‘Will you please turn around and face me?’

A smile played on his lips, but he was not foolish enough to turn around, to expose himself to her devastating weapons, to allow her to cast her sensual spell over him. He looked down at the young man who had captured the blonde. Even from his window on the second floor, he could see the hunger in the boy’s wide eyes as he moved in to claim his hard-sought prey. The boy kissed her. His hands began to wander.

To the victor goes the spoils.

He diverted his attention toward the library, feeling as though he were invading the young couple’s privacy now that their relationship was getting somewhat physical. He put a cigarette in his mouth. ‘Get out.’

‘What?’

‘Get out. Do whatever you please but I don’t want you here anymore.’

‘You can’t mean that.’

‘I can.’ He lit the cigarette. ‘I do.’

‘But I was going to tell – ’

‘Don’t tell anybody anything. It’s already gone far enough.’

There was silence for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was pleading, the tone strumming at his nerves. ‘But I thought…’

He inhaled deeply on the cigarette as though he wanted to finish it in one puff. From the commons, he heard a sharp slap. The blonde had halted the young man’s hormones as he tried to slip past the innocent groping stage. ‘Obviously, you thought wrong. Now get out.’

Her voice was a whisper, ‘Bastard.’

He nodded yet again, but this time he was in full agreement with what had been said. ‘Just get the hell out of my office.’

‘Bastard,’ she repeated.

He heard her slam the door. Her high heels echoed against the wooden floor as the most beautiful woman he had ever known headed out of the ivy-covered building.

He stared out the window at nothing in particular. His vision unfocused, and his world became a blurry mass of green grass and brick buildings, his mind racing with a series of what-ifs.