Why had she interfered? What devil’s imp had made her start all this up again?

Clover sat very still. The others were still chatting away, talking about songs, beginning to sing, drinking solidly. She could hear Ari asking Matty who the flowers had been from.

But they, she and Kit, they sat in silence. She could feel them settling into proximity with each other. She was acutely aware of the way his body enveloped her, their faces a metre apart, eyes downcast but always somehow in each other’s peripheral vision. She sensed their very quietness, their stillness, stood as a counterpoint to the passions that had unexpectedly rocked them that quiet afternoon downstairs. If they had lost themselves in the pool, they had found control again on the chess board and they were moving back into their correct positions once more: opponents, black and white, occupying opposite sides of the board.

They both wanted to win. They moved the pieces carefully, every play considered for all possible outcomes before a hand was reached forward. Neither of them rushed, savouring the battle. They felt evenly matched – his knight, her bishop. She captured a pawn but lost her rook.

She felt the silence envelop them. They might have been sitting in a cloud or under a duvet, drifting on a boat in the middle of the ocean. The drunker and more gregarious the others became, the louder their silence. It became too loud to want to speak through, something comfortable and easier to sit with. The forces that had repelled them so powerfully from the start – switching into catastrophic attraction for a few lost minutes – had begun to temper. They could share a house now, a room, a table.

It no longer astounded her that he played chess. It was actually obvious – he’s a tactician, she told herself as he took another pawn, setting it down on the table with a satisfied look. His whole life is a game of moves and power plays, intimidation and domination.

But he couldn’t bully her. She had her own strategy. His pawn on F3 was pinned to his queen on F6. If she moved her rook to F3, taking the pawn, he would have to play queen to C4, and she could take his queen with her rook to F4. She played aggressively, determined to hobble him—

‘Check,’ he murmured, moving his bishop.

What?

Her lips parted as she saw what he’d done. Or rather, what she had done. In moving her pawn to expose his queen, she had exposed her king on H2 to his bishop on D6. Her own pawn hemmed her in from H3 and she couldn’t move to G3 without attack from his knight on E4.

‘You were too busy going after me,’ he said quietly, watching the blush stain her cheeks.