On The Market Chapter 22 - Ill met by moonlight, a pride and prejudice fanfic

Hello dear readers. I'll be posting two long chapters this weekend, this one and one tomorrow. Then there's two more next week to finish the story, and a bonus chapter the week after and then... the end.

Or will it be? I've been really touched and amazed by the traction this story has gained over the course of a few months, so I have decided to try submitting it to some agents once I have posted it here in full.

The thing is, Fanfic has some really fancy analytics, but not fancy enough to tell me how many unique readers I have, probably because a lot of you read as guests and that's fine: I don't like registering for stuff either. But it's also a shame because that would be one really useful number to show to a prospective agent - can you tell by now that I like numbers? I'm not sure how to get around that, but for sure it would help me if in the next few weeks you followed the story if you are a member, or left any kind of review if you are not, anything at all along the lines of "I'm reading this".

Oh, and if you want to exhort all your mates to read it that's fine too ;-)

Also, talking of reviews, please know that each and every one of them lifts up my day so thank you ever so much if you have taken the time to write one.

And now read on an enjoy: if you've got this far I think you will.

All the best, stay safe.

Mel

'She's cack-handed, she's bound to fluff it,' Will said from the other end of an immense billiard table.

'Again,' he added, his arms crossed as usual, and although ostensibly he was talking to his team-mate Jan-the-Dane, his last remark had been for Elisabeth's benefit. She knew it was late, but she had no idea whether it was just past her bedtime, or way past her bedtime. Unluckily for her long-suffering teammate, Neil, it was her turn to play.

'Seriously, I've never seen her finish a cup of coffee without spilling some,' Will went on.

She might not have found it so infuriatingly distracting if he hadn't just stuffed his tie into his pocket after the last frame and undone his top shirt button, leaving her in a mild panic about where to keep her eyes.

'Don't listen to him, El-isabeth,' Neil said with saintly patience, and his most reassuring Scottish burr, 'Just push that wee rrred in gently.'

'OK, I'll try,' she said, only too glad to focus back onto the green baize of the table. She started fiddling about trying to line her cue with the white ball and the red's nearest corner hole.

'Watch out, Neil, she's gonna put the eight in. Elisabeth, you're gonna put the black in.'

'Thanks for the translation, Will,' she said, rising up from the table and making sure to keep her eyes well away from between the end bits of his collar, 'And so far this evening how many have you seen me put in in, what, five games?'

'Dunno, two?' he asked with crossed arms, thrown-back shoulders and a cocky smile.

'One, actually. That second one wasn't the one I was aiming for.'

'Right.'

'So I just don't know why you waste your psychological warfare on me, Will. Statistically I'm able to fluff this quite without your input, thank you very much.'

Jan and Neil now started smiling too. But seriously, good job she sucked at this anyway, else his latest move with the tie would have put her right off her game.

'OK, now, Neil, what is it I'm trying to do here?' she asked, dragging her attention back to the table.

'Aim about here,' Neil said, pint in one hand, the index finger of the other hovering half an inch right of the red ball. To Elisabeth it looked like the black was in the way and the hole wasn't, but Neil despite copious amounts of beer had managed to stay completely on top of things, and to win the previous game. She by contrast, despite being stone cold sober, or rather because she had been throughout, had established with certainty that she had no understanding of pool, whatsoever.

'OK,' she said, and blew a strand of hair off her face while sending the white ball off, without undue care or indeed hope of success: 'Like that?'

For once she managed to send the ball off gently, rather than either missing it, or whacking it off into the table's edges as she'd been doing all night. The white hit the red and indeed knocked it sideways towards the opposite corner pocket. The white did for an awful moment look like it might be heading for the near pocket, but it slowed and stopped about an inch away from the hole.

'Faaaan-tastic!' Neil cried, 'Great! OK, Elisabeth, stay with it, can you just do this one more time?'

'Probably not.'

'No way,' said Will.

'Easy shot, Elisabeth. Don't listen to him.'

'She never does anyway.'

'Yes thanks, Will,' she said, keeping her eyes on Neil. 'OK so tell me, where do I aim this time?'

Neil led her around the table, and started hovering his index finger to one side of the black ball. She bent down, took aim, frowned, and got up again.

'Are you sure? There?' she asked, fiddling with her hair.

A slow, confident nod.

'OK, then.'

But before she bent back down something– she hoped it was only the expectation of another taunt- made her look Will's way. He held her gaze for a second, then cocked one eyebrow. She frowned and looked away, aimed again, and pocketed the black.

'Bra-vo!' Neil cried with uncharacteristic abandon.

'Thank you!' she replied, beaming, gave a little curtsey and leant her cue against the table to tuck back that still rebellious strand of hair. Just as she was advising Will and Jan to "eat poo" she heard her cue crash down onto the parquet.

'Oh dear, never mind,' she shrugged, picked it up again and this time popped it on top of the table. 'I'll go and powder my nose.'

She took off, aiming to grab a quiet moment to herself before bed. A ray of moonshine caught her eye as she turned a corner into a long corridor, lined on its right with ornate, properly Parisian-looking French doors onto the hotel's back lawn. Most of them were locked, but eventually she managed to open one near the end of the corridor, and stepped out onto a shallow Bath-stone terrace. A dozen steps separated it from the grass below. She settled herself on the middle step, pulled her half-spent cigar out of her back pocket, got it going again, then gathered her burnt matches into a neat little pile next to her and enjoyed the caramel taste of the smoke in her mouth and the feel of the crisp night air on her flushed cheeks. She hugged her knees with one arm, rested the other elbow on her knees, and popped her smiling chin onto her cigar-holding hand.

She'd made sure to sit outside the pool of light projecting from the hotel's windows, but the night all around her was so bright that even her small clouds of smoke cast their own shadows as they drifted over the steps. An almost full moon had risen above the line of trees far across the lawn, cutting out each of their leafless twigs in black filigree against a silvery sky. She watched, and smoked, and smiled at what she knew to be one of life's rare and fleeting moments of perfection. How long could it last? And did she feel happier and calmer than she had in ages, she wondered, because of the moon's beauty, or because she'd been having far too much fun with...

'There you are. Doing a runner again?'

Think of the devil. She shrugged but did not turn as Will came to sit down on the step, to the other side of her stack of burnt matches.

'Smoke gave you away: nice spot you found here.'

She nodded slowly and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him look down the stairs over his knees.

'You sure you're OK?' he asked.

'Aha.'

'Good, you're a great sport.'

She frowned for a second, then decided for once not to over-analyse things. Now that he was here she found she didn't mind, he'd managed to blend into the scene without distracting her away from its perfection. For a while she stayed silent, and then addressed herself to the tree line, and with admirable grace he did the same:

'Are you OK?' she asked.

'Yeah, 'course.'

She saw his shadow shrug as he said this, and raised a sceptical eyebrow. She sent another puff of smoke a little further, onto the lawn. A breeze was bending the grass below them into gleaming waves, and in that second she might have been Neptune, sending clouds over an angry sea, just for the hell of it.

'What?' he asked.

'Nothing, it's just that, you've hardly been yourself tonight.'

'In what way?'

'Oh, come on...'

His shadow shook its head.

'Well, let's just say you've seemed considerably happier than usual.'

'I'm generally a very happy guy.'

'Hmmm, not around the office, no.'

'Around the office I'm sat in front of Andy all day, trying not to screw up my trades and not to piss you off.'

'I know, tall order… I mean I get to sit in front of Master Yoda, trying not to break tradePad and not to piss you off.'

'You don't piss me off anymore.'

'I know, you don't really piss me off anymore either,' she said, her eyes still tracking the course of her smoke clouds.

'But I used to, right?'

'Oh yeah, big time,' she nodded, 'But then I do believe that in your case pissing me off was deliberate whereas I wasn't actually trying to be annoying, believe it or not.'

'I'm sorry.'

Her left temple started pounding, which told her she'd had enough nicotine. She set the cigar down on the edge of the step next to her, and wrapped both her arms around her knees.

'Why, though? What did I do?' she asked a tree two hundred yards away.

'Nothing. My bad: you can't help being so much smarter than the rest of us.'

She frowned.

'And better with computers and therefore Raj's number one pet,' Will said, to the lawn.

'What?'

'Oh come on, Elisabeth, it's bloody obvious. You should have heard how pleased he was with himself for poaching you from Toad: Elisabeth Bennet this, Elisabeth Bennet that! I'm sorry it got to me though. He was right, we're lucky to have you.'

Elisabeth had to smile. It made sense that Will should have wanted to take her down a peg or two if Raj had indeed praised her to him half as much as he'd praised Will to her. Traders are selected on their single minded obsession with their own performance, and Will wouldn't be as good at his job as indeed he was, if he wasn't also borderline pathologically over-competitive. He simply had to be the best at everything, from trading to rowing, spoof, running... It definitely tickled Elisabeth's pride to think that he might have considered poor little her as any threat to his work mojo.

'Thank you, Will. You're very kind. Glad Raj found you too.'

She stared on into the edge of the sky, where it met the trees, then as her eyes swept back down towards her feet she finally understood what was so mesmerising about this scene: under this light the large but otherwise banal, trite garden in front of her had acquired an appearance of depth. The grass, the sky, the trees even, it was like looking at deep water from on high, too boundless not to be a little scary, but also begging you to dive in.

A bit like that square inch of skin between the ends of Will's shirt collar, she thought with a private smile: unknowable and all the more compelling for it. She shut her eyes, opened them again and, having committed the landscape to memory, she smiled to herself again.

'You know, Elisabeth, you never smile like this around the office. More's the pity.'

She turned to him: she had no idea how long he'd been looking at her like this, but he too was smiling a smile she hadn't seen on him around the desk. The same kind of happy, perhaps slightly cocky, definitely flirty, and so far irresistible smile he'd had earlier at the bar. And for a good part of the evening in the games room too. She felt her eyes wander towards his neck again: she knew she ought to feel embarrassed, she ought not to stare, she ought not even to look there or look amused and above all she ought not to give his flirty remark a flirty reply. But she felt happy and not one bit bothered, so she looked him back in the eye, she did look amused, she didn't even begin to blush and she said:

'You're right, Will. I should make more of an effort, we both should.'

Right now of course the only effort she was having to make was not to strain her face smiling so much, but never mind.

'This isn't an effort,' Will answered in his calm, pleasant voice, meanwhile shaking his handsome, unflappably smiling head. They held each other's gaze for a moment longer.

Eventually it did dawn on her that this may be inappropriate, and she turned her eye to the night sky again. If anything it was even more beautiful than before, the moon's face taunting them, half hidden behind a single wispy cloud. Then all of a sudden she became intensely aware of the chill of the night, and of the need to bring this encounter to a close, fun though it had been.

'Better turn in, Will: I think you're pretty drunk,' she said, forcing on her sensible voice, and felt a shudder of cold go up her spine.

'I'm not that drunk, but sure.'

'No, you definitely are.'

'Am not.'

'Will, you just pretty much came on to the desk quant. Trust me, you'll regret this when the cheap champagne goggles come off.'

'Will I?'

'I should think so.'

'I'm not even sure you will.'

OK, cross out that "pretty much" in "just pretty much came on to the desk quant". Not half bad at it either. Come on now, time for a graceful exit before she said or did anything even sillier. Oh, but if he would only stop smiling and do that button back up, maybe then she might start to act sensibly?

'OK fine, Will, whatever, you're right. Let's go.'

'I'm right? Did the desk quant just say I'm right and she's wrong?'

'Yes, Will. Of course, Will. You're right, Will. Look, I've just done it again!'

'It's my lucky night.'

'Whatever you say, Will, oh and that makes three!'

'Now you're just being contrary.'

'God, you are so right. Four. Is this getting to you yet? Pretty please?'

Boy, did he look good! Very good and very off limits, she reminded herself. Out of her league, for a start, but also well out of bounds.

'You'd never be able to keep it up long enough,' he said with a look far from collegial.

'Also true, five,' she said, unable not to return it.

'Come on then, let's turn in.'

He shot up and held a hand down for her. She took it and hoisted herself up. As soon as she did the weariness of the hour caught up with her.

It wasn't until they'd reached the French doors again that she realised he'd set her hand onto his forearm and that she'd left it there, nice and warm under his. It all felt perfectly nice - comfortable and not actually flirty or inappropriate, just nice - until the electric light inside shook her back to her senses. She let go, and with her hands safely off him she bid him a somewhat standoffish good night and walked away, repeating to herself all the way down the long corridors that "it was just a bit of harmless fun".

xxx

When the alarm went the next morning at quarter to nine it felt like she'd only just gone to sleep. It took her a while to work out that the voices she heard were coming from Radio 4 and that she was in room 1203 at the Dale Hall hotel. Then the timeline came back to her as well: she'd gone to bed about two thirty, she'd been awake from about 4 to 6:am feeling nauseous and with a mouth like an ashtray. So yes, she had indeed only just got back to sleep. And now… well now her head didn't hurt too much, provided she did not try to move it. This was why she didn't smoke anymore.

Normally.

She slouched out of bed, and downed in one the bottle of Voss on the coffee table. Then she ran her body under the powerful jets of hot water in the wet room, put her last set of fresh clothes on and started chucking things back into her bag, the heavy conference folders first, at the bottom.

All the while something was bothering her, as if she was forgetting something important and possibly shameful. Clearly she would have to go straight from breakfast to check out to… Ah yes, that was it. Oh dear. That cheeky cigar: not only did she feel like death served up cold, but she was now supposed to be heading back in Will's car, and in the cold light of this winter day it now struck her as a very bad idea. She told herself that lots of people were giving each other rides back this morning, so it wasn't a big deal. Yet somehow, somewhere between her concrete-capped head and the pit of her queasy stomach, it was.

She checked her room, shook the sheets, retrieved a lone sock, checked the bathroom, found her room-key card next to the basin and finally left the room holding her coat and bag. From a practical perspective, she continued to think along the meandering corridors, he was without a doubt going to drive some silly toy-car far too fast, and she felt nauseous enough as it was without boy-racing all the way back to London. More to the point, right now Will too would probably be feeling very silly. Not about the drive back, that was no biggie, but about the flirting last night. There had definitely been more teasing than is appropriate between esteemed colleagues. And although she could honestly say that he'd started it, she could also see she'd gone right along with it, like a very silly little… goose. Would she never learn? He must be mortified. Surely he must be. She certainly was, she couldn't even argue she'd been too drunk to know what she was doing. Which surely he had been.

Surely.

The breakfast room was busier than she had expected given that, according to the schedule, they were all supposed to be on the shuttle back to the station. She grabbed a large mug, filled it to the brim with black coffee, and went to plonk herself next to Neil and his new friend, the girl from the bus, whose corkscrew hair was now gathered up in a neat bun behind her head, enhancing the feline delicacy of her features.

'Morning, Elisabeth: Natasha Burke. Natasha: Elisabeth Bennet. She works with us on the desk.'

'Yes I've seen you around,' said Natasha with a very friendly smile, and despite being seized by an unhealthy dose of glamour-envy Elisabeth could not bring herself to hate the girl.

'You're one of the new VPs, aren't you? Congratulations. Heard you guys are doing really well with those new UCITS.'

'Thanks, are you not eating?'

'I don't think I could swallow anything just yet.'

'Haven't we got to go anyway? There's a line to check out,' Neil said. 'How are you getting back?'

'Same way I came I suppose, train into King's Cross,' said Natasha. 'I'd better go and pack up quickly. It's very nice to meet you, Elisabeth.'

'And you, Natasha.'

'I'll see you at reception?' Neil offered.

'Sure!' she replied coyly, and turned to go.

'I gather you're no longer staying for that round of golf then?' Elisabeth teased him.

'Decided against it,' he replied, playing it cool.

'You could do a lot worse.'

'She's so beautiful!' he agreed, treating Natasha's perfection as a major personal achievement.

Which in a way it was, of course.

'And so well groomed!' Elisabeth concurred with genuine admiration. Natasha reminded her of a younger, browner version of Jane. Or of the woman she'd always imagined Baudelaire's Invitation au voyage to be about, quietly exuding "order and beauty, calm and luxury". Of a feminine ideal, in short, that Elisabeth herself was pretty sure she would never to reach, but especially not on the day after the cigar-smoking night before.

'Dunno how people like her do it,' she mused, shaking her head as she took another sip of coffee. The caffeine started to cross her blood-brain barrier and her meninges eased off a fraction. Then her bag buzzed, and Sod's law meant her phone had sunk to the bottom, under the conference folders. She got herself a paper-cut as she extracted the effing thing, too late to take the call.

From Will. Blood from her finger had got all over her phone, and presumably all over her clothes inside the bag. She dipped a napkin in someone's leftover glass of ice water, wrapped it around her thumb, then read his text: 'Morning, where are you?'

'Here, obviously,' she texted back, painstakingly using her extra clumsy right thumb rather than her ordinarily clumsy left one, then shoved the phone into her back pocket and stood up.

She only queued for check-out for a few minutes, bag at her feet and left thumb up in the air. It probably had stopped bleeding by now, but she didn't dare take the paper towel off to check.

'You're late,' she heard as soon as she was done with the receptionist.

She looked for Will but could not spot him in the rest of the checkout line. Then she realised that the longer of the two pairs of legs sat on the lobby's matching red Chesterfields must be his, sticking out below an open copy of the Weekend FT's main section.

'And a very good morning to you too, Will,' she said, pleased to find that she was able to sound very much like herself.

'Good morning!' he said brightly, pulling the paper down. The left bracket next to his mouth was already open, and the right one appeared as soon as he'd taken one look at her face: no, he definitely didn't look mortified. She tucked her hair back while she wondered whether this was a good or a bad thing. Unable to find the answer she tried to think instead how to provide them both with a graceful escape route. This wasn't helped by the fact that the top button of his rugby shirt was undone: not his fault of course, only twats and quants wear rugby shirts done all the way up, nonetheless…

'Well look, Will, since you're in a hurry don't worry about me: I can make my own way back, they put on a late shuttle, I can see it from here. See you tomorrow?'

'Don't be daft, Elisabeth. It's vile out there,' he said, tilting his head towards the window behind him and folding his paper away.

'Are you sure?'

'Positive. Come on!' he said, springing up and gallantly picking up both of their bags.

Perhaps the cold outside air finally shook her back to her senses, but after a few steps on the gravel she quit worrying. Either he had no recollection of their exchanges last night, or if he did he was making a sterling effort at shoving them under the carpet. Both alternatives were fine by her: she felt far too sick and tired for anything more complicated.

They walked in silence past scattered Porsches, Beamers, Jags, a couple of Audi TTs; she even spotted the CEO's yellow Maserati in the distance. Eventually Will stopped next to a small black car and watched her carry on. She realised she'd lost him after a few paces, and turned around, frowning. Then she took a look at the car next to him, an H-Reg Golf, and back at him again: he'd put the bags down to go through his pockets.

'That's your car?' she asked, pointing at it with one of her outsized arms.

'Aha,' he said, and started to open the boot. She retraced her last few steps and saw him chuck their identical bags in, next to a muddy pair of trainers, a battered road atlas and a manky tartan blanket. He slammed the boot shut.

'Nice motor!' she said with the utmost sincerity. Everyone knows German cars go on forever, but this was something else. Probably something his parents had handed down to him to head off to college. Give it another couple of years and it would be vintage. Now he was the one looking befuddled:

'Nice?'

'I expected you to have one of those,' she said, her eyes full of surprise, relief and tiredness as she thumbed across to some of the racier models across the alley. She waited for his reaction, idly observing that he'd cut himself shaving, the smallest of nicks across one of those little brackets that formed around his mouth when he smiled.

But Will wasn't smiling.

'Yours is miles better!' she said, and thank goodness his face relaxed again.

'I'm sorry, there's no central locking,' he said and got in, then reached across to her side to unlock her door. Inside all was satisfyingly grotty, the kind of vehicle which, like every happy dog, gets taken on muddy outings on a regular basis. He switched on the de-mister, which made her decide to take her coat off. But since she'd already fastened her seat belt it was a bit of a struggle. He watched her for a while, in much the same way she'd watched him think a minute ago, then without a word he grabbed her right sleeve and held it so she could pull her arm free.

Taking the rest of her coat off was a doddle, and soon she did buckle back up. But as they drove off she realised that she was in fact a bit cold, and pulled her coat back up to her neck over the seat belt. He smiled to himself behind the wheel and fair enough, all this faffing around was probably good "entertainment value".

Her brain settled into counting the plane trees on either side of the gravelled drive through the hotel's estate. She got to thirty-four when he stopped at the gates. The February sky was looking more threatening by the minute, and the first few drops of rain splashed down onto the windscreen. On her side of the gate she spotted that particularly elegant tree she'd been staring at from the terrace the night before –a copper beech, round crowned and leaning nonchalantly to one side. She realised they were now following a hilly, windy country road, and that she hadn't noticed Will getting up and down the gears.

Huh, maybe her stomach was going to be OK? The car was beginning to warm up now, the wipers swishing from side to side at a peaceful adagio, which lulled her brain into a pleasantly contemplative mood. She snuggled up into her coat and felt herself relax.

'You OK?' he asked, glancing her way in between two bends.

'I'm fine. Thank you.'

'Good.'

He carried on driving, occasionally turning to look at her, then back at the road. In only a few weeks, four or five if they had a whiff of an early Spring, this landscape would start to become bucolic. A maze of low hedges was spread over the hills, separating larger dark brown patches from smaller grass fields. But for now no cattle was out, and even birds were scarce and slow. They drove past a copse, and then she saw the approach to the M25 in the distance below them. Warm at last, she shrugged her coat down and it brushed painfully on her injured thumb, which she now took to examining, tugging timidly at the paper towel a few inches in front of her glasses.

'You all right?' he asked again.

She nodded.

'What's with your thumb?'

'Paper cut. When you called. From the conference folders in my bag.'

'Sorry about that.'

She shrugged, and peeled off the last piece of tissue with a wince. The cut started halfway up the cuticle and went round and down into the pad. It would throb like hell when she typed tomorrow. But apart from that she felt like a lazy cat on a winter stove: warm, quiet, and not half smug about it.

Their CEO's Maserati made a point of undercutting them as it merged into the traffic, then fishtailed into the middle lane and past the lorry Will was about to start overtaking. He took his foot off the pedal and switched his indicator off, then switched it back on for a left at the next exit. The M1, already? She checked the clock on the dashboard: according to it they'd been driving for over half an hour, which just could not be.

'Is that the right time?' she asked.

'It is, why, do you need to get somewhere?'

'No no, it's just...' she watched him drive for a few seconds, long enough for him to notice and wonder what was up, so she looked back through the windshield again and then it occurred to her that she couldn't think of many people, apart from him, who could both talk articulately and yet know when and how to shut up for a whole half hour.

'You sure you're OK? You're not normally this quiet.'

'I know, you neither. It's nice, isn't it?'

'It's nice to see you happy,' he nodded, and then very considerately he shut up again. She rested her elbow on the thin ledge at the bottom of the window and leant her lazy head on her hand watching the landscape turn from brown to grey as they neared London and, presumably the mythical North Circular.

Again he looked at her:

'So where am I turning off?'

'What?'

'Which exit am I taking?'

'Are we actually on the North Circular?'

'What do you think? So what exit are you?'

'I don't know.'

She looked at the signs above the road and tried to think about it, but she just didn't have that particular piece of information about her flat.

'What do you mean, you don't know?'

Oh, so normal transmission had resumed, then. It had to happen eventually.

'I mean I don't have a car, do I? I hate driving. Don't you have a Sat-nav we can check?'

'What?'

'One of these Tom Tom things.'

'Please spare me the technicalities.'

'Alright! A road atlas?'

'In the boot.'

'Well, that's not a very clever place for it now, is it?'

'Oh come on, A1! Are you down the A1?'

'The A something is near me, after Holloway road it's either the A1 or the A1000.'

'Fucking typical.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Just as well you don't work with numbers. Golders Green, 'that near you?'

'I think we need to go further. After Archway there's Highgate, and then the Finchleys. Golders Green's definitely on the wrong branch.'

'We're not on the tube, in case you hadn't noticed.'

'I know! I'm sorry, only trying to help! I thought you lived around here, perhaps.'

He shook his head and rolled his eyes.

'I'm sorry,' she said again, trying not to aggravate him by showing how funny she found seeing him like this again. 'Look, the next one says Holloway, that'll be OK.'

'Good.'

'You see, there you go! All sorted.'

In truth she had no idea, but they carried on down the dual carriage way and eventually reached more residential areas, and passed the Highgate tube.

'I know where we are now! Carry on straight down. Where do you live anyway, then?'

'Butler's Wharf.'

'I see. Not too out of your way, at least.'

He made no reply. They negotiated Archway roundabout, and turned down Holloway road.

'Nearly there!' she said encouragingly.

'My, isn't this a nice neighbourhood,' he replied with obvious sarcasm.

'Isn't it just? Very up and coming.'

'I bet, yes, let me know when it's up and come.'

'But by then it'll be too late to invest and you'll have missed out on the upside. OK OK, turn left, not that one! That one, good!'

'Even nicer.'

'Oh come on, don't be precious. Now just go to the end and turn right.'

'…'

'OK now there, behind the Moonbus.'

'The what?'

'Orange thing, there! Great! Thanks,' she said as he pulled up in front of the steps. Home again! She picked up her coat and staged a reverse manoeuvre of her earlier performance, much to his amusement.

'So this is where you live?' he said when she'd finished.

'Aha, basement flat.'

She checked her coat pockets and bent down to retrieve her wallet from off the floor, while trying to think up something along the lines of 'Well thanks again, you must be in a hurry so don't get out, etc'. But she felt a draft as she lifted her head back up and found Will standing outside, holding her car door open. She got out and he closed it behind her, then went to get her bag from the boot. Still carrying it, he followed her into the minuscule space under the stairs.

What now? Too late for the line about not getting out. She didn't come from the sort of family that holds car doors open for womenfolk so she was already well out of her depth etiquette-wise: would a cup of tea be polite? Expected?

'Do you want to pop in, meet my flatma-'

'No thanks,' he said before she finished, shaking his head at the brass number on the door. Well, that was a relief. He put her bag down:

'OK then. Thanks for the ride, Will, see you tomorrow,' she said, reached for his hand and leant forward to kiss him goodbye, but he swayed back and away from her and, in doing so, he knocked the back of his head on the stairs above them.

What now? Since that pool night after the tradePad launch, and the protests about Dean getting preferential treatment, she kissed all the traders on both cheeks after a social. As far as she was aware this was the new, improved, continentalised-in-her-honour, off-duty protocol, and thus far she hadn't taken any complaints about it.

Yet here was Will frowning at her, still shaking her right hand, and still rubbing the back of his head with his left. Her mind boggled and her right hand began to warm up inside his while her left instinctively reached up for the comfort of her hair. That made him smile: his eyes lit up and those lovely little lines appeared on either side of his mouth. He stopped rubbing the back of his head and put his hand on the front door instead, and then he leant in and kissed her.

On the lips, as you do.