On The Market Chapter 14 - Marshmallows, a pride and prejudice fanfic

How on earth had Elisabeth ended up perched on her high heels in this ridiculous tight shirt, walking a gigantic silver bowl of pink and white marshmallows towards a chocolate fountain at the Berkeley Hotel?

The hotel had been hired by one of their brokers to host Christmas drinks and the outfit was Charlotte's idea, who else? She'd insisted that Elisabeth "smarten up" for her second broker outing. The heels were alright: Elisabeth's only pair but danced-through and comfortable. She'd never worn them with trousers before but they worked, made her legs look longer in her only pair of skinnies, which was nice. The shirt, however, was a mistake. It was a boob-hugging blue-stripe lycra-enhanced number which Mike, in one of his classic moments of sartorial ineptitude, had bought her for her birthday a few years back. She knew why Mike liked it and that was the reason she never wore it: it made her B-and-a-half cups stick out far too conspicuously and Elisabeth, unlike Sarah Atkinson, did not enjoy people talking to her chest. In fairness to Charlotte though, what she had accomplished tonight was nothing short of a styling miracle: she had managed to dress her up as an almost convincing salesgirl whilst only using Elisabeth's own clothes.

As for the mountain of marshmallows, well, that was the guys' idea of a joke and she had to hand it to them, it was a good one. A perfect double joke served both on their quant and their broker, i.e. on the two brands of professionals they most loved to hate.

None more so than the broker hosting tonight, who had such a large share of the Alternative Investment Market that they could charge whatever they liked. Since neither Andy nor Yoda, nor indeed anyone in attendance tonight, could therefore afford to cut their line, that broker did indeed charge a lot. In return Andy and Yoda had turned up tonight determined, like every year, to make a nuisance of themselves in every possible way.

Andy, a lager drinker, had kept everyone on five hundred quid a pop Cristal and Krug all night while Master Yoda, who did not eat fish, had sent for half a dozen different trays of sushi, only to send each of them back – not before Elisabeth had enjoyed some rare treats.

It hadn't been too bad an evening to start with: she'd consumed raw fish and fine champagne she estimated to be worth about a week's salary to the median British household, and then she'd headed towards the chocolate fountain for dessert.

'Yum! Shame they don't have any marshmallows,' she'd said without thinking as she chomped on a chocolate covered strawberry, and Andy's little eyes had lit up with a spark of pure evil.

So now between the heels, the tight shirt and the avalanche of marshmallows on her hands she was attracting rather more attention than she was comfortable with. With all British inhibitions washed away in a torrent of overpriced booze, both she and the marshmallow mountain had been propositioned many times en route.

This was only marginally worse than the average Saturday night in Paris, of course, so Elisabeth just blanked every one out and walked on until there were only a few steps between her and the chocolate fountain. A few more steps and she'd dump this stupid silver bowl and walk back away in more dignified anonymity.

'Excuse me, may I help you with that?' she heard behind her. Which was perfectly polite and the man didn't sound particularly inebriated but, extrapolating from her experience thus far, Elisabeth lumped him in with the other drunken chancers and ignored him together with a couple more suggestive winks from complete strangers.

There, she'd arrived at last, having lost no more than perhaps a dozen marshmallows along the way. But now the table supporting the fountain was covered in dishes of fruit and she didn't have a free hand to push any of them and make space for her stupid bowl of marshmallows. She couldn't see a waiter anywhere within shouting distance; people were squishing and squashing around her; some started helping themselves from the top of the heap and she feared the whole edifice might soon collapse all over her. She fantasised about chucking it all into the fountain and doing a runner, but for now she kept ducking and weaving and watching her sides as grey suits pushed and shoved.

She'd just had another close shave when someone pointed her to a gap he must have cleared for her between the alien mutant Christmas strawberries, and a largely untouched heap of kumquats. Moses could not have felt more relieved when the waters of the Red Sea parted before him.

'There you go, better?' the voice from earlier asked.

'Thank you, very kind,' she said, and blushed as she realised that the last man she'd blanked out was in fact her saviour, and that he had been perfectly sober and well intentioned. In fact, he must have been the only person this whole evening to have shown more interest in her welfare than in her stripy chest or her marshmallows.

'What's with all this? May I try one?' he asked.

He was strikingly fair in a uniquely British way. Almost consumptively so. His skin was all but translucent and his hair, thin and unkempt, was so blond that his eyebrows were barely discernible above his light grey eyes. But with all that he was a nice looking man and, more importantly, he seemed a nice man.

'Try one, you kidding? Now we've got them here you may as well have as many as you like,' Elisabeth said, grabbing two skewers and handing him one. 'Please, be my guest!'

'Thank you,' he said, smiling, and they each took a handful and waited for an opening around the chocolate fountain. 'So how did you end up with those?'

'It's a long story.'

'A funny one?'

'I'm still not sure.'

'Why not?'

'Are here you here as client, or as host?'

'Client, why?'

Elisabeth explained how around ten thirty in the evening a drunken Andy had sent the head of their host's entire European Sales operation on an "urgent" errand to find her some marshmallows. Lots of marshmallows. Only Haribo ones. He'd been very specific: the marshmallows must fill this entire huge bowl, with as much again sticking out of the bowl.

'They do something along those lines every year, apparently,' she said, 'They complain about something trivial and send the most senior person they can find on the most stupid errand they can think of. Doing the salesgirls is not enough you see, at Christmas they like to humiliate the top brass.'

Her companion's smile was the perfect mix of sympathy and amusement.

'But this year they got a double whammy because they specifically asked the guy to give me the stupid marshmallows, so they got to make fun of the top brass and the desk quant. Genius, don't you think?'

The man looked away, clearly too polite to laugh at Elisabeth's expense. There was a gentle diffidence about his whole fair person, an obvious aversion to causing offense, which reminded Elisabeth of all that was best in Jane.

'You aren't angry with them then?' he asked.

'Naaah, come on: it was funny! Plus it serves me right for being such a greedy-guts in the first place. No, believe me, this is much better than being ignored.'

The man allowed himself a frown of incomprehension.

'Two months ago they would never have dared take the mickey out of me directly,' Elisabeth explained, 'so I'm kind of glad that nowadays they feel they can. No, it's this poor sales guy I feel sorry for, scouring Mayfair in the middle of the night for forty packs of marshmallows.'

'Poor sales guy? Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? Especially tonight: they're an expensive house. Everyone's here to punish their entertainment budget.'

'So I gather. But even assuming that they're, what, even 5 bips more expensive than they should be?'

He shrugged.

'Then every time you do a hundred mil with them - which takes a while on AIM - that's fifty grand you've overpaid. Does that give you the right to send a grown man hunting for marshmallow in the middle of the night?'

'Do you enjoy being a quant then?' the man asked, smilingly avoiding her question.

'I do, yes,' she nodded, 'but sometimes even I can't get to the right number. I mean how much exactly do you reckon makes it all right to be this rude to your host? Ten grand, fifty grand, six figures?'

'Me? I'm not sure there is such a number -but I seem to be in a minority.'

'Minority of two,' she said, holding out her hand. 'Nice to meet you, I'm Elisabeth Bennet, I'm with ––––.'

'I thought so,' the man said, and with three little words suddenly went from really nice to downright creepy. She dropped his hand like a hot potato and he started pointing at his glasses and at the region below his left ear.

'It's the... Sorry, I should have said, I'm Dean,' he said, bravely extending his hand again. She looked down at it: "Dean" was still creepy. What gave some "Dean" the right to get familiar with her?

'Dean Fitzwilliam,' he persevered, 'I work at Sankuro? I'm...'

At last it came to her:

'Dean, now I've got you! So sorry! You work at Sankuro in made-up trading systems! But you used to row with Will Kingsley and now you go running with him, right?'

Dean nodded and she was surprised at how relieved she felt, that he wasn't a creep after all. Not that she couldn't deal with one more creep in this room tonight, but it would have been a disappointment: she'd quite liked this Dean Fitzwilliam, on first impressions. But how come he'd known her by her hair and glasses and, even more baffling, how was someone as nice as he seemed to be any friend of Will's?

'Thanks for taking him running by the way. He's normally in a much better mood afterwards.'

'Glad to be of service, Elisabeth – or should I call you Lizzie?'

'Definitely not Lizzie,' she said without thinking. Damn, that was the problem with considerate people, they lulled you into a false sense of security until you forgot to watch herself for a second and then:

'Look I... I didn't mean that. Well I kind of did but ... don't say anything, please. It's fine. As nicknames go I get off lightly, really. It's just that Lizzie Bennet is a lot to live up to, these days, don't you think?'

Dean smiled:

'Elisabeth, then. I believe I've been dating a friend of yours?'

Dean's eyes, which had so far looked polite but diffident, lit up as he spoke of Lily, and this unchecked display of excitement did more to endear him to Elisabeth, than had all his previous solicitude. She had never thought, when Lily Cheng had mentioned this friend of Will's she was "sort of seeing", that she would ever feel sorry for the guy, but here she was, doing precisely that.

Meanwhile all manners of inappropriate retorts to "I believe I've been dating a friend of yours" came to her along the lines of "Well, that's what you think" and "Good luck to you then", but none that she could bring herself to utter to someone as undeserving of them as Dean Fitzwilliam.

'Of course, Lily!' she said, her voice straining.

'Did she...'

'Of course! She did tell me about you, yes, last time I saw her: she did!'

This time her voice didn't break but she nodded rather more vigorously than was warranted. Dean, bless him, was far too enraptured to notice, hanging on to her every word. She could tell he was at that stage of early infatuation where he would have lapped up every last mundane detail she could have dredged up about Lily: flossing routine, childhood pet's birthdate, favourite crisp flavour... But Elisabeth did not have the heart to lead him on:

'I only shared a hall with her for a year at college. To be honest with you I'd lost touch with her until a couple of months ago. I guess she's not the sort of person you forget though, is she?'

He shook his lovelorn head, and her heart went out to him again. Why did Lily have to go and mess up the last decent single heterosexual male in the City as well? Typical. She really would have to have a word.

'She should be joining us any time,' Dean said.

'Right, that'll be nice. Oh look, there's Will! D'you think he's seen us?'

Another thing she would never have anticipated was that she would find herself longing for Will's company at a social but here she was: anything to move the conversation away from Lily Cheng. Dean Fitzwilliam waved at Fitzwilliam Kingsley Darcy, made the international hand-sign for "drink", received a thumbs-up back, and when he spoke to Elisabeth again his eyes had resumed their earlier expression of polite diffidence.

'Are you getting used to him yet?'

'Hmmm, exactly how good a friend of yours is he?' she joked.

'The best: we met our first week at college.'

'Wow, really?'

She frowned, but then it begun to make sense. Dean must be the only person on this earth with enough kindness, patience and diplomatic skill to get under Will's emotional armour plating.

'I've rowed with him, run with him, worked with him: he's the best. Just think of him shaving his head for charity…'

'Hang on, is that why he did it?'

'He never told you?'

She shook her head.

'Our PA's son, back at Belmont, was diagnosed with leukaemia. Will raised over five grand in the end - and the brokers had a laugh doing it. I can't believe he didn't tell you?'

'It didn't come up, I suppose. Good for him though - is the kid OK?'

'Alive…' Dean said, dropping his happy front for a second. But only for a second:

'I'm intrigued,' he said, 'what on earth did you think when Will showed up cueballed for his interviews? That he was a Buddhist?'

She laughed.

'No, I never would have accused him of that. I just thought he was… unusual,' she said, catching herself in time.

'And now?'

Now? Let's see: how to put this?

Back in research Elisabeth used to be known as pig-headed. Whereas now in trading, and with the tradePad project turning into a daily battle against recalcitrant or plain incompetent data vendors, brokers and IT guys, the same trait had been rebranded as determination. So Elisabeth's fighting spirit, being more than a match for Will's, had finally gained her his professional respect. She would of course much rather he respected her for being a good quant than for being pig-headed, but it was a start.

Conversely, and although it wouldn't have been right to say this to Dean, Will had risen in her estimation since he'd pulled her into room 3.11 one morning, and asked her in great secrecy to conjure up some numbers to back Neil's promotion. Neil was smart, generous, hard-working, and had been her only ally when she'd first joined the desk. She would gladly have done the numbers for nothing but Will had provided an extra incentive, in the form of daily morning macchiatos from a proper coffee shop.

Elisabeth had never stopped to ask herself whether Will would rather she'd respected him for being a good trader rather than for sharing her interest in Neil's career and strong coffee but again, it was a start.

'You know what,' Elisabeth said to Dean in the end, punctuating her speech with an affirmative tip of her marshmallow skewer, 'actually he's alright, these days.'

'What a ringing endorsement!'

'Sorry, did I just damn with faint praise?'

'Quite possibly,' said Dean, though he did not look the least bit offended.

'I didn't mean to.'

'But he does say you're very hard to please.'

'Am I?'

'I don't know. You seem easy going enough. Especially given the marshmallows.'

'Oh those weren't Will's idea but thank you. Naaa, we're doing fine these days, Will and I, honest.'

She had spoken from the heart, only she had kept to herself the one thing that still did bother her: the fact that deep down she knew Will didn't like her, and never would. He had far too much self-control to let on these days, of course, and they'd even shared a number of friendly enough chats over their morning coffees. But most of the time even these ended with him serving her his trademarked death-stare for no reason she could fathom. And although she'd never feared it she'd much prefer to be spared his disapproval, especially at quarter past seven in the morning when she was usually happy and smiling and just looking up from one of Tom's lovely emails.

Seriously, why did Will have to disapprove of fun? With the exception of fun at her expense, of course, but then she'd actually managed not to screw up for a while now, so she hoped her "entertainment value" was going down. Point was: it was one thing for Will not to allow himself any fun, but quite another for him to look down on those who did. Unfortunately there was no amount of early morning double macchiatos that could ever make up for that kind of attitude. Not even having your head shaved for charity, not in Elisabeth's book anyway. But hey, never mind: she had never viewed liking her colleagues as an obligation, though it was nice when it did happen.

Her back pocket started buzzing and she found both a missed call and a text from Lily: "Call me" said the text, typically peremptory. She excused herself and went to make the call out of Dean's earshot.

'Why the fuck weren'you pickin' up?' Lily opened.

'Because I'm at the Berkeley with your Dean, actually,' Elisabeth said in an angry whisper. 'Pretty loud place. When are you coming?'

'I can't. I'm seeing this photographer I met in New York, he's only in London for the week. Tried to call Dean but his fuckin' phone's off or something. Just tell'im I'm sick or somethin', alright?'

'No.'

'Whaddaya mean: no?'

'I mean that I won't. You told Dean you'd come and he's waiting for you. You've got the rest of the week to see this other guy so get yourself over here, I don't care how.'

'Whadda fuck?' Lily cried, then lit up.

'Get over here,' Elisabeth repeated, 'Where are you?'

'West End.'

'Great, just hop down the Victoria line and do the decent thing and stay for a couple of drinks. Then I don't care: if you want to pretend to be unwell and shoot off to see Whatshisface from Wherever, that's up to you.'

'Shit, Elisabeth, what's your problem?'

'Well one problem is, it turns out he's Will's best friend and I can't afford to get caught in the middle, OK?'

'Alright, sorry, alright.'

'But more to the point Dean seems like a really nice guy and he's expecting you, Lily.'

'Oh just fuck-off and mind your own business, alright? If you find'im so fuckin' nice then you're welcome to go and screw'im, got that?'

Elisabeth took the phone off her ear for a second and allowed herself time to reel back before she spoke again, very slowly:

'That is so not my point, Lily. Just get over here, I'm not doing your dirty work for you, that's all.'

And with that she hung up, à la Kingsley, i.e. without bothering to check whether the other person was finished. Then she walked back to the chocolate fountain and told Dean truthfully that Lily had tried to call him, and should be on her way soon.

Meanwhile Will had been stopped on his way over by the most beautiful salesgirl in the room. Even from this distance it was clear that she was delightful and doing her best to chat him up, and that he was bored out of his wits.

'I'll say this about your friend,' Elisabeth started, 'He may say I'm hard to please but just look at him: don't you think he might be enjoying the moment right now?'

'Why?' Dean asked, turning back to her with a look of genuine puzzlement.

'Well frankly if she isn't good enough for him then who is?'

'Hmm...'

'What?'

'How did you enjoy being hit on all the way here, Elisabeth?'

'OK, that's fair enough I guess, but would you look at her? She's so pretty and she's trying so hard, look at her: laughing at whatever he just said!'

'Has she thought of trying to make him laugh?'

'Hey, that's my party trick! I'm hilarious, especially during meetings with Toad. Then there's my cack-handed receptionist impression, and of course my comedy marshmallow waitress… Oh, poor pretty salesgirl! She hasn't got a chance, Dean, I'm the reason he's still single, it's as simple as that.'

Dean laughed, though perhaps a fraction later than she would have liked him to. By way of complete clarification that she was, indeed, joking, she added:

'How tragic for poor Will that I'm spoken for.'

'That's right. Tom, is it?'

She nodded. As with the "hair and glasses" thing earlier she wondered whether Dean had this from Will, or from Lily. She would have asked him, but if he was as much like Jane as she suspected him to be, then he'd never reveal his source.

'Hey look, I'm all rescued here, Dean. Anyone else try to chat me up tonight I can just finish those marshmallows and then skewer their eyes right out, so if you want to go and rescue Will…'

'We could go and rescue him together.'

Or not, she wanted to say, but ate a marshmallow instead. She felt her phone vibrate again and found another text from Lily:

"Hi E. D's phone off. Dreadful headache, can't come tonight. Tell him will call tomorrow. xxx Lily"

Will, having somehow rescued himself, arrived just as she was showing Dean the text.

'She's right, silly me, my phone's out of battery. Can you text her to say I hope she feels better soon?' Dean said feebly, putting his own phone away.

'I'm sorry, mate,' Will said when he too had read the text. His right arm got half-way to giving his friend's back a pat before he realised that both his hands were full:

'Lizzie, grab the glasses, will you?'

'Sure,' she said, complying with an anxious glance at Dean's face.

Disappointed didn't begin to cover it.

'So, what have we got here?' she asked Will, speaking with a gaiety so exaggerated he frowned at her. Not quite the death stare, but almost. She nodded and smiled more forcibly yet, until he caught her drift and switched on the phoney smiles too:

'Oh you're gonna love this, mate,' he said to Dean, '1999 Vonn Romany County.'

'1999 what?' she asked, and read the label. 'Ooooh, you mean a Vosne Romanée Conti!'

'If you say so,' Will said, looking positively grateful that she'd just made fun of him, before he checked his friend's face again. Elisabeth's eyes followed his: she had never realised one could look so miserable as Dean did now, whilst technically still smiling.

'Gosh, that's a bit posh, isn't it? Was it Andy's idea, perhaps?' she asked. Even she knew this bottle must be worth hundreds if not thousands of pounds, and commenting on it seemed the most obvious way to try and distract Dean.

'Only the best for you, my dear,' Will said with his best smile.

Impressive: he hadn't switched on the charm on this sort of scale since that morning he'd asked her to help with Neil's promotion. Now as then, there was an ulterior motive. Or rather a joint cause, a meeting of interests: today mission Cheer Dean Up!

'But of course!' she replied in her thickest, most obsequious Franglais, and smiled back. It seemed to work: Dean cheered up a fraction and reached for two of the glasses she was still holding. He held them up for Will to start pouring.

'Excuse me, where are your manners, Dean, ladies first!' Will protested with an unexpectedly amusing parody of his friend's formal civility, and reached out to fill Elisabeth's glass.

'You know what, Dean?' Elisabeth said once all three glasses were full and clinking together with a delightful sound, 'Your friend here has called me many things before, but never a lady. Not to my face at least.'

Mission accomplished: both Will and Dean had finally cracked into proper smiles. Well done her, time for a tactical retreat.

'How do you like the Waughn Whateveryoucallit?' Will asked, dashing her plans of a swift exit as he swilled his wine around his glass.

'I don't know anything about wine.'

'But you're French.'

'I'm half French.'

'That's more than enough: go on.'

'I don't know, it needs to breathe.'

'Very true.'

Of course it was true. The only useful thing her otherwise incredibly boring French uncle Bernard had taught her, was that all grape-based alcoholic produce opened for under half an hour "needs to breathe". In her experience Brits were congenitally unable to leave booze of any description open for half an hour without drinking it, so saying "It needs to breathe" on this side of the Channel was a safe bet. It was one of those useful stock phrases, like "I like their early stuff better" at a gig: unlikely to offend anyone, and it made you sound instantly knowledgeable.

Having satisfied Will's enquiry, Elisabeth made a renewed bid for freedom:

'Anyway, I guess I'm gonna head to the terrace and try and cadge a smoke while this breathes.'

'What.'

There! She knew she should have quit while she was ahead. She knew it couldn't last. Here it was again, the accursed Kingsley-Darcy death-stare. Back in the office she would have just ignored it, and got on with whichever of her three screens most urgently required her attention. Out here it was harder to deflect.

'You smoke?' he asked, but it sounded more like a threat than a question.

'You know what yes, I think I've earned myself a smoke tonight,' she said with a forced smile and a nod to the marshmallow bowl. 'I'm gonna treat myself to a cigar, I'm sure they'll have them. I'll make sure to pick the most expensive one, don't worry, even if I don't finish it.'

'A little bit of what you fancy does you good, Will,' Dean said, raising his glass.

'No, Dean, what she really fancies is in ... where is it again?' Will asked, one eyebrow quirked. The tone was sarcastic rather than teasing, and unmistakably disparaging. Together with his lingering look of scorn it made it clear that Will lumped Tom with tobacco chocolate and marshmallows, as despicable indulgences of the weak-willed.

Killjoy.

'Tom's in Estonia,' she said, 'Dean, it was really nice to meet you at last.'

'And you, Elisabeth. Goodbye,' he said, and they kissed on both cheeks. She smiled at him then turned back to Will. They swapped barely perceptible nods, and she walked off.

xxx

'Oh thank Goodness for that!' she thought when she saw Will come in the following Monday, coffees in hand. There still wasn't quite enough length on him for a good haircut, but whatever military looking arrangement he had going on, it beat both the cue-ball, and the regrowth.

'Thank Goodness for what?' he asked.

Ah.

'Coffee of course. Thanks, nice haircut by the way.'

'Thanks. You got home OK on Friday?'

'Oh yes, I didn't stay that much longer after I left you guys. Ah, but I'd like to register a protest about the party bags: I hear you guys all got iPods, and I get a bloody Hermes scarf. You've got to admit it's vexing.'

'So sorry, Lizzie. I'll have a word and make sure they hand out boxes of Monte Christo's to all the girls next year.'

He was doing such a good job of playing along, Elisabeth wondered whether just this once they might manage a whole morning coffee without an argument.

'Thank you, yes, that would be lovely,' she smiled. 'And talking of ordering, I've bought myself a copy of War and Peace on Saturday.'

'Good call,' he smiled back with a slow nod.

She should have quit while she was ahead, but some stupid impulse made her add:

'Oh and it was good to meet Dean: he's so nice!'

There you go: back to the death-stare. What now? Was she not supposed to find his friend nice?

Bah, who cared? She turned back to her screen and got on with her day.

'Glad you think so,' she heard Will say.

xxx

At lunchtime Elisabeth schlepped to the West End and back to swap the broker's scarf. It turned out her Hermes presence was even worse than her bar presence: at first all the assistants looked from her to her orange box and back and clearly just wished she weren't spoiling their nice shop with her presence. Eventually a wise older lady with excellent French decided speaking to Elisabeth might be the swiftest way to get rid of her, and ten minutes later she left with a scarf so bright, she hoped Charlotte might like to have it for Christmas.

A week later she experimented with another girly fantasy: the country spa, this time courtesy of her brother. She'd armed herself with a pile of trashy magazines, ready to discuss celebrity cellulite at length, which she imagined was what girls did at country spas. Instead she found that by lunchtime all she and Jane had covered were Dan, Sophie and the bump.

And that Jane's stoicism in relating the events of her last few weeks was, once again, pure spirit of the Blitz: she was glad that the children had caught chickenpox while in London, and not during their rainy cottage holiday in Devon, and whilst it wasn't great that the au-pair had refused to miss any of her English lessons to look after them for the two weeks they were quarantined from nursery, Vincent had been very good and taken a full two days off work, in between his various business trips to Italy, which was fantastic juggling on his part, and had allowed Jane to keep her appointment with the midwife and her scan - just the one baby this time!

And the great thing about conference calls was that she hadn't had to miss all of her meetings whilst off nursing her sick children. Between Sophie's night terrors, the chickenpox and trying to keep up with work she'd missed up on quite a lot of sleep, of course. It made the morning-noon-and-night-sickness worse, apparently, but then it was so much more dignified to vomit in the privacy of your own bathroom, rather than into your FT on the way to work.

For the whole morning Elisabeth listened in amazement as Jane described what sounded to her like hell on earth, all the while rubbing her tummy with a beatific smile. Eventually it came back to her at the mention of barfing into newspapers. Perhaps because it was so unlike Jane to refer explicitly to any bodily function, she remembered her friend's smile from during the twins' pregnancy. From a couple of months in until three days after the birth: the mind-altering pregnancy hormones. Jane's rationality would now stay dormant for a few months, during which nothing and nobody would be able to get to her. Given she worked with Toad and lived with Vincent, it was probably just as well:

'So have you told your boss yet?'

'I did, last Monday.'

'Well done! How did he take it? Had he guessed?'

'Of course not: why should he notice someone put on four dress sizes in two months? He had no idea!'

Elisabeth smiled.

'And then he had to assume that that was why I'd been off. He told me I'd been absolutely right to get some rest. Some rest, fancy that?'

'Oh Jesus, that's upsetting, yes.'

'It is, especially when I took all the time off as holiday yet still made sure I showed up to two football games and one opera with our clients.'

'What?! You didn't?'

'Oh yes, it had been in the diary for weeks, the au-pair couldn't wriggle out of that.'

'Naturally,' said Elisabeth, despairing of her friend's priorities.

'Then he went on for ages about the trouble his poor lady wife had had with her third pregnancy down at the Portland.'

'I take it Mrs YourBoss never worked after she popped number one?'

'Do be serious, of course not. And then he asked me how long I planned to be on break for!' Jane said, and her beautiful eyes lit up with a spark of the purest, most innocent delight:

'Note the use of "break", not "leave",' she carried on, 'So I said just the statutory, and he said what's that these days, I said three months and he says "But surely you're not going to be away that long?"'

'Seriously?' Elisabeth frowned, and Jane nodded again as if this was the funniest thing ever. Amazing stuff, those pregnancy hormones. If only she could bottle some and sneak them into Will's morning latte.

'Hang on though, is that even legal? I mean is he allowed to say stuff like that?'

'Elisabeth, he's my boss, of course he can say exactly what he pleases.'

'Jesus, Jane, good luck. Whatever you do, make sure you get that promotion before you go on your next rest-cure-slash-luxury-breastfeeding-break, will you?'

'I'm doing my best,' Jane shrugged modestly. 'Launches are all on track for January, and maternity leave shouldn't kick in until end of March, so plenty of time for them to promote me in February.'

'And how soon do you actually plan on coming back?'

'I'm not sure, probably about two months - the boss might just about swallow it if I work from home while I'm on leave.'

'It's not leave if you're working from home,' Elisabeth pointed out.

'I've got to show some flexibility, they're not going to give me that promotion for free.'

'Hmmm, unfortunately I don't see how even you can organise and delegate the begetting of children.'

'I'll make it work, Elisabeth, with a little bit of help.'

'Talking of which, is my brother shaping up? I mean apart from the heroic two days off he took to look after his own sick children?'

'Oh I didn't tell you, did I? He started acting really weird a couple of weeks back. He took it into his head to start rubbing my feet: you know how I hate people touching my feet!'

Elisabeth gave herself such a violent internal kick that her head jolted, and Jane wondered at her.

'Sorry, foot cramp,' Elisabeth lied, and twiddled her toes. Oh, but how could she have forgotten about Jane's phobia of pedicures? More to the point, how could her idiotic brother have forgotten?

'Huh, really, he did that?' Elisabeth asked when she was done wincing.

'I don't know what got into him. But it's all over now, thank god! I've hardly seen him last week, he's been in Italy a lot.'

'It must be tough.'

'Actually, it's quite nice having time to myself after the kids have gone to bed.'

Elisabeth shook her head, mystified. She hadn't witnessed such irrational exuberance since the 1980s housing bubble. She must remember never ever to get married and have children.

'But enough about me and the kids,' Jane said, 'how's life without Tom?'

'I do miss him,' Elisabeth said, breaking into a smile at the mere mention of his name. It was great having someone to miss.

The guys at work always knew just by that look on her face when she'd been reading one of his emails. They were oh-so-romantic: all the sentiment of the love letters of old, but with a dash of irony too, and without having to wait for Ocean liners to bring the post. Through them she learnt of the endless forests and of the Germanic orderliness of Eastern Estonia, learnt the taste of the winter air at dusk in Tallinn, and that of male loneliness drenched in black market vodka. Last weekend Tom and his Finnish colleague had taken the night-train to Saint Petersburg, crossed into Russia without a visa, got drunk frozen and eventually mobbed before fraternising with locals and their samovars on the way back.

'When's he coming back?' Jane asked, interrupting her reverie.

'Two days after we head to France, sadly,' Elisabeth replied with a deep sigh.

'Cancel!'

'I can't do that, come on, I haven't seen the French aunts all year, what with New York.'

'Could he come along?'

'No, it's the same for him, family stuff. We'll just see each other after New Year I guess, after that stupid Y2K test.'

'That's right, yes. But you guys must Skype all the time, right?'

'We do, yes. It's horrid.'

'Why?'

'Well first of all the modem at home goes apoplectic every time we try and switch on video mode. But even when it doesn't, he just seems to swim in low-pixel slow-down jelly. Seriously, Jane, don't ever attempt irony on Skype. Tom reckons there must be some giant cyber-spiders prowling the World Wide Web, feeding on all the humour that gets lost on Voice-Over-Internet lines.'

The image had made her smile when Tom had come up with it, emailing one morning after a particularly bad quality call the night before. Now, out of her own mouth, the same line came out flat.

'I hadn't thought about it before but you're right, humour doesn't really work on conference calls either,' Jane said, 'But still, Skype's got to be better than email, right?'

'Oh no, emails are the best!'

Jane frowned.

'I don't know, the whole relationship's just weird without the irony. It's so much nicer when we have time to choose our words. To savour what's been written, as well. I can read the same email over and over again and...' she stopped, judging by Jane's face that she must be inexplicably insensitive to Tom's charms.

'I hope you don't do any of this from the office?'

'Jesus, don't you start! You're sounding the way Will looks, half the time.'

'It is unprofessional, Elisabeth, and unprofessional is not like you.'

'I know, and great fun it is too.'

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: Day 34

Sent: Tue 14 December 01:35

I don't know if I can survive another day of bootleg vodka and PPTP encryption, let alone another week. Why do people do this, why do I, when I could be swimming with you in Hawaii? You said yourself, it's lovely there.

I've now been pickling myself alive with a fat Finn every evening for 34 days. Even with the very thickest of vodka-glasses on he's still not remotely attractive. He's told me far more than I ever want to know about Linux and football, and the ignoramus knows no German poetry - whatsoever. I've checked. He does sing a nice Finnish lullaby after he's had a few though. Still, I know tonight I'm gonna dream yet again of getting back home and to our room, and of all the stuff I'm going to do to you when I get you back into that bed and stone cold sober this time. It's a good dream.

By the way if you're smiling in an unprofessional manner right now and Willy Wanker disapproves tell him to piss off for me. He doesn't know the meaning of tough. Tough isn't losing millions, it's waking up from that dream, as I inevitably will far too early tomorrow morning, and realising that I'm still stuck here without you. So night night luvvie, I miss you.

Tom

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: Morning 35

Sent: Tue 15 December 07:03

Another night over. I'm having to get here earlier every day in order to catch some private time with our illicit correspondence. Will's been serving coffee with a scowl of late, I expect we've got about ten minutes before I get interrupted. So good morning to you and take heart, my love, not much longer now. In answer to your question the reason most of us do this is so we can pay the rent on the room in the flat, then the mortgage, then the nursery/school fees and then die having had no fun whatsoever.

Sorry, that last weekend I spent with Jane has left deep emotional scars. Perhaps your Hawaii plan isn't so crazy after all, you know. Not with those screens flashing all around already. In an hour's time the din around here will be deafening. All this noise and fury, and for what?

Ooops, I can see him walk across the atrium, coffees in hand. I miss you too you know, plus que je ne puisse l'ecrire. See you in 15 days. I'm counting.

Love

Zab xx