Hello again everyone!

I've been really touched by the steady flow of new readers coming to this story in the time since I finished posting it, back in February. Being a relative newbie to this fanfic game I'm curious to know how new readers found out about On the Market, especially now it must be way off the first pages of any P&P search. If you are one of them, do leave a comment or message to let me know. And don't forget to check out A Bee in her Bonnet too. It's now complete and it too is a hoot, I promise.

Now Gemma Woodhouse is out of my way, I finally had time to check in on Elisabeth and Will. Hope you enjoy this new chapter but beware: with Andy still around and things getting a tad stressful, I'm afraid there's some strong language ahead...

All the best

Mel

Monday mornings were always awkward these days, but today was something else.

Monday mornings were always awkward in the way that having to shake yourself out of How can I ever get enough of this guy's skin, and how did I land him in the first place mode, and into He's my esteemed colleague and we've got a job to do mode, feels like heart and mind whiplash wrapped up into one. Monday mornings had been awkward ever since Elisabeth had danced with Will and then kissed him and then slept with him and then had had to account for being a scatter-brained train-wreck at work, and gone and invented Chris. Surely it didn't get more awkward than that, right?

Maybe it did.

Usually, Will and Elisabeth dealt with the Monday morning awkwardness by sharing their morning coffees at the desk in loaded silence. He still got her a macchiato every morning because it would have looked weirder to stop than to carry on, right? A week or so after Chris was first invented, Will had made a point of teasing Elisabeth in front of the whole desk, asking whether her new boyfriend was OK with him getting her coffee. She'd assured him just as publicly that yes, Chris was cool with him co-financing her caffeine habit. So the morning macchiato round carried on, except that nowadays instead of just reading the FT while waiting for his first buy order of the day to complete, Will would compose coded messages to his beloved on the inside of her cardboard cup-holder. Complex acronyms decipherable by Elisabeth only, and which would have made Tolstoy's wife proud.

Seriously, how had she landed this guy again?

But these sweet almost-nothings also signalled the end of playtime. After she'd decoded her cup holder and binned it with a small sigh - a sigh entirely justifiable by the fact her coffee was finished and her work day about to start, you understand - she'd find a piece of actual Java to get on with and he an email to reply to, or she'd find a dataset to clean and he'd pick up the phone, and usually after ten minutes or so it was OK, really. After all, they both had jobs they enjoyed so it wasn't too bad. Really, it wasn't.

Provided they never got on a lift alone. Lifts alone were bad, very bad, but then so was taking the stairs together alone. So Will used the stairs on odd days and Elisabeth on even days. Not weird at all. Other than that, it was just a matter of not sleeping together on school nights- just. Commuting together was too risky: not only could they get spotted on the way, but even Will would have struggled to put his straight trading face back on between the last tube stop and the desk.

The only good Mondays were when one of them had a meeting off-site first thing in the morning. Only then could they spend Sunday night together. Hence Sunday nights sucked generally, but yesterday-night was worse by some margin. They'd had to part after a whole glorious week together, their first holiday, making the whiplash worse than ever because, god-damn-him, on top of everything else Will was also a very competent skier. Almost as good as she was, in fact. They'd had a week to revel in each other, and in the legal kind of white powder, in Meribel. So yes, much though she still liked her flatmates, Ben and Mac's company had been a bit of a let-down last night. Mike had bought Elisabeth out of the flat back in August and she probably should have moved out ages ago, but what was the point of doing that, if it wasn't to move in with Will?

And now not only was she not in Meribel, not skiing and not allowed to even look at the better-than-perfect man sat right next to her, and trying to stare instead at the latest stupid effing stock split the stupid effing data team had missed yet effing again. Not only that, but today the stupid effing data team had decided to come and discuss said stock-split-fuck-wittage in person and en masse. Also half the UNIX team was here to report - in person too, for some unfathomable reason - about some minor backup outage that had occurred so well out of hours, it had been of no consequence whatsoever to tradePad's disk mirroring.

Yet here they all were, crowded around the desk, and you couldn't hear yourself think for all the questions they had about Elisabeth's holiday, and about Will's.

UNIX to Will: "So how was the snow?"

Will to his middle screen: "Good."

UNIX to Elisabeth: "And where did you go again?"

Elisabeth: "Courchevel?"

Data team to Elisabeth: "Isn't that where he went?" (to Will:) Will, isn't that where you went?"

Will (un-bloody-flappable): "No, I was in Meribel."

UNIX: "And your snow was good also, Lizzie?"

Elisabeth (wincing at the Lizzie thing): "Excellent. Very good snow. We had fresh powder on the Wednesday."

Data to Elisabeth: "Who's we?"

Elisabeth (harrumphing): "Chris and I, obviously. And the rest of Meribel, I suppose."

UNIX and Data team (nodding knowingly): "A-haaa..."

Elisabeth: "What?"

Will (almost-but-not-quite death-staring his foot-in-mouth beloved): "She means Courchevel."

Elisabeth (clutching at straws, hence falling back onto her French e's and r's): "Not at all, Will, I meant Meribel. Which happens to be right next to Courchevel, so we skied there on the Wednesday. Chris and I did. Powder was great, wasn't it?"

Will (to his right screen, pretending to be aping her French accent, not having to pretend to be crap at it, and probably not having to pretend to look annoyed either): "But of course."

UNIX (playing dumb) to Will (staring at screen, then at dealer board, then sighing when all lines refuse to ring): "Ooh, so you two basically went to the same resort? Did you bump into each other on the slopes perhaps?"

Data team (almost faint with excitement) to Elisabeth: "Or in the ski bar afterwards?"

UNIX to Data team: "Or at the airport. They could have bumped into each other at the airport, right?"

Will (full death stare, plus some, at the lot of them): "Don't think so, no."

Elisabeth (rather proud of her next line): "No offence, Will, but I'm really not sure I'd have noticed you anyway. I was kind of busy trying to keep Chris upright on those mogul runs..."

Will (running with it): "God help Chris."

UNIX (innocently) to Elisabeth: "Is Will a good skier then?"

Elisabeth (rather proud of herself again, but also trying not to look like she'd have any reason to be): "I really don't know: Will, are you a good skier?"

Will (ostensibly clicking the arrows on his keyboard down a PMS screen): "It depends. How good a skier are you?"

Andy (outdoor voice cranked up to 11): "I don't give a fucking crap if he's Eddie the fucking eagle and she spent the week shagging her cunting lawyer boyfriend til his dick fell off! You lot fuck back off to your fucking desks and fix your fucking data and your fucking servers, so we can get some fucking trading done around here!"

Will (to Andy): "Couldn't agree more."

Elisabeth (to Andy): "Quite," (to UNIX and Data, with her best smile): "Happy Monday guys, keep me posted."

x

There were a few backward glances from the atrium as they all shuffled away, and Elisabeth now found it rather hard to focus on data cleaning. But she pretended to. She pretended hard, so as not to steal so much as a bouncing glance at Will. She listened to him continue to click through stuff on his screen and sigh, whether at PMS or at her stupidity just now, who would ever know? Really, Will was right all along: you couldn't take her anywhere. All she had to do was say: Meribel. Meribel Meribel Meribel. They'd agreed that if asked she'd say she'd been in Meribel, because that was the truth and she was crap at lying, and he'd say whatever came to him, because he was very good at lying and didn't need crib notes.

So why did she have to go and say Courchevel, and then Meribel when he'd said Meribel? Also, couldn't he have said something else, like, I don't know, L'Alpe d'Huez or Villard de Lans? Of course there was the fact that he couldn't pronounce either, but still. And now she'd have to remember to carry on saying Courchevel. Courchevel Courchevel Courchevel.

Why?

Besides, what had possessed both the Data team and the UNIX guys to come and give them the third degree at, what, barely 8:am? What was the last time any of that lot had been in at 8:am? Had they seriously cut their morning sleep short for this? To come and snoop on the head trader and the desk quant? Just how wild had the rumour mill got in the week they'd been away?

And why? Why? How could anyone possible have...

"Elisabeth,"

"Yes, Will?"

"You read Raj's email yet? About that FIX committee meeting tomorrow?"

"Sorry no, I got side-tracked by that missed stock split and..."

"Yeah, better take this in 3.11," he said, handing her her notepad as he stood up. "You might need this."

Elisabeth felt herself blush and tucked her hair back. Last time he'd handed her that notepad ... well never mind that time, now was no time to remember that time. Following Will the few yards to the meeting room, Elisabeth tried to cast her mind instead onto that FIX protocol inter-bank committee that was being set up in London. Raj wanted her to represent the bank. It had sounded quite exciting at the time, but now all she could think about was why the Data and UNIX teams were so interested in hers and Will's holiday and how on earth they ...

"I'm sorry," she said, burying her nose into her notepad as soon as the door was closed.

Now she thought about it, just like the last time he'd taken her into 3.11 for a non-collegial chat, Will had sat down with his back to the glass wall, leaving him free to smile all the non-collegial smiles he liked, while she had to hide her blushing face behind her spiral bound Black & Red. Not fair.

"You certainly channelled some classic quant skills back there," she heard – and fair enough.

Peeking over the edge of her notebook, she saw that today's non-collegial smile wasn't the outright flirty offsite one today. It was more akin to the one Will smiled at her whenever he had to hand Victoria back to Jane. It slow melted your heart instead of causing instant combustion, and it usually came with the line:

"Please, Elisabeth, pretty please, when can we build our own?"

To which the only answer he ever got was an only half-joking:

"You mean when do I get to build your own? As soon as I make MD, my love, I promise."

So not any time soon then, because even though the idea of babies with Will was strangely compelling, in a way she'd never thought of babies as compelling before, building babies while also trying to build some kind of a career around here did remain terrifying. And that terror, she remembered, was only rational, cute though any baby of Will's would surely be. Just think of Jane.

Besides, now was no time to be side-tracked by thoughts of procreation with London's Head of Trading:

"I'm sorry," she said again, "I panicked but we did alright in the end, didn't we? I mean they tried to trick me, but I didn't fall for it so we're OK, right?"

Will leant back and crossed his arms, but smiled on:

"Elisabeth, you do realise we're busted, right?"

"What?"

"Oh, come on: we're toast!" OK, well then why was he still smiling? "You know we are: what's the last time the data team were in the office, let alone down on the desk before the open? The only question is who spotted us, where, and when."

"Actually that's three questions."

"Ever the helpful quant in a crisis. Thank you."

Ever the helpful head trader in a crisis, Will continued to smile his distracting smile. Elisabeth tried hard to focus on his three questions instead, but the problem was, there had been so many times during the holiday, when either of them had abruptly broken off a Public Display of Affection in order to check over the other's shoulder. They couldn't help it. If someone stared a little too long, or a camera flash went off anywhere near them, they broke off like the guilty parties they still felt, even when they were on their own free time together, and well away from the office.

And then Will would tell Elisabeth that she couldn't blame people for staring at them: they were jealous of him, naturally. To which she would argue that obviously no, it was her people were envying. And then they'd both tell each other that people had every right to take holiday snaps where and when they liked. And then they'd start whatever they'd interrupted, only with that increased enthusiasm which nothing brings on, like the sense of freshly escaped peril.

But now, one of these random starers or snappers must have recognised them and spread the news around the office, so...

"What are we going to do?"

"Deny it," Will shrugged.

"How? If people saw us?"

"They were wrong. They made a mistake, it wasn't us. It can't have been, because - plausible deniability - you were in Courchevel, remember, Courchevel, with Chris, whereas I was in Meribel with Dean the entire time and nowhere near you. He'll vouch for it."

"OK," Elisabeth nodded, the way Will had last nodded when she was talking him through that non-linear component she was planning on adding to the market-impact model for FTSE100 stocks to account for block trading.

"So... I just have to lie some more?" she checked.

"Not even, think of it as almost telling the truth: you had a lovely ski break with Chris very near where you and I had the best ski break ever. I had a brilliant if slightly exhausting ski break chasing after a hot young mogul instructor. Now I think about it, I very much hope to see more of her in the future. It's such a cliche, that old sleeping-with-the-chalet-girl trope, but the fact is I do want to carry on sleeping and skiing with that one. What with her working there I won't be able to introduce her to the desk any time soon of course... oh wait, she's perfect! What shall we call her?"

"Melinda Mensongère?" Elisabeth joked, a tad bitter. Will almost certainly didn't get the pun, but seemed happy enough to go with it:

"Better Melinda than Christie. Mel she is, then. See, it all adds up beautifully, just the way you like. Plus Dean's not gone out all week so he could pretend he's been away with me. Trust me, it'll work."

"Yep, still a top wingman, Dean," Elisabeth sighed, "But let's face it: he's not gone out all week because he's been too busy staying in with Charlotte's sister."

"Of course, but the point is that the more we tell our story, the more it adds up. And we all know how important that is to you, right?"

Elisabeth managed a feeble nod.

"Come on, it's a cracking story!" Will said, "Just keep telling it, you know you can!"

"Can I?"

"'course! You actually did alright back there. They were onto us already, nothing you or I could have done about that."

"Thanks."

"There you go. Not the end of the world. It was bound to happen at some point. Let's face it: we've had a good run."

"We had lots of good runs back in France, Will. You were even starting to get the hang of moguls. Why we ever had to come back..."

"Hey, hey, all's good, it'll be fine, we're still here."

They'd gone over this before, they knew. They knew that at some point, someone at work would cotton on, and they'd have to be even more careful, to lie even more often. They knew that whatever happened then, they wouldn't let it get between them. But they hadn't thought that that point would be right here, right now. Hence they'd never gone into the detail of how they were going to ensure that everything was going to be OK.

Because who wants to be thinking of that, on their precious two days off a week with Will?

x

Now as it turned out, as well as his famous cutting-broker-lines-in-3.11 voice, Will also had a baby-and-toddler,-girlfriend-and-probably-horse-and-dog-whispering voice too. Dan hero-worshipped him, and with his help was starting to learn not to loose his proverbial when faced with such ordeals as tying up his own shoe laces, or locating any of that stuff he kept losing around the house. Hence Sophie and Jane adored Will too, the former for keeping her brother off her case, the latter for looking so damn hot while doing that and simultaneously rocking Victoria to sleep.

That same miracle-working Will now shook his head and said:

"Great stuff, Elisabeth. Nothing to see here."

He really did say it as if it weren't the greatest biggest lie since white men first strung together the words regardless of race, gender or creed.

"Big fat nothing happened," he went on, "My regards to Chris by the way. I do hope I get to meet him some time. Can you stick with that?"

"OK, OK yes."

"Great, meeting over then. Go get yourself a coffee upstairs, you've earned it. I love you."

"Will, you can't say that here! Look at the state of me!"

"OK, but I do."

"And I would say it back, if we could. You know that."

"Thanks. Now look away: now."

She did, so that he could stand up and stop smiling, and then put his head trader face back on before they left the room.

x

As the day wore on, a variety of usually lesser-spotted colleagues continued to visit the desk, each with a flimsier excuse than the last, but with an even greater curiosity for Will and Elisabeth's holidays. At first Andy did a great job of barking the intruders away, but after he left the desk during the midday market lull and then came back again, even he started staring and asking too many questions. By mid-afternoon Elisabeth and Will were so desperate for a break, they actually looked forward to a chance to talk Interbank FIX Committees and non-linear market impact models with Raj over video link.

"How was the lift?" Will asked when Elisabeth joined him in 4.02.

His smile implied they were alone, but just in case she closed the door and checked the wide screen at the far end of the conference room before she made her reply. Over in New York the meeting room, probably Madison, was empty, silent, and its door closed. Raj was, as usual, exercising the privilege of his rank by making sure he turned up last. Fair play to him, plus as today had turned out Elisabeth could definitely use some alone time with Will.

To re-group and strategise, of course, nothing more. Nothing unprofessional about that - bar Will's smile. Besides, Raj was a busy man. Far busier than he was vain, so alone time with Will wouldn't last long. And hopefully the rumour mill wouldn't have ground its way to New York yet, so Raj wouldn't give them the third degree about their holidays.

But even if he did, Will was right earlier, all they had to do was tell him more about Melinda the chalet girl. She was beginning to catch on around the London office already so Will was right to smile, they could do this.

"Lift was empty, good job you took the stairs," she said, smiling back at him.

She put her notepad down, the better to grab the hand Will was holding out for hers under the table. It was a very large table, large enough for twenty, a boardroom-type affair in high polish pale oak, with a walnut inlay along the edge, and three black triangular microphone and loudspeaker units dotted down the middle like mini alien spacecrafts.

Those simply begged to be swept away, of course, to make room for better, ruder things. After a while Will closed his eyes and emitted a long, tired, groany, and altogether non-collegial sort of sigh.

"Look at us: this isn't even the actual boardroom we're fantasising about," Elisabeth said, taking her eyes off the oak veneer to watch his Adam's apple bob up and down. Seriously, of all times to undo his top button...

"Between this table and your chalet girl we're not just a cliche, Will, we're a cliché mediocre," she said in French he would understand, "We should aim higher, a proper ESF ski instructor and some table in C suite on 6th, at the very least."

"Naah," he said, reopening his eyes to cast them, dark and melancholy, onto the wide tantalising expanse of polished wood in front of them. "This is our table," he said, tapping it with the index finger of his free hand. What beautiful hands he did have. "You and your coffee-stained boobs," he mused, "not even pretending to give a shit about my CV from across there, the day we met. Me pretending not to give a shit that you couldn't even be arsed to pretend to give a shit. All the while gagging to drag you across here to my side while taking that dirty shirt off you... good times..."

Will had that funny look on his face, both hungry and faraway, and altogether far too distracting for Elisabeth to remember to argue that that coffee stain hadn't been anywhere near her boobs.

But wait, no! Why was she letting her mind wander with his? No glass walls, that was why. This room only had windows to the outside and even on those, the blinds were usually down, to keep screen glare at bay. Damn those windowless places. Elisabeth and Will could work around the staircase and the lifts, but they couldn't not have video conferences with Raj once a week. And they couldn't show up late for those either, hence they had to be early, and alone, which was always great at first but inevitably led to...

"Well," she said, in what she deemed a heroic attempt to bring them back to the positive, and the professional, "Good job we don't look at the dealer boards that way."

"Most of the time I manage not to. The reception sofa on the other hand..."

"Well of course, but..."

"Also, why are you whispering?"

"I don't know, it's..."

"Don't worry, Will, I can hear you both fine," they heard over the loudspeakers, and froze.

x

Time slowed down, just as abruptly as it seemed to have accelerated while Will and Elisabeth reminisced about their sweet beginnings. They watched in horrified silence as the back of Raj's left shoulder appeared on the right of their screen, then grew into a full view of his back, at which point Raj turned around to face them, and sat down. How long had the smug, devious bastard been hiding off-camera? Just how much had he heard? The whole thing? Who knew, his face looked no different than it had been two weeks ago, on their last video call.

"I take it you two enjoyed your time off, then?" he said benignly. Raj was never so terrifying as when he pretended to be benign.

"We did," they said in unison, then,

"Well, I did anyway," Will said.

"So did I, very much so," Elisabeth heard herself say, and gave Will's hand one last squeeze before dropping it.

But he grabbed it back again, this time holding hers in full view of Raj, on top of the table.

Will had his shitty trading day face on, but as for Elisabeth, she barely had time to feel herself slip into another one of her out-of-body experiences. Suddenly there she was, hanging from somewhere near that projector unit on the ceiling, gazing upon the full horror of it all.

This was so, so bad. Raj had this big thing about integrity being what you did when no one was watching, and there he had been all the while, watching – and listening. That same Raj who was making them fill in gift declarations for anything above fifty quid, for God's sake. Since he'd taken over they pretty much had to report any off-site interaction with a broker.

So this? There wasn't a declaration form to make this OK because not only had they given the game away right in front of him, but they'd also made it crystal clear they'd been going behind this back for months. And as Raj now said, in a tone feared on the stock exchanges of three continents at least:

"I should not need to remind you, that for you two to engage in relations of a sexual or intimate nature is against company policy."

x

How transactional he made it sound: relations of a sexual or intimate nature. But then, Global Head of Trading, what do you expect? Not Raj's fault if the company handbook didn't mind about relationships being fun, or caring, or respectful, or supportive, or joyful and life affirming - provided they weren't sexual or intimate with it.

Elisabeth watched Raj stare mutely on at Will, and Will stare back at him. They were both awfully good at that mute staring game, she thought. She used to find Will's unsettling, if not scary, but Raj's? Raj still terrified her.

There was no telling how long this went on for. It felt like an eternity, but just like that time in the atrium with Khalil, after Paul put his picture of Toad doing coke up on the company intranet, time itself stopped mattering, because this was the end. They really were toast, fried. Fired even - an apt anagram of fried. For such are the thoughts you think while you watch, suspended in mid-air, as before your eyes your career blows up to smithereens.

"OK, I'm going then," someone said.

Turns out that was Will. He was still staring at Raj and she couldn't figure out what he meant because evidently he wasn't going anywhere. He was right here, wasn't he? Still holding her hand, thank goodness, or she might evaporate altogether, get sucked in through the aircon vent, and end up cooling the server room down in the basement.

"I'll go, but you keep her on," Will said. She felt him raise her hand in his, and now she got it. She dropped from the ceiling and back into her seat so fast her head physically hurt at first. Hence it took her a moment to be able to think again, and realise that Will was still speaking, and to Raj, but with none of his usual deference:

"In fact I swear, if you so much as think of sacking her over this, I'll walk too. Just because she's not an MD, which is fucking unfair if you ask me - and don't get me started on what you pay her. She's not carrying the can for this, Raj, over my dead body. You need her more than you need me anyway. She's the best thing you've ever done for this desk by a country mile, so don't go fucking it up now when I can just walk, OK? I'll go quietly too, you don't need to pay me off, I'll go and pack my box now, if you want."

What on earth was Will playing at? Self-sabotage at meetings was her party trick, last time she checked. He'd gone back to serving Raj the death-stare, and Raj was still busy giving him the Raj stare, and none of it made any sense so hell, she might as well stick her oar in:

"Look, Raj, I do love Will, but forget what he just said, I... this is not what we... that is, what I mean is I don't know why he just said all this and obviously you should keep him on, not me. I mean look at me, I'm no use without him. I can go and crunch data anywhere in the City but what we've done here, I can't do it without him. I... I need Will to hold my hand - not literally all the time. I don't mean like he's doing now, but metaphorically, Raj, you have no idea how many scrapes he's got me out of, when you weren't looking. Not just that time I screwed up over Xstrata, but lots of other times. In fact almost every time I speak to a broker, and..."

"You two disappoint me," Raj said, shaking his head. "Both of you, you disappoint me."

Will and Elisabeth looked at each other, then down at the big glossy table, its earlier allure now a distant memory. Of course Raj was disappointed in them: he was a cold blooded lizard with slightly less than zero time for human emotions, except as buttons to be pressed to make money. Behavioural Economics, they called it these days. So yes, it was probably hugely disappointing to him, that instead of knifing each other in the back in order to save their own jobs, as good self-interested little corporate soldiers should, Will and Elisabeth were taking the irrational step of putting the other first. Still,

"I'm sorry we had to go behind your back," Elisabeth said, because that was the truth. For all that he was cold and heartless, Raj had always been a good boss to her, efficient, respectful and supportive. Perhaps he'd only been nice so she'd build tradePad for him, but hers was not to question why. Raj had given her a chance and at the end of the day she too was disappointed in herself, for lying to him for so long.

"There you go: she's right, again, no surprise there," Will sighed. "And I'm sorry too, Raj, that we lied to you."

He sighed again but then resumed giving his boss the death stare, plus one:

"Sure, I'm sorry about the lying, but as for any other part of your precious bloody disappointment, Raj: I swear, you can stick that where the sun don't shine."

x

Amazingly, or perhaps not in view of the man's reptilian blood circulation, Raj's face did not appear to register any reaction. Unlike Elisabeth's heart, which skipped a beat or three. Will went on, seemingly impervious to either:

"Seriously, Raj, what do you take me for? Have you looked at her? Elisabeth isn't smart, she's fucking brilliant, OK? And she's funny. And fucking gorgeous, obviously. And true and loyal, to a flipping fault. She's still being loyal to you, right now: you're about to sack her, you bloody idiot, and she finds time to say she's sorry that she couldn't have been more honest with you. The truth is you don't deserve her, Raj. And nor do I, but if you think even for a nano fucking second, that I'm going to even contemplate putting your precious fucking job above her, then I'm sorry but no, Raj, you got me wrong. Not in a million years."

Elisabeth's heart had by then missed so many beats, she was busy trying to catch her breath. Raj, meanwhile, appeared to be flicking through his notepad, jotting something down. Hopefully not any of the epithets Will had just hurled at him.

Bah, what did it matter now? If you're going to get yourself sacked, you might as well go in style. She looked at Will and smiled, thinking that those were probably the best and loveliest things anyone had ever said about her. And Will looked back at her and smiled too, the smile he smiled at her when no one was looking, and now nothing mattered and all was well with the world. They were only jobs after all. Good, interesting, well-paid jobs, but...

"Good," Raj lied, unless of course he was pleased to be sacking them both, who'd ever know with him, "I see this only leaves us with one option,"

As if any part of "this" were an option, a choice.

"But for the record," Raj continued, with less emotion than Will and Elisabeth had seen him show while discussing some lesser IT protocol issues, "I did always worry this might happen. From the beginning - I think it was at our trading off-site. Will is never usually this... bellicose. Not with competent people anyway. I should have thought of it before, of course, encouraged you to stay with that nice man you were seeing then..." Raj said with a nod at Elisabeth, who shuddered at the very idea of Mike. Of all people to be dragging into this room right now...

"Well," Raj was saying, "I hoped that familiarity might breed contempt if I made you two sit together, but..." a shadow or mild revulsion did briefly pass over his face, "evidently not. The problem is, of course, that you two do do excellent work together."

Gosh, yes, what a problem. What a headache - for Raj.

"Still, I hoped," he said, "when I saw you pretend to be reading wine lists together, that this was just a..."

Mild revulsion passed over his face again, or was it a very slight unease? Either way, like hell were Will or Elisabeth going to fill in the awkward gaps for him.

"... a physical thing, shall we say. Temporary in nature, in any case," Raj said in the end. "I would have been sorry, of course, to see either of you distraught whenever it ended. But even if there had been bad blood between you, that would still have been more convenient, in so many ways. Even today, when Mike Poynton emailed me about his holiday snaps, I still hoped…"

Wait, what? Mike effing Pointless Poynton? He was the one who'd spotted them and gone ratting on them? Vindictive, useless effing bastard. When? How? Could that sad moron even ski? And there were pictures?

Elisabeth was so busy being outraged she missed whatever Raj said next, and caught back up with him at:

"... so you'll forgive me if I thought it best to gauge for myself just now how... serious this was."

Will and Elisabeth sat and stared at their soon-to-be-ex boss, their faces blank.

"... serious in both senses of the term," Raj said, as if it were funny, which it wasn't, to imply that them being serious about each other was also a serious headache, for him.

The fool. Raj's punishment would be, never to know how right the world felt, when you knew you that whatever happened next, you had your hand inside the right person's hand.

"But I'm afraid that in view of your current position, I must ask you both to proceed from here on with a little, no, with a lot more discretion than you have shown so far."

x

Excuse me, what? He wanted them to go quietly? Was that it? So as not to tarnish his own precious reputation while he sacked them? Well sod that for a game of soldiers. As Andy would say but seriously, even Elisabeth was starting to feel a case of foul-mouth-disease creeping up on her. In fact she was starting to feel like perhaps she and Will ought to go ahead and have good 'old naked sex on that reception sofa on their way out, or perhaps against one of those stupid ficus trees in the atrium too. Just to make things extra clear for everyone around this stupid bloody office. After all they all seemed so very, very interested.

"Fortunately those airport pictures look blurry enough to me to de deniable," Raj was saying, "so for the moment it's Mike's word against both of yours. And Melinda does seem to be catching on already, but until Elisabeth makes MD in February, however deeply infatuated you two believe yourselves to be, you are simply going to need to do a much better job of dissembling. I won't be authorising any leave of absence for both of you unless your departures and returns to the office are staggered, for a start."

Eh?

"And by February I do expect, Elisabeth, to be able to demonstrate to the MD selection board that you have made material contributions to that new Interbank FIX committee. Having spoken to some of the other banks we'll make sure you get to chair one of its working groups. I've taken the liberty of suggesting you'd be especially well suited to take a lead on relationships with VPNs and stock exchange data?"

"Uh... sure, yes," Elisabeth said, with absolutely no idea what she was agreeing to.

"So let me get this straight," Will said, "you're actually going to make her MD in Feb?"

"I certainly intend to. Elisabeth only leads a team of three at the moment, but they've all been very strong hires and as you know, the budget is agreed for her to hire a further research analyst in December."

"Right..." Elisabeth said, still too stunned to remember to be grateful, or to try and work out what that weird look might be, on Will's face. Probably just astonishment and mild hysteria, going by how she felt.

"And since your team has already been so instrumental in helping the tradePad launch in Tokyo," Raj was saying. All she'd done was crunch a few bid-ask spread numbers for them and arrange for her minions to cover Tokyo's early shift, but whatever, "it's only right that, outside New York, we officialise your global remit as head of Trading Systems Research. With four people here and three in Tokyo your team will actually be larger than Will's."

"And she's going to make MD… this February?" Will checked again. Far from looking surprised, let alone remotely bothered about his team being outnumbered by hers, he was now grinning from ear to ear.

"That's correct. You two will then have equal grades and ranking within the organisation, and be leading parallel teams. Technically, and provided Will does not force me to de-mote him over any further instances of insubordination," Raj said with a threatening look, "neither of you will be in a position of authority over the other, and a sexual or intimate relationship between you will no longer be in violation of company policy."

x

Raj gave them both a moment to let this sink in.

Or perhaps he was just waiting for Will's insane grin to go away.

Fat chance.

"Elisabeth, you did get this, right?" Will said.

Sorry, what? Oh yes:

"Raj, I'm so sorry, thank you! I'm very very grateful," she finally remembered to say.

"And so am I," Will said, "So grateful, Raj, you can't possibly have any idea. In fact it doesn't sound like she does either."

She turned to him, frowning:

"You're going to make MD in Feb?" he said.

Well yes, great. Fabulous. They were OK. Provided they could force the genie back in the bottle for a bit. Keep Chris and Melinda going for another couple of months, and only then ditch them both and... oh what, wait, that?

Will's grin and nod told her that, yes, he did mean the babies. OK, well great then, yes, why not?

Provided they didn't name any of them Fitzwilliam.

That was just ridiculous, in this day and age.

Or perhaps just as a middle name?

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