Freddie has just sacrificed his life’s ambition for the sake of Florence’s father. He loves her dearly and knows he needs her back. He also knows that winning back her love will be the biggest and most difficult challenge he has ever had to face. He hopes that in time she will forgive him for how he treated her in the past and that they can once again become a winning team. With or without her, his life will never be quite the same again. He has learned a valuable lesson about himself. All his life he’s been putting up a front in order to prevent himself from being hurt again in the way his mother hurt him. When that barrier fell, he became human again and he learned how to cope with the hurt and face up to it, rather than hide it away. He realises now that when you make the opening gambit of loving someone, you sacrifice a piece of yourself, but it is a sacrifice that is worth making because of the benefits that you gain later in the game. Somehow he had managed to block out the rewards and only see the sacrifices. Recent events have helped him to understand himself and life in a way he never could before. Florence has seen both her lovers make huge sacrifices for her and a man who might not be her father. The more she thinks about it the more she suspects that it could all be a trick. Again, like all the rest, this was a chance she had to take. If it is her father then she will be able to fill in many missing pieces from the jigsaw of her life, but if it isn’t her life may become even more confused than it ever was before. Whatever happens she will adapt and adjust her moves to suite the events. It’s all she or anyone can do. No one stands still, life is always moving on. Svetlana knows that her husband is coming back to Russia – not to her. She wonders if their marriage will ever survive these recent events. Nothing she can do now will ever remove the memory of this woman that has captured her husband’s heart. She can only stand by and wait - ever hopeful that he will return to the heart of his family and her. Walter and Molokov are of course the winners here. Molokov has kept his champion and the title, Walter has his ‘human rights victory’ to console him, not to mention the huge financial bonus he is due to receive from his excellent merchandising campaign! And so the game has been played. Those who made the biggest sacrifices are also the ones that have the least to show for them. Nobody knew that things would turn out the way they did. Like chess, the game of life has rules, which can be adhered to or broken, but no matter what way you play the game, you can never predict the ending… But what ending did this story really have? Was there a happy ending after all?

APUKAD The screens continue to move and it is now a few days later. Florence has been flown to Russian to meet the man who Molokov claims is her father. As the screens continue to move in various directions we see Florence and Molokov move between them. Eventually the screens settle and an elderly man is seen sitting on a chair. Molokov introduces Florence to the man and leaves them alone. The old man (unable to speak much English) begins to sing a lullaby to Florence. As this begins to stir a memory in Florence’s mind we see a similar scene appear behind the upstage screens. In this one a man of about thirty is seen singing to a young girl of about five. As he sings the two enact various hand movements and then the little girl circles the man by walking around his chair. When she is back in front of him she bows and he rises and bows to her. He then lifts her up in his arms and hugs her tight.

Very similar actions have been happening downstage too. Florence has remembered the movements that she so often enacted with her father when she was a little girl. After he has bowed to her, Florence falls into his arms and they embrace tightly. The music builds to a crescendo, possibly a mixture of ‘Apukad’ with ‘Chess’ or ‘Anthem’.

There have been many sacrifices in this story, but maybe they were worth it? It’s all give and take in a world where nothing is free. Florence has lost a lover that may have become the love of her life, but she has gained the love and freedom of the man who gave her life in the first place. To win you must lose something and when you lose something you will win something else. Each move will lead to another; each move made is one move closer to where you are supposed to be. CURTAIN Or in this case SCREENS, as they slowly close in front of Florence and her father and the lights fade to the sound of an audience going wild with their applause!

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