On The Market Chapter 24 - Flagrant Lice, a pride and prejudice fanfic

'Hey,' was all that Will said when he popped her next macchiato onto her desk. Cool as a cucumber, as usual.

Save for the fact that he'd run into work before showering and then gone back out for the coffees. Even under the flat light of the ceiling neon strips there was still a glow to the skin of his face and neck.

'Hey. Thanks, so how was it?' Elisabeth asked, grateful for her coffee and, by implication, for Will's return to London, in a strictly healthy and professional way.

'Oh fine, usual bullshit, you didn't miss anything,' he replied casually, and just as casually she took her eyes away from the lingering glow of Will's skin, the better to prise the lid off her coffee cup. After a week without, it smelt heavenly.

'Nor did you, really,' she replied with a happy pout and a shake of the head, and turned back to her screens.

Well, there you go: easy, no awkwardness at all! Good job she hadn't wasted any time worrying about Will's return because it was fine, just fine. In fact if she had wasted any time worrying about it, she would now have had grounds to feel mightily relieved. But of course she hadn't, and it just so happened that she was in a great mood this morning, so great that not even Pointless Poynton's latest email could take the smile off her face, though it announced yet another slew of weekend server migrations, and associated Continuity Testing.

It must be the coffee. She took a sip, hot and delicious, and started entering the migration dates in her diary and Paul's.

'It's good to be back, Elisabeth,' she heard.

Why did that wipe the smile from her face? Within the same action-packed microsecond she also blushed, cleared her throat, and stole what she hoped to be a discreet glance to her left. This fleeting glance was enough to make both her face and her blood freeze, and she gave him the look she'd last shot at Caroline at Charlotte's wedding. Then for good measure she crossed her arms in front of her chest and instead of replying that it was good to have him back too, which had been her innocent and strictly professional thought not 30 seconds ago, she said:

'Good for you, Will,' with an icy voice, a petulant shake of her head and the same obsequious and blatantly phoney smile she'd given him on the reception's sofa the day of his job interview.

And then just in case he still didn't get the message, just in case the cattishness and the ever-so-subtle body language were lost on him she also stood up and walked off, though not without dramatically chucking her half-drunk cup of perfectly good coffee into the bin as she stormed past him into the atrium.

That look on his face: seriously, what was he so pleased to be back about? How dare he sport that smile at 7:14am on a cold grey Monday morning late February? So OK, perhaps she was over-reacting, but she knew that smile of his by now and it couldn't be good, because if he was half as pleased to see her as he looked then she must nip it in the bud this time.

Right now, before she found herself inadvertently kissing him again.

Whereas if, on the other hand, his being this happy had nothing to do with seeing her again after a week, if he was so completely over his weird crush for her already that it had nothing to do with her whatsoever, then he deserved her ire all the more, the smug bastard.

Having established such a balanced, well-grounded rational basis for her outburst as she stomped across the atrium, Elisabeth realised she had no idea where she was going. She turned right a reception and went to wash her hands.

'You OK, Elisabeth?' Will asked as she sat down again. He was looking and sounding normal again.

'Fine, thanks,' she replied, hugely relieved that she was, indeed, all of sudden feeling perfectly fine again.

Weird.

Back to work then. Shame about that wasted coffee.

What followed was that strangest of beasts, a quiet Monday, so quiet that Newbie got sent out for ice creams around three o'clock, and not very much trading went on after that. Elisabeth bunked off discreetly right after five, and felt thoroughly pleased, for once, to be stepping down to her front door before six o'clock.

A jeans and reefer-jacket clad heap was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, announced by the smoke of a rollie. Elisabeth's face stiffened as she took in Tom's. He'd always been slim, she liked that in a man, but now he'd gone well past sinewy. His face looked drawn, but his eye lit up with the old spark as soon as it caught hers and he was still quick as a cat. He was up on his feet before she'd made it to the bottom of the stairs, smiling his old smile and reaching for a kiss. Much to her surprise she leant forward confidently, and made sure she got him on what was left of his cheek before he got her anywhere else.

'Elisabeth.'

'Hey, Tom! 'you waiting for Ben?'

'No I'm waiting for you.'

'I see.'

'I'm back. I'm back from Oxford. I left.'

'I see,' she lied, and felt her stomach tighten as she opened the front door. He dropped his rucksack against the back of the sofa and turned back to look at her. She stared at the bag and remembered a similar scene many moons ago, and how innocently happy she had been then.

'Shall we go out then? Can I take you out?' he asked, turning to face her, and making her look up from his battered backpack. Other than the stone of flesh he'd left behind in Oxford he was the old Tom through and through, but gone sadly was the old Elisabeth's insouciance. Where she had once struggled to take her eyes off him she was now struggling to keep looking at him, and she couldn't figure out whether that was because of how he looked, of how much he'd hurt her, or of what she still felt for him.

Or of what she might no longer do.

Or of what she might or might not feel for somebody else.

That last bit didn't bear thinking about:

'I'll go anywhere,' she said by way of a cop out, 'just provided you promise me to eat a square meal. Is that a deal?'

'I'll eat whatever you tell me, ma'am, promise. Where are we going?'

'I dunno, give me a sec, will you? Let me go and get changed.'

'Can I watch?'

'No you can't,' she smiled, 'Then I dunno, just head to the Thai?'

Well, she thought as she pulled up her jeans, here he was. He'd done what she'd asked. He looked like hell, but then judging by the one letter she'd opened from him he had actually been through hell. There was no telling where the next conversation was going to lead, but she wasn't willing to risk Ben or Mac walking in in the middle of it. So out they went before either of her flatmates came in. He tried to take her hand on the other side of the road but she shrank away.

'No, Tom.'

'Naughty!' he said, slapping his hand with the other one.

'Thai OK, then?'

'Whatever you'll have me eat, ma'am.'

'Great, let's get you fed!' she said, holding the door for him. Her good cheer was entirely fake, and having spent weeks beating herself up over how easily she'd been taken in by his charm, she now found herself wishing she could fall back under his spell just for a moment. How sweet that delirium of fulfilled expectations had been when she'd found him in her bed on New Year, that warmth irradiating through her until she'd seen...

But here they were now, back to just the two of them, though somehow she had the completely irrational feeling that Will might be somewhere around too, watching them with his bad-market-day face on. Will and perhaps Charlotte and Jane too, willing her not to be silly this time. Was she ready for this? Absolutely not.

'How are you feeling?' she asked once they'd sat down.

'Weird.'

'Well, what else is new? But seriously, what have you lost, like, a stone or what?'

He shrugged.

'Should we talk about it?' she asked.

'Sure.'

'Well?'

'Well, you read the letters...'

'I... I read the first one.'

'Why just the first one?'

'Novelty?' she said trying for irony, but he saw through her bravado.

'No, come on, Little Miss Well-Adjusted,' he said, and now the look in his eye reminded her of the Tom she'd met that first night in Oxford, 'Why don't you tell me why you didn't open the others?'

'Well, rather a lot happened, actually.'

'Really, like what? Things too busy at the millinery for you to spare a moment for me while I'm languishing away on your orders? Market conditions got in the way?'

'Oh come on, Tom…'

'No, no, do tell me, what?' he asked, and now she was thrown right back to their first meeting: to that split second when he'd shouted that he wanted to kill her.

'I knew you'd come back when you were ready, that's all.'

'Still. You could have opened them.'

'I…'

'You?'

'Tom, if you think I get some strange kind of kick out of reading how miserable and out of your mind you and Sara get out there, then you're wrong! I'm not that pissed off with you. Never was.'

She felt better for it on the spot, but soon she looked back on her words and realised they had come out all wrong. Again. It had always been infuriatingly difficult to have any serious or even sensible personal conversation with Tom, but was she actually angry with him? Not really, not anymore. She'd had enough of anger, it was exhausting and she was tired of it. She wanted to hang on to the happy times, to the carefree Elisabeth who smiled at moonlit lawns, not to the angry Elisabeth who snapped at well-meaning people when they brought her macchiatos in the morning and smiled and said that they were glad to be back.

'I'm sorry, Tom,' she sighed. 'I thought it was a… it was a beautiful letter but you've got to understand it was … disturbing. Can you see that?'

'Elisabeth, let me tell you what's really, but really disturbing. You keep telling me that I don't open up and that I never told you how I felt. So I go away and think about it. A lot. Then I write it all down for you and you don't read it. What's more: you can't even tell me why you won't read it.'

His voice was calm, even friendly, his face scary calm. He had a very good point, so good that she wasn't sure how to address it. All she knew was that the tension between them was becoming palpable, until a pretty waitress took him back to happier times. All with four little words:

'You leady to owdah?'

'Al we leady to owdah?' Tom asked Elisabeth with his old mischievous smile. The kind that had once made her go weak inside, and now only made her insides feel... empty.

'I'm just gonna have the green curry.'

'Chickin bif oh plawn?' the waitress asked.

'Prawn, please.'

'Yes, I'll have the plawn gleen curly too,' Tom said calmly. 'Is that OK?' he checked with Elisabeth, who had quite forgotten about supervising his feeding.

'What lice do you like, Suh?'

'What lice do you offah?' Tom asked, very cruelly in Elisabeth's opinion. The waitress bent down with a straight back to take a look at the menu.

'Sixty-one steam lice, sixty-two is flaglant lice. We have coconut lice also, vely nice.'

'Oh, darling, what do you think? What should I have?' Tom asked.

She couldn't be entirely sure what was less funny about this situation: him calling her darling, or making fun of some underpaid waitress.

'I'll just have mine plain, Tom, you do what you like,' she said, but she shouldn't have:

'What was sixty-two again?' he asked the waitress, biting his lip in eager anticipation of her answer.

'Flaglant lice?'

'Flagrant lice? Is that vely nice?' he asked, unleashing his biggest brightest grin on the poor woman, who couldn't but look down. The worst thing was, not knowing whether she was just embarrassed to be stared at, or whether she'd started to sense she was the butt of a joke. Elisabeth could almost feel her squirm inside that faux-raw-silk skirt they'd shrink-wrapped her into. It took her back, in the worst possible way, to her early run-in with the boys on the desk, and to that horrible feeling when you're down and everyone's looking and there's nowhere to hide because, well, you've got a job to do, right?

'Sixty two vely nice, yes, Suh,' the young lady said with remarkable dignity.

'Great, flagrant lice it is, then!'

'Thank you, Suh. Anything to dlink?'

'Jasmine tea, two,' Elisabeth cut in before Tom could try anything with the drinks menu. She waited until the waitress was out of earshot and said:

'That was unnecessary, Tom.'

'Not at all, it was great! How many times have I been to a Thai, and I've never had flagrant lice: this is gonna be great! See, I'm so glad to be back already: we're having the best fun, you and I!'

'Are we?' Elisabeth asked with a look Will would have been proud of.

Here was Thomas Reilly in a nutshell: existential angst one minute, some childish prank the next. She wondered whether back in the days she would have found it funny or not. She'd always been fine with him making fun of her own accent, but in hindsight, was that funny either? Wasn't fun by definition supposed to be... happy? Was Tom ever happy? She couldn't picture it, no, not in that lovely quiet way happy could feel, under the moonlight.

'Anyway,' he started again. 'You were about to tell me all about how the stag-flation in the zloty's under the counter markets prevented you from reading my letters.'

'Ah yes, that.'

Damn. Elisabeth stared at her white ceramic plate, while the waitress came back with a pot of tea and two cups. Tom beamed his friendliest smile at her while she poured, and she smiled gracefully back and bowed before she went.

'I'm listening,' he said.

Elisabeth looked at him and sighed. Her stomach tightened as she prepared to be honest with him and, more importantly, with herself.

'I chickened out. I didn't feel up to it.'

Tom nodded. With his legs crossed one way and his arms the other he looked sort of wonky, twisted, like some underfed yogi caught in a crazy trance, a trance which might be broken should he take his eyes off her, ever. She stared back at him and started fiddling with her hair.

'Why did you chicken out?' he asked.

'Why?' she sighed, 'That's a very good question. Let's see. I'll admit: part of me could stay up all night reading over and over again about how you love me so, Tom. I know, because I have. Perhaps it's just because I'm as vain as the next person, but I probably still do hold some irrational feelings for you. And you write beautifully, I'll give you that. A girl doesn't get that sort of mail very often.'

Her opening ad-lib had wiped any remaining traces of cockiness off his face. She paused to look at him, then carried on while she still felt the courage:

'Then, Tom, there's this guy with the dope habit and that strange fascination for bi-sexual manic-depressive artists, or at least the one bi-sexual manic-depressive artist, and I can't figure out whether he's writing the letters, or whether that other fun flirty and sometimes very charming guy is. But whoever's writing, the real issue is: I'm not even sure either of these guys likes me, you see. It almost reads like you begrudge me for disrupting your life, or something. I mean, you've made it abundantly clear how much you generally disapprove of horrible venal City people like me. Yet you say you want me and I'm not sure why. You definitely don't seem at all sure why. Why, Tom?'

'Can't be helped,' he shrugged. 'Doesn't really sound like you like me very much either, by the way.'

She sighed. Fair point. Then what on earth were they doing here?

'I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't mean to… I do still like you, I think. But you're right, deep down I don't think I should, either. I mean honestly right now you look like death served up cold. You're a homeless, jobless, drifting dope-head and that doesn't exactly make for compelling relationship material in most girls' books, trust fund notwithstanding.'

She said it kindly, and he took it that way and smiled, and she had another realisation:

'Also you know, Tom, pointer for another time, but a girl deserves to be kissed sober, now and again. You know: in full daylight and everything. Did you ever wonder why we never did that?'

'Yeah yeah… wait, what do you mean: pointer for another time? Are you breaking up with me?'

She laughed:

'What?'

'Is that it? You tell me to go away and think, I go away and think. I write to you, I come back and you've just ditched me?'

'I'm sorry, Tom, what?'

The mad and still-quite-scary stare from Oxford again.

'Tom, if it makes you feel better about it then yes, OK, let's say that I am ditching you tonight. But in my book you ditched me on January first. Your choice, your timing, your decision. Forgive me for trying to get on with my life.'

'But I lo…, '

'Tom, I know, but you don't like me and never will. It'll never happen, end of. It's better that way.'

The silence that followed was awkward, but not that awkward for Elisabeth that she didn't pack away half her delicious prawn green curry. After a few mouthfuls she even felt some of the self-satisfaction one feels upon completion of a long put-off chore, a really awkward bit of filing. Thomas Wickham Lorcan George Reilly, finally consigned to drawer B for: Bygones Be Bygones.

Tom meanwhile was elegantly swilling his chopsticks around his bowl, making his prawns swim around in the sauce. She was ladling some more onto her rice when he said:

'So I take it you're still snogging this guy from your office then?'

'What?'

''s OK, Ben told me.'

'For a man of such few words, Ben has a real issue with information leakage.'

'But are you?'

'It wasn't a snog,' she said, hoping a passing blush might be put down to the curry's heat, 'it was just a kiss, and I'm pretty sure it was a one-off.'

'Poor guy, and after he drove you all the way home to bloody Archway...'

'Yeah well, look, off-sites are weird events. People under the influence of intense boredom will go and do weird out of character things, which we've both been quite clear aren't going to be repeated. Must have been some weird crush or something.'

'Has anyone ever had a regular, bog-standard crush on you?'

'I don't know, Tom. I don't care.'

It was true, she didn't. Right now she didn't care why Tom or Will might or might not like her, all she wanted was an easy life, and to finish this curry.

'Why aren't you eating?' she asked.

'Not hungry.'

'You really ought to try and beef up and clean up, you know. Sometimes things actually make more sense sober and fed. Talking of which, what happened in Oxford?'

'I don't know...'

He frowned down at his plate:

'I got fed up. I just got up one morning and that was it. I went to see her and told her I was done, I was going.'

He paused, took a deep breath, and looked up: 'She didn't take it very well, but finally, you know, I was pleased with myself, because she cried and screamed and scratched and kicked, and it didn't get to me. I thought it might, still, but it didn't.'

A bit like you're not getting to me now, Elisabeth thought smugly.

'So I got back to Bombshell's and started packing up again, then there was a call from Vera saying she was on her way to A&E and she hoped I was pleased with myself.'

'Oh dear…'

He shrugged:

'I'm not. I'm not pleased with myself at all. But Sara's the one who's got to deal with herself. Not me. I told Vera: she's not my problem, or even yours, she's her own problem. She should try and deal with it. She called me a callous git.'

'Sorry.'

'Not your problem either,' he sighed.

Elisabeth sighed too. Yes, she thought as she spooned the last of the curry onto her plate and gestured at the waitress for the bill. I must remember that, Tom: you're not mine to fix, however much you'd like me to.

Tom was much feted on their return to the flat. She left him in Ben and Mac's capable hands and retired to her room, and the next morning she found a note under her door. It said:

I'm going to go off to dad's to try beefing up and cleaning up, as suggested. I'll be safest there, the whole estate has been largely drugs-free since 1995, when our old head gardener retired and the new one told Dad it wasn't really hemp plants I'd been keeping in the greenhouse since my biology O'level coursework. Hope you don't mind, I've borrowed your Dostoyevsky for company. I'm not sure if you want me to call you so ask Ben and Mac for dad's number if you do. I do.

Love

Tom

Her Dostoyevsky? God, good luck to him. She'd never got past page thirty.