Lucy ran like the wind from the bus stop.  It was the luck of the draw:  you wait half an hour for a bus, then three turn up at once.  Normally Lucy looked at life through rose-coloured spectacles, but recently she had not exactly been laughing all the way to the bank.  Life was leaving her at the altar.  In the great scheme of things, she felt she was always the bridesmaid, never the bride, and she couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.  ‘Life’s a bitch,’ she thought, ‘but so am I.’

She rounded the corner lickety-split, as though the devil himself were at her heels.  Though she tried to run light as a feather, she feared she was less ‘graceful as a gazelle’, more ‘bull in a china shop’.

She had taken the writing course to broaden her horizons, never expecting cupid’s arrow to pierce her heart.  But the tutor was drop-dead gorgeous.  He had the lion’s share of good-looks.  Lucy just wished that she hadn’t been hit with the ugly stick.  ‘But all’s fair in love and war,’ she thought.

‘I’m getting too long in the tooth for this,’ she cursed, puffing and panting as she crossed the road to get the other side.  She was putting her nose to the grindstone on this course, so that she could leave her mark on the world, and she would leave no stone unturned to get qualified.  But like a Mounty, she was determined to get her man as well.  She would win his heart with the prose she wrote, burning the midnight oil to complete the assignments he gave out.  The last thing in the world she wanted was to be late for class.

Should she lay her cards on the table?  Could they be kindred spirits, or were they chalk and cheese?  Would life with him be a bowl of cherries or a marriage from hell?  Oil and water or happy ever after?  Would he fall into her arms or run like a rabbit?  Or do actions speak louder than words?  If she looked lovingly in his eyes, would his heart leap for joy, urging him on to make the first move?

She had made sheep’s eyes at him, but he was a typical man.  He couldn’t read between the lines.  She was left sitting on her hands as time rolled on.  Lucy knew that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but she wasn’t getting any older, and a rolling stone gathered no moss.  But every time he looked right through her it rubbed salt in the wound.

The bus stop wasn’t far from the college as the crow flies, but the roads twisted and turned.  Her breath came in short pants.  But the college’s open door beckoned her.  As she collapsed in a heap at her desk, she was saved by the bell, announcing the start of the class.

The teacher flashed her a smile as their eyes met across the crowded room.  He handed back her assignment from the previous week.

“You obviously found this a piece of cake.  Just one fly in the ointment.  You must avoid clichés like the plague.”