On Thursday, I came to work at eight o’clock in the morning, At ten o’clock, I met Rose in the corridor. She stopped and smiled at me. ‘Hello Pete, how are you?’

‘Not bad, Rose, thank you for asking. And what about you? Is everything OK?’

‘Yes, everything is fine with me, thanks,’ said Rose. ‘But I am a little busy this morning. We have a little problem in our department.’

‘I hope that it isn’t a serious problem. Or is it something serious?’ I asked.

‘No, nothing serious,’ she answered.

‘I’m going to make some coffee now,’ I said. ‘Would you like to have one cup with me?’

‘Sorry, I don’t have much time, right now,’ Rose answered. ‘Besides, I already had one coffee in the morning. But thank you for asking!’

‘No problem. I can see that you are busy.’

‘Yes, a little bit,’ she said. ‘I need to speak to Tom about something. I am going to his office now.’

‘Tom? I don’t think that you can speak to him this week. He took two days off. He is not at work today and tomorrow,’ I said to Rose.

‘Really? I didn’t know that. And where is he? Do you know?’

‘Yes, I do. He is in London.’

‘In London? When did he fly there?’ she asked.

‘I think he flew there yesterday. He took an evening flight,’ I answered.

‘Good for him! I hope that he will enjoy his weekend there,’ said Rose. ‘It’s no problem. I will talk to him next week. I only wanted to ask him about a book.’

‘What book?’ I asked.

‘He wanted to lend me one book in English. My English is very bad, so I want to work on it a little bit. It is a book in easy English. There are only simple English sentences in that book.’

‘Oh, I know about the book!’ I said.

‘Do you?’ she was surprised.

‘Yes, he left it in the office for you. He put it on his desk and told me “This book is for Rose. You can give it to her, when she comes for it.”‘ I said.

‘That is very nice of him. He did not forget about me!’ she said and smiled.

‘No, he didn’t,’ I said and I went to get the book for her.

corridor /ˈkɒrɪdɔː(r)/ – chodba

serious /ˈsɪəriəs/ – vážny

besides /bɪˈsaɪdz/ – okrem toho; mimo to

And what about you? – a čo ty?

take two days off – vziať si dva dni voľna