Cheryl sat back in her chair, brushed an errant strand of jet-black hair from her eyes and blew out heavily. She was musing to herself, "Bam! Thud! Spattered in runny clay."
She twizzled her gold pen between forefinger and thumb whilst her other hand toyed with her French plaited hair and murmured once more, "Bam! Thud! Spattered in runny clay, 3, 4."
Inspiration! She clapped a hand to her forehead and said, "Of course!" before writing the words 'mud bath' into the crossword grid. She was making a start on the next clue when a polite cough interrupted her chain of thought. Cheryl looked up and saw Thomas Baker, a new addition to the company.
"Yes, Thomas?" she asked.
"Do you mind if I sit here?"
"No, not at all. Please."
He placed his tray on the table and sat down beside her and began to eat his lunch. His eye wandered round the crowded canteen and he muttered, "Busy today."
Cheryl sighed to herself and answered, "Yes." She hoped that she had managed to inject just enough polite disinterest in her voice so that he would take the hint and leave her to her crossword. However, this was not to be. Thomas glanced at where she was fiddling with her pen and studying the next clue.
"The Times cryptic," he said, "I'm impressed. I have trouble with the easy one in the Sun."
She sighed again, nodded briefly and continued with the puzzle.
"Please," she thought to herself, "please get the message."
But it appeared that this was also not to be. Thomas looked over her arm at the crossword and read out loud, "Murines! The civic German is working at home in England. 4, 4. What on Earth is that supposed to mean?"
Defeated, Cheryl decided to humour him, it was obvious that he wanted to start a conversation. "Well," she said, "this one's quite easy."
He stared blankly at the crossword and replied, "Oh. Is it?"
"Yes. Look, murines. That means mice or rats. Bovine is cow, canine is dog, murine is mouse or rat."
"So the first word is rat or mouse... no wait, can't be, it's four letters."
Cheryl smiled, "Well we haven't finished yet. Civic German working at home. So think about it. Home in German is haus... well nearly, anyway. Civic, what could that be about? What about rat haus? That's the German equivalent of one of our civic buildings."
Thomas's lips moved silently for a moment before he said, "Town Hall!"
She regarded his look of triumph, "Well done."
Thomas grinned at her, "I'd like to thank all those who worked in the background to make this the astonishing success that it was." He took her hand and kissed it. Cheryl found herself shivering slightly at the touch of his lips, before gently pulling her hand free. She could also feel her cheeks reddening slightly.
He seemed to sense her discomfort and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."
"Oh don't be silly, it was just a laugh."
Thomas held her eye for a long moment, his face unreadable until he broke out into his now familiar grin and said, "So what else?"
"Sorry?"
"Games. What other games do you play?"
Cheryl was a little taken aback by the question, it could after all be taken two ways.
"What exactly do you mean?"
Thomas ignored the slight edge to her voice and replied, "Well, you like crosswords. What other games? Cards? Puzzles? Chess? I love to play chess, myself."
"Oh... Oh, sorry. Erm, well I've never actually played chess. I do like logical problems though and the old lateral thinking."
He said with some surprise, "You can't play chess? And I thought you were civilised! I will have to teach you. I'll bring in my set tomorrow and we can play during the break, what do you think?"
"I don't know..."
"Oh go on, it'll be fun. You never know, you might even enjoy it."
In spite of herself, Cheryl was infected by his good humour, "Okay, why not."
That night, Cheryl let herself into her small flat. She flicked on the living room light before flopping onto the settee and kicked off her shoes. She pulled her foot into her lap and started massaging her toes. A few seconds rubbing then she transferred her attention to her other foot, "Oh, that's better."
She sat a moment and then wandered into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Whilst she waited for the kettle to boil, her thoughts drifted back to the lunchtime conversation with Thomas. He seemed a pleasant enough man and she had to admit that he had a certain charm about him. He wasn't what you might call handsome, but there was something about him that she found attractive. Not that she intended to do anything about it of course. At thirty-four years old, single and working at a very successful career, she was far too set in her ways to think about a man. Besides, she had been hurt before.
Cheryl thought about the only man she had been involved with. They had been due to be married, he had respected her wish to remain a virgin until her wedding night, or at least she thought he did. Three days before the ceremony, she had paid an unexpected visit to his house and found him in bed with one of her friends.
A tear still burned her cheek every time she thought about that night. The argument, the thrown crockery, shouting, tears, recriminations. The words that were said and could never be unsaid. "A cold, frigid robot." That's what he had called her. She remembered how he had tried to turn the situation around so that she was the one at fault instead of him, "A man has needs. If you understood that, then this wouldn't have happened."
That had hurt. He had never really respected her wish to remain a virgin until the nuptials. He hadn't respected her, not really, otherwise why would she find him in bed with another woman just a few days before the wedding and then try to hold her responsible for his own inadequacies.
They broke up.
She could still remember the humiliation she went through cancelling the wedding, telling all her friends what had happened, and worst of all, telling her parents. Her father had been supportive enough, but her mother. God! Her mother had loved it. She had never liked him and told Cheryl so on many occasions. She had tried to keep the triumph out of her voice when her suspicions were brought to light, but she couldn't, not quite.
The kettle boiled and Cheryl poured it into her mug over the teabag-for-one on the string. Whilst she waited for the infusion to form she stared blankly at the swirling pattern of the brown fluid mingling slowly with the clear water.
"Two become one," she thought bitterly, "Yeah! Right!"
So here she was, thirty-four, single, living in a small flat on her own. She had never gotten over his betrayal and had thrown herself into her work with vigour. She used to think she was happy, better off without anyone in her life. She had been on the occasional date that was true, but they never came to anything. As soon as the man she was with got a little too close, a little too personal then she would freeze. She didn't want to, but it was beyond her control. Either that or they disappeared over the horizon when they discovered that she was not an easy proposition. So now, she didn't bother. She just resigned herself to a lifetime of solitude and buried herself in her career.
But her feelings were changing, she no longer felt so secure in her decision to remain a virgin until married. She was a healthy woman with all the drives and needs associated with it. She was finding herself more and more often daydreaming about the various men in the office and what she could be doing with them. Nothing was stopping her except one thing, her own inhibitions, her own inability to just let go. She had been so badly hurt in the past and all the men she had dated turned out to be feckless and shallow.
She also knew that the men in her professional life and her social life (such as it was) saw her as unapproachable. She had even accidentally overheard herself described as 'The Ice Maiden' over the coffee machine.
That had hurt more than she thought imaginable. She knew she kept everyone distant, but it still hurt. The two men involved had the decency to be embarrassed when they realised that she had heard them discussing her, but her own pride kept her from any display at all of how much it had stung.
Then her thoughts returned to Thomas. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five, average height and stocky build. Dark hair, not as dark as her own ebony locks, but a deep velvety brown with eyes to match. She liked his eyes. Dark yes, but not brooding and piercing as all the slushy romance novels would have you believe such eyes should be. No, they sparkled. It was like he had just told himself a joke, a joke to which no one else was party.
She wondered briefly if he was interested in her before deriding herself, "Idiot woman! You've got ten years on him as well as your reputation. No, he just wants to play chess. After all, what else could he want?"
Lunchtime the next day saw Cheryl walk into the canteen. Thomas stood up at the far table and waved her across. On the table in front of him was a small magnetic chessboard, with all the pieces set up and ready to play.
"Hi," he grinned, "Ready for your first lesson?"
Cheryl smiled back politely and answered, "Yes."
They sat down and Thomas ran through the basic rules and explained how each of the pieces moved. Once Cheryl agreed that she understood the rudiments, they started to play.
Thomas went first, made a move and said, "King pawn to King 3."
"Sorry?"
"Oh, that's the move I just made. Look, see how it works. Each of the squares is named for the main piece of the column and each row is numbered. So I take this pawn," he said pointing to the pawn in front of the white king," and move it forward one from row two to row three. So it's King pawn to King 3. Okay?"
Cheryl was a little confused, "Erm... sorry, no."
"Never mind, perhaps I went a bit fast with this bit. There is an easier method. If you just allocate the squares a column and row by the numbers and letters around the outside, then you just reference the square by the letter number coordinate, then you don't need to remember the classical notation. So I'll make the same move and just say E2-E3. Is that better for you?"
"Oh yes. Much better, thanks."
"Okay then. Your turn."
Cheryl studied the board for a moment and then made her move. She placed a pawn from in front of one of her castles, or rooks as Thomas had called them and said, "Erm, H7-H5."
Thomas immediately moved his bishop and countered with, "F1-C4."
