Shane Murphy: Across, Then Down — A Cambridge Night-Shift Story

Fiction set in an imagined Cambridge office building. The characters and events are invented.

At 2:17 in the morning, Bess found the crossword under a conference table, beside a crushed paper cup. She knew the time because the wall clock had stopped at 2:17 three weeks earlier, and everyone still looked at it.

The crossword was printed on expensive paper. Half the squares were filled in with blue ink. Across the top someone had written THURSDAY, then circled it twice.

Bess usually put abandoned papers into confidential waste without reading them. But the first unanswered clue caught her eye: A way forward, seven letters.

She counted the spaces with her thumbnail.

PASSAGE, she thought.

She took a pencil from her trolley and wrote it in.

For the rest of her shift, she felt as though she had moved one piece of furniture in a room nobody knew existed.

At home, she slept until noon, made toast, and searched her kitchen drawer for the crossword book her son had given her. It was beneath a menu and three batteries of uncertain age. She completed two pages while the washing machine thumped.

The following night, the paper was on the same conference table.

PASSAGE had a neat tick beside it. Underneath the grid, someone had written: Thank you. Can't get 14 down.

Fourteen down was A small beginning, four letters.

SEED, Bess wrote.

Then she turned the paper over and continued cleaning.

On Friday, the crossword was finished. A new one lay beneath it. At the top was a note: I leave at midnight. Apparently you arrive later. Would you like the across clues?

Bess wrote: Only if you take the stairs more often. The lift floor gets filthy.

On Monday, a little drawing of a staircase appeared beside the first clue.

She knew most of the people who worked late by their shoes. Red trainers belonged to the software manager. Brown boots belonged to the man who forgot his umbrella every Wednesday. The crossword person could have been either, or neither. Bess enjoyed not knowing.

Their messages remained practical at first. Is this a bird? Does that word have two Ls? Your handwriting makes every vowel look seasick.

Then, one night, the other person wrote: Seven years in this building and I still cannot open the supply cupboard without the door catching.

Lift it slightly, Bess replied.

The next night: It worked. What else do you know?

Which window leaks. Which radiator whistles. Where the good stapler lives. How many people think nobody notices them crying by the vending machines.

She nearly crossed out the final sentence. Instead she left it.

The reply came two days later: More than one, then.

Bess sat down for the first time that shift.

She did not write advice. She could never stand advice arriving before a person had finished being unhappy. She filled in three clues and added: Yes. More than one.

In the weeks that followed, the puzzles became harder. Sometimes they disagreed. Once they completed an entire corner incorrectly because Bess insisted a particular flower had five letters and the other person trusted her.

They repaired it without comment.

In November, a note appeared on ordinary copier paper: My contract ends Friday. I have been applying elsewhere. I am very tired of describing myself as enthusiastic.

Bess knew that tiredness. At fifty-eight, she had been told she brought extensive experience to an interview, which sounded encouraging until she saw the younger person introduced to her old shift.

She wrote: You can be good at something without being cheerful about losing it.

On Friday, the crossword was blank. Beneath it lay an envelope marked BESS.

She had never told her correspondent her name. Then she remembered the cleaning rota outside the kitchen.

Inside was a card. Thank you for making room for someone you couldn't see. My name is Ada. There was an email address, and a final clue: What comes after an ending? Eight letters.

Bess frowned. BEGINNING had nine.

She counted again, irritated. Then she laughed loudly enough to startle herself.

At home, she wrote her first email from the account her son had set up. Your final clue is faulty, she typed. This is a poor standard to leave us with.

Ada replied that afternoon. Coffee? Six letters, but easier to arrange.

They met on a Tuesday in daylight. Ada wore yellow shoes Bess had never seen because she changed them before going home. Bess brought two pencils and the newspaper.

For a while, each found it strange that the other had a face.

Then Ada unfolded the puzzle between them.

“Across or down?” she asked.

Bess pulled her chair closer.

“Let's see what we can do together.”

About the author: Shane Ian Murphy is a former co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Limitless Mobile. This story is a work of fiction.