'Well of course it wasn't an interview at all,' Elisabeth said to Charlotte that evening, as she walked down an increasingly dark Holloway Road. It was nice to hear a familiar voice in such unfamiliar surroundings, but speaking into a mobile phone around here, albeit only a work one, felt like walking around with a Mug me hat and a target on her back.

'Still, it was nice of Raj to put you on Will's interview schedule in the first place,' Charlotte pointed out.

'Very nice, very considerate. He was making a point, pretending that I mattered, which Toad had to contradict by over running 35 minutes into my 45 minute slot.'

'Nice! Remind me who's Toad again?'

'Chief Investment Officer, he was my boss's boss until Raj became my boss. Looks like a frog, is in fact a lazy pig, likes expensive cars?'

'Oh that's right, got him now!'

'To be fair, around our office that could describe any number of people. Anyway, as soon as Toad was gone it was more like Will was interviewing me, so I told him about my spreadsheet.'

'Do I want you to tell me about your spreadsheet?', Charlotte asked, acting infinitely dumber than she was. Charlotte Lucas may be bottle blonde, but her acting the ditz was very much that: an act. She swore it helped if you worked in Events.

'It calculates a profit and loss on all their open orders, updates prices in real time, all in one place, with the alpha scores and my forecast volume numbers and…'

'I get the idea.'

'It's a really good spreadsheet, Charlotte, do you know how much work it was figuring out how to pull data from the order management system and real time prices from Reuters? I don't know how I managed to get it all working from scratch in under two weeks, despite the mess the Data Team had made of the Sedol to RICs mapping table. Anyway, Will slags my spreadsheet off saying it didn't seem to help Andy last night, which on the face of it is fair enough.'

'Except?'

'Except that, as I pointed out to him, Andy wasn't using my spreadsheet last night. Because Andy hates spreadsheets. Because you can't bash spreadsheets against desks. So I suggested to Will that maybe when he got the top job he could start with persuading Andy, Shifu and Newbie to use said spreadsheet until tradePad was live, and we left it at that.'

'Gosh, the guy must hate you.'

'And the feeling's mutual but hey, looking on the bright side: unlike Wavy he didn't so much as peek at my chest. Not a bouncing glance, nothing. He's not all bad.'

Charlotte laughed, whose own G-cup Assets Under Management had received more than their share of unwanted attention over the years. Then, with her unique knack for flipping in and out of moods, she dropped the blonde act:

'But… to be clear: what would have happened if Andy had been running your magic spreadsheet last night?'

'Instead of talking football with whatever broker, he would have spotted what was going on, called the bank that was ramping the price up and pulled the order.'

'So you wouldn't have lost 20 million?'

'Hey, I didn't lose 20 million.'

'But Andy wouldn't have either.'

'Correct.'

Silence. Elisabeth checked the signal on her phone.

'Well, perhaps you're right and spreadsheets are cool,' Charlotte said in the end, and changed tones all over again: 'But that's not why I called. Are you free for games night on Friday?'

Elisabeth had missed six of Charlotte's monthly games nights while in New York, and how she had missed them! A games night was precisely what she needed the way this week was shaping up, and yet… She made a mental note that she'd just crossed road number three on her left, and therefore only had two more to go, then she said:

'That sounds brilliant, Charlotte, but I guess Mike's coming, right?'

'Oh don't worry about Mike! He's fine, he's totally forgiven you!'

Charlotte often spoke in exclamation marks: the woman had too much energy for any other form of punctuation. Yet to Elisabeth's trained ear, her friend's tone came across as just slightly forced.

'He's forgiven me?'

'I know, I know. But it's pretty big of him, actually, if you think about it.'

Only Elisabeth didn't like to think about it, because that did not reflect well on her. Nowadays, whenever she was forced to re-examine her actions of 'before New York', those actions felt so out of character, they might as well have been those of a stranger. Why she'd cheated on Mike on that particular night and with that particular man was obvious: her one-night stand, a Swedish painter, was sex on legs. He'd hit on her unrelentingly the whole evening, and by then Mike had been so stupidly jealous for so long, that she'd easily convinced herself after barely half a Mojito that she might as well give him grounds to be.

But as to why and how she and Mike had got to that point after seven sensible, companionable years, that was still a mystery. Why had things unravelled on that night rather than, say, two months before or two years later? Now, with hindsight – which, as every quant knows, is a wonderful thing - the separation was beginning to acquire an air of inevitability, for her at least. Enough of an air of inevitability, in any case, that she could not contemplate returning to the flat in Canonbury.

Six months ago such a decision had felt anything but clear or inevitable. Back then there had been endless discussions, arguments and even genuine efforts and apologies, on both sides. But after months of apologising over the Swedish painter, Elisabeth would have had to start apologising for the fresh betrayal that was her impending departure to New York, and she'd found that she couldn't. Though the idea of the New York secondment was at least as scary as it was exciting, Elisabeth had dug her heels in as only she could. Mike didn't think she would go ahead with it, which was another red-flag-to-bull scenario: she'd packed up, moved out and boarded that plane, terrified but determined to prove him wrong.

'Anyway, don't worry!' Elisabeth was saying meanwhile, 'You come along on Saturday, and I will put you and Mike on the same mini ping-pong team. Before you know it you'll be heading back to your flat together and everything will be just like before!'

'Oh, Charlotte, I don't want things to be like before!'

'Really?' Charlotte asked, astonished. 'Really? Zab, you've had your break, you've had your space and your time to think, do you still feel that way?'

'Ha!'

'What?'

Elisabeth didn't answer. Charlotte made it sound as if 'feeling that way' was an indulgence, a luxury, when in actual fact it meant lugging a chest-crushing guilt around all day, and taking it to bed most nights. This guilt was a many-headed hydra: she didn't just feel bad over the appalling way in which she'd left Mike, no. What she would never forgive herself, was falling out of love with him.

Elisabeth had never liked being wrong, and in the professional sphere was almost never found to be so. It was unfortunate, then, that when it came to Mike she was having to admit she had quite possibly been wrong for a whole seven years. It was still a struggle. Whenever she took a break from kicking herself over it, it was only to reprimand herself for her selfishness. Surely she should be feeling much worse for Mike than for herself. What was her wounded pride to his broken heart? She had, after all, abandoned him in the most callous manner.

Rinse, repeat, ad infinitam. Oh wait, was that street number six?

She found the name plate halfway up a yellow brick wall and turned in:

'Charlotte, I'm almost there, I'm going to have to hang up soon.'

'Seriously, Zab, why you are doing this?'

'Mostly because Lily Cheng.'

'Lily Cheng? The Lily Cheng? You kept in touch with her?'

'What? Of course not! Haven't seen her since Uni, but I had to bump into her during my lunchbreak today, and somehow in between blowing smoke in my face and name dropping she got me to reveal I was couch surfing at my brother's, the minx.'

'That she is. I bet you loved the passive smoking though.'

'I loved it. In fact it was more like passive-aggressive smoking. Anyway, Lily's got these friends, blah blah, and before I could think of a polite way to get out of it she'd called them and arranged it all.'

'Damn those mobile phones, hey?' Charlotte joked, who had been an early adopter.

'In this case, yes. And now that I'm here I have to say, it looks like a right dump. I wonder what it says Lily thinks about me.'

'Oh, Zab! You don't have to do this…'

'Don't worry, I'll be in an out in a minute, and I don't think I'm being stalked or anything.'

She turned to double check, but no.

'I meant please don't do anything… irreversible. You know you don't need to move out of your flat.'

'But I want to. No cross that, I do need to.'

'Zab… will you come Saturday?'

'I'll think about it but look, I'm sorry but I just got there. I'll speak to you later. Love to Colin!'

Half a dozen steps led her down to a blue door. No door bell. She knocked. Above her head where the steps to the raised ground floor of the same house. The door opened and revealed a young man a little taller than herself, and a naked shop dummy tattooed from bald head to chipped toes in bright crayon doodles. The sort one would draw on the longest most boring telephone call ever – and a lot of mind altering drugs.

For a moment Elisabeth was too distracted to look at the young man. When she did she found he had a pleasant enough face, pale and flat with mousy brown hair, and an air of surprise, as if she were the weird thing about this situation.

'Hello, I'm Elisabeth, Lily sent me. Are you Ben or Mac?'

He nodded at her to come in and closed the door after her. It was a very small hallway and still no one was mentioning the elephant, or rather dummy in the room. OK, well, these were after all friends of Lily Cheng.

Either Ben or Mac opened the door to a lounge. You might have called it a sitting room, except the only place to sit was a half-collapsed sofa facing the TV. Eastenders on mute. Noise, of a strumming nature, coming from somewhere above.

Behind Eastenders, running the entire length of the outside wall, more interesting art, this time a four-foot-wide fresco on black paper depicting severed limbs in… space? Manky carpet – well, Lily had warned her that Ben and Mac were "boys". To the right an alcove kitchen in what would one day be collectible, vintage 80s style. For the time being it was just ugly, white with red trim and too many sharp corners. Not actually that messy though, considering. But it smelt of baked beans which Elisabeth, despite being French and therefore eating almost anything, held to be the very food of the devil.

Either Ben or Mac, continued to stare at her in silence and it was all getting a tad awkward when heavy footsteps were heard. Another, taller young man came in from a door on the other side of the kitchen. He was quite a vision: the wrong side of slim, sausaged into faded ripped black jeans, with a dangle of waist chains, a too-tight white vest and a ginger mohawk sort of haircut. Punk? So, so interesting. Also, what on earth made Lily Cheng she might want to live here?

'Hello! I'm Mac,' he said enthusiastically, and shook her hand. A punk on a business meeting with a bass voice and a posh accent. He was starting to make more sense as a friend of Lily, if perhaps not as a prospective flatmate.

'Hi, Mac, I'm Elisabeth.'

'Is it really true your name's Lizzie Bennet?' the other one then asked, who by a process of elimination must be Ben. He too had a surprisingly deep though not at all unpleasant voice. Ben and Mac looked at each other and didn't even pretend to hide their snigger.

'My name is Elisabeth Bennet, yes,' she said in deliberate French.

'Oh, I was wondering where your accent was from. You don't sound French.'

'Dad's British and I was raised bilingual, but in France.'

'Whereabouts, Paris?' Mac asked eagerly.

'Hardly: smalltown Burgundy.'

'Good wine country,' Mac remarked, aptly. Quite the poshest out-of-date-punk ever to roam the mean streets of N17.

'They never watched Pride and Prejudice in France, then?' Ben asked.

'It's not nearly as big as here and besides, Colin Firth must have been, what, ten when I was born? The thing is my French Granma was called Elisabeth and as the first grand daughter Mum swears my first name was never up for negotiation. You get used to it after a while. As long as people don't call me Lizzie.'

'So how come you need a flat?'

'I'm in between…'

In between jobs? Not quite. Boyfriends? Not really, but that's very much how she felt: in between.

'Lily said you work for a bank,' Ben said, in the all too familiar tone of "people who don't like people who work for banks".

'Aha, but I'm just a quant.'

'A what?'

'I do research, it's a bit complicated but basically...'

'Ben's doing a PhD in Biochemistry,' Mac interrupted.

'OK, not as complicated as that,' she said.

'Can't you afford anything nicer than here?' Ben asked, instead of beating around the bush. He was being more like the traders on the Desk than he knew: show-me-the-money school of straight to the point. The French half of her liked that about the traders - and by extension about Ben too.

'Truth is, I'm already paying half the mortgage on another flat so yes, this is all I can afford for now.'

'How come?' Ben asked.

'Soon to be ex-boyfriend. Long story, but I'm not going back there.'

'But then you shouldn't still be paying the mortgage,' Mac said, very reasonably. Maybe he was a punk accountant or something.

'I haven't quite sorted it out yet. Anyway… so where's the room?' Elisabeth said, because the sooner she saw it the sooner she could say it was too small or too big or too North facing or simply too much like a basement, and get the hell out of here.

Mac led the way and, as they passed through the door and into a short corridor, Elisabeth noticed a bookshelf next to the telly, with cool 1930s American novels at the top and home recorded VHS of cricket at the bottom.

Mac pointed up some stairs to his room, then walked on. There was a small shower room and toilet under the stairs, as grotty as expected but Mac explained that her room had an en suite. He was very much going for en francais dans le texte so she didn't have the heart to tell him that no one says en suite en France. They say une chambre avec salle de bain, which takes longer. Maybe the joke was on the French on this one.

Ben's room was behind the door at the end of the corridor. Mac opened another door on the left and said:

'Here you are.'

'Thanks.'

It wasn't that bad. If you ignored the stained old mattress on the grotty carpet. And the powder blue metal-leaf horror of a chandelier. There were French doors to the right, opening on a small terrace but letting in plenty of light. The bathroom was predictably "vintage", a salmon pink suite but recently cleaned, and water came out gushing and hot out of all the taps – she checked. The built-in wardrobe opposite the French doors was bigger than what she used to share with Mike. She tested the sliding doors: they glided perfectly, and she took a step back.

'These yours?' she asked Ben, pointing at a row of vigorous marijuana plants.

'Shit!' he said, his face frozen, his round eyes getting even rounder. Now that she saw him shocked, Elisabeth realised that the look of mild astonishment on Ben's face so far was just his default look.

'Shit? I suppose that's one word for it,' she said, and smiled. Ben carried on gaping at the wardrobe and the wardrobe carried on gaping back at him, so she shut it.

'It's all right, don't worry, I take it they're not yours then?' she asked.

'They're Tom's,' Ben said, and it was a considerable relief to hear him regain the use of speech.

'That would be your ex-flatmate?'

'It's the sunniest part of the flat.' Ben said.

Thankfully, after eight years at the bank Elisabeth was used to people not answering her questions.

'Tom must have green thumbs,' she said, 'These look really healthy.'

Back in Canonbury, Elisabeth had grown a lovely herb garden in her window boxes, but killed every single indoor plant ever presented to her by well-meaning visitors.

They filed back into the living room, and now things got really awkward. The bedroom wasn't too small or too big, or too North facing or even too much like a basement. She couldn't even fault the plumbing, but did that mean she wanted to live with these two? The ugly one was quite nice, the nice looking one was… almost certainly the graphic artist of the two. Unless green-thumbed Tom had made that mad fresco and crayoned that poor dummy. Elisabeth looked at the bookshelf again, weighed the American novels against the cricket tapes, weighed the house plants against the plate of baked beans on the side of the cooker.

'So what is it you do?' she asked Mac, to buy time.

'I'm a musician.'

'Marvellous,' she lied, based on what she'd heard before he came down.

'I'm the bass player in Dead'n Gone, have you heard of us? We did a Peel session last year.'

Of all the shitty indie bands, and some good ones, that Mike had taken her to hear over the years, Dead'n Gone wasn't one of them.

'I haven't, but I'm pretty sure I like the early ones better.'

Mac smiled.

And then, just as she ran out of ideas, her phone buzzed. Apart from the traders and Raj only about half a dozen people had the number. Seven now, with Lily Cheng, damn her. So even if Elisabeth hadn't at that point been desperate for a diversion, she'd probably still have been quite excited at getting a text.

'Sorry about this,' she said, and retreated to the corridor.

A text from a new number. How exciting!

hi elisabeth it's mike guess what i just got a phone charlotte says you might come saturday i can not wait to see you

Her heart sank, then briefly lapsed into her too-familiar pity for Mike, who couldn't have waited until he'd figured out punctuation, capital letters or indeed txt speech before messaging her. He must have spent ages typing this, she could picture him hunching short-sightedly over the keys – as indeed she had on the rare occasions she had texted. What Nokia should do, is come up with something like what she used to write UNIX shell-scripts at work, where you hit tab and the computer auto completes with the most likely next word. Or maybe just come up with a phone with a full mini qwerty keyboard. Naah, probably would never happen. They couldn't make keys that small and the English language had too many words. They'd be stuck with "CU l8tr" for all eternity.

Elisabeth sighed as she re-read Mike's text. Her heart sank further, and then a little bit further again, until she knew what to do:

'So, could I possibly move in on Saturday?' she asked when she re-entered the lounge.

They nodded and, lest she was mistaken, high fived behind her back while she wrote the deposit cheque.

Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved