After her detour to Maintenance, Glinda went back to the newsroom, expecting to find everyone already in the meeting. However, everyone was still at their desks – including Elphaba, who had made her own way back. While they had been downstairs, someone had retrieved the helium birthday balloons and tethered them to Elphaba's desk with a paperweight, where they floated optimistically above her typewriter.

"What's going on?" Glinda asked. "Why hasn't the meeting started?"

"Chuffrey's lost it," whispered Pfannee. "He's in his office, screaming at Amanda. Listen."

"…not going to stand for this! This is MY newsroom!" Chuffrey bellowed.

"He's yelling like that at Morrible? Whatever for?"

"Beats me. But he's been bawling for ten minutes straight. It must be something really serious."

"Really serious…" Elphaba repeated idly, her attention seemingly fixed on the balloons floating above her typewriter. She reached up, and batted at one of them lightly, like a kitten batting at a toy mouse on a string. "Where would we be without your insight, Miss Pfannee?"

"…intolerable interference in the editorial process, absolutely intolerable…" There was a crash, as if something breakable had just been thrown across Chuffrey's room and hit the wall. It was followed by absolute silence.

The drop of a pin in the newsroom would have been deafening.

Then Chuffrey's door flew open and Amanda Morrible walked out, calm and composed as a sonata. Glinda glanced over at Elphaba, and saw she was looking at Morrible's departing figure thoughtfully – as if the senior producer was a puzzle, or an optical illusion: one of those magic eye pictures that needed to be looked at in just the right way before they revealed their true shape. Glinda recognised the look. Elphaba had looked at her like that during their second-floor bust up.

Too many glances. Too many secrets. Too much was out of the normal way of things this morning. Glinda wished she could shut her eyes and open them to find it already six o'clock, and herself safe in the camera's impersonal embrace.

"What are you all waiting for?" barked Chuffrey, appearing in his office doorway. His face was red, his tie askew. The sight was almost as disquieting as his lost temper. "Conference room, ladies and gentlemen. This minute. We don't have an eternity to waste."

The balloons were gone when Glinda returned from the studio at seven that evening. So was Elphaba. Glinda sighed with relief at the sight of the vacant desk.

"She left," said Fiyero, passing by with papers from the photocopier. "While you were on air. She said she was done for the day."

"Oh, that's good."

"You and she don't get on with each other very well, do you?"

"I daresay we get on disastrously. But where did the balloons go?"

"She took them with her. She said she liked them. Brighten up her apartment, she said." He smiled, shy and boyish, and it reminded Glinda why all the make-up girls were so gone on him. His quiet mystique, his lack of arrogance, his catalogue good looks. The way he really listened when you spoke to him. He was every inch the unintentional prom king, right down to his beautifully polished, understated wingtip shoes.

"The contrary thing." She couldn't picture it. Elphaba, cutting through the rush hour crowds like a knife, three smiley-faced balloons tied to her wrist with ribbon. And home…where was that, for Elphaba? Under a rock? A cupboard fit for cobwebbed brooms and family skeletons? An antiseptic, new-build duplex?

"What kind of a place do you think she lives in?" she said speculatively.

"I don't know. I never really thought about it."

"I mean, it's not that I want to know where she lives. Well – not exactly. I do want to know. But I don't want to want to know, if you see what I mean."

"I'm not sure if I do."

"For instance, we had a fight this morning – over nothing, really, just the birthday party." Fiyero hadn't been in the office for the party itself, and since it put her in an unflattering light, Glinda glossed over it. "But it felt so serious. And now I know more about her, and she thinks she knows more about me – although she doesn't, not at all. She's just being presumptuous. The point is, the more I find out about her, the more I think she's either a crazy angry person, or a sad angry person, or both. And it's not my problem what kind of person she is, but at the same time, it bothers me, and I feel like I need a little more knowledge to be sure."

"To be sure of what?"

"Why, whether Elphaba's sad or just plain bad." She thought back to Elphaba shoving her hand under the water to prove her allergy; the act had obviously caused the green woman pain, but she had done it anyway, with such determined disregard for herself. How to explain, to Fiyero, the way this nagged at Glinda now?

She couldn't explain it. She couldn't even try.

"Most people are somewhere in between, don't you think?" he said. "I'm sure she's neither wholly one nor the other."

"That's a very diplomatic attitude."

"I learned it on the job."

"Diplomats don't believe in seeing things in black and white, is that it?"

"Something like that. But I do think differences are never as irreconcilable as they appear to be. There's always some common ground, somewhere."

"I can't think of any."

"Well. You're both very good at your work – that's a start."

Glinda couldn't argue with this. She had watched a few of Elphaba's reports by now, and there was no way around it. Elphaba was good. "Now you're being too diplomatic for my liking."

"I don't seem to be able to help it, I'm afraid."

"There's no need to apologise. Either Elphaba and I will learn to put up with each other eventually, or we'll push each other out of the window one day, and the whole problem will be solved. I feel better just for having talked about it." In fact she felt flattered that he had stopped to talk at all. Fiyero didn't make a habit of casual conversation.

"Are you working late?"

"No, I've had enough excitement for one day. I'm going home."

"All right, then. Good night, Glinda."

It would have been a lie to say she wasn't tempted. Ask him out for margaritas! Just for kicks. Not for keeps. The idea only lasted a clock-tick, though, and she knew it had more to do with the stress of the day than any attraction to Fiyero himself. For all his perfection, Glinda found that she didn't share the passion of the make-up girls. Perfection didn't seem to be turning out to be her type, judging by what had happened with all those lawyers.

Even if she had liked Fiyero in that way, there was the ring on his hand to consider, and the money that went back to the Vinkus every month. He might not be married. But then again, he might. And that was a line Glinda preferred never to cross. Ever. She had seen enough of that kind of thing when she was growing up: her father's affairs, his long absences from home excused with vague references to "golf" or "business"; or her mother's, during which Larena would suddenly start wearing new clothes and perfume just to go and play bridge. These affairs would always end, and Glinda was always able to tell when they did – not that anything was ever said openly, of course, in accordance with respectable upper middle-class tradition. If it was her father who had been playing away, he would suddenly be much more visible around the house, drinking Bloody Marys at breakfast. If it was some dalliance of her mother's, her mother would conduct long phone calls and chain smoke in the privacy of her own room, emerging only to make random pronouncements: "Triangles, darling. They're the worst shapes of all. They look like fun, but somebody always gets hurt. Write that down with your geometry homework."

In the space of a week, true winter settled on the Emerald City. This was Glinda's favourite time of year: it was all anthracite skies and fairy lights, the splendours of the capital gleaming bright and clean. Fine woollen gloves, pillar-box hats, new boots. The simple pleasures of coming in from the cold and getting warm, or gazing out of her window and watching the frost descend as the temperature dropped. Snow falling noiselessly, peacefully, like cherry blossom. Lurlinemas, yet to come.

"Isn't this weather wonderful?" Glinda said, coming back in from lunch one afternoon, too glad of heart to keep it to herself, or to care who heard it, despite the likely bitter response from Elphaba. "Doesn't it make you feel alive?"

Elphaba was hammering at her typewriter with a scarf swathed around her neck and a pair of black fingerless mittens on her hands. "It bites."

"Oh, I know it's cold, but it's so invigorating, don't you think? Bracing."

"If by 'bracing' you mean 'glacial.'"

"You only feel it so because you're thin as a spindle. It's simple thermodynamics. Nothing to burn. Try upping your carbohydrate intake."

Elphaba rolled her eyes. In the same instant, a piercing wail tore through the newsroom.

The fire alarm.

The sprinklers went off above their desks.

Elphaba ducked, too late.

"Great," yelled the Legal Correspondent over the ear-piercing alarm. "That's just great. Now all my stuff's covered in foam. What idiot tried to make waffles in the toaster again? Things are against the rules for a reason!"

Glinda looked over at Elphaba, who was patting herself carefully. Checking for damage and finding…none.

"Why, Miss Elphaba. You're still here."

Brown eyes met hers, steadily. "That's interesting."

"Isn't it, though? Maintenance must have changed the sprinkler system. I can't think why they would have done that."

Chuffrey came out of his office, wearing a fluorescent sash emblazoned with the words Fire Marshal. "Come along, everyone. This isn't a drill. Proceed to the assembly point outside in an orderly fashion. Don't take the elevator, please. Stairs only."

"I'll pretend you said thank you, shall I?" Glinda said as they started heading for the stairway along with the others. "For my having practically saved your life."

"Knock yourself out. Paint a mental picture."

"I don't consider that an adequate expression of gratitude."

"Keep moving, will you? If there's a real fire I'll be charred to cinders waiting for you to stop blocking the stairs. I was quite capable of talking to Maintenance myself, once I knew about the sprinklers."

"But you didn't."

"Because you said you were going to. No point in sending a delegation."

"But you had no way of knowing whether I really did or not – unless you went and asked them later."

"I trusted you," Elphaba said simply. "Should I not have? You don't strike me as a double-crosser, though you might stoop to the level of juvenile mockery now and then."

They were outside now; the evacuated staff were milling about on the pavement opposite the EBC1 building as the fire marshals from each floor tried to take roll calls and tick names off their lists. There was no sign of any fire, but since it wasn't a drill they had to wait for a fire crew to arrive and check the place over.

Elphaba folded her arms and hunched her shoulders, bouncing agitatedly from one foot to the other. "Unnamed God. I should have taken my chances with the towering inferno."

"What you should have done is bring your coat. Like I did."

"I didn't think we were going to have to stand out here all day."

"It's been two minutes."

"Yes, but how much longer will we loiter in this frozen wasteland before they let us back in?"

"Do you ever stop complaining?" Glinda started yanking her coat off. "Here. Take my coat, for Lurline's sake."

"I will do no such thing."

"It's not real fur, if that's what's bothering you. It's one-hundred percent acrylic."

"I didn't think it was real, you silly girl. I can't take your coat because then you'll be cold. It's my own fault. I shall just have to put up with it."

It was easy to miss, between you silly girl and the uncharacteristic admission of my own fault, but Glinda heard it. Consideration, thoughtfulness: Elphaba didn't want her to get cold. She was getting wise to the way Elphaba spoke: in among her twists and sarcastic turns were real sentiments, like gems in rock. The green woman made them deliberately difficult to find. Was it just a tactic, a way of making sure people didn't look too close, or listen too carefully?

"Stubborn monster," Glinda said, but she took care to say it without meanness.

"Thank you."

Glinda blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"I think you heard me competently the first time. No rewinds."

"Was that thank you for calling you a stubborn monster, or thank you for getting the water switched out of the sprinklers?"

"You choose."

"You never let on when you're being serious, do you? The effect is quite exhausting."

"You have foam in your hair," was the answering observation. "The effect is quite ridiculous."

"Oh, do I?" It wasn't only that Elphaba spoke in such a chopped-up way. Glinda felt herself chopping and changing in response. Repulsion switched to curiosity, curiosity switched to impatience, impatience switched to annoyance...it was making her feel like a remote control with faulty batteries. "Well, you have foam in your hair. You look like a fright."

Elphaba's hair was tied back in a braid, the way she always wore it to work. Glinda couldn't remember whether it had been down the night they met at the Crystal Plaza – the greenness had taken up most of her attention at the time. She certainly couldn't remember noticing, as she did now seeing Elphaba let her hair down and shake it out, tsking with annoyance, how very striking it was. Avaric had been right all along, with his film-school dropout claptrap about presence. Elphaba did have it. She was captivating to look at. Not just on screen, either.

Switch. Envy.

Switch. Appreciation of externalities of form.

But she had made the mistake of giving Avaric mental space – think of the devil, and the devil saunters over.

"Look at you two," he said. "Shooting the breeze. Almost like friends."

"We're not friends," Elphaba said mildly.

"I second that emotion," said Glinda.

"Have you considered any conflict resolution techniques? An intermediary body to help defuse the tension, or whatever it is you have going on here? Think about it. I could be that body."

"Keep talking, Mr Tenmeadows, and you could be a body in the morgue."

"Don't engage with him," said Glinda. "Ignore him. He'll get bored and go away."

"There's nothing boring about a gorgeous blonde and a botanical mutant." Avaric said, just as the fire engines rounded the corner of the street, sirens blaring, and pulled up outside the building. "Ah, the cavalry's here. I'll have to leave you to your own devices while I go and find out what's happening. I left my handmade designer sunglasses in there. Quality goods, you know. You can't be too careful."

"I hope his sunglasses have combusted," Glinda said as he hurried off. "Although I don't think there is any fire. It must have been a false alarm, or a spark in the wiring."

"Then let's hope that a fireman treads on them while they're checking the place over," said Elphaba, and smiled a little smile, turning up one corner of her mouth. It was a smile of private mirth, but Glinda understood it was meant to include her. Not to shut her out.

She couldn't help but look down at the pavement beneath their feet, to check it was still conventional concrete.

Because, all of a sudden, it felt a lot like common ground.