Fitzwilliam Kingsley Darcy joined the following Monday. The Wednesday after that was the last day of the quarter, which meant an even busier day than normal on the desk. With all the clucking and the crooking of necks from this screen to that screen it felt like a chicken battery. Every so often Elisabeth looked away from her programmes and watched and listened, grateful for the empty desk which separated her from Neil, and from the real action:

'Andy, Tony on line one, got some form in Southern Electrics!'

'Piss off, I'm done for day! What did Nomura want?'

'They'll call you back!'

'Neil! Bob Haines for you!'

'Tell her I'll call back.'

They didn't like Bob Haines, who wore double-breasted suits and was a bit pompous, so they called him "The Queen".

'Neil, call Goldman – they're bidding you 43!'

'I'll get back!'

'Yo, 'you on the dog?' someone asked, too busy for the full 'Yo-da'.

'No I'm chewing a brick.'

Around 11 am things settled down a fraction so Elisabeth braced herself, took a deep breath in and walked over to Will's desk:

'Is now a good time?' she asked, as she'd soon learnt to do before she asked anything else from any of the traders. In the case of Will, however, there never seemed to be a good time to talk. Over the last three days she must have asked him this question well over a dozen times, always to be met with: "Not now."

So it was with surprise that Elisabeth heard him say:

'For what?' without taking his eyes off his email, where he was reading something evidently more amusing than whatever it was she wanted to discuss with him. He took his time, typing a reply to someone, pressed Send and swivelled his chair back towards her:

'As good as any,' he said, all traces of a smile gone from his face. 'What's up?'

This was, she reminded herself, extraordinary progress. She stifled a sigh and explained:

'Well, it's about that presentation for Raj's trading off-site. Coming pretty soon now, shall we talk it over in the atrium?'

'Sure.'

He picked up his new logbook and followed her through to the atrium, where they sat down by a ten-foot potted ficus. There were about a dozen of them arranged in neat arcs around the corners of the chequered marble floor. They were presumably supposed to lend this cold two-storied glass tank a more organic feel, but they failed. Whatever they planted there, the atrium's vast proportions and see-through walls would always make Elisabeth feel like an ant in a terrarium. The white marble tabletop was cold under her hands, the neon light above bright and unforgiving. This setting was in every way perfect for an awkward meeting with someone as uncongenial as Will.

'Yes?' he said, looking as straight, as sure of his place and as profoundly indifferent as the ficus.

'OK, so you know this off-site is next week?' she started, pushing her glasses back up her nose.

'Where is it, by the way?'

'Well it's here actually, in the boardroom on the fifth floor. Off-site for New York Sydney and Tokyo, not for us. An on-site off-site, so to speak,' she smiled, and realised she was pushing her glasses back up again, though they no longer needed it.

'Aha,' he muttered, un-amused. She ploughed on:

'Have you seen the agenda?'

'Yes.'

'So you know I have to give this presentation in the afternoon?'

'Yes.'

'So you've spoken to Raj about it since you got here?'

'Aha.'

Oh for goodness's sake! She wasn't asking him to be pleased to see her or anything, but he could have made some effort towards pretending to give a rat's proverbial, instead of sitting back in his chair, his arms crossed in front of him, begrudgingly muttering monosyllables while looking over the line of her right shoulder. For a while she stopped talking and just stared at him, hoping he might seize the chance to say something, or maybe even just look at her, but no. She took a deep breath in and started again:

'Raj suggested to me, last Monday, that it might be a good idea to involve you in my presentation about UK t-costs.'

She stopped again and waited for him to say something, hopefully something else than "aha" or "yes". She saw him turn the corners of his mouth down, and move a pensive gaze to the scribblings on the opening pages of his notebook.

'Just send me your slides then,' he said, swayed at last –and no doubt only by the mention of their common boss's name- into stringing together a full sentence. She pushed in front of him the latest draft of her PowerPoint, fresh off the printer, and there were a few more minutes' silence while he read it. At least it looked like he was reading, flicking each page with a loud flip of his long index and thumb. He looked up at her when he got to the end, then back down at his pad, brow knitted in that unpleasant frown of his which, now she thought of it, she hadn't seen on him yet today. Nice though is always is to feel you're bringing the worst out of people, she tried to keep sounding positive:

'Why don't you just have another look, at your leisure, and then we can discuss it when you've had time to think about it, OK? Oh and also, it would probably be good if I'd shown you that PnL spreadsheet by then, the one I've been working on with Neil. We still have a few days…'

'No it's alright,' he said, and looked straight at her at last, his face weirdly expressionless. 'This is fine,' he nodded. It didn't look like he meant it, but there was the beginning of an effort, which she knew to be grateful for.

'Go on. It's fine. It's very nice of Raj to think of including me,' he said. Then, conscious perhaps that now he'd made a start he might as well indulge them both with a couple more polite insincerities: 'I don't see what I can add, I mean this is all your work, isn't it? I've been here two days, I'm not gonna start telling you how to do your job, am I? I can't see what I could chip in, really. Just go on and present that, I'm sure it's fine.'

He stopped talking, looked at her for another second, then gave her the briefest nod and most joyless smile, which she interpreted as his version of: at rest, private Bennet-dismissed!

'Great stuff,' he concluded without a discernible trace of enthusiasm, and then he got up and left.

She did not follow him, but took a walk to the coffee machine, staring aimlessly down at the squares of dark purple carpet under her feet while her brain started counting her steps. At 48 she bumped into one of the portfolio managers, looked up, stopped counting, joined the line for the machine and pondered what more she could have done with Will before concluding that no, she'd done her best. On her way back to her desk she dropped her slides onto his, for future reference.

'Tchin up 'lisabeth! -we'rrre 27 pints ahead!' Neil called. She smiled back, knowing he was only laying the Scotch on thick to cheer her up. She stifled yet another sigh as she slumped back into her seat and saw yet another email from Mike in her Inbox.

She deleted it before she was tempted to read it.

That evening she called her brother's house, hoping to pick the brain of her friend and now sister-in-law, Jane. But some new French au pair picked up instead, saying Jane and Vincent were both still at work. Elisabeth flash-boiled some capellini, poured the best part of a jar of pesto on top, and settled down in front of the telly with her food.

Sod's law made the phone ring after barely two mouthfuls. She switched the TV back off and went to get it.

'Good evening,' she said.

'Evenin', can I speak to Ben?' she heard.

Not Jane then, and not for her. Shame:

'I'm afraid Ben's not in right now, have you tried his mobile?'

'No, why, have you seen his mobile?'

'I don't think so, no, sorry.'

'Yeah, that'll be because he hasn't got one. 'that you then, Elisabeth?'

''tis I indeed, Tom, hi. And how are you doing tonight?'

'Bloody fabulous.'

'Still wound up, hey? Well, I guess that's…'

'I'm sorry, Elisabeth. You've got to believe me, I'm not a violent man. Boarding school tried their best to make me so, Gaelic football and everything...'

'Well, trust a French woman to succeed where the British public school system failed,' Elisabeth said, smiling at the knobbly ankle and foot across from her on Ben's fresco. She tried to picture what kind of sadistic institution Tom could have attended as a child to explain his remarkable present character.

'It's OK, honestly, Tom, we're cool,' she added when he didn't reply.

'Speak for yourself.'

'What?'

He left a pause, then laughed a short throaty laugh and said:

'I never considered myself cool.'

'Have you considered picking up the bass and joining a band? I hear it's not very difficult.'

'Fair cop,' he laughed again, but this time not at her expense.

'Hey, it's not like I'm cool either, and I'm not even in a band.'

'Oh, you're cool enough.'

'Thanks – I think?'

She couldn't be sure, but in the silence that followed he didn't care to reassure her.

'So what is it your friends call you, Elisabeth?'

'French ones, Zabou, English ones just Zab.'

'Zab?'

'Zab.'

'Well then, Zab, are you around Saturday?'

'Probably not. I said I'd go and see my brother and the kids.'

'You've got a brother with kids?'

'Aha, yes. Two, twins. Daniel and Sophie.'

'Right.'

Silence. The mention of the twins appeared to have killed the conversation, as indeed the twins themselves had killed so many conversations before.

'Anyway, I'll tell Ben you called,' Elisabeth said.

'Thanks.'

'Bye,' she hung up, looked back at her cold pasta, and chucked it into the bin.

She didn't see much of her flatmates that week. Mac was out most evenings rehearsing at a studio down the bottom of Holloway Road, and never got up before halfway through the trading day. As for Ben, when he was in he was sunk into the sofa in front of the telly, with some random sports on far too loud. By Saturday Elisabeth was growing desperate for a friendly face when Ben rolled into the living room and found her chopping apples, with a bowl of pastry dough next to her on the counter.

'What' you making?' he asked in his deep bass voice, peering over as he switched the kettle on.

'Apple tart. For dinner at my brother's,' she said, keeping her eye on the chopping board where, despite her best endeavours, the slices were looking anything but regular. Her neck felt stiff so she stretched her head from side to side, then carried on chopping.

'Do you do this every weekend?' Ben asked and she looked up, more to stretch her neck again, than to look at him.

As soon as she did look at him, though, Ben looked down at her chopping board.

'Hey, I thought you were the scientist here,' she said, 'Evidently I don't do this every weekend, or you'd have seen some last week.'

Ben looked back up from the board, smiled his bonny simpleton smile, and turned away to grab the kettle:

'Do you know what you call a very clever prostitute?' he asked behind his back.

'No?'

'A fucking know-it-all,' he said, and turned back.

'I should be so lucky,' she nodded, and went back to her chopping.

'So you're staying over tonight?' Ben asked after watching her for a while in silence.

'At my brother's? Yeah I am, why?'

'Can we use your room?'

' 'depends what for.'

'Tom's coming.'

'That's right, I guess he's missing his old digs,' she said, looking back up at Ben with one eyebrow quirked.

He shrugged.

'Yeah that's fine, leave it as you find it and everything,' she shrugged back, and got back to her chopping again, trying not to dwell on how chuffed Ben seemed to be at the idea of swapping her back for Tom, even just for one night. This was their place after all, the boys' place. They'd granted her asylum, but full citizenship was a bit much to ask for just yet and anyway, did she want full citizenship of the Ben and Mac Republic of Arrested Development?

'Aah, le tahwt o'pom!' Ben said meanwhile, and this time she put her knife down to look at him. He was smiling again. At her. A cheeky, carefree smile, more Cheshire cat than simpleton grin, and almost contagious. Let's see, this must be roughly equivalent to being granted leave to remain - perhaps even a work permit.

'No, zi appel tarrrrte!' she said.

'I love a good tart.'

''bet you do, Ben, I bet you do,' she said, shaking her head as she turned back to her chopping board. 'But I'm afraid this isn't gonna be a very pretty tart, I'm no good at pretty tarts. Not much good at pretty anythings, for that matter.'

'I'm not proud,' she heard him say, and looked around at him again.

He carried on grinning at her all the time he was filling up his cafetiere, and then he carried on grinning some more. Did falling for it make her a desperate, pathetic, Saturday-morning Jenny No Mates? Not entirely, for Ben also had something she wanted, so she might as well pretend that she was buying his sudden outburst of friendliness:

'Would you like to swap good strong black coffee for apple tart?'

'Yes!'

'Deal. But remember no milk, OK? Or I swear I'm putting Stilton and mayo on yours.'

Then again, she thought, given Ben's fondness for baked beans he'd probably enjoy his apple tart with cinnamon, Stilton and mayo. By the end of that thought the perfect mug of coffee had materialised next to her chopping board, Ben's head had vanished again behind the back of the sofa, and Football Focus was on. Mac was still asleep upstairs and two hours later she had run out of chores. Her bathroom was clean, her laundry hung to dry over the tub, her carpet was hoovered, and two tarts were baked to a golden crisp, one for Ben and the boys, and one for dinner at Jane and Vincent's.

She was sitting on the lounge carpet with her back against the heater trying to read the weekend papers Ben had gone out to buy, but her eyes kept leaving the page and turning to the phone on the kitchen wall. Just over six months ago this was the time when she and Mike would go out for a late brunch, picking up those same papers on the way. Today instead of reading she kept wishing that Ben would turn the volume down, and wondering whether Mike had managed to finish stripping all those layers of paint off the Victorian plaster mouldings on the lounge ceiling in Canonbury. Each square inch had been a shoulder-wrenching nightmare, yet now she was almost longing back for it. She sat up, glanced at Ben's frieze and then at his frozen face gawping at the TV screen. She looked out of the window at the grey retaining wall, then up at the ceiling and back to the phone with a sigh.

She mustn't call Mike, she must not, tempting though it was to feel wanted.

For once.

No, no, no. Mustn't start thinking that way. She stood up, went to her room, grabbed her swimming things and walked up to the Archway pool.

At first she didn't feel less lonely in the water, despite the loud ambient noise and the desperate fight for Lebensraum in the two narrow lanes reserved to proper swimmers. It took her a few lengths to find someone of a similar speed to hers and slot in behind him. Then her mind returned to Mike and to the flat in Canonbury. She tried to focus on keeping up with the flapping feet in front of her, but Mike was still in her head, making the water heavy and her ribcage tight. Then halfway through her eighth lap and already breathless, she realised why it was that she couldn't remember how busy Canonbury's pool was at the weekend: in the old flat there was always something more urgent to do than to go swimming on a Saturday. Like the weekend queues at Ikea or stripping those stupid ceiling mouldings, for instance. Hence why Mike had to watch his waistline, hence why apple tarts and pancakes were banned from the menu. She felt her next in-breath swell freely through her chest, her brain switched off and she started counting strokes. At last. She wasn't lonely. She wasn't. Just alone.

New mantra: not lonely, just alone, she thought as she rang Vincent and Jane's doorbell later that day. As soon as her brother finished working his way through the Fort-Knox-like arrangement of mortice-locks, door-chains and latches on the other side of his front door then she wouldn't even be alone any more, she'd be with family.

'How's my n'ickle baby sister then?' Vincent asked, leaning in for a kiss on both cheeks.

'Fine, how's my biiiig brother?' she replied with matching irony, adding for good measure a pinch at his expanding waist. He squashed her in a bear hug until she squeaked for mercy, and didn't let her go until she threatened to drop her tart to the floor.

'Oy!' they both said, stepping back from each other.

'But seriously, bro, watch it, you are getting big.'

'More of me to love,' he said, this time without a hint of irony.

Jane walked in from the front room, as petite and delicate as Vincent and Elisabeth were tall. A small green plastic locomotive followed after her, which she appeared not to notice as she shook her smiling head at her husband. Her glossy, light brown ponytail swished as she did so. She relieved Elisabeth of her tart and kissed her on both cheeks.

Even in her state of heightened singleton anxiety tonight, Elisabeth couldn't have accused the two of them of behaving like smug-marrieds. In Vincent's case he'd been smug all his life anyway: starting with him being born first, and apparently the spitting image of his English grandfather. It had continued as Vincent spent his formative years teasing her, forever his "baby" sister, while growing taller and handsomer every day. Then he'd moved to London and walked out of college and into his job in a private wealth management firm, where if anything the recession had made him even more popular with his clients. Hence these days being married to a woman as smart, beautiful, classy and yet as down to earth as Jane Bennet-Bingley was merely the icing on the giant cake of his self-satisfaction.

As for Jane she was, as ever, way too busy to be smug. Elisabeth watched her simultaneously balance the apple tart, smile, swivel round and bend down to catch her two and a half year old son by the hand moments before he slipped on that green toy locomotive behind her.

She would, in Elisabeth's opinion, have had better reasons than her husband to be smug. For starters clearly Jane must keep a third eye in the elastic band of her ponytail, since until she'd turned around Elisabeth hadn't even noticed her nephew Daniel toddling out after his toy. It was just over six years since Elisabeth had met Jane Bingley, as she was then. They'd joined the bank the same week and endured Compliance and Anti Money Laundering training together. Two female nobodies, not long graduated, but in the six years since Jane had gone from nobody to head of a team of eight in Product Development. She even looked set to become a managing director in April, which would make her one of the youngest in the office, and only the second female one in London. Meanwhile she'd found time to meet and marry Elisabeth's brother, and to gestate and then breastfeed not one but two premature twins. She was the sort of woman, in short, who God puts on this earth to remind all other women to stop whingeing and get on with the job.

'Auntie Zab brought us a lovely apple tart for dessert. Say hello and thank you, children!' Jane said as her daughter joined them in the corridor.

' 'ello and fank yooooooo!' the children duly screamed, forgetting the "indoor voice" thing again.

They filed into the kitchen and Elisabeth had one of those moments when she had to keep herself from wishing she'd never introduced Jane to her brother. Instead of now listening to a litany of tales from the nursery, she would have been telling Jane how she'd got another one over Will yesterday. He'd been so busy ignoring her since he'd joined, that he hadn't twigged Raj had had her added to the UK Tradingemail list. Yesterday Will had copied the desk in on a reply to a broker calling him gay in over twenty idioms so florid and impenetrable, it had taken Elisabeth a couple of reads and a quiet word with Neil to figure out what he was on about.

'D'ye know, the other day…' she started, but Sophie did that thing two-year-old twins do to adult conversations- again:

'Mo' apple juice please.'

'Later, Sophie,' Jane said, who never used the word "No" with children or bosses, 'When you finish your green beans.'

'They're too haaard, Mummy,' Sophie answered in a pathetic voice. She had her mother's big violet eyes, and was a master of the trembling bottom-lip.

'They are not that hard, darling. You can do it!'

To hear Jane you'd have thought the girl was proposing to climb Everest without oxygen. Elisabeth gave up on her anecdote, and instead watched as Daniel arranged his portion of beans in decreasing order of size, parallel to each other and equally spaced, with the all the beans' bottoms lined up in a line itself parallel to the edge of the table. Only then did he start eating them, one at a time, from the outside in. He would make a great quant when he grew up, she thought with her first spontaneous smile in far too long. Possibly since she'd penned her reply to Will's email yesterday, in fact.

It went something like: thank you very much, Will, my understanding of English idioms is progressing leaps and bounds, but I'm still not sure I get the one about uphill gardening. They both knew as soon as she'd pressed send that she had an audit trail against him: Raj was very particular about his traders maintaining the appearance of political correctness at all times. Just as he was particular about them leaving no evidence of accepting hospitality from brokers above a threshold of a hundred dollars a head. Probity was the one thing, he was wont to say, which once sold no broker will ever sell you back. They were supposed to remember the bank's image at all times, to picture what their actions would look like on the front page of the papers.

To be fair to Will, his email would certainly have amused a tabloid-reading public, at the very least. He'd read her reply and stretched to look at her over the top of Neil's head, the first time he'd spontaneously elected to turn his eyes in her direction since joining. Then, having ascertained that she didn't look like she was about to shop him, he had turned back to his screens again and replied, just to her, with: "Fair cop, won't happen again."

It wasn't particularly clever of her to wind him up like this. Jane would definitely not approve, and Jane was the only person Elisabeth knew and liked, who also happened to be an office politician in Will, Raj and Mr Toad's league. Which was all very well, but if Will didn't want her winding him up he could have started by not behaving like such an almighty stuck-up pain in…

'Look at my drawing, Auntie!' Sophie said, pointing at the fridge.

'What is it, darling?' she asked, patting Sophie's angelic blonde hair, 'Is it an amoeba?'

'Not a meeba, isss a po!'

'A poo? I'm surprised Mummy let you draw that. Or was it the au pair?'

'Pas le poo: la PO!' Sophie explained in a frustrated mix of outdoor French, outdoor English, and lesser-spotted gibberish.

'Hey?'

'Tabby Po!'

'Po from the Teletubbies.'

'And that's meant to help me how?' Elisabeth asked her brother, then to Sophie: 'So is that what Po looks like? What does he do?'

'She drinks pink goo.'

'I see. Maybe she's got indigestion,' Elisabeth said, grabbing a wet wipe to clean apricot-flavoured yogurt from her hand, then from the only place she could have picked it up, namely Sophie's hair. Warning: using outdoor voices while indoor eating yogurt may lead to unforeseen dispersion of said yogurt.

'The Teletubbies are probably the country's greatest export right now,' Jane said with the greatest seriousness. 'It is a good drawing she's done, they have these... these things on their heads, and Po's a circle.'

'I see...'

'Hey,' Vincent chipped in, stirring his coq au vin over the stove. The kind of slow-stewed, aromatic dish he'd used to seduce Jane, who couldn't cook for toffee. Typical, that their mother should have taught them both to cook "so you never end up marrying someone just so they can feed you", only for Vincent to use his superpower to ensnare then impregnate his little sister's friend.

Just typical.

'Don't poke fun. Those Tubbies are the only thing Daniel will stay on the potty for,' he said, 'Hence we all take them extremely seriously.'

'I see,' she said again, meaning she saw more clearly than ever that there were four of them Bennet-Bingleys in this kitchen, who all took the Teletubbies "extremely seriously", and only one of her who, well, really but really didn't give a proverbial.

'I drewed it for you, aunty,' Sophie said.

'What?'

'I drewed it for you.'

'Drew. You drew it for me. That's very kind, Sophie. Are you sure?'

'I'm sure.'

This was the problem with those Bennet-Bingleys: as soon as you started resenting them they went and gave you a drawing of a Po, or poured you a glass of Burgundy, as Vincent just did, or smiled at you, as Jane just did, or else having finally finished their green beans they started lining up everything else they found around the table, until the only possible conclusion was that you loved them even more than you envied them sometimes, though possibly still not half as much as they loved each other.

And then you had to remind yourself that it was your choice, and not the Bennet-Bingleys' fault, if you were currently single and hence had no one to cook stews for, or with. Unless you counted a couple of malnourished, overgrown adolescents back in a dingy basement flat in Archway. You also had to remind yourself that Mike had never shown the slightest bit of interest in your work anyway. Therefore it was extremely unlikely that right now he would have been showing any more interest in Fizwilliam Kingsley-Darcy's misdeeds, than were the Bennet-Bingleys. Had you indeed been cooking coq au vin for him, which you wouldn't have, because Caroline was, of course, a vegetarian. So you might as well be single, and as per her new mantra Elisabeth was not lonely anyway, for goodness's sake, she wasn't even alone.

The children asked whether they may leave the table, permission was granted, and they disappeared back to the playroom while the grown-ups cleared up after them and started setting the table again for grown up dinner. After she'd opened the cutlery drawer, but before Jane got a chance to ask her about Mike, Elisabeth asked what she thought was an innocuous question:

'So anyway, guys, how's the new au pair working out?'

Jane let out an uncharacteristically deep sigh while she reached up a high shelf for some adult-size plates.

'She's great, isn't she, darling?' Vincent said, 'The kids' French is improving already.'

'Well,' Jane said, shooting him a less than loving look.

'What's wrong?' asked Elisabeth. Jane set two plates down and said:

'She's great with the children and they love her dearly, bless her, but around the house...'

'Why, what does she do?'

Jane paused, the last plate suspended in her hand.

'Mostly it's what she doesn't do, like pick up anything but anything at all outside the playroom. She'll do the laundry – badly but that's another story – but it all has to be in the basket. She wouldn't dream of checking the kids' bedroom floor before she starts the machine. So we're always running out of clean uniforms for them in the morning, or I'll end up blow-drying shirts for your brother at 11 the night before one of his business trips. It's ridiculous! So yes, I come back from work and the playroom is pristine, but I really don't care: the playroom is the last place I want to spend my evening. Meanwhile it doesn't seem to bother her that there's mess everywhere else around the house.'

'It's not that bad,' Vincent interrupted, his eyes fixed on the suspended plate in Jane's hand. He had a point of course: not only was this kitchen "not that bad", by the standards of Elisabeth's new abode it was show-home neat.

'No, it's not that bad,' Jane said, 'because I spend my time picking up as soon as I get in, and then I sort everything out by the time you decide to get back from work!'

To anyone who didn't know her better, Jane would have looked like she was about the smash that last plate in her hand. She put it down without a noise and said:

'But she did make time to iron the children's nursery sweaters: they're 100% acrylic, Elisabeth. I just spent my afternoon queuing to buy the kids new tops, and myself a new iron. I mean, the things don't even need ironing! But I suppose she'd rather do that than take the bins out.'

'Now, now, darling,' Vincent said, though Elisabeth was frantically shaking her head at him over Jane's shoulder. Fortunately Jane wasn't looking at either of them, but staring disconsolately at their beautiful black slate floor. Wet smudges still shone around the high chairs, where she'd ran wet wipes over the debris of the children's tea.

'Look, if she's crap, never mind about their French, Vince and I can take care of that, just get another of those German ones,' Elisabeth said, her gaze skipping between Jane and Vincent, trying to look comforting to Jane, yet forbidding to her brother. Now was not the time to open his big mouth to offer anything other than sympathy. But after only three and a half years of married life and two children, he did not seem to have worked that out yet:

'Look, darling, the kids like her, and we don't want to end up with another manic depressive like the last one, what was her name?'

Oh dear, there you go.

'Precisely!' Jane shot back with brimming eyes, and then turned to Elisabeth. 'Can't even remember their name! That's how much he's got to do with any of it! And anyway, when would I even get the time to go and find a new one?'

'It's all right, I'll do it!' Vincent replied, the idiot. The gigantic, smug, godforsaken idiot! Jane looked up, stared at him sideways for a moment, carefully shut the door of the cupboard she'd taken the plates from, and then left the room with her head high.

'You stupid, stupid…'

'Oy! You're supposed to be my sister, remember?'

'I think there's something you're not getting here, Vincent, if I may. Jane perhaps does not make quite as astronomical a salary as you do, but she does work damn hard. And keeps everything running around here.'

Vincent tried to interrupt, but Elisabeth chucked the three knives she was still holding onto the table and raised a forbidding index finger at him:

'Oh don't you try and make like you're all domesticated! You and I lived together long enough, I know exactly what you're like. She's borne you two very lovely children, and it looks to me like she's pretty tired, so it wouldn't kill you to show a little sympathy or appreciation.'

'But I don't see what the big deal is, really.'

'That's precisely the point, Vince! You don't even see what she does, let alone thank her for it. That's what upsetting her!' she said, stressing the words and poking her index finger at him again for extra emphasis. Perhaps the jabbing got to him eventually: he stopped looking so carefree and jolly, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

'OK now go! Go see her,' she said, but Vincent stayed rooted to the floor. 'Grovel. Put it right, Jesus, and get back down here when you two are finished sulking so we'll have some of that lovely coq au vin and drink some Nuits Saint Georges together,' she added more gently.

'Sir yes, ma'am!' he said at last, then sighed and made to leave. He turned to look back from the door, but said to the floor rather than to her:

'I don't know what you're thinking right now, Zab, but this is love, you know, this is marriage. We do love each other.'

'Je sais, Vincent, je sais. Now you tell her that.'

They took a while to get back down, but when they did they were holding hands, looking conspiratorially cute, and Elisabeth knew they'd be all right. Just as well, because if these two couldn't be happy together then there was no hope for mere mortals like her.

The next morning, over breakfast, they apologised for their tiff, and announced that Jane was seven weeks pregnant.

Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved

NOTES on this chapter

Shortly after posting I received the following review from a Guest.

:Sorry but as it rings home for me, I have to share my view of the way you describe the Au pair... I was one myself a life time ago and thanks God had a great host family - with whom I still keep in touch. Unfortunately lots of hosts families mistakes the au pair with a housekeeper. Iam sure it wasn't your intention here. but I had a friend That her host mom wanted her to wipe their windows three times a week (and they had a lot of windows)... The job is take care of the kids and do things related with them (thats probably why the playroom is neat) of course, since she lives with the family is nice to help doing the dishes or so. But it's not their job doing the parents laundry or keep the house cleaned. Anyway, thanks for sharing your story with us and sorry if I somehow offended you with my point of view.

Sadly doesn't make it possible to respond to reviews, just publish or remove. So I thought I had best remove the review but invite this guest's story to the end of this chapter instead. First of all thank you, whoever you are, for helping your host family all these years back, and for staying in touch with them. Readers who do not have children of their own may not realise just how much of a difference you made.

Thank you also for sharing your friend's window story. There's a fanfiction waiting to be written about this, I'm guessing in the Charlotte Bronte/Jane Eyre section. You are, of course, quite right: though my fictional au-pair may need to brush up on her ironing skills, it is definitely not any au pair's job to be picking up after the entire family or ironing Vincent's clothes.

Which begs the question, who is? Housekeeping is such a feminist issue, still, and this is why I wanted to touch upon it in the story. In this last scene we have Jane moaning about it while actually doing most of it, and Elisabeth taking an interest (partly because she's worried about Jane, partly to avoid being questioned about Mike) while lending the occasional yogurty hand. The real villain of the scene, in my mind, is the one person NOT slagging off the au pair, because he's placed himself so far above domestic concerns, he doesn't even know her name.

Stories are about characters going on learning journeys, and the Bennet-Bingleys still have a lot to figure out about how to look after young children while holding down their jobs. I hope you can give them a bit of time time to learn over the course of the story - some of them will, I promise.

Finally, a very big thank you for reading this far, and for taking the time to review the story and share your experiences.

Stay safe, all the best

Mel