It’s easy to talk, so they say. But what do they know? Sighing, he looked down at his lunch. He pierced the top of his apple juice carton with the straw, extracted his first sandwich from the plastic bag and bit into it: cheddar and Miracle Whip again. He ate too quickly as he scanned his cacophonous fellow inmates, all fourteen hundred, from his perch on the window ledge. He sighed once more as his eyes passed over the table where he used to sit, before he got so tired of things being thrown at him and retreated to this corner. Not that it had helped much, but he rather prided himself now that he could take an apple core bouncing off his head without flinching.

His eyes searched out a more distant table, fourth from the far side of the room. And there she was, though she was so short he almost missed her dark blonde hair. His mouth was too dry to swallow his bite of sandwich; he drew long on his straw while his stomach complained. Today her back was turned, so he knew she wouldn’t see him looking, not that it was much of a risk at this distance. He forced down the rest of his lunch.

And then, as every day, he began to pace for the half-hour or so until they were released from the cafeteria (people had given up mocking him for it, and seldom even hurled anything any more: he had ignored them until they became bored of it). He walked down the room and turned where he could get a good view of her, but not directly opposite her table, which would be too obvious; then he turned and walked back. She was wearing her red sweater today – his favourite perhaps because it brought out her hair. As he paced up and down, he thought about one thing only: what he could say to her, how he could possibly tell her what he felt, how she might react if he did, how he couldn’t bear that, and so back to the beginning. It was all futile anyway, he knew: if it came to it his mouth would never utter what he had planned. At times he would grimace and return to his perch, but he would be on his feet again in minutes.

On one turn she happened to be talking to the person next to her and so looking in roughly his direction, and for a moment he saw her dark eyes, her tiny nose, her delightful smile. His heart and stomach lurched as one and his head jerked away before her eyes might meet his. He prayed it hadn’t been too obvious he was looking, and walked away too quickly. He berated himself for not taking the opportunity to do something, though, as ever, he had no idea what the something might be.

High school ended, and still he had said nothing.

Twenty years passed.

One December afternoon he stood at the bus stop after work. A woman joined him. She was quite attractive, he thought, though in a way he couldn’t quite define: a certain neatness, going on elegance, about her coat and moccasin-like boots, blonde hair framing a smoothly strong-featured face. Her nose, he allowed, was rather too large, at least in profile, for conventional beauty, but he didn’t mind. She said nothing.

A car drove up and the driver leaned over to the rolled-down window. ‘Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Federation House?’

‘Sorry, no idea,’ he replied.

The driver asked the woman next, who gave directions. The car drove off.

After a moment’s hesitation, he said to the woman, ‘He picked the wrong person with me – it’s my first day working here.’

‘What?’ She removed the small headphones, which he hadn’t noticed, from her ears.

‘I said he asked the wrong person – my first day of work.’

‘Oh! Bad luck.’

Just then her mobile rang. By the time the call had ended they were both on the bus.

After that he saw her on the bus most days. She always had her headphones on, and so he never spoke to her again. But when he got on the bus, their eyes would meet and they would exchange smiles.

He was incapable of regret.