On The Market Chapter 25 - Plausible deniability, a pride and prejudice fanfic

They were all staring at Sarah Atkinson's bum as she strutted back to reception across the atrium, having just delivered the desk's mail. Even Elisabeth was, and even Paul, because Sarah had been going steady with some guy in Asset Allocation since the Christmas party, and like all happily paired-off women she was putting weight on.

But unlike any other happily paired-off woman she didn't seem to be putting on a tummy or thunder-thighs, no, just more, more and more of her lovely bum and boobs. Her clothes had always been tight but they were now at bursting point. It was impossible not to stare.

'Elisabeth, 3.11 please,' Will interrupted, and it turned out that rather than ogling Sarah he had been opening his mail all along. Elisabeth could tell by the stiff, freshly opened envelope in his hand, which he held onto as he stood up.

'Right, yes, 'course.'

She grabbed her notepad and followed him.

Her heart sank as soon as he closed the meeting room door. He was smiling at her.

'Will, stop it.'

'What?'

But he did stop it, because he did know perfectly well what he was doing because, with the possible exception of that stone-cold-sober, full-daylight, not-quite-snog on her doorstep, Will always did know perfectly well what he was up to. Just now he'd been smiling at her in a non-collegial manner and he knew it, she knew it, and they both knew that she did not like it one bit because he'd done that a couple of times since he'd been back from the States and she thought she'd made it abundantly clear it wasn't on.

Right now, for instance, she had her arms crossed one way, her legs crossed the other way, she was giving him as much of a death stare as she'd ever given anyone, and she was tapping her right toes in the air in a can-we-please-move-this-along fashion. And whatever he thought, she was hating this catty, petulant attitude of hers at least as much as she was hating him.

'OK, Elisabeth, great news,' he said, producing two gilt-edged cards from the envelope he'd just opened. 'You and I are going to see those little yobs from TSF next Saturday.'

'The Soul Factory? That's not great news, Will, that's my idea of hell.'

OK, so she didn't have Will down as a manufactured boy-band groupie, and his enthusiasm for this outing was indeed baffling, but there might have been more humorous ways to make that point. Elisabeth thought back, almost fondly, to the early days of their acquaintance. To Will's Vulcan death-stare and how simple things had been once.

He started smiling again, so she said, or rather spat:

'Seriously, Will, give me one good reason to do this.'

Will put the invites down onto the coffee table between them, and after a moment he looked up again, and finally started handling himself like the guy she neither loved to hate, nor hated to have liked quite so much, once, on her doorstep.

'OK, Elisabeth, reason one: considering we've not sent any business their way for four months it's great news that Rheinland are inviting us, not just good news. This is an olive branch that we need to take as much as they need to hand it over. This ban's costing us too, you know.'

'I realise that, Will, but I still fail to see why it should make me want to listen to TSF for two hours.'

'OK, then let me put this to you in a way you will understand: what's six mil divided by 150?'

'Forty grand, why?'

'I guess you've been too busy with tradePad to do much arsing about on Bloomberg lately, so let me catch you up on the goss down Broker Strasse. What's happening here is that while you were here Y2K testing, Deutsche's rumoured to have paid Robbie William 5 mil to sing at their New Year shindig. Now Rheinland are looking to pay TSF even more, so they can one up the other Germans. They're hosting 150 bankers in some small West End club for media-types,' he said with evident disdain for the profession, 'and it's all the market's talking about. So these invites are not to be sneezed at, Elisabeth. Not even by you.'

He said it kindly, not snootily as he would have once, but thankfully he didn't say it un-collegially either.

Funny, Elisabeth thought. For one night's work those "little yobs" from TSF would each be taking home some good investment-banking-sized packages. They wouldn't be boasting about it, for sure, when they next posed chest-waxed for the front cover of Sweet Tweenies magazine. Their PR team would probably make them donate half their fee to Great Ormond Street Hospital but even so, how come it was cool for the four of them to earn shedloads from Rheinland, but the same fact made Rheinland's CEO a hateful bastard? She reached for the cards on the table: stiff white gilt-edged named invites, golden tickets indeed, one of which said Elisabeth Bennet.

As much as she despised herself for it she had to admit that that Will was right: that piece of paper with her name on it felt pretty amazing. Another ego-boost, Charlotte would say. Jane would call it an opportunity she should be proud of, and perhaps Elisabeth would have seen it that way too, if it hadn't also involved a night out with TSF – and with Will.

As if reading her mind he started relaying with a healthy dose of irony Raj's explicit instructions for both of them to go and "re-ignite the business relationship", "maintain the bank's profile in the industry" and "showcase our unique scientific trading approach". He was, in other words, making it crystal clear that taking her along was Raj's idea and not his, concluding with:

'You coming then?'

'Sure.'

Sure, yes. It would be fine. The show might even be a giggle in a so-bad-they're-good kind of way. Fascinating too, as an anthropological survey of 40 grand a head events.

'Great, you want me to pick you up?'

'What, NO!'

Damn, so close. Maybe next time she could demur without actually shouting at him. But hey, at least he wasn't smiling, right? Or indeed driving her anywhere and then kissing her.

'Look, this is black-tie, Elisabeth, Raj will kill me if you get mugged on the way from that dump where you live.'

'Fine, I'll take a cab.'

'Fine.'

'Great,' she lied, got up, and left the room.

'So the boss is taking you to TSF?' Neil asked in a rare quiet moment later that day.

'Aha, suppose so,'

'God you're lucky!'

Elisabeth frowned. First of all Will wasn't taking her, she'd got her own named invite. No doubt at Raj's insistence, but it was recognition of her services to electronic trading so no, she wasn't being taken, thank you very much. And second of all, she'd never had Neil down either, as an excitable follower of manufactured boybands.

Then she remembered that, in the pointlessly competitive world of trading, even the opportunity to take part in a pig-manure-shovelling contest would be seen as desirable, provided that it was a forty-grand-a-ticket pig-manure-shovelling contest, held in a small West End club for media types.

'I guess,' she said in the end.

'Jesus, Elisabeth, it wouldn't kill you to show a little enthusiasm.'

'Sorry, yes, of course! Great ticket, yes, I'm really glad to be going.'

'You don't look it.'

'Just tired but tell me, is it true Robbie Williams played for Deutsche Bank for five mil?'

'Oh yes, at least that's what they said, Andy went.'

'I see… I never realised that's how all these glamorous pop lives are funded.'

'Yep, nicking our bonuses, they are!' Neil smiled, but she'd already let out another sigh at the prospect of the TSF gig.

'What's wrong?'

'Nothing, nothing, anyway tell me, how's things with that lovely girl from the off-site? Whatsherface? Natasha?'

Thankfully only Elisabeth could see the link between the two lines of conversation, namely the awkward fallout from all that mindless off-site flirting.

'Funny you should ask, I might just have asked her out,' Neil said, making sure to keep his poker face on. Elisabeth made up for it by breaking into the first genuine smile she felt she'd cracked for far too long.

'Wey hey! Well done you, Neil! And might she have said yes?'

'Might have,' Neil said, still playing it cool.

'Well, well, well… Good for you!'

'Do you know a good place for a first date? Can't take her anywhere too flashy, you know, keep it low key. Somewhere sort of French perhaps, I think she said she'd spent a year there.'

'Define "sort of French" to me: there's this place in Islington… where do you want to go? I don't know many places south of the river.'

'Ah, probably south, actually. I think she said she lives in Clapham.'

'I see, sorry.'

'If it's a nice evening I'd stay along the river,' Will said from behind her.

'Yes, that'd be lovely.'

Something made her turn, and she saw Will raise an amused eyebrow at her, his lips twitching into an almost smile, which instantly wiped hers away. Seriously, what part of "quit doing this" was still unclear to him? She tucked her hair back and looked back at Neil:

'Yes, that or just take her to Paris, that's sort of French and south of the river, isn't it?'

xxx

The next day a letter arrived from Wiltshire, which she had to decide whether to open or not. She ended up throwing it, still unopened, in the first bin on her way to the tube as she headed to Vincent and Jane's for the weekend. Jane had just been allowed to come home, finally, and although still on bed rest she was now able to enjoy her family's company. Her return home also meant that for the first time since New Year Elisabeth would get to spend a bit of time with her brother, rather than looking after either his wife or his children while he looked after either his children or his wife.

Elisabeth planned to put the time to good use: she couldn't get the bank to introduce a women quota on its board, but perhaps she'd be able to turn Vincent into a New Man and a supportive husband. It was a long shot, but she had never let that stop her before: just think of the tradePad launch.

'Vincent, I never asked you: how do you feel about Jane quitting her job?' she said as he helped her set the table for Sunday lunch. She had tried her best not to let her own opinion on the matter show and, as it turned out, she might have managed only too well:

'Honestly, that's the best decision she's ever made,' said Vincent. He stopped helping, the better to focus on expressing his views: 'It's going to be such a relief for her, not having to run herself silly the way she's been doing. And then she can be there for the kids, you know, as she should...'

Elisabeth stopped him with one glance.

'As she wants to be!' he hastily corrected himself, and fussed over a plate before continuing, this time addressing the cutlery drawer. 'After all, we're lucky that we don't need her salary. Perhaps I should feel smug because I'm the one who suggested it to her in the first place but you know what? It doesn't matter who thought of it first. All that matters is that she's making the right decision.'

'I hadn't realised it was your idea,' Elisabeth said. She had also failed to twig when her own working mother's son had somehow turned into the fatuous chauvinistic pig now standing in front of her. New Man, Vincent? It really was a very long shot:

'Oh yes, it's just too hard, you know,' he was saying, 'for two parents to carry on working like this. How many couples do you know who can manage with two jobs like ours? How many?'

'No, you're right, I don't,' Elisabeth said with a sigh. Soon thanks to him she would know none at all, because this kitchen clearly was too small for both his stupid ego, and his wife's career.

'But aren't you worried she might get a bit bored after a while?' she asked after a heroic struggle to stay calm.

'Naaah, there'll be other mums, you know, clubs, coffee mornings, those sorts of things,' Vincent said. Now that the conversation had strayed away from his area of expertise he was setting the table in earnest again.

'I'll go and help Jane down,' Elisabeth said, rather than punching him.

Once upstairs Elisabeth did not kid herself that Jane was delighted to see her per se. Jane was delighted that she was going to be taken downstairs for a few hours and allowed to sit with her family, rather than lie down here on her own.

'Thanks,' she said as Elisabeth helped her stand up. Almost seven months pregnant she was still light as a feather, and despite her recent ordeals still far too proud not to resent even Elisabeth's helping hand. Elisabeth understood this and even respected it, but she worried when after only a few steps she saw Jane wince.

'You OK?'

'Fine, fine,' Jane said, getting on with her slow but deliberate shuffle out of the room. 'I just wish he wouldn't scream at them like this.'

'Right.'

Indeed Vincent had just been heard downstairs calling the children to dinner. The children shouted back, one of them coughed, then a couple of doors slammed and Jane winced again before starting her descent of the staircase, one hand on Elisabeth's arm and the other under her bump. They covered the full distance to the kitchen in barely five minutes and Jane, having levered herself down onto one of the brown leather dining chairs, caught her breath and looked upon the two beautiful blond heads running in towards her.

'Vincent, where are their slippers?' the delighted mother said as her progeny rushed towards her.

'Go easy on Mummy,' Vincent replied in his deepest pater familias voice, whilst transferring a mid-market white Burgundy from its bottle into a decanter. The children ignored him, just as he had ignored his wife's question, which Jane asked again in an already less delighted tone.

'Vincent, darling, their slippers? You need to put their slippers on or they'll never get rid of that cough.'

'Hmmm? Kids, go and find your slippers, allez allez' he said impatiently while stirring his Blanquette de Veau. Whatever else you might say about him, Vincent was a true son of France, one of those accomplished and fussy cooks who ply every last kitchen utensil to the confection of a single dish, and then abandon them exactly where they've stopped using them.

Sophie left to do as she'd been told while Dan stole another cuddle from his mum and eventually had to be shooed away from her lap. More shouting and coughing was heard from the playroom while Vincent stood by the counter, stirring away, unaware of his wife's winces each time the children shouted.

'Vince, why don't you go and help them look? I'll stir,' Elisabeth said to him.

Vincent took off with a look of sufferance, and now stampeding as well as shouts were heard up and down the stairs.

'If you knew how hard it is for me to sit here,' Jane said in a small voice.

'I know, I know, but it's good for them to get on without you sometimes, trust me.'

Vincent and the children eventually reappeared into the kitchen fully shod.

'How on earth do these things end up in the laundry basket?' he grumbled as he sat down.

'You mean you know where the laundry basket is?' Elisabeth said, ''cos I couldn't tell by the state of the floor upstairs round your side of the bed.'

Vincent shot her a dark look. Jane briefly laughed in her sleeve, then not at all. Vincent served up and they enjoyed a typical family meal, i.e. a stressful one where many a cup of water almost fell to the floor and no adult sentence was heard through to completion, and then Jane and her children were seen out into the playroom while Vincent and Elisabeth cleared the kitchen.

'Vincent, Vincent darling?'

Elisabeth heard Jane first and popped her head around the playroom door.

'What's up, Jane?'

'Can you ask him for the scissors?' Jane said. Dan was on her lap again, which they both knew he wasn't supposed to until his baby sister arrived. On his own lap he held open a Thomas the Tank Engine magazine. Elisabeth was delighted to see Jane breaking the rules for once in her life, and for such a worthy cause too.

'Right up,' she said then, back in the kitchen: 'Vince, les ciseaux?'

Vincent waited until a self-important man was finished talking on Radio 4 and then pointed to a drawer. She opened it, rifled around, did not find any scissors, looked around the counter tops and in the dishwasher.

'Vince, they're not here, where are they?'

He shrugged.

'Sorry, not in the kitchen,' Elisabeth said to Jane, 'Any idea where they might be?' she asked, starting to examine the contents of the playroom cupboards.

'Can you go and get Vincent?'

'Sure.'

She returned with her brother, though not before a different self-important man was done talking on Radio 4.

'Vincent, darling, where are the scissors?' Jane asked.

'I was clearing the kitchen,' Vincent said.

Elisabeth recoiled in anticipation of a full-blown marital.

'Darling, how can you not know where the scissors are?'

'I don't, there! But I'm sure the au-pair put them somewhere sensible.'

'If she did, then how come you can't find them?'

'Why should I know? They could be anywhere!' Vincent protested with a petulant flick of the kitchen towel over his shoulder.

'Owwww!' Jane said. Once again it wasn't pain, thank goodness, just exasperation, but coming from her even a very short "Ow!" was roughly equivalent to "you effing Peel Hunt" back on the desk.

As even her inobservant husband should have known, except that he still didn't:

'Look, just calm down, OK? Do some colouring or something with him and I'll go and buy you some new scissors right after I'm done clearing up the kitchen, alright?' he said as if his wife was the one who needed indulging with cutting, pasting and colouring.

Instead of highlighting this to him, as Elisabeth would have done, Jane spoke back in the tone she normally used to cajole Dan into brushing his teeth:

'Vincent, if neither of us knows where the scissors are then they could be anywhere, and they are dangerous things. Do you want Dan to cut another blanket for his trains, perhaps out of your office curtains this time?'

Dan's eyes lit up and Elisabeth had to repress a chuckle. She loved Dan's creative spirit, Vince and Jane should be so proud. But now was not the time to compliment them on their son's engineering promise, she could tell. Vincent looked darkly from Elisabeth back to his wife. Time to separate them:

'I'll look for the scissors, you finish in the kitchen,' Elisabeth said to him. 'I'll start with the laundry basket, shall I?'

Jane smiled, Vincent vanished in a huff, and five minutes later Sophie ran to find her upstairs, lisping with excitement:

'Auntie, Auntie, I 'member! Daddy took the scissors! He took them! Because he lost them!'

Elisabeth looked down at her niece, confused. The damn thing with three year olds: in Teletubby world this sort of inversed causality probably made perfect sense, but to her it was deeply disturbing.

'Right, never mind, Sophie, he took them where?' she said, squatting to get level with her niece.

'To the cwicket,' Sophie answered with a solemn nod.

'The what?'

'The cwicket!'

'The cricket?' Elisabeth checked, in case Cwicket was some other children TV nonsense she'd never heard of.

'The cwicket. Where he works.'

'Ooooh, you mean the office!' said Elisabeth, springing back up, 'OK come on, Sophe, let's go get them!'

'Jesus, thank goodness she's gone,' Vincent muttered, less New Man than ever, once his wife was back in her bed and the children parked in front of the telly, 'See what an absolute nightmare she is? God, I can't wait for that kid to pop.'

'Hey, I'm pretty sure she can't wait either,' Elisabeth said, but looking at her brother's drawn face she was surprised to discover that she hadn't spent quite all her reserves of sympathy on his wife. Vincent was having a hard time too, albeit on his own, more favourable male terms.

'I'm sorry, Vince, this has been tough for both of you.'

He nodded into his coffee, she tucked her hair back, and then she surprised herself all over again. Out of this unexpected sympathy for her brother rose a beautiful idea, one which might possibly save Jane's career:

'She's really no fun when she's like this, is she?' Elisabeth said, mimicking Vincent's casual contempt as best she could.

'Tell me about it!'

'Let's face it she's never been terribly good at being stuck at home, has she? Remember her last maternity leave? Remember that time you used the wrong marigolds to wash up the bottles?'

'Oh no! Don't remind me, I'd forgotten that one!' Vincent said, looking up from his cup of coffee with the first smile she'd seen on him all weekend.

'How could you have forgotten?'

'How could I?'

'Oh but don't worry, she won't let you forget this time around.'

His chuckle tapered into a sigh, and she kept going while she was on a winner:

'God, Jane? Stay at home mum? Can you imagine, when she's spent the whole week looking for scissors and slippers and disinfecting the washing up gloves? Good luck with that, Vince, sucks to be you.'

Vincent sighed again, shaking his head.

'I mean let's face it, she's far less grief when she's working. She gets far too knackered after all the operas and the footie games to give you aggro over the laundry.'

'You're right!'

Vincent greeted this discovery with wide-eyed, head-shaking wonder. She recognised it as the same astonishment which seized the worst of the old boys back at the office when, every so often, she left them with no option but to acknowledge that the girl quant actually knew what she was talking about. But never mind that, for now she must focus on the job at hand, and strike while she still had the advantage of surprise over Vincent:

'Perhaps you should find her one of those mother's helps, you know, or a housekeeper or something,' Elisabeth said, careful to sound casual and even slightly dismissive about it, as if talking about something she didn't care much about, one way or the other. To sound the way Neil or Will would sound when buying a couple of mil's worth of Xstrata. Sure enough Vincent pricked up his ear:

'Just some dog's body, to keep everything in the right place around here, full time. You know,' she said, as if it had just occurred to her, as indeed it had: 'I think Charlotte's cousin's got one of those.'

'Really?'

No, not really. None of Charlotte's cousins had husbands, let alone kids, let alone housekeepers. How long could she keep the bullshit up? She pictured a Reuters screen and a dealerboard and gave it her best shot:

'Said it literally saved her marriage, she did. At Charlotte's wedding, I remember,' she said, and mentally checked: three-link chain, still plausibly deniable, keep calm and carry on:

'Just think about it: Jane stays out all day, then she comes home to find everything where it should be. She'll be sweet as pie, won't she?'

Vincent was now pouting and nodding to himself.

'And as you said,' Elisabeth continued, 'you don't really need her salary anyway, so it might as well go to keeping someone else off the dole, right?'

'That's not a bad idea, how do I find one of those... what do you call them?'

'Mother's helps?'

God, the sheer injustice of it, they were his kids too, weren't they? What would a father's help do for a living? Stir blanquette? Decant wine?

'Shall we go on the net?'

'No, no, no, wait!' Elisabeth said, holding on to his arm with the greatest and phoniest concern: 'Whatever you do don't do it without consulting her first.'

'Right, OK. Why, d'you think she won't want to?'

God, Will was right, sometimes bluffing was almost too easy:

'Well, she seems quite determined to quit, you know, you'll need to talk a good game,' she said, and bit her tongue to stop herself from smiling.

'Right,'

'Try and make it sound like you're supporting her though, you know, not like you want to get rid of her. Just... just act like the New Man!'

'The New Man?' Vincent laughed, 'Seriously, you girls don't go in for that crap, do you? You know it's all bullshit, right?'

'Of course, just being ironic,' Elisabeth said, making sure to smile as if she really was. 'Anyway tell me, does Jane have to go back for a while in order to keep hold of her maternity money?'

'I think so, six months?'

'Great! You could suggest it as a trial period: try and find someone some time before she has to go back, make sure they're well trained, and then evaluate at the end of the six months.'

'Definitely.'

There was no hope for Vincent as a New Man, this much was clear. But maybe Elisabeth would manage to get the Old Boy to support his wife instead. He had that man-with-a-new-dial-up-modem-and-a-mission look, and she reckoned that now Vincent had changed his tune Jane probably would too, if only to keep the peace. Finally she was able to go and bid her good bye, and she climbed upstairs with a spring in her step.

'Hey, Jane, bye bye, I'm off!'

'Already?'

'Work tomorrow.'

'Of course, too bad: dinner on Saturday though, right?'

Elisabeth froze. She'd managed to forget all about Saturday night. The whole time she'd been busy buttering Vincent up it hadn't even lurked at the back of her mind, though it had almost continuously ever since she'd left room 3.11 a week ago.

'What's wrong?' Jane asked.

'I... I've got to go to this fancy black-tie broker thing with Will on Saturday night.'

'Hurray, a date! He's asked you out properly at laaaast!' Jane cried, clasping her hands with heart-breaking enthusiasm.

'No, no, Jane, it absolutely is not a date. It's just a work think that Raj wants us to do together.'

'Really? Oh what a waste, Elisabeth – I thought you liked him! Are you sure it's not a date?'

'I do like him, but Jane I'm on two ex-boyfriends in six months already and whatever is going on with us lately it's not healthy and I need to make it stop, not go on a date with the guy.'

'Why, what is going on?'

'Hell, I wish I knew, but the way I look at it either he's only 99.99% over his weird crush, or more likely it was all off-site boredom induced and he's so totally over it that he actually has fun messing with me in 3.11. Which sadly isn't very difficult.'

'Hmmm.'

'I know, it's not big, it's not clever and it's not professional, Jane. You don't need to tell me: I wish I could make it stop. I do try to.'

Jane looked at her first with a frown, then with pinched lips, then looked down at the bedcover and back up again. Elisabeth braced herself for the chiding she knew she deserved, but instead Jane said:

'Well to my mind, you might as well make the best of a bad job, Elisabeth. Whatever is or isn't going on, go and have some posh civilised fun for once in your life: what are you wearing?'

'I guess my…'

'No,' Jane cut in. 'You can't go in that second-hand thing you always wear at Christmas parties.'

'But it's lovely!' Elisabeth said, disappointed but also slightly panicked. Black vintage 1960s raw silk: she had to do better than that?

'It suits you, but it's too short for a black-tie do, Elisabeth. Go over to the wardrobe. I might have something for you.'

'You? You must be kidding. What are you, a size 6?'

'Not when I'm trying to hide a 16 weeks bump second time around, I'm not. I had to get something for that client evening at the Royal Albert Hall and ended up with a 10.'

Elisabeth let out an unladylike snort as she shook her head with envy: 16 weeks pregnant Jane was still a full size smaller than she was.

'That's very kind of you, Jane, but I'm more of a 12.'

'Never! Not with all that swimming you've been doing since the New Year. Go on, open it!' she said, pointing at the wardrobe. Elisabeth complied, though only out of deference for her friend's condition.

'There, on the left, no, next to it, black satin. Yes, that one!'

Elisabeth pulled out your average little black number, except indeed perhaps not that little in comparison to the rest of Jane's clothes. Halter neck though not in a tarty way, low but still decent at the back, in thick soft shiny cloth. A nice cut too, with a tailored waist and little pleats gathered high up behind the legs, giving it what was going to be a figure hugging line.

'It looks about the right length,' she said dubiously, holding the hanger to her chest. 'How on earth did you wear that?'

'On me it was mid-calf, which worked with heels. Try it on!'

'Don't be daft.'

She did, mostly on the basis that it would be quicker than to argue with Jane, and was amazed how easily the zip came up despite the size 10 designer label stitched into the side seam. She took a tentative tiptoe towards Jane's mirror, where Jane caught her reflection's eye.

'So tell me, Elisabeth, do you still feel like his weird crush?'

'Perhaps not.'

Swivelling on the ball of her feet to check her back, and despite the purest of intentions to the contrary, Elisabeth couldn't help wonder what effect this black-satin-shrink-wrapped derriere might have on Will, and whether that might pay him back for his last few unprofessional smiles in 3.11.

But then, she thought, landing back onto her heels with a thud and a sigh, she had made it so abundantly clear that she didn't want Will to get over familiar with her, or indeed with her derriere: what could possibly be the point of this frippery?

'You're going to need some proper shoes to go with that,' Jane said with a frown reminiscent of Sophie's.

'I have proper…'

'No, not those. This dress needs at least four inches.'

'This dress has needs?'

'Don't even dream of not going shopping for this, Elisabeth, OK? I'll call you until you do, and I will find out if you don't, you know that I will. Four inches or above: you're lucky, Will's more than tall enough for you plus four inches.'

Elisabeth frowned.

'…but you don't have to listen to me, of course,' Jane said while nonchalantly swishing her ponytail over her shoulder, 'I'm just trying to save you from yet another faux pas, but if you want to turn up to a forty grand a head do looking like you're scared of your own gorgeous legs, that's up to you.'

Something told Elisabeth she was being subjected to the kind of reverse psychology she'd only just used on her brother. She didn't want to fall for it, yet she also didn't want to turn up at a forty grand a head do looking scared of her own legs. Which she wasn't, she was scared shitless of making Will smile at her, not the same thing at all:

'I don't know, Jane, don't you think this already looks like trying too hard?'

'Who cares? I thought it wasn't a date.'

'True.'

'Which is a shame, because you certainly look stunning.'

'Thank you, Jane.'

'And you do deserve to be taken on a proper date.'

'Well, one day, maybe,' Elisabeth sighed again, then remembered that she wasn't the one with real problems in this room. 'Thanks for the dress,' she said with a smile which was not entirely forced. 'I'll go shoe shopping, promise.'

'Good. And you will tell me all about it over Sunday lunch, right?'