriedly.

  “Four, three . . .”

  This is it, the coin’s first big decision. Its chance to prove to all its doubters that it is right for me to follow its decisions. To win us £100.

  “Write down your final answer.”

  “MAYBE WE WEREN’T meant to win,” I say somberly as we trudge out of the pub, gutted to have come so close to finally beating the Quizlamic Extremists. If Jake, Jake, and Jessie weren’t skeptical of the coin’s power before, they certainly are now.

  “If you’d just listened to me, we would have won,” Jake says as he and Jake hug Jessie goodbye. “Either way, you definitely weren’t meant to tell Little D where to shove his kazoo. You’re such a bad loser.”

  “I’m not a bad loser!” I reply.

  “He’s still just venting his anger about Jade.”

  “It’s not about Jade!” I shout into the distance as Jake and Jake head off home into the night’s darkness, waving goodbye.

  “What do you think of Jake, then?” Jessie asks me as soon as they are out of earshot. I get a sudden flashback to when we used to work together on reception and would gossip about couples staying at the hotel. We started working at the hotel on the same day and bonded over idle chatter and mutual apathy for the job. Despite having Jade there, it was never as fun after Jessie left.

  “Of Jake’s Jake?”

  “It’s going to be so confusing, isn’t it?”

  “Tell me about it. He seemed nice, though, and knew quite a bit of trivia, which is key. Although it’s hard to judge after just a few hours. Look at me. I couldn’t tell after a few years.”

  Jessie loiters beside me as we reach the bus stop; no one else is around apart from a couple of students stumbling home on the other side of the road. My lack of a driving license has never been a concern before—having lived in London and then central Bristol—but I’m now stranded in the back of beyond with a very unreliable bus service to rely on. I took my driving test when I was seventeen and managed to fail three times. I had the same examiner each time, and on the third occasion he told me, “I don’t fail people, they fail themselves.” I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye or try again after that.

  “You know you don’t have to wait with me,” I say, as Jessie shivers in her bright padded jacket, with the warmth of her flat only a few minutes’ walk away.

  “It’s all right, I’m happy to. It’s not that long until it comes,” Jessie says as she looks up at the electronic board. It never seems to be accurate and has currently been stuck on eight minutes for at least four minutes.

  “So, have you seen her yet after the incident?” Jessie asks. The London Eye debacle is now just being referred to as “the incident.” Jade is “her,” or “she.”

  “No, I haven’t. She doesn’t want to see me, apparently. She’s going to drop my stuff to the hotel so I can collect it. And my pink slip.”

  “I suppose that is the problem when you live in a flat owned by your girlfriend’s dad.”

  “And also the problem when he owns the hotel you work in.”

  “I know it’s rubbish, but come on, you can now find a job you actually enjoy. You were wasted there. You should have left when I did.”

  “But I still don’t know what I want to do. At least you knew you wanted to go into teaching.”

  “You’ll figure it out, I promise. Just think, you won’t have to work those horrendous back-to-back late/early shifts again. Have you got enough money saved up in the meantime?”

  “I spent most of my savings on the ring! Fortunately, I get a few weeks’ pay from the hotel, so that should keep me going for a while until I can find something else, I hope.”

  “That’s good, at least, and I’m sure you will find something soon. Having a bit of a break in the meantime isn’t a bad thing. You’ve been working there solidly for—what?—seven years? It will be good for you to have
some time to find yourself.”

  “But if I don’t know what I’m looking for, how will I find it?”

  “You’ll know when you find it. Trust me, everything will work out.”

  “Thanks, Jessie. I really hope so. I just can’t believe how everything has turned out. If asking the girl you love to marry you and finding out she’s been cheating isn’t bad enough, then it’s not made any better by having to move out of your flat and losing your job.”

  “The girl you love or loved? Don’t tell me you still love her? Not after what she’s done to you?”

  “I know I should be hating her, but all I can think of is: Where did it go wrong? What did I do? Why did she go off with someone else?”

  “You did nothing wrong, I promise. I know we’re all friends and I like Jade, but come on, Josh, what she did was brutal. There’s no coming back from that. You deserve so much better. Just think that you dodged a bullet before it was too late.”

  It is nice to know she is on my side. But no matter what Jessie says, I can’t pretend I’m not wishing I was heading back to Jade’s flat right now. I can’t bear to think of her being there with him instead.

  We’re soon interrupted by the bus, completely out of sync with the electronic board, which pulls up next to us and nearly mounts the pavement. I wonder how this driver passed his test.

  “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but it will all work out for you, Josh, I’m sure. I’m here whenever you want to talk about it, or not talk about it.” Jessie smiles.

  “Thank you, and sorry we didn’t win the money tonight.”

  “I know, we were so close. Maybe next time?”

  As the bus driver passive-aggressively coughs and attempts to shut the doors, I wave goodbye and board the bus back to the middle of nowhere.