Thursday the 16th of December was the bank's Christmas party. It was barely past eight o'clock and the good news was, the boys seemed to be getting over the initial shock of seeing Elisabeth in the shortish black dress she'd been wearing indiscriminately to every dressy event for the last seven years. Also, Will had been in an exceptionally benign mood, and hadn't shot her a single death-stare so far this evening. He was at his combative best, however, playing the drinking game, the rules of which had been circulated well in advance by e-mail: touch your face, drink one finger, touch your hair, same thing, call anyone at the trading table by their name or usual nickname, same thing. Point at someone to get around naming them, two fingers. And at VP level and above –just Will and Elisabeth for now- there was an additional no gloating rule, penalty three fingers.

The bad news was: Paul was already plastered. His downfall was his compulsive hair fiddling: he'd been caught early on by Andy, who'd just been caught by Neil calling him Paul. They'd both drunk a finger of the sour Chardonnay accompanying the starters.

Elisabeth's strategy had been to stick to soda water until dinner, despite the free champagne, so that she started ahead of the pack in terms of sobriety. She now knew her danger zone to be her unruly hair, but she'd also have to watch her tendency to gloat if she did catch anyone else out. To her the best thing about the drinking game was the difficulty the boys had calling their softest target neither Paul nor gay, pufter, queen, pinko, queer, fairy, sausage jockey, or any of the more elaborate profanities from Will's early email.

'With all due respect,' she said to Will, 'I do believe that the younger member of the small cap team did just point at my new joiner in reference to his hair-touching.'

'Sadly you are right, Frenchie. Go on, you, two fingers, and one for…' oh, Will's struggle for words was a beautiful thing to behold '…the person who just touched their hair.'

'Well saved!' Neil pouted. Andy let out a few expletives as he topped up his glass to find two fingers in it. Paul gave a braying laugh reminiscent of Mac's, before draining his to the last dregs.

'I think that should cover you for a couple more offences,' Will said.

'We haven't got Lizzie yet!' Newbie said, and they all turned to him.

'Oh, man!' he said with a shake of his spiky-haired head, and drank.

Elisabeth smiled.

'Watch the gloating! Is she gloating? I can't see,' Will said, turning to look at her from the next seat. They had instinctively assumed the same seating plan as around the dealer boards: Will, Elisabeth, Neil, Paul, Newbie, Andy, Yoda.

'Most certainly not, my fine fellow!' she said. Her fine fellow? Whatever.

Neil was examining her face: 'Nope, sorry, Sir, no gloating there.'

'Guess you're right: damn, Lizzie, you're still far too sober, that's the problem.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'Drink up, big man!' she said, and bit her lips tight not to smile while he drank and the rest of the team cheered her.

'And still she doesn't gloat!' Newbie grumbled. 'It's not fair.'

'If it's any consolation I'm finding it really hard not to,' she said, her voice breaking and her eyes watering with the effort not to laugh.

'Tell you how we could get her,' Will said to Neil as he put his glass back down. 'Let's embarrass her. Ask her something awkward and she'll start tucking her hair back, you'll see. Every. Time.'

Elisabeth looked round to him, surprised and inexplicably offended. And started fiddling with her fork like a maniac because indeed, now she knew that she mustn't, tucking her hair back was all she could think about. Will was watching her with that glint in his eye that told her he was enjoying her struggle. Good for him, but there was no way she'd increase his pleasure by blushing as well, so she turned her eyes down to her dessert spoon and braced herself:

'OK, right, shoot!' she said setting her hands on the table either side of her plate and looking right at him, then around at Neil with a nod. 'Do your worst: you get one shot.'

Will smiled at her for a while: he always looked happiest before a good fight and his eye lit up as he looked at her, half-taunting and half-threatening, and wholly certain of victory. But her spirits were raised too, and she was just as determined to prevail as he was. Did he think that just because OK, objectively, perhaps she wasn't the best at keeping it together under all circumstances, did he really think that he could make her lose it? The arrogance of it! No way. Her suspense endured while plates of cardboard-like turkey were set in front of them, then Will finally took his shot:

'OK ma'mselle, here goes: which one of us "fine fellows" here assembled is a polyorchid?'

'I know that one! He was boasting about it all last week! It's New… It's the young derivative trader!' she said, and hit the table with the flat of her palm. Ha! So Newbie had three gonads: big deal. 'There, I didn't name him and I didn't nearly touch my hair, so eat poo!' she added, jabbing the air in front of Will's face with a victorious index.

He sat back and crossed his arms in front of him, beaming from ear to ear.

'And that will be three fingers! Now, clever clogs,' he said then, turning to his boys: 'Voila!'

'You just gloated too, Sir,' Yoda chipped in on his left just as Elisabeth's head was about to explode with frustration. This was the first time Yoda had opened his mouth all evening, other than to eat drink or smoke. He'd just been steadily stroking his bald patch, then tipping his glass without waiting for anyone to catch him.

'Drink up, both of you!' Paul screamed with excitement. Will and Elisabeth looked at each other and raised their elbows in synch.

'So worth it!' they said together as they put their glasses back down.

There was a perfectly good dance floor and a couple of other attractions, but after pudding and crackers the guys decided to spoof for who'd go and get the champagne instead.

'What's spoof?' Elisabeth asked.

'Yes, what iz it?' said Paul.

'Haven't they taught you but anything?' Will asked.

The French team shrugged.

'OK,' Neil explained, 'everyone places between zero and three coins in their hand, fists in the middle. We take turns at guessing how many coins are in the middle in total. Two people can't call the same number, person with the right call leaves the game and last person in the game is a big fat loser. Simple.'

'Right,' said Elisabeth, and while she took it all in she bent down to retrieve the stupid little clutch containing her change from under her chair. Unfortunately her brain was too busy with spoof-related game theory to remember that while her head was upside down simple gravity would make a complete mess of her hair. She emerged back up from under her chair and put three coppers on the table, then tried her best to shake and blow stray locks, out of her eyes at the very least. Besides entertaining everyone else around the table, this achieved very little. Alternatives were now asking one of her neighbours to tuck back her hair – highly inappropriate- or drinking another finger. All eyes were once more upon her.

'Right, someone top me up,' she sighed, and Neil obliged while Will bit back a smile. But the non-VPs around the table more than made up for his restraint by cheering her as she drank again, then tucked her hair all back safely behind her ears.

'OK, let's do this,' she said, her head already beginning to spin as she put her glass back down.

'Uh, Sir?' Neil said.

'Yes?'

'We can't play two first-timers, that's just not fair. Shall we do teams?'

'You're right, OK, just for the first couple of rounds though. You take…' oh, she saw Will struggle, refrain from pointing and think again, 'You take the male spoof virgin and I'll take the other geek, she's odds on to lose.'

'Thanks!' Elisabeth said. They'd all started fiddling with coins under the table and putting one fist out where their plates had been:

'Ladies first, you start,' said Neil.

'Let's see, 7 times one point five is 10.5, I'll call it 11.'

'Told you she was gonna lose,' Will said.

'12,' said Neil

'11?' asked Paul.

'You can't say that, she's already called it,' Neil reminded him.

'14?'

'Bullish,' said Newbie. 'I'll go nine.'

'Shit, that's what I was gonna call -uh, 10,' said Andy. Master Yoda stroked his bald patch, took a slow sip of wine, and said:

'13,' before drinking again. Will had a look at the faces around the table::

'8. Show up!'

They counted the coins: 14, three of which were Paul's. He punched the air with both fists and got out with an excited screech.

Master Yoda got out next and went outside for a fag. Next out were Will, Neil and Newbie, and then it was down to Elisabeth and a foul-mooded Andy, who'd twice been prevented from calling the winning number by the person just ahead of him. OK, so any number between zero and six… Elisabeth did not like how stressful she was finding this. She wasn't proud of her track record to this point –a solid statistical approach must not be what was required here – but childish though it was, the idea of proving Will right about her made it ten times worse.

She looked at her hand under the table, took all the coins out, and stuck with statistics to the last. Paul was snapping away on some new-fangled digital camera he'd just bought. Elisabeth caught Will's eye and nodded at her open hand under the table. He barely looked at it and shrugged:

'Go on, call it, what do you need me for?'

'Come on then, you fuckin' French loser!' Andy barked.

Right. Think calmly. She had a huge advantage here, speaking first. She knew her hand, so it was just a matter of guessing his: zero, one, two or three. Average outcome: 1.5. But it made sense to go all or nothing in the last round, so he was probably gonna go one or zero, or else three, but probably not two. Last round he'd gone low, so he'd expect her to expect he'd go high this time and go low instead. So go with low this time - call either one, or else three. But then calling one would reveal she hadn't kept much, and leak information. And what if he went high again, just to go against what he'd expect her to expect. Or would he? Oooh, she just didn't know, so statistics got the better of her again and she went for the average:

'OK, two!' she said trying to sound confident, but immediately saw she was undone.

'One!' he said, slammed his single coin on the table, and raised both his arms in triumph.

'Good play!' Neil nodded.

'Told you!' Will said with a cheery smile.

'That's right. So you enjoy the gloating and drink your three fingers, Mr Smartarse,' she said with a little smile back at him, then rose from her chair and pulled the skirt of her dress back down. This she tried to perform as discreetly as possible, conscious they were all including Paul checking her out again – nothing personal, just the novelty value.

'I'll be off to the bar,' she said. And to think she didn't even care about the champagne in the first place. Oh well.

'Oh come on, Lizzie!' Will reappeared on her right as she joined the throngs in front of the bar.

'What? No it's OK, I can handle this, really I can. You go and have fun with the guys.'

'I can't let you lose by yourself. We were a team, remember, what would Raj say?'

'Oh you smarmy bastard!' she said, smiling as she shook her head, 'Oh yes, that's right.'

'We can't let beginners lose by themselves, we need you to play again.'

'I see, yes.'

'So we can fleece you again.'

'Of course. It's not just because you enjoy rubbing it in, then?'

'Not only but yes, that's a bonus. And it looks like I'll have plenty of time to do that,' he said pointing at the solid ranks of black-tied backs between them and the bar. He was still in a great mood, and after four fingers' worth of Chardonnay Elisabeth was pretty happy too, happy enough to indulge even Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy in this rare show of playfulness.

A gaggle of Market Data girls now arrived, said hi, carefully arranged themselves around him and proceeded to make a spectacle of themselves. Their heels were so high their knees couldn't unbend fully, their laughs too loud and their plentiful derrieres squeezed into shiny tunics that left far too little to the imagination. The pouting, the prancing, the eyelid batting... the indignity of it all made Elisabeth cringe: seriously, did they have no shame?

To think of all the years of her professional life Elisabeth had spent trying to prove that women deserved respect from the old boys around here. She tried to tell herself that they were just harmless silly girls, trying to have a good time. That Charlotte would have approved. Still, Elisabeth wanted to kill at least a few of the brashest ones.

They were saved by a herd of roving Pimms programmers who, attracted by the loudness either of their cry or of their plumage, surrounded the Market Data girls and proceeded to grin gurn and swagger until they all disappeared together to go and queue up for the golf simulator. Elisabeth shook her head as she watched them go then, turning back to Will, found him still smiling:

'And by the way,' he said, 'you tucked your hair back as soon as you lost that last round of spoof, but I didn't have the heart to...'

'Shhh!' she shushed him. He held his hands up and started sayng something, but she pushed him away and held him at arm's length while she leant to the left, straining to hear a deep voice ahead of her:

'Yes, damn shame about that Bingley girl expecting again. Damn fine girl!'

Elisabeth couldn't hear the reply. One of the backs in front of her, the stooping one with the deep voice, was definitely Toad's, the other one was too quiet for her to identify, but the back of his head could have belonged to Jane's boss.

'Yes, I don't reckon she will either,' Toad started again. 'My wife went back after Rosie, but with two there's really no point.'

Ah but he was wrong there: Jane Bennet Bingley, had indeed found it worthwhile going back to work after having both Dan and Sophie. Again Elisabeth couldn't hear the reply, although she started to edge her way left, elbowing the poor guy next to her as Will looked on, less than impressed. Well tough:

'Hell, if she wanted to make MD she should have thought about it before she went and got herself sprogged up,' she heard Toad say. 'Still, that frees up an MD slot for Nigel in January.'

'She won't want a holiday and a promotion,' the other voice said, definitely Jane's boss's voice. Elisabeth had now burrowed her way so she stood as close behind them as it was possible to, without actually touching Toad's back. She saw their shoulders go up and down as they both enjoyed the joke and felt her nails dig into her hands as she clenched her fists. Then her head jerked back as someone pulled at her elbow: Will, who'd caught up with her and was dragging her back through the crowd and to the far end of the bar, turning many a disapproving head along the way.

'Right, you stay here,' he said. No need – though her eyes were still scanning the crowd for Toad and Jane's boss she couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to: shock and anger rooted her to the floor. The bastards! After Jane had worked herself silly, and bloated, in fact to the verge of exhaustion for their effing fund launches. And she was going to pull them off too, and now she'd also agreed to keep her maternity leave short, even though she didn't have to. How on earth could they expect her to rush back to her desk if they promoted stupid Nigel instead of her? Nigel whose only conceivable advantage over Jane were his big self-promoting gob and his lack of a uterus. If she'd been a bloke, right now Elisabeth might well have punched the pair of them. Then again, if she'd been a bloke, right now she would have seen that you can't expect both a holiday and a promotion, right?

'You OK? Hold this,' Will said, and handed her two tumblers of clear fizzy stuff. 'Stay here, I'll be right back,' he said again, and went back to the bar, presumably to fetch the bottle she'd originally come for. She complied and continued to ruminate, only vaguely aware of the damp cold glasses against the skin of her palms. Numbing the ire at the edges. There was Will again:

'Right. Dunno what's up here, but you look like you need some fresh air. Are you gonna start to hyperventilate?'

She shook her head, still too stunned to speak.

'Good.'

He grabbed one of the glasses, and with his free hand frog marched her outside.

'Shit, it's freezing!' she said, shocked out of her angry stupor, and before she knew it his jacket was on her shoulders.

'Pardon my French,' she said as the most absurd afterthought.

'Sure.'

A couple of waiters on their break stared at the two of them and elbowed each other suggestively, as did a couple of guys from Operations also out for some nicotine. Will walked Elisabeth past them, along a low wall until they were a few meter away from the nearest group, and set the drinks down. Then he reached inside the jacket pocket on her right.

'Might this help?' he asked, and produced a cigar.

She frowned: nothing made sense anymore. Jane's boss was handing over her promotion to some random Nigel. The general view was that women should know better than to get sprogged up and what, start ordering children on Amazon instead? Meanwhile she was wearing Will's jacket, and Will was being nice for no reason and plying her with cigars. Will disapproved of cigars, hence this must be a bad dream - just a really really weird bad dream, right? Only one way to find out:

'Thanks,' she said, reaching for the cigar with a slow, mistrusting hand. It didn't vanish or melt when she touched it, in fact as she unwrapped it the plastic crumpled in her hand with a very lifelike crackle, and then a lovely aroma reached her nostrils. No, this must be real alright: dreams never smell this good.

How sweet, how absurdly sweet this was in the middle of... oh dear no, this was hardly the place for tears, no no no. She picked her head up, took a deep breath and made herself look at Will and try to smile.

She didn't manage of course, but she did try.

'There's a light there as well,' Will said, pointing to the same pocket. She looked down and rummaged, found a strip of promotional matches and lit up, and then tilted her head back.

The sky was clear and starry, just like the inside of the marquee, which had been draped in black cloth and peppered with fairy lights to the most ravishing effect. So she tried the other useful thing boring uncle Bernard had taught her back in France: the one advantage of being short sighted. If you tucked your chin in and let your glasses slide down your nose, then tilted your head back just a tiny bit, then in the blur over the top of the lenses you could make any star, real or electric, lose its pinprick sharpness for a moment and start twinkling away, just for you. The idea was to let the benign permanence of the celestial bodies put your worries into perspective - remind you of their true, insignificant proportions, blah blah. It had worked a treat on the hills of the Auvergne behind uncle Bernard's house, when she'd been worried about leaving France behind for London. It had sort of worked too on the beaches in Hawaii, when she'd been trying to forget about Mike. But tonight in London tilting her head back just made it hurt.

Still, she stuck with it until the nicotine hit, and until sorrow and outrage turned into a mere concentration of physical pain beneath her temples. Then she looked back down and at Will, passing a wince of pain off as an apologetic smile:

'Thanks, sorry about that. Much appreciated, as you see,' she said, raising the cigar.

'No trouble,' he lied.

This she knew because his right eyebrow was up and out a bit. This wasn't the familiar "Did I just stumble upon a new sub-species of dust-mite?" look, the one he'd given her throughout his early career at the bank whenever she tried to talk to him. No, that look involved both his eyebrows being up and out, and the corners of the mouth down. Whereas right now only his right eyebrow was out of line, and he was pretending to be smiling. She'd only seen that look maybe two or three times before, always on bonus-defying, six-figure trading-cock-up days. She couldn't be doing that to him: he could hate her, despise her, work around her, have all the fun he liked at her expense, that was all fine, but she wasn't having him worry about her. Shit, he really did think she was going to start hyperventilating, didn't he?

Because, of course, that's what women do, right? They get pregnant, she thought with another surge of anger and a jab of pain behind her eyeballs so sharp, it brought her stomach to her lips. Women get pregnant and then they have hysteric fits, because unlike the Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcys of this world they are no good at self-control. Ha!

'Can I ask what's up?' he said, still with that disturbing right eyebrow.

'Nothing,' she looked at him, pretending to be wincing at her own smoke, and flapping it away from her face. 'I just heard something I probably wasn't meant to out there.'

He nodded, and she felt another jab of pain.

'No take it back, certainly not meant to hear. It's about a friend and it's so bloody unfair it's made me… No sorry, let me just shut up while I can, I'm being indiscreet, I…' still the damn eyebrow wouldn't get back into place. 'I think I've already made enough of a spectacle of myself tonight, wouldn't you say?' she said with a wave of the cigar towards the Ops guys, who were still busy ogling them.

Surely he of all people would see the funny side of that? Perhaps he did. The damn eyebrow fell back into line, and Will to his normal, reassuringly contrary self:

'You haven't made a spectacle of yourself.'

'For once. Perhaps not by my usual high standards.'

A smile: in the circumstances it was much appreciated, only it made her head hurt again.

'But the show must go on,' she said thumbing at the Ops guys again.

'Who cares?'

'Quite. What's in the glasses then?' she asked, hoping it might be something to clear her head.

'Ah, knowing you I've hedged my bets. There's a gin and tonic and a sparkling water. Which one would you like?'

'The water, please.'

'I was hoping you'd say that,' he said, and took a few gulps of the other glass. She drank too, and for a few seconds let the coolness of the drink numb her head.

'Thanks. I think that's done the trick, thanks,' she lied.

'You sure you're OK?' he asked, looking worried again. She really couldn't be doing with his worry.

'Aha. Do you want to head back in? I'll be fine here.'

'Doesn't seem right.'

Right? Who cared? Which part of this whole thing was "right" anyway? But for now she had to do something to wipe the worry off his face, because that wasn't "right" either. If anything it was worse than all the contempt put together, that she'd ever endured from him before.

'I won't nick your jacket, promise, it's far too big for me anyway,' she joked, though it cost her a lurch of her stomach and another stab of pain at the temples. Once again she hid her wince behind a pathetic effort at a smile, and perhaps he did the same: with weary eyes she watched little folds form in his cheeks, either side of his mouth.

'Let's finish this drink,' he said, raising his glass, 'Toast to a better new year and all that. You up for that?'

For once he managed to make the question sound like a question, and not like an order. To make it sound like they were just having a drink down the pub with some broker, and not out here by themselves under the curious eyes of half the Ops team. To move things on, in short, and make them sound normal and pretend that she wasn't behaving like a psycho or looking like she was about to start hyperventilating.

Which she wasn't.

But hey, bless Will's ability to dissemble. If he could do such a good job of it then why not go along with it too? Why not pretend, for as long as it took him to finish his G&T, that all was well and the world was not the wicked and cruel place Toad and Jane's boss had just turned it into? She had the whole rest of her life to live in that world.

'Happy New Year, Will,' she said, raising her glass back. They clinked.

'And to you. What are you up to over Christmas?'

'I'll be in France, then back here for that stupid Y2K testing.'

'Ah, that's right. Why didn't you send Paul?'

'Oh no, tradePad's nowhere near "live" as far as IT are concerned, I'm testing stuff I wrote for my old team. You?'

'Yeah, Christmas back home, then off skiing with Dean.'

'Cool, where are you guys going?'

'Vale.'

'Wow, lucky you. I'm officially jealous.'

'Sorry, I was supposed to cheer you up. I don't know -isn't that boyfriend of yours coming back soon?'

'You're right,' she said, and despite Will's truly valiant effort not to frown as he mentioned Tom she felt compelled to look away. 'He's coming back,' she whispered to herself, 'He is,' and the corner of her lips edged up, ever so slightly, in spite of it all.

'There you go, then, it's not all bad.'

'You're right, of course it's not!' she said, looking back up. But now Will cleared his throat and looked away. Well of course, even with his bluffing faculties it must have been quite an effort mentioning Tom with a straight face. He'd been very good tonight, but she mustn't ask for the impossible.

'Shall we head back in? You must be freezing,' she said, trying for an outright smile. He looked back at her, perhaps a little surprised, then put his poker face back on.

'Sure, let's go.'

They made their way back past the smoking waiters and the Operations crowd again, and through the hall where a few early leavers, amongst them Jane, were collecting their coats from the cloakroom. Elisabeth gave her friend a brief nod and accelerated past her, before Jane's lingering stare made her realise she was still wearing an outsized dinner jacket. She whipped it off, and only as she did so did she notice its smell, Will's well-groomed yet unmistakably male smell. She looked down as she handed it back to him, vexed with the strange idea now intruding in her mind, of their scents mingling on the fabric, together with that of the cigar's smoke. When she looked back up Will seemed worried again, so she ignored the fresh jab of pain beneath her temples and forced herself to say a cheerful but impersonal-sounding:

'Nice jacket but it looks better on you! Thanks again.'

'You scrub up well too.'

'Would you believe it? Elisabeth Bennet's got legs!' someone said as they walked past. With a cheeky, supposedly friendly wink at her. Only the eighth person to give her that line tonight:

'Why is it, Will, that Neil can wear a skirt and no one bats an eyelid, but when I do somehow that's headline material?' she said, shaking her head.

'Neil's legs are nowhere as good,' Will answered gamely.

'Seriously, this stopped being funny about 20 years ago,' she sighed, and shook her head again. Will looked at her, opened his mouth then, wisely, thought better of it and shut up again. He'd probably have her down as some humourless paragon of political correctness. Well, tough.

'I think I'll go and see the research guys. Thanks again,' she said, and walked away.

The Quantitative Equity Research team, a.k.a. the Foreign Legion of Banking, were only half drunk, meaning that the Greek contingent were plastered while the stray Muslim and the American boss were talking shop, both being stone cold sober for equal and opposite religious reasons. Ah, the spirit of Christmas… Elisabeth's thoughts returned to Jane's innocent happy face by the cloakroom, and from there to Toad's hateful back, his stupid, mousy, ill-trimmed hair poking down in greasy spikes over the top of his collar. Her head was still hurting and she grabbed an unfinished bottle of water off the table and swigged it straight from the bottle on her way back to the trading table.

'Check this out!' Paul squealed at her as soon as she got in sight, and she winced with fresh pain.

'This is wicked, man!' Newbie slurred.

Andy was standing behind them, or more accurately swaying from side to side under the influence, even while holding on to the back of Paul's chair. Paul's hot pink satin cummerbund and outsized bow tie combo were unravelling, and he looked ecstatic.

'Hey, Boss! Let me take your picture!' he said to Elisabeth. She held the neck of the bottle up and smiled through another jab of pain.

'Come and see!' said Paul.

She sat next to him and Newbie went off to the bar with Andy.

'Wann anyfink?' he asked.

'No thanks, I'm sorted' she replied, raising the litre of Hilton Spring.

'Anozer Mai Tai!' sang Paul.

'OK let's have a look,' she said, and he let her scroll through his pictures. Kudos to the boy, he had a real skill for capturing the moment. This was a whole alternative Christmas album. There was Sarah Atkinson leaning in suggestively. He had wisely cut the shot halfway up her face to maximise exposure of her cleavage. In the next one she was wrapped around someone Elisabeth thought she'd seen before, perhaps on the Transitions team, with their bow tie half undone and a scarlet lipstick mark on their collar. There was mooning by various people, mostly IT. And a full frontal by Neil lifting his kilt with a cheeky grin, which made her wince. There were some fascinating dance moves. Lots of non-accidental pictures of people's feet, especially of women in very high heels. One of the Chairman, Sir Phillip, on the bog, taken from above the partition with the next cubicle. And taken from the same place but to the other side of that cubicle, there were two people in what looked like the handicapped cube, bent over two nice fat lines of coke.

'Can I zoom in on this thing?'

'Yes sure, just 'ere, look. Do you know zem?'

'Fuck me, Paul,' she said shaking her aching head in disbelief, 'I mean, pardon my French, but I think you've got yourself a picture of Toad blowing some early Christmas snow here!'

Next Friday will be Christmas in real life, so I don't think I will be posting. As it happens Elisabeth will be on her festive break too, but unlike me she gets to travel and hang out with her relatives!
I hope you have a good Christmas despite this all new, non Y2K, 2020 bug. Watch out for the other half of this story in the New Year!
All the best
Mel

Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved