Cassie used two fingers to gently ease apart the slats on the Venetian blind at the window of her first floor office; she peered down to the car park beneath to watch Daniel walk from his car to the factory entrance beneath her. This had now become a daily ritual for her ever since he had started working there two months ago. She stood motionless at the window as if even the slightest sound or movement would alert him to her; she even held her breath so as not to steam up the glass when she exhaled. Cassie watched as he locked his car and started towards the building, Daniel was around 20 years old, a couple of years younger than Cassie, he had cropped mousy brown hair and a slim, athletic build. He had covered almost half of the short distance to the factory entrance when he suddenly looked up towards Cassie’s window, she remained motionless, frozen, if she made the slightest movement now he would surely know that he was being watched. Suddenly a loud voice from behind her asked, ‘See anything you like out there?’
Cassie almost jumped out of her skin and let go of the blind, it hit the window with a dull thud as she quickly spun around. If Daniel hadn’t realised that he was being watched before, he almost certainly did now. Sue, the office accountant stood in the doorway to Cassie’s small office holding 2 cups of coffee with a smirk a mile wide across he face.
‘How long have you been standing there you cow’ asked Cassie.
‘Long enough, I suppose you were watching young Daniel again’
‘Might have been’ replied Cassie in a jokey, matter-of-fact tone, ‘There’s no law against it is there?’
‘There are laws against some of the things I would do with that young man if I was a few years younger myself’ said Sue, grinning. ‘Just stop messing around and get on with it, it’s getting painful to watch you’ she added.
‘It’s not easy you know, I keep dropping hints to him that I like him, but the boy is terminally shy, he practically runs away whenever I come near him’ said Cassie.
‘I think you need to be a little less subtle with him, try to get him on his own, I know he likes you because I’ve heard the guys on the factory floor tease him about it, he just can’t pluck up the courage to ask you out, especially with those dickheads all around him’ said Sue as she set one of the coffee cups down on Cassie’s desk and left her office.
Daniel was a real fish out of water in the factory, he was totally different to all the other workers there, they were all older than him and a lot rougher and he stuck out like a sore thumb amongst them, a genuine rose amongst thorns. He was painfully shy and very quiet and he suffered for it greatly as his brash, unsubtle co-workers constantly teased him. Cassie often wondered how he managed to endure it, day-in day-out. The worst of them was the factory foreman, he could be a real bully if your face didn’t fit and unsurprisingly Daniel’s didn’t, probably something to do with the fact that Daniel was obviously quite an intelligent guy, which to his Neanderthal-like colleagues was almost a crime and the foreman, not being the most academically gifted person ever to walk the earth, obviously felt a little threatened by someone much younger and brighter than he. They would mock almost anything the poor guy said when he tried to join in their half-witted conversations around the table at break time, so most of the time Daniel elected to say nothing and spend his break times alone.
It was mid June and the factory was hotter than hell and time almost seemed to be standing still. Daniel glanced up at the clock on the wall, all morning the hands had been moving painfully slowly around the clock face. Daniel began to wonder if there was a factory somewhere else in the world that manufactured evil clocks to torment workers, clocks that only ran at half the normal speed and stopped dead whenever you looked at them, maybe by some incredibly cruel twist of fate that’s what he was helping to make now, after all, the small, nondescript metal parts that left the engineering works by the ton could be for anything.
Eventually Daniel’s idle thoughts were interrupted by the siren to signal lunch break and he made his way to the wash room as the foreman and his merry men filed past him, out of the factory in the direction of the nearest pub.
It was a beautiful day so Daniel grabbed a chair from the empty canteen and sat out in front of the factory in the sun to eat his lunch, a paperback book giving him an invaluable temporary escape from the misery of his daily drudge. After a short while an ice cream van pulled up opposite the factory as it did most days and Daniel looked up from his book to see Cassie, the only bright point to his working life, walk past him on her way to get ice creams for the office workers. On seeing Daniel she called out
‘Can I get you one Dan?’
His mouth went dry as it did every time Cassie spoke to him
‘No, I’m fine thanks’ he replied, his voice wavering slightly.
Daniel watched Cassie as she took her place in the queue for the ice cream van; she wore a thin summer dress that clung to her figure, perfectly describing her shape as the gentle summer breeze blew it against her. He continued to watch, as she paid for the ice creams and turned, now silhouetted against the sun as she started back towards him and the office. It was as if he had suddenly acquired x-ray vision as the bright sunlight went through the fabric of the dress leaving just the outline of her slim figure.
He quickly looked back down to his book as she drew closer, savouring the stolen glimpse of her before looking up to meet her gaze as she passed him, smiling. Daniel’s concentration went back to his book but moments later the office door swung open behind him and Cassie appeared with a chair of her own and placed it next to Daniel.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked
‘It’s a collection of short stories’ he replied, looking up from the book ‘mostly sci-fi’ he added, sounding slightly embarrassed.
