On The Market Chapter 21 Le coeur a ses raisons, a pride and prejudice fanfic

It was just as well that tradePad was a success, for on the home-front things took a turn for the stressful. Jane's mum hurt her back looking after the twins, and since Jane's older sister had a Christening to attend the next weekend Elisabeth was put on a triple shift. She went over Saturday morning straight after swimming and didn't get back until six o'clock on Sunday night. It rained the whole time so she couldn't face getting the twins out of the house, and just made a bucketful of popcorn, plonked them in front of the TV with it, and got on with War and Peace.

Back at the flat she interrupted Tom playing the guitar with Ben, and sure enough, she had hardly entered the room before an instantaneous feeling of loss of freedom made her aware with her whole being of his presence. Ha! If Leo could but see the bitter irony of it. How noble it seemed on the page, and how downright ridiculous in real life. Of course she couldn't expect Ben to dump his best friend overnight just because he had dumped her in the most humiliating fashion, but still. Every time he came around she had to pretend to ignore him, then either retire to her room or head out swimming. She'd dropped a dress size and four minutes off her 1km time as a result but, unlike with front crawl, with Tom things weren't getting any easier with practice.

Tonight she heard him before she saw him and felt her chest tighten before she'd even put her key into the door. She remembered her fresh resolutions, took a deep breath and a few seconds to collect herself in the tiny hall, then forced out a gruff but audible hello and made for the safety of her room. She mustn't let him spoil her evening, she reminded herself. Instead she had a well-deserved bath, thinking the boys would be out by the time either cold or hunger drove her out of the water. But her heart sank when she re-emerged, wearing her old green flannel PJs, and saw they were both still around.

Thankfully, she had with great foresight taken the last tome of Tolstoy with her against such an eventuality. She leant against the counter next to the hob and opened it the moment she had her pan of water going. Even at this crucial point in the plot, she had to re-read the first paragraph half a dozen times before it began to make sense but she stuck with it, as she'd had to do many times before with, say, the Journal of the American Society of Quantitative Finance. She'd only just managed to forget her own heartache and focus on Pierre Bezukhov's when Ben interrupted her again.

'Elisabeth?'

'Aha?' she said, careful not to look up.

'You haven't eaten?'

'No but I'm making dinner,' she replied from behind her book.

'We're getting curries, do you want one?'

No, what I want is for you two to clear the hell out of here so I can relax, she thought. Applying Charlotte's perspective on tonight's situation she was finally beginning to feel angrier with Tom than with herself: why, for a start, was she hiding behind that book when he'd been the one who...?

'No, thanks, I'll be all right. You have a good time,' she said, still hiding, and despaired to think what she'd do when she eventually reached the end of War and Peace. The guys meanwhile remained silent, which was weird given how much noise they'd made while she was in the bath, and she set about reading, re-reading and re-re-re-re-re-reading her next paragraph.

'Right, I'm off!' Ben said when she turned her back to them to throw some pasta into the boiling water.

'See you!' she replied while putting the rest of the pack back into the cupboard. She couldn't wait to have the place back to herself. She heard the door slam shut and turned back around with a sigh of relief.

Tom was still there, staring straight at her. As usual in his presence, her body started reminding her of his power over her in a thousand oppressive ways: eyes wide, breath short, cheeks burning and hands cold and trembling.

And yet tonight she found that this whimpering frame of hers was no longer wholly subservient to Tom. There was still within her, as it turned out, one thin thread of rebelliousness that had not been worn quite through. Tom started smiling his old smile at her but she did not yield to the tyrant, she did not smile back, and she even brought herself to break the silence:

'Tom, what are you still doing here?' she asked, and almost managed to keep her voice steady.

'Looking at you,' he replied, and smiled more broadly.

That dangerous spark was back in his eyes. Why oh why oh why was it still doing these things to her? Tonight at least it didn't just make her knees weak, at long last it also made her angry. Too angry, unfortunately, to come up with anything terribly witty by way of repartee:

'Right,' she muttered.

'D'you reckon we could talk? You know: chat, banter, like we used to? You and me, babe, how about it?'

Elisabeth clenched at her book, her heart trying its best to rip her rib-cage open and throw itself at Tom, but her head just about level. She kept her eyes on him and her focus on her good, self-righteous anger. Here was, after all, the very person which Jane, Charlotte and even Will would have agreed was worthy of the full might of her ire:

'Right, so what is it you want to talk about, Tom? Sara? How is she doing lately?' Elisabeth asked, crossed her cold clammy arms in front of her shallow-breathing chest, Tolstoy pressed hard against her heart in lieu of armour, and tilted her head to the right.

'Elisabeth…'

His cocky smile had vanished, thank goodness, and his tone was almost pleading.

'What? You don't want to talk about her? You used to. What's wrong with you?'

'Elisabeth…'

'So tell me, how is she? Who are you guys being unfaithful to with each other, these days? Apart from me, that is.'

'Elisabeth, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry,' Tom said slowly, looking her in the eye, and looking for once in his life like he might mean what he was saying. 'There: I am. I'm sorry it happened, more sorry than you can imagine.'

'Yes but see, Tom, it didn't happen; you bloody went and did it!'

'Will you at least let me tell you what happened?'

'No, I don't care, I don't want to hear it!'

Oh but she did. After over a month she still desperately wanted to hear anything, anything at all that could make New Year's Day even marginally less of a disaster than it was in her memory. Tom stared on at her. Not quite the angry stare she'd first seen on him back in Oxford, that time, but a pretty scary, penetrating stare. He probably saw right through her, because he disregarded her pretended lack of interest, and told his tale anyway, while she clenched her forearms ever tighter to her ribs.

'Look, no one invited Sara, OK? No one expected her to turn up. I'd gone to bed, I was so tired and pissed. And frankly, horny as hell too. I passed out waiting for you to bloody return from your sodding office. According to Mac it was about 5 in the morning when she showed. She talked to him, she was high as a kite. He told her about you and to go away and apparently she just flipped, went ballistic. She does that sometimes, when she'd had too much dope.'

'Yeah, poor thing.'

'She came into our room, your room, my old room, totally off her head, looking for me. I was so out of it I thought it was you, but she soon put me right.' he said, pulling the collar of his t-shirt down to reveal three parallel red streaks still running in an arc from the bottom of his neck and left across his chest, 'And then she started crying and that always gets me, Elisabeth. It always does.'

'Oh I see, that's where I went wrong, is it? Didn't cry enough?'

'Elisabeth, don't be like that! Please! I miss you! I hate her!'

'Do you?'

'I do, I hate her. I hate what she does to me, she just messes me up. I want you. She knows I want you. As soon as she knew I wanted you she had to go and mess that up too, and I can't believe I let her.'

Now at last she could see pain on his face, a pain vaguely reminiscent of her own, and which deflated her anger back into something more like philosophical bitterness.

'You know what, Tom: it doesn't really matter why you guys can't keep off each other. The material point is, you can't.'

'But I don't want to let her do this! Not this time, do you understand?'

'But you already have, Tom!' she shouted again. Then, remembering her new resolutions, she stopped until she'd mustered a modicum of dignity again. 'Don't try and make it her fault, OK?' she said more calmly. 'It's too late.'

'I'm not letting you go.'

'Oh silly me, Tom, I thought you already had!' she cried, unable to keep her voice calm any longer. A deep dry sob was rising from her chest, so deep she feared swallowing it back might be the end of her. But no: she survived, and pride in her relative composure helped her carry on. 'God knows you could have had me, you know,' she added, watching him stare at the carpet with his head hung down. 'But no, you enjoyed dancing around me, you enjoyed flirting with me and you enjoyed playing cat and mouse with me, and then at the end of the day you just have to be with her.'

'I want you,' he said looking up at her again resolutely: 'It's you I want. Not her.'

'Oh yes, since when?'

'Since forever, since I met you!'

'And up until New Year's Eve? I'm sorry, still don't buy it,' she said, her tone resolute but her chest ever tighter, so tight she feared she might stop breathing any minute.

'I do, I want you. She messed us up. She's evil and I'm never seeing her again.'

'Don't believe you.'

'Would it make a difference if you did?'

Elisabeth looked at him. What an awful question: would she love him again if she knew Sara was out of the picture for good? Two awful questions in one, really. Firstly: had she ever stopped fancying him rotten? Clearly not, sadly. She just wasn't letting herself go with it anymore, something she could do extremely well when she put her mind to it. Secondly: could she ever trust him again? She didn't like that she even let herself consider that question.

'Elisabeth, come away with me. Let's start over. I'll take you to meet Dad in Wiltshire. He always hated Sara but he'll love you - I love you.'

'You don't.'

'I do, Elisabeth. Just tell me what I have to do to prove it, I'll do it.'

'Tom, it's more what you have to not do, and it's way harder to prove anything that way.'

'I'll never see her again, I promise! Believe me I don't ever want to: she's evil, toxic, she's poisonous, I'm never…'

'No, Tom, actually,' she said calmly. A strange thought had just occurred to her, one of those thoughts which at first appear completely absurd, but grow to be self-evident the longer you consider them.

'What?'

'No, that's not at all what you should do. You should see Sara. You should definitely see her.'

'But…'

For the first time in their acquaintance Tom was speechless. All eagerness vanished from his face, replaced by a look of concentration she'd only ever seen on him when he was playing an instrument, the only activity in this world capable of absorbing the whole of his otherwise disparate attention.

'You should go and see her, and you should see her over and over again, until you can see her and not let her mess you up, Tom. That's what you should do. Get her out of your system. And get out of hers. For everybody's sake.'

She wasn't bluffing. She knew there was a distinct likelihood that Sara and Tom would never be able to get out of each other's heads or beds, however hard they tried, however much pain they inflicted on each other in the process, or perhaps even because of it. The image of him smoking all pensive on her windowsill after Mac's party came back to her, and she knew she'd rather never have him, than have him like that again.

'I don't want to be the one keeping you away from her, Tom. I don't think I could, for a start. But more to the point it wouldn't be fair. Not to her, not to you, let alone to me. I don't want you to stay away from her for me.'

Tom frowned at her, then briefly looked at the floor before looking up again.

'Elisabeth, are you sure?'

'Yes. Yes I'm absolutely sure.'

If there was one thing she'd picked up from hanging out with the traders, it was that she was rubbish at bluffing, and should therefore never use an empty threat. So no, she wasn't bluffing: this idea felt right on several levels. It was methodologically sound, a good empirical test of the exact whereabouts of his affections. More importantly, and like all correctly specified tests, it took the ultimate decision out of her hands: the results would speak for themselves.

'You actually want me to go there?'

What a stupid question: of course she didn't, not really. What she wanted was to collapse into his arms, but she was cruelly aware of the difference between what she wanted, and what was good for her, and refrained from going with the former. Sending him away all but broke her heart all over again, but for once in this almost-relationship she was the one calling the shots and that, at least, felt good.

'I do want you to go, Tom. Or rather no, I just think you should, but you're a free agent. Take as long as you like, and if I'm still around, and it's meant to be,'

He shook his head.

'No, I'm not taking that risk. I can't lose you.'

'Yeah but Tom, look, I certainly can't take the other risk either.'

'I can't lose you.'

'If you love me as much as you say you do, then you'll do it.'

She felt shamefully disingenuous saying this. If she ever had, she no longer believed that he could love her, though she did believe that he wanted her very much, still. And how could she blame him? The same was true of herself. Her heart must have its reasons, which her reason would never ever fathom. But she'd deliberately used the word "love" to leave him no way out. He hung his head down.

'Bye, Tom. Good luck. I mean that.'

Her pasta had long turned into complete mush on the hob. She dumped it in the bin, went back to her room, and took herself to bed with an empty stomach and a heavy heart.

He probably wouldn't come back, but that was alright. Either way she'd done the right thing, the only thing to do. And she wasn't going to sit here pining for him, no. She was going to go out and celebrate with Neil and the guys on Wednesday after the VP promotions came out. Maybe they'd go and play pool again after the drinks, as they'd done last time with Dean - that was good fun. Then she would go and see Jane on Thursday, and next weekend there was the VPs' off-site and she'd get a break from babysitting duties. She'd keep herself busy, that's what she would do.

xxx

The next Friday she left the office early with a very proud and excited Neil. They were lugging matching "Global Trading Team" overnight bags, which Raj had "gifted" to his team for Christmas. This was to be Neil's first "Annual VP off-site conference". On the train to Hertfordshire Elisabeth tried to explain to him that there was no point in getting over excited about the hotel because he wouldn't get a minute to enjoy it, but he'd taken his golf clubs anyway and was talking about making his own way back later on Sunday, so he could fit in a round of the famed 18 hole course surrounding the Dale Hall Hotel, Resort and Spa.

Once off the train they joined a messy queue for the hotel shuttle from the station and got separated. Elisabeth plonked herself down in the first available seat in the third row, next to a lone character from the legal department, who did not utter a word the whole journey. Neil was luckier, he walked right to the back of the bus and introduced himself to another new VP, a thin and very pretty girl with latte-coloured skin and glorious corkscrew hair.

As expected Elisabeth's room was absolutely stunning, despite being one of the worst the hotel had to offer. And as expected she didn't get a minute to relax in it. But instead of joining the after-dinner drinks on Friday night she made time to enjoy the swimming pool. For exactly twenty five minutes before it closed she had thirty meters of glass mosaic-tiled, ozone-treated bliss all to herself, under a glass roof and a starlit sky.

It almost made up for having had to sit through that excruciating opening address by Sir Phillip.

Things were bad enough five years ago, when chairmen went on about people as "key-differentiating assets" in between massive rounds of "downsizing". But as times and hypocrisy had moved on these days it was all about the "talent": the bank had a strategic talent agenda for talent acquisition and building a talent community. Seeing as the gold talent had served as a biblical currency unit, perhaps it was apt that the fortunes of banks should now hinge on managing it.

Already on her third VP retreat, Elisabeth considered herself well versed in corporate bullshit but this year Talent Management, being the new HR, had unexpected treats in store for her. They'd decided to mix it up by imposing a sitting plan for the weekend which forced people from different areas to get to know each other during meals, whether they liked it or not – and mostly they didn't. To one side Elisabeth had dreary from legal, her laconic bus companion, who turned out to be another Andrew, and to the other a Simon from IT, one of Pointless Poynton's more punctiliously procedural acolytes, who had made VP the same year as Elisabeth by loudly collating the project management paperwork around the release of PMS version 2.4. He had little time and even less affection for the head of the nascent tradePad team. This year's newbie at the table was a Jan, pronounced Yan, a lanky, beak-nosed, over-eager fixed income portfolio manager originally from Denmark, and gifted with all the irony that country is famed for. Over the course of two dinners he regaled them with many an unsolicited in-depth analysis of alternative scenarios for the Eurodollar yield curve.

So yes, by Friday night she'd already earned that night swim.

Then on Saturday morning they had the predictable "high energy session", in which teams had to complete "tasks" such as building with sticks and string, jigsaw puzzles, marble runs, and even Elisabeth's party trick: plug-wiring in marigolds. Nothing, in short, of any relevance to finance, but there was a supposed element of team strategy in the choice of task type. For each new task one team member had to be designated to act as leader, and a further two had to observe and record the leadership behaviour that the task had elicited in a) the leader and b) the rest of the team. True to life at the office, therefore, most of the morning was wasted trying to decide what to attempt and then bickering over who would do what bit of it, rather than actually doing anything. A member of the highly paid consultancy unit who had set this up (for a mere £1,500 a day per consultant, +VAT) would then collect the feedback sheets and provide helpful feedback on the helpfulness of the feedback collected. Kudos to the consultants: even Pointless Poynton's paper trails rarely got so long over so little.

In the afternoon they split the teams into eight professionally led focus groups (different expert consultancy, similar billing rate) designed to explore the bank's key issues/ strengths/challenges in "building a talent community". Focus groups 1-4 related this fascinating question to the bank's culture, while focus groups 5-8 explored communication strategies. By six o'clock they'd spent over thirty grand on consultancy fees alone and almost a thousand man-hours, and what they'd established was that the Brits resented the Yanks and had no clue about the Japs and that, while everyone felt entitled to know what everybody else was up to, nobody wanted to read or indeed write about it in the Pravda. Elisabeth eclipsed herself for the pool once more, before she had to sit through another unsolicited lecture by Jan, followed by Sir Phillip's even duller closing address.

'Elisabeth, here you are. You didn't go swimming again, did you?'

After the day she'd had she was undoubtedly glad to see Will, and yet she couldn't help frown at him. The guy still didn't add up. She may not have cared to admit this publicly, but she actually liked him nowadays, about 90% of the time. He'd relaxed a lot since their fight -or the tradePad launch, or both- and it turned out that he could actually be fun, once he got to know you and decided that you were worth the effort. Unfortunately 10% of the time he could still be a complete killjoy and give her the death-stare over the most trivial things, like insisting that they start FIX-testing with Dresdner when Dresdner were nowhere near ready or, in this case, the appropriateness of going swimming when networking was expected.

'I might have been swimming, yes, but come on, have you seen the pool here?'

'No, I haven't because, Elisabeth, you'll never get on if you don't spend a bit of time getting to know your peers.'

'Oh, Will please, give me a break: you're beginning to sound like Jane.'

Indeed in previous years Jane had been the one to lecture Elisabeth about networking at the off-site, rather than just hanging out with her established friends.

'Who's Jane again?'

'My sister in law.'

'Your sister in law?'

'Aha, seriously, you two can be such squares.'

'Hang on, you're not married, so she'd be a Jane Bennet, right?' he said slowly, and Elisabeth nodded back nervously: she and her big stupid mouth, why did she have to go and say sister in law? Friend! Jane was her friend too, right? Will meanwhile was frowning with concentration, trying to work something out. In Elisabeth's experience this never took very long, which meant that he was getting uncomfortably close to something she hadn't planned on sharing with him. Except that she just had.

'Perhaps she'd even be a Jane Bennet-Bingley if, say, she worked in Product Development?' Will said, and Elisabeth found it impossible to carry on looking at him. She took a swig of the insipid but cold champagne a waiter had thrust into her hand a minute earlier, and gave Will the vaguest of nods.

'Shit, I'm sorry. So this is who you go and see Thursdays, right?'

Fear gave way to resignation. The cat was out of the bag, and it was her own stupid fault for mentioning Jane in the first place. She nodded at her champagne flute again.

'And that's also what you got all upset about, of course. At the Christmas party, were they talking about the MD promotions?'

If he'd got this far by himself there was no point denying it. She sighed again, and nodded again, without looking up:

'They were, yes. Toad and her own effing boss. How he didn't get sacked...'

'Hey, one out of two ain't bad, Elisabeth, you guys did good,' Will said, and she looked back up at him. It was typically well judged of him to smile and crack a joke at this junction. She could use a joke.

'I still don't know what you're talking about.'

'Yeah right,' he said, then carefully removed the smile from his face before carrying on: 'Look, I know it happens all over the place and it sucks, but Jane'll be a shoo-in next year. She's great and you're right, she is a fantastic corporate square: everyone likes her.'

Elisabeth's face fell again, and she stared at Will with a mix of sadness and impotent rage, which baffled even his natural talent for seeing right through her. Next year? If only he knew. She'd tried to reason with Jane several more times since their falling out about quotas, but to no avail. Jane had given up on the City, and Elisabeth knew that the City would be only too quick and too happy to give up on Jane. To hear Will praise her only served to remind Elisabeth of what a waste it was. It made her angry, so angry that Will's easy confidence faded away, replaced instead by the look of disappointment he'd had after their last bust up.

She reminded herself that, unlike during their last bust up, tonight he'd done nothing to deserve her ire, so she made a conscious effort to keep it under wraps:

'Of course, yes, next year,' she said, only a little stiffly, and forced on a smile. He looked away and started rifling through his pockets.

'This will help though, right?' he said, and produced a big smile and a small cigar. Half an hour earlier she'd almost passed out with frustration as the port and smokes had been whisked in front of her inferior female nose after the cheese course. Before she knew it gratitude came gushing out of her mouth:

'Thanks so much, Will, you're a star!' she cried, reaching for the cigar.

In a flash he stopped smiling, his hand shot up and he held it just out of her grasp, with the tiniest hint of teasing on his poker face:

'Really now? Can I have that in writing?'

She bit her lip, dropped her hand and her gaze, and frowned to herself for moment. What was going on here? Had Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy just pulled her metaphorical pigtails? Surely not. She stole a brief, suspicious glance up at him to check, and got back the cockiest of go-on-then smiles.

OK, this could only mean two equally scary, equally improbable things; things so incongruous that she would have called them impossible if they hadn't been happening right before her. The first was that he was trying it on. She knew his face well enough and she was definitely still sober enough to tell. There was an unapologetically flirty spark in this smile which, and this was the second unbelievably scary bit, which instantly made him attractive instead of merely handsome, and made her want to smile wantonly back.

She stole another glance at his face, her lips already curling up despite her best intentions to the contrary. Oh, what the heck! They were having rubbish champagne at the end of a rubbish day, and surely there was no harm in a little bit of stir-crazy fun. If she knew him it would be over soon enough.

'Yes, yes you can, Will, absolutely. You can have it all in writing. Just as soon as we're live with tradePad for Baluchistan's derivative market,' she replied, crossed her arms à la Kingsley-Darcy and held his gaze with hers.

'I see,' he said, put his poker face back on and dropped his hand. Her eyes followed the cigar's course while his lingered on her face. She looked back up at him and found this new searching look in his dark eye even harder to hold than the flirty one from before.

'OK, be a good sport now,' she said, keeping her voice steady, 'hand it over, it's of no use to you.'

He didn't budge, though a small glint in his eye told her he probably felt like smiling.

'Pretty please?' she added, grinning and fluttering her eyelids away to try and coax the whole smile out of him.

'Is this how we got our tradePad servers?' he asked, smiling fully as he edged the cigar towards her. Such an easy victory came almost as a disappointment. She would have expected more of a fight out of him, but she quickly uncrossed her arms to make snatch for her cigar:

'Pretty much!' she shrugged.

But though she had got hold of the cigar this time, Will still hadn't let go of the other end of it.

'Can I drive you home tomorrow?'

'Sure!' she said lightly.

Or at least she hoped she said it lightly, but she wasn't at all sure. She looked away and he let go. Together they headed out to the adjoining terrace, which the hotel was keeping at indoor temperature thanks to a series of monstrous gas heaters. Will rifled through his pockets for a match, then re-crossed his arms and watched her light up, looking a little smug and uncommonly happy while she, under the rising wisp of blueish smoke, thought how nice it felt to watch, smell, and hold this little thing, and how good Will had been to think of procuring it.

She wasn't nearly vain enough to assume that he might have done this with ulterior motives, or to suspect that he might have planned to ask to drive her home tomorrow. That clearly had been the champagne and the boredom talking. They'd both get back to their senses soon enough and forget it, but in the meantime this cigar tasted absolutely delicious.

'Happy?' he asked.

'Much happier yes, thanks.'

'You're very welcome.'

She smiled back through her smoke, perfectly content. Why shouldn't she be: he looked gorgeous happy, with that new spark in his dark eye and the little brackets lingering in his lean cheeks either side of his mouth. Miles out of her league, of course, and she still had no idea what had come over him, but why question it? There was no point anyway: he just didn't add up. And hey, who was she to complain about a silly bit of non-committal fun at the end of a very dull day, with a great cigar and by far the best looking person on this terrace? They'd all be back to the grind at the office soon enough. Neil was making his way over to them this very moment, and his presence soon finished dispelling what was left of the moment.

'There you are! Didn't know you smoked,' he said.

'I don't,' she agreed, blew out, and went to find an ashtray before the nicotine headache got too much, and before the other half of the crowd on the terrace started staring at her too.

'A woman smoking a cigar?' she overheard, and recognised Jane's boss, 'Whatever next?'