On The Market Chapter 12 - Not one of the old boys, a pride and prejudice fanfic

What a complete and utter disaster: what had just happened?

Elisabeth tried to figure it out on the way back to her desk, but could not begin to make sense of it.

The meeting with Toad had started in the usual manner: twenty minutes late, with a few idle rounds of name-dropping between him and Willy Wanker. Then, a propos nothing, Toad had turned to her and asked what she was here for.

Not exactly encouraging, but this was one question she'd been ready to field for a long time. She had figures for Toad that even he would understand. Love, even: hard pounds and pence, actual cash savings, amounts she'd computed based on the New York experience of using tradePad. It all sounded so great it was a no brainer, really: greater scalability, risk reduction and lower costs, what was not to love?

What indeed? Why was it that, instead of gaining Toad's support for the project, her answer had unleashed Armageddon? A torrent of pissed-off questions: Why was a researcher doing this? Who had approved the budget? When? How many programmers? Who cared what they were doing in New York? This was London, last time Toad had checked. And anyway: where was the PPP for all this?

Those three letters still struck dread into Elisabeth. The PPP, short for Project Prioritisation Proposal, was a 26 page document template designed by the bank's tentacular IT department to optimise the stalling of all software development.

PPPs were presented by various departments to six-weekly Strategic IT Project Board Meetings made up, in equal and opposite parts, of IT people with no understanding of fund management, and of fund managers with no understanding of IT. The outcome was normally to prioritise fixing the bugs identified since the previous meeting in existing systems, and to approve the hiring of yet more IT personnel while postponing all open and new PPPs. If, in short, tradePad went down the PPP route, then it would die.

A long, slow, agonising death, of strangulation by red tape.

Now Will, she was pretty sure, didn't even know what a PPP was. Yet despite his complete ignorance he'd somehow known to switch to uber-schmooze mode and rescue the situation.

"Somehow" was not, in this case, an idle figure of speech, because what made Elisabeth want to scream out with frustration as they walked back to the desk was that she still failed to see how more random name dropping, together with some random story about some guy Will used to work with having some random IT disaster at some random hedge fund, had anything to do with either tradePad -or PPPs. And yet, somehow, that had done the trick.

That, and a joke about how cheap she was, compared to an army of programmers.

Yes, really.

What she did understand all too well, "management-level-strategic-steering-group-membership" notwithstanding, was that the old boys were preparing to shaft her in classic City style. So what if Will and Toad thought Java was something you got at Starbucks? So what if without her they wouldn't have the first clue how to set up a pivot table in Excel, let alone roll out a real time trading system? If she knew anything about this place then as soon as tradePad launched, as she would make sure it did, then the credit would be all theirs. Raj might have given her a bright new beginning on the trading desk, but the happy ending wasn't going to be hers this time either. It was going to be Toad's. Again. Blooming stupid useless evil effing...

'Lizzie?'

She carried on walking, unaware that Will had stopped and was calling her from halfway across the atrium. He called again and this time she turned around and stopped:

'Yes?'

' you heading home now?'

'Yes?'

'I'll walk you out.'

'Sure,' she said with a shrug, though it was a strange and unpleasant idea and she'd much rather be left alone.

'Sit down, we're not done,' he said as she walked off again.

She complied, too shaken still to start fighting with him as well.

'First of all: sorry, obviously, for the crass joke,' he said, 'I hope you realise it was for a good cause?'

She thought he looked sincere enough, albeit in that cold, detached way of his:

'Sure. I mean I'm sure I've heard worse before and yes, I do realise,' she said with a nod and another cheerless shrug.

'Good. In that case, and in the team's interest, can I presume to advise you?'

She tucked her notepad under one arm, stuffed her hands into her trouser pockets and stared at the table between them: did he perhaps think she'd failed to notice that she'd messed up?

'Look,' she said, indeed looking back up at him, and talking slowly so he would get it first time around and leave well alone: 'I screwed up in there, I think I figured that out. So thank you very much for fixing it, Will, and now shoot me.'

'Oh come on...'

Staring at him this blankly was probably rude, but Will's hair was still growing back and it was now a shapeless mess in dire need of a cut. In her current state of mind that was yet another annoying thing about him.

'Look, Lizzie,' he was saying, 'we all know how terribly clever you are. I didn't get half of what you went on about the other day in that meeting with Raj, about servers and replication and VPPs.'

'VPNs:' she said, 'Virtual. Private. Networks.'

He began to smile, which annoyed her some more because she had a feeling it wasn't Virtual Private Networks he was finding funny:

'Yes thank you for that, Lizzie. That was my point. What I did get, is that this launch is going to be a complete nightmare, and that you're the only person in this office with any clue how to make it happen.'

'Thanks,' she said, her brow knitted with equal doses of surprise and suspicion. She knew that he was now under direct orders from Raj to be nice to her, like it or lump it, but most likely the latter. By admitting that he needed her on tradePad, he'd also just shed light on his newfound interest in honing her trading skills, Lizzy-ing her and now pulling her aside for a cosy atrium chat. However, something also told her these niceties must be a polite prelude to the most enormous "but" in history, and he did not disappoint:

'But if you'll excuse me, when it comes to negotiations, you're a bit of a liability.'

Truth hurts. In this instance it hurt like a fresh punch to the chest. How unfair. How bloody unfair! After all if Will insisted that they point out the obvious to each other, then she could for instance have a go at his ridiculous hair or at his French. Should she remind him that his contact at SocGen was in fact called Xavier, with an X? Not Zaviere with an e at the end. And certainly not "Zav".

'Then again you can be a really entertaining kind of liability,' Will continued, the fool, beginning to smile again.

Elisabeth stared at him, and pinched her lips tight so as not to bite his head off.

'So glad one of us enjoyed it,' she said, and crossed her arms, much as he did when squaring off to people he didn't like.

'Oh, Lizzie, come on now.'

There was a spark of amusement in his eye as he said this, which she knew full well to be at her expense, and which killed off what little was left of her sense of humour:

'What? You want to talk about it? Yeah, I think I'm vaguely aware I don't go down well with the Toads of this world, thanks. Thanks for pointing out the bleeding obvious, Will.'

'All right, sorry again, Jesus! Only trying to help.'

Now she really wanted to kick herself as well as him and Toad. A minute ago she was merely an entertaining kind of liability, but now with Will's help she was turning into a complete pathetic whiner as well. Wonderful, just when she didn't need more reasons to hate herself. She uncrossed her arms and made herself take a few breaths through her nose before she opened her stupid mouth again:

'I know, Will, I'm sorry. But seriously look at me, I can't exactly help it if I'm not one of the old boys, can I?'

'That you aren't, no,' he smiled, but thankfully put his serious face back on before she had time to hate him for it: 'Anyway look, I really don't think that's the problem anyway.'

'Easy for you to say.'

He nodded and, for once, did not contradict.

'But seriously, Will, I can't help it the guy's always hated me. I gave him the facts, what else could I do ?'

'Think. What does Toad respond to? What does he like?'

Strangely Will was smiling at her again. She couldn't see anything in what she'd just said to make him smile at her expense. In the end she was forced to conclude that perhaps Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy might be making an effort towards behaving nicely. No doubt the effort was expanded for Rajeev's sake rather than her own, nonetheless Elisabeth tried her best to emulate it:

'What Toad likes? I don't know: name dropping? Golf? Long liquid lunches?'

'Correct.'

'See, Will, none of that plays to any of my core competencies.'

'We'll get back to that. But what are the two things that are guaranteed to raise his heckles?'

'Hmmm, not sure, but I'll go for tradePad and Elisabeth Bennet!'

'Close!' he smiled. 'But sadly, humour is another thing that's totally wasted on him. Try again.'

'No thanks,' she said, as Toad's angry face flashed back into her exhausted brain.

Will sat back and stared at her, arms crossed, clearly expecting more but what was the point? She might as well give up and anyway, with all his skill for schmoozing how come Will was still pushing this? Couldn't he tell how bad her head was hurting by now? She let her eyes drop and with her finger traced one of the black veins running across the white marble of the tabletop.

'All right, be pig-headed, for a change,' she heard him say, and looked back up. He uncrossed his arms and leant forward, placing his hands on the edge of the table. Where she would have been gesticulating he was merely punctuating his speech with the lightest taps of his long middle finger:

'I'll tell you what would piss Toad off: first, would be to tell him how it's done in the US. For fuck's sake even you hate that, Lizzie. And second, would be to tell him to go with it because Raj says so. Everyone knows they hate each other's guts. You just need to learn to play dumb sometimes, Lizzie – yes, even you can do that. It's easy enough, really: just stop telling Toad what to do, start presenting him with a problem instead, to which there's only one solution, being the one you're proposing. Except that you never ever propose it, so that it can all be his brilliant idea. Think you could do that?'

Elisabeth frowned down at the table: Will was being unfair, she hadn't told Toad to support tradePad because that was how they did things in New York. Nor had she told Toad to go along because Raj said so, even she wasn't that stupid. But then… well perhaps Will was right, this must be how Toad had chosen to interpret what she had seen as plain neutral facts: the 80% reduction in trading errors "in New York", the 40% drop in commission costs being "replicable for trading everywhere". Perhaps she had, indeed, been telling Toad over and over again what a wonderful idea he hadn't had, because Raj had had it first.

'Well, perhaps…'

Elisabeth started thinking back to how many times she had made that same mistake before, and it wasn't a happy thought. Having grown up in the country of Descartes, her entire education had taught her to reason, to build sound arguments , then to present them elegantly. Various schools and universities had rewarded for excelling at this. Then she had, foolishly as it now turned out, carted her Cartesian logic with her into the British workplace, with the result that now computers loved her, but no boss ever had.

She felt her cheeks heat up - oh the humiliation! The worst thing was that Will was right about this too: dealing with the Toads of this world was in fact easy enough, even for her. Only she'd never thought of handling a Board Director the way she handled Dan and Sophie. With the twins she knew better than to ask what they wanted to eat, for instance. To which the answer would be something along the lines of popcorn and pancakes, with hundreds and thousands, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and chocolate chips on top, meaning that if they just got the pancakes and chocolate sauce they'd kick and scream like the spoilt brats they were. Instead she offered the twins a choice of green beans or spinach, leaving them delighted to eat their beans. Simple enough.

Then she realised that having to be put right by Will on something this glaringly obvious was not, actually, the worst thing. Worse was: Will had just thrown a hand grenade at the one pillar of her corporate identity. Until today she'd never thought to put a name on it but now that she did, it wasn't a name she liked very much: victimhood. The story of her career so far went something like: Toad and his chums are complete scumbags who nick all my ideas, appropriate my work and never promote me. Whereas today as it turned out Toad and his chums were still complete scumbags, but she did not have to let them win. By behaving like a victim for so long she'd not just been an idiot, she'd also been a bloody whiner, and she couldn't be sure which she hated more: idiots or whiners.

Seriously, moaners vs. imbeciles: tough call, right? Not that it mattered, because she'd been both:

'I'm sorry, I've been such an idiot,' she said, to her notepad.

'You certainly made a couple of bad calls in there today, yes,' Will said, and she looked up at him again: stern but calm. A lot calmer than she would have been had she been confronted with anyone as self-indulgently inane as she'd just discovered herself to have been. There was nobility in that, and probably not a little self-restraint.

'Glad we're finding stuff to agree on,' she joked bitterly. She saw she'd raised a fresh smile from him, and tried her best to emulate it.

'That's the spirit,' he said, coming forward on his seat again, 'Now back to the name-dropping thing.'

'Do we have to?'

'We do, because there is one more thing that works a treat with idiots like Toad – can you guess?'

'I can't, no. I give up, Will, really I do.'

'Oh, Lizzie come on. Put up a fight, this isn't like you...'

But how on earth did he expect her to behave like herself after what she'd discovered? And why should she want to, when her "self" turned out to be such a moany, whiny, idiotic one anyway?

'No? OK,' Will said when she did not reply, 'so let me tell you a story.'

'What?'

'See, you looked up. No one ever looks up when you tell them you're going to reel off some facts, do they? Or do they?'

'Back in Research they did, actually. Mostly so they could try and poke holes at them, but...'

'But Toad did look up too, when I started telling him about my friend Dean's terrible experience with his terrible central-IT at his new hedge fund, didn't he?'

'I guess that's what turned him, yes…'

'That and calling you cheap.'

She frowned, and he took the smile off his face:

'Sorry, I really shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did. Point is, Lizzie: it really doesn't matter what kind of bullshit story you've got to make up, provided it makes your point for you.'

Her frown deepened.

'It doesn't even matter where your friends work, trust me. Take that girl you go to lunch with, tell Toad she just hired someone, who once worked with a guy, whose boss used to be the last guy he mentioned. Works every time – in my experience.'

The frown on her face deepened another notch while, under his patient stare, it slowly sunk in that he'd made up his whole story for Toad. Bluff, of course: every trader's favourite weapon. Or as the rest of the world called it: lying through your teeth. You could have heard the penny drop in her head, and although she hadn't thought it possible she now felt even more like an idiot than she had before.

'The key thing is, always have three links to the chain, in case you need to use the middle one for plausible deniability.'

She nodded at the table, stunned.

'Your face is a picture,' he said.

She was thinking how lucky it was for her that Will was under Raj's strict orders to get on with her. In a real jungle, he could and would have had her for breakfast. In a plausibly deniable way.

'My god, you're good…' she said in the end, shaking her head with disbelief. 'I … I really don't want to end up on the wrong side of you, Will.'

'Likewise, actually. Now let's go, before you lose your sense of humour over it. Rare enough for a French woman to have one.'

'I'm British.'

'Yeah, right. Come on then, let's get out of here.'

Later, as they stepped into the lift, he noticed the copy of Moby Dick sticking out of her coat pocket.

'You reading this?'

'It's a strange book,' she said, conscious of quoting Tom. 'Even second time around.'

'You should read Tolstoy,' he said. Then, even more unexpectedly: 'Perhaps you have?'

'Nope.'

'You should. It's more fun than you think. You two'd get on.'

'Would we? Isn't he a bit, what is it -dead?'

'A bit. But you could definitely do with swatting up on winning military strategies,' he smiled.

'That's fair enough. Do I have to start with War and Peace, then?'

'I'd say start with the war bits of that, yes, but both his novels are good. It's the essays on land management you want to stay well away from.'

'I'll remember that.'

xxx

Of course tonight, of all nights, was the night when Charlotte was at church again and Tom was back in Oxford for a gig and didn't call at all. Even the normally reliable Jane was out at some shindig for clients at the Royal Albert Hall, so Elisabeth had to make do with talking to her brother.

Since familiarity breeds contempt and Elisabeth had shared a roof with Vincent for twelve years, he was about the last person she wanted to talk to tonight. After the roller-coaster ride of the last few days, however, she knew she must be grateful for even his inattentive ear.

As always with Vincent, he took a far more sanguine view of other people's problems, than of his own. On the plus side, this meant that he failed to see why his baby sister should feel the least bit guilty about lying to dump Mike. Likewise he made light of her 500 quid trading loss, pointing out that it was nothing to the quarter of a million she'd made the bank earlier.

She still struggled to see it that way, but since that trade she had revised her opinion of the traders' unsmiling poker faces and uncouth speech. Vincent could say what he wanted about them being "used to" losing five, six, and occasionally seven digit figures; she now thought them incredibly graceful about it, and had nothing but the deepest respect for their sang-froid. She'd almost finished telling Vincent about her disastrous meeting with Toad and Will when she thought she heard him munching on the other side of the line.

'Sorry, were you in the middle of dinner?' she asked.

'Just having the kids' leftovers, never mind. Go on.'

'Well, then he basically told me to grow up and start looking out for myself, and now I feel about this big.'

'How big?'

'I dunno, about half an inch?' she said, measuring it with her free hand. 'You know how Mike always used to whine about everything but never actually do anything? It really pains me to say this but Will's right: that's exactly what I've been doing for my entire career,'

'Hang on, how does Will know about Mike?' Vincent interrupted.

'He doesn't! That's not what I was saying! What I am saying is: the very thing that what used to annoy me about Mike, the moaning, I've been doing exactly the same thing with Toad all along: just moan and wait for the world to see the injustice of it all. And that's not only stupid and counter-productive, it's immature. From now on I'm just gonna have to work around Toad same as Jane does, same as everyone else...'

'You know, talking of Jane, perhaps she was right. It is quite messy in here, come to think of it,' Vincent interrupted.

Elisabeth wanted to strangle him. Yes, she did want to speak to him about Jane, and about tidying up and trying to be nice to his pregnant wife. At some point. But right now she'd just shared a momentous discovery with him and what she wanted was for him to venture an opinion, preferably an encouraging one. She should have known better:

'I keep saying you should listen to your wife,' she said, 'but then I guess you listen to me even less than you listen to her, right?'

'Sorry, what?' he asked mid-munch.

He wasn't joking. How could it be fair that the older, male Bennet sibling had never got any flack about his conversational skills?

'Anyway go on, how're things with you?' she said, concluding that, just like with Dan, Sophie or Toad, she may as well stop bemoaning her brother's idiosyncrasies, and start working around them instead.

'Well, thanks for remembering to ask, yes,' he sighed, 'Let me tell you, those pregnancy hormones aren't doing anything for me at the moment. I just can't seem to do anything right. The nagging! Truth be told I'm kind of glad she's out tonight.'

'Ah yes, well, poor you. You could of course try tidying up before she gets back, my guess is that would probably be well received. Or are you still not quite sure where things go outside the wine cellar?'

'You know, even assuming you make an effort so you're twice, no let's say you're even ten times nicer with them on the desk, than you are with me. Even then, I actually feel quite sorry for Will, putting up with you all day.'

'What? So now you're siding with him?'

'Same way you side with Jane,' he said in his most infuriating, gotcha, big brotherly way.

'OK look, there's one essential difference here. I'm not married to Will, perish the thought, so I owe him nothing beyond professional respect. As of today, as a matter of fact, I might even begin to grow one of those for him. You, by contrast, chose to go and marry Jane. So now she's sick as a dog, and as her loving husband you're supposed to anticipate her needs and...'

'Let me stop you right here, sis: real men don't anticipate. That stuff is all rom-com bullshit. Real men act when there's a need they can fill. No pun intended - I'd be so bloody lucky. I wish there was anything I could do about Jane's morning sickness, but there ain't. Let's be rational here for a second: it's not my fault she's sick and moody.'

Oh the idiot! At what point had he sneaked out for his sympathy bypass?

Elisabeth was very good, she pictured Will's finger tapping the marble tabletop in the atrium, remembered his advice, bit her tongue and tried to present her brother with a problem that he could, and would care to, solve:

'Look, I'm sure it's not much fun for you either. All I'm saying is, that your current attitude may not be the best suited to your tactical objectives. Jane's pregnant, you have two kids, but you still want to watch the cricket: I'm afraid if you want the time off you need to be seen to be making an effort the rest of the time. It's not that hard, really: clear up after dinner, give her couple of cuddles and the odd foot massage... it'll take far less time than arguing with her, you'll see, so in the end it might be more fun.'

'Hmmm.'

'Give it a go. Why don't I come and babysit this weekend, take the kids off your hands while you give her a massage or something.'

'A massage? I don't know how to...'

'Oh never mind, bro,' she said, Will having just popped into her head again: 'What real men don't know, they just make up.'

xxx

The next couple of weeks were a lot easier, thankfully, if a lot busier too. There was her first ever hire to recruit; there was extending the spreadsheet to a myriad of European exchanges; there were meetings with VPN providers and meetings with data providers.

'Kudos, Lizzie, how did you pull that?' Will said as she walked back to the desk one lunchtime and proudly presented him with a fifty grand invoice to sign off for two brand new UNIX servers. The machines were coming to them three weeks into a two months freeze on hardware changes, which Central IT had imposed ahead of Y2K testing on New Year's eve. Elisabeth, already very pleased with her victory over IT red-tape, now congratulated herself on getting Will to notice.

'Oh I just flashed a bit of boob, you know, the usual,' she joked, and saw his face freeze. Checking on Andy and Yoda over the screens revealed that their eyes too wore a thick glaze of shock.

'Oh the double standards in this place!' she laughed, 'I swear, if I down-tooled every time you guys go on about your bits.'

'Fair cop,' Yoda shrugged, and got back to work.

'So what did you tell them?' Will asked while he checked the invoice.

'Nothing, I did that other thing, you know: listening?'

She saw him smile as he flicked the pages.

It really hadn't been that hard: every geek knew that the basement-dwelling UNIX team were the bank's last true rebels. They were so excited about buying machines this fast, they'd all but fought each other to break the IT freeze.

'It's bloody good kit, this, you know,' she said, 'More CPU than all the Pimms machines put together, live and dev both.'

'You don't say,' Will said, nodding as he handed the invoice back to her.

'Luddite,' she replied, sitting back down.

Never mind Will: in a couple of weeks' time she'd have at her sole disposal the fastest computers in the building's server room.

And then the fun would really begin.

xxx

But before the new servers came an overproduced, exuberant gig where Tom, under the cover of darkness, grabbed her by the waist, planted a kiss in her neck, let go and then proceeded to act for the rest of the evening as if nothing had happened. This was followed by emails, which in the time between the gig and Mac's return from America took on an increasingly unprofessional turn.

He was hating work, he seemed to hate all his colleagues bar one large placid Finn, and he hated calling the flat in the evening and getting through to Ben instead of her. On the couple of occasions when he "got ben'd", however, it never seemed to occur to him to ask Ben to put her through.

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: Hawaii

Sent: Fri, 29 October 10:42

Where the hell were you last night? Since when do you hang out with stockbrokers? That's the kind of thing my dad does for fun. And remind me when we are going to Hawaii: I want to hear the lapping of the waves, and here all I hear is the unnatural buzzing of the e-ther and the endless tuneless clicking of keyboards, and to this I now return.

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: Dispatches from the sell-side

Sent: Fri, 29 October 11:01

In answer to your question about stockbrokers, according to the boss I need to "raise my profile with the sell-side" – that's what we investment professionals call our stockbrokers. Last night they invited the desk to Le Coq d'Argent, which is very expensive and has a rooftop overlooking the Bank of England and the old Stock Exchange building. It'll make a great launch pad some day for a sell side professional looking to end their sad lives after a bad day on the markets.

I contemplated taking the plunge a few times myself. You'd have loved the sales girls though. They'd brought not one but two in our honour. Both bottle blondes, both pneumatic, both functional alcoholics and both perched on 6-inch Louboutins. All skin-tight skirts and money-coloured-lipstick-smiles - I'd not felt that inadequate in a long time. Understandably they gave up on me at the word "quant": in commission terms us quants are worthless, plus we know nothing about statement footwear.

The two of them obviously preferred to try and entertain Willy W. but, as we know, that is a hard and thankless task. They failed abjectly, though not for lack of throwing their cleavage around. I bailed out as early as I could but Andy has been all over Bloomberg this morning telling the world and his dog that he had both of them.

Tom, these girls scare me more than any old boy ever did. For ruthlessness alone they deserve every penny they earn to spend on those Louboutins.

What else? A lot of football and inane TV talk, the odd mention of the market, and some displays of appalling manners towards our poor waiters, who smiled on and carried on serving about five grand's worth of booze. So yes, I am sorry too that I missed your call, in more ways than one.

Now, about Hawaii: sadly I'm busy until New Year's Eve, which I will spend in the office finding out what happens to my old research code when the Apocalypse strikes. I don't believe anyone would care much about my old research code should that happen, but internal audit will sure have a field day. Next year perhaps?

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: RE: Dispatches from the sell-side

Sent: Fri 29 October 11:10

What do I have to do to get a job on your desk?

Why thanks a bunch, Tom, she thought. Thanks for the sympathy, you should meet my brother. But instead of writing that she simply stopped emailing him for a bit, and got on with interviewing candidates for her new analyst position.

Her next email exchange with him was not until a few days and a few phone calls later.

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: Check out the time stamp

Sent: Tue, 02 November 09:02

Hey, I'm sure I'm terribly glad you're so successful at executing everything around you executive style, just please don't execute me, or your new French slave if and when he starts. And when you "go live" as you said last night -as if you were presently dead- and they pay you a bonus big enough to buy Oahu, will you pleeease take me to Hawaii? In the meantime yes, do send me the e-fish.

PS: Hope you're impressed with the time stamp, cos that's all the good that's come of you hanging up on me at 9pm sharp to go off to bed.

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: e-fish

Sent: Tue 02 November 12:35

Bet you just tampered with Outlook's clock, I wouldn't put it past you. Spent far too long looking for this, so please do enjoy.

xxx Sorry readers, the site will not let me insert the e-fish picture here. It's the one on the cover of this story, or read this on ArchiveOfOurOwn xxx

Must run or will miss yoga. So you're definitely coming Saturday for Mac's welcome back thingy then?

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: RE: e-fish

Sent: Tue, 02 November 14:02

Back from boozy lunch with the Finn. He has a fascinating interior life, amounting almost to an entire alternative operating system. Must tell you all about it Saturday night. Why is your fish staring at me threateningly?

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: RE: e-fish

Sent: Wed, 03 November 07:05

Because you were pissed, is why. Better now?

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: RE: E-fish

Sent: Wed, 03 November 14:10

OK, you probably think I haven't noticed but I have, and I do know that I'm only allowed to correspond once a day. If I were a betting man, like those lucky idiots you keep going on about, who get to sit at your pretty feet all day in your office, then I'd definitely say you're not gonna reply to this 'cos you've wasted your email for today already, but I'd also bet that you'll be pleased to know that yes, I am better now.

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: RE: E-fish

Sent: Thu 04 November 07:55

Oh good.

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: RE: E-fish

Sent: Thu, 04 November 09:05

Will you stop it? We're all out of synch now all because of you and I'll have to wait until tonight for my fix. Don't go anywhere and don't let Ben near the phone and don't email back first thing tomorrow morning with "yes" or something even terser. I wouldn't put it past you.

From: Elisabeth R Bennet

To: Tom Reilly

Subject: 160 words exactly, I checked

Sent: Fri, 05 November 14:55

I know you'll be thrilled to bits –that is if you ever resolve to make it in today- to know that I've had a most successful day thus far. My French slave, sorry "report", Paul, did sign on. He starts next week, and Raj has created a new redundant gerund to celebrate our progress on tradePad: said our "interactings" with our "external stakeholders" were "stabilising extremely well". Willy W. loves my new Europe spreadsheet. Well, his exact words were "Not bad, Lizzie." But point is, he managed not to swear or sigh or interrupt or shake his head at me or take a phone call or cross his arms the whole time I took him through my new features. Even though the phone did actually ring. More than once. I know, you probably can't believe it either, but it is true. This pleasant peaceful mood won't last though, it's time for our 3 o'clock with Toad. Wish me luck.

From: Tom Reilly

To: Elisabeth R Bennet

Subject: Bring on the weekend

Sent: Fri, 05 November 15:05

Just because our mail server has been down until now does not give you the right to punish me with an exhaustive narration of what you get up to with the most verbally challenged of your colleagues. And I didn't think you needed new features, I like your old ones well enough. See them tomorrow?