This chapter takes place on the first day back in the office after the Christmas break. New Year 2000: it feels especially weird to go back to those simpler, happier days, two weeks into a war in Europe. Well at least over here I'm still allowed to call it a war, or a special operation, or whatever the XXXX I please.

But remember when all we were afraid of was a hypothetical Y2K bug?

So enjoy this week's slice of harmless escapism and stay safe and hopeful, wherever you are reading this.

Mel

Third of Jan. New year, new millennium, same old stupid story, only good thing about it being, that it was now only six more weeks until bonus-slash-resignation time.

And Will had finally grown back into his normal haircut, and Georgie was back in town for a couple of months: small mercies.

Also, must remember to call her Elisabeth, Will thought as he picked up their coffees. Why had Dean waited until that random gondola ride in Vale to tell him how much she hated Lizzie?

x

Will knew something was wrong as soon as he got out of the lift. Too many people far too agitated for a third of January. The quant wasn't at the desk when he arrived, but the guys were all aflutter about some picture of the Toad doing coke at the Christmas party, and someone had posted it on the front page of Win, so that Win was now down while they investigated.

Will sat down and took one sip of his latte. He knew exactly what was up: the gay quant had taken the picture. Will remembered him going on about it, from after his surreal smoke-break with the other quant. Paul must have posted the picture too: judging by his work on tradePad thus far, that particular uphill gardener could hack his merry way into anything he liked. So clearly Toad was going to get the sack, and good riddance too. But so was Paul, as soon as he was found out, which was a shame for tradePad's sake, and was going to stress the hell out of Elisabeth.

Oh but wait, wait: what about her? Paul was only on some kind of training programme scheme for his first year. He wasn't a full-time employee yet, so on paper the buck stopped with her. What… what if they sacked her too?

Will couldn't immediately work out how he felt about that, but it sure didn't feel good. In theory, of course, her getting the sack should have been great news for him. It meant that he would no longer have to sit and watch her emailing her boyfriend every day. Which in turn meant there was no need for him to resign as soon as his bonus hit his bank account. If anything, her leaving soon would shorten his pain too, so that could only be a good thing, right?

Right - in theory.

In practice, what if the Angel of Doom made her appearance now? What if the little cup he was keeping warm inside his hand, waiting for Elisabeth to get back from the canteen, what if that turned out to be the last coffee he ever bought her? That was just…

'Happy New Year, Elisabeth,' Will said instead of trying to finish that thought, because the right word was probably "terrifying". The quant put her canteen card away and looked at him funny for a while. Then she probably remembered a New Year resolution to be nice:

'You look well,' she said very politely, 'Had a good break?'

'Great, thanks. You?' he said, handing over her coffee.

'I've had better,'

It was true the quant had looked better as well, but in her shoes he'd have been pretty stressed out too. In fact he was pretty damn stressed out in his own shoes, right now.

But then, Will remembered with a fresh dose of the third of Jan blues, perhaps it was just that she'd spent the entirety of the New Millennium to date shagging her stupid trustafarian boyfriend, and wasn't best pleased to be back here dealing with pictures of the Toad instead.

'Matey's back from Estonia though, right?' Will said, despite his own New Year resolution to play nice too.

There was a pause while she looked down at her keyboard and rubbed her temples, either like someone about to be sacked, or else like someone who's done too much shagging and not enough sleeping over the Christmas break. Or both.

'He is back, yes, but we are not...' Will turned around and raised an eyebrow, the way he did when he couldn't believe what he was hearing, and he was having to ignore a caveman inside his head doing a possibly premature victory lap of his dugout, while putting up bright polka-dot bunting in anticipation anyway:

'…we are not concerning ourselves with Tom anymore,' she finished, and the caveman shot a brace of party poppers out as well, for good measure.

Right.

What did you say to that?

'Really sorry, Lizzie,' Neil said.

That, yes: that's what you said, you said sorry, but now that Neil had gone and said it first it was too late. The quant turned to thank Neil and Will started typing away, complete garbage into some random Outlook window purely to buy himself time and look busy while he tried to think of something to say that was neither mean nor cravenly moronic, nor indeed jubilant.

'Good call,' he said before his silence got even more rude, and even more awkward.

Probably the closest to what she and the rest of the desk would have expected him to say, in the circumstances.

'Yeah thanks, I don't remember asking,' she spat back, and fair enough. She was rubbing at her temples again and all he wanted to do was take her outside, give her a cigar and a glass of cold sparkling water and watch her smoke away all remaining memories of that foreign dwelling idiot.

Instead, Will kept his face still and carried on typing random strings of characters into his email.

'Hey but look, don't worry,' Neil said from the other side of her. 'IT will be thrilled to know you're on the market again. Your little friend Khalil was here just now looking for you.'

Wait, what? No! They couldn't go and bust her now! Not now that she was single again! She needed to stay, stay employed and sat right where she was, thank you very much. And also: Khalil? Right, he wasn't letting Elisabeth anywhere near any of the IT guys unchaperoned from here on, nuh-huh. He knew exactly what their cavemen were like.

'Khalil's not my little friend,' she said, which was pretty cool for someone about to be busted for hacking into the bank's intranet. But that was the marvellous thing about Elisabeth: she panicked about all kinds of stupid stuff, and certainly looked adorable doing so, but give her a proper crisis or a trading system to build, and she rose above it in some style.

'He is when you need disk space,' Will said, but didn't dare look her way. She was so awesome he'd probably melt into a Dean-like puddle if he so much as glanced at her.

'What I meant is he's not that short,' she shot back, also not looking at him.

But then, he really did desperately want to look at her because: how could you not, she was so awesome. He crossed his arms for courage and swivelled his chair and feasted his eyes. She was magnificent, until she started blushing and turned adorable instead and Will said to Neil:

'Right, Neil: so it's no jokes about Estonians or Pakistanis, OK? You won't like her when she's angry.'

Whether she actually did write some code after that, or was merely doing to Java what he was doing to Outlook, no one would ever know. Eventually Khalil did appear and whisked her away to the atrium for what was likely to be a very awkward chat. Will swallowed hard as he watched her disappear into the atrium: like she was on some quant catwalk.

Kudos to her but also: please, please remember to act cool and deny it all, so they don't sack you.

x

'Everything OK?' he asked when she got back, and she said something about filing Y2K testing protocols and then started opening Word documents and sighing at them a lot.

Safe for now.

Will spent his afternoon listening out for the clip of the Angel of Doom's steps across the atrium, while also finding liquidity in British American Tobacco for a portfolio manager with a sudden enthusiasm for legal uppers.

The next morning he stepped into the lift wondering once more whether the smaller of the two coffees in his hand might be the last he ever bought Elisabeth. Someone pressed the call button as the doors closed, so he kicked one foot between them and who should walk in, but her definitely quite small friend: Khalil.

'Morning, mate. Khalil, is it?' Will said, who only called "mate" people he truly detested.

'Morning Vill,' nodded the young Eastern sage of the basement server room.

'How's it going? You caught your Win hacker yet?' Will asked, his hand unconsciously tightening around Elisabeth's macchiato.

'Vee haven't, no,'

'Shame,' Will lied, and felt his hand relax. 'How come?'

'It's all veeerrry strange, what traces vee have lead to the T… to Rralph himself, and vee can't rretrrieve our log files at all!'

'Really? How strange,' Will lied again. Seriously, when was the last time these guys had been able to locate any useful kind of a lost file? Still… 'Have you been through your backups yet?'

'Vell that's the thing,' Khalil said, whose slow exotic diction did shine the most pleasant, elegant and languorous polish onto his department's legendary incompetence, 'vee seemed to experrrience a backup failure that night.'

'Huh, strange… must be something to do with Y2K, right?' Will said, fiddling with the lift's control panel, because keeping a straight face really was becoming a challenge.

'Prrrobably, yes,' Khalil was nodding as the lift doors reopened.

Will willed himself not to skip his euphoric way through the atrium to his desk.

Elisabeth was already there, looking about as stressed and underslept as he'd felt until his little lift-chat with Khalil.

'Morning, Elisabeth,' he all but sang as he delivered her coffee. Probably was smiling at her like a moron too, but who cared? She was safe!

Single, and safe. Halle-jolly-lujah!

'Cheers, I'm gonna need this,' she sighed, pulling the lid off.

'Ah, you'll be alright,' he said, but then Andy started swearing at the spreadsheet and the quant walked over to the other side of the screens to help him, giving Will a told-you-so kind of look on her way there.

She pounced onto Paul the moment he pranced in, marched him into 3.11 and emerged a few minutes later still looking knackered, but with her face now a sort of drained blank that reminded him of her funny turn at the Christmas party.

'Duly chastised?' Will asked, making sure not to look at her, he still felt so high from knowing she was going to stay sat here next to him, all the way to bonus time, and hopefully the one after that, and all the other bonus times after that too, ever.

'Are you talking to me?' he heard while he fantasised away.

'No I'm chewing a brick, as Yoda would say.'

He looked at her and, like that night with the cigar, he saw her pull herself up and make herself stare back at him, like the absolute champ she was.

'Did you give him a good bollocking then?' he asked again.

'Sorry, I really don't know what you're talking about. Unless it's that Y2K testing protocol?'

She raised a most delightful eyebrow and made to get back to work. He crossed his arms and carried on staring at her awesomeness then said, while she still pretended to stare at her screens.

'You know, I was in the lift with your little friend Khalil just now. Apparently they drew a blank on that Win thing, something about some files missing and backups failing?'

'What are you talking about?' she lied again, grabbed her pencil and tucked her hair back.

'You're a terrible liar, Elisabeth. Look at you, you just tucked your hair back,' he said.

And also: you're awesome, you're starting to at least try and lie like a trader, and I love you.

'What?' she asked, almost like a trader, she was getting that good – apart from the hair and pencil fiddling, but…

'OK, all right. So this is the official party line, then?'

'Absolutely! What?'

'We know nothing about this?'

'Correct. Who else do you think knows nothing about it?'

'Just me and Neil. We didn't actually see the picture, just overheard you two talking about it.'

'I see. Can we arrange for some collective amnesia?'

'Elisabeth, you're safe with us.'

She briefly turned to face him: he was probably still smiling like a moron because she did a sort of double take and turned back to her screen, and he to his.

Before he pulled a Dean, and pledged undying love for her in front of the entire desk.

'Thanks!' she said to her screen, then: 'Not that I know what you're talking about.'

'Don't mention it.'

'Me? I wasn't.'

'Fuckin' spreadsheet's playin' up again. Where's the fairy?' Andy barked, killing stone dead whatever this strange moment had been.

'Watch it, Andy. He's called Paul,' Will said.

'Sure, boss.'

'Good, thanks.'

'Paul's upstairs getting the coffees, can I help you?' Elisabeth asked.

'It's fuckin' broken again!'

'OK sorry, I'll have a look.'

'Thanks, Elisabeth,' Will said as she passed.

x

It should have been plain sailing after that. It should have been banter, leading perhaps to coffee at the coffee shop, maybe a couple of times, leading, in Will's fevered imagination, to him asking her out on a proper date somewhere French and quirky. Simple, end of.

Elisabeth was doing great: she'd got the Toad sacked without getting sacked herself. Even though that had probably involved her lying without losing her proverbial, and on more than one occasion. She was weeks away from delivering tradePad's first live trade in London, which would be great, and which Raj was sure to reward handsomely a couple of weeks later, come bonus time.

All good, right?

x

Right, so why wasn't it plain sailing then? Why was this effing new year like wading through treacle? Marginally less excruciating than watching her email her Estonian dwelling tosser of a morning, granted. But the guy might as well have been sitting right here, between Will and Elisabeth, day in day out, the way she moped on about him.

What could have been so great about the guy anyway? Just how good were his blooming emails? How could anyone be worth Elisabeth Bennet getting herself into such a state? Not smiling, barely eating: she, who used to be such a messy but enthusiastic wolfer-downer of sandwiches? She'd spent the year so far swimming a lot, working late, never smiling, and speaking to Will hardly at all.

'I just can't watch her like this, I think I'm gonna need to pounce,' he concluded on a cold dark Saturday morning late in January as, unbeknownst to him, the object of his affections, worries and general fuck-wittedness was donning a pink dress – a pink dress! - in preparation for her best friend's wedding.

All Will knew was, that he'd overheard her tell Neil she was going to a friend's wedding, and that concerned him.

Deeply.

'Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy I absolutely forbid you from doing anything of the sort,' Georgiana Kingsley-Darcy said to him from the depth of his sofa.

'Seconded: thou shall not pounce!' Dean Fitzwilliam said from next to her, and with a dramatic slam of his empty tea mug on the last syllable. In his own despair over Lily Cheng, Dean was refusing to cut his hair, but he'd always done a good Gandalf even before that.

'What's with this talk of pouncing anyway?' Georgie asked, 'What is she, meat?'

'Just be nice to her,' Dean chipped in.

'But I am!' Will said, exasperated because he'd put too much milk in too quickly and was now having to fight some lumps in his batter, as well as fighting two of the people dearest to him in the world.

On the eve of Georgie's fifth birthday, which fell during the Easter holiday, Will had taken it into his head to cook her American Pancakes, which she'd wanted to try ever since they'd featured on Blue Peter one day. Back in those simpler, slower pre-internet times, he'd taken himself to the public library, smiled at the elderly lady at the desk when she'd asked him for his card, and told her she reminded him of his gran, which she didn't at all. Granny Kingsley was considerably less hairy about the chin, whereas Granny Darcy was nowhere near as friendly.

After the bearded librarian had gone "aww" and he'd smiled at her and she'd waved him in, Will had walked to the cookery shelf with his history notebook under his arm and his pencil in his back pocket, copied down the recipe next to his holiday homework on the Tudors, and walked home via the shop, spending his holiday pocket money on eggs, milk, butter, flour, baking powder and strawberry jam. All of which the housekeeper already had in the house, but to this day she'd never told him that.

Or indeed told Georgie.

Will had also bought Georgie a small bag of Strawbz, which she still preferred to Strawberry Softies, and the next morning he'd got up at four just in case Georgie woke up early or he messed up his first attempt at cooking. He hadn't, but the hadn't half messed up the kitchen. The housekeeper, who had more spine than most of the Darcys put together, had made him put it right while Georgie opened her actual presents. Fluffy pancakes had been Will's signature, and indeed only dish, ever since.

Seeing as Georgie and Dean loved eating them so much, perhaps the two of them could have tried being nice to him today, for a change. He'd got two cans of whipped cream and genuine maple syrup for them, for God's sake. Did they know how hard it was to find maple syrup around here? And out of season blueberries, just so she could make googley eyes.

'Elisabeth just isn't ready,' Dean was saying, probably based on the fact that, over two months since Lily had officialised the fact that she wasn't his girlfriend, he was still busy moping on about her as well.

And not having his hair cut.

As if that would help.

'Just carry on with the coffees and talk to her,' Georgie said, 'You'll know when she's ready.'

'But she's at a wedding. Do you know how many people get pounced on at weddings? And she's probably wearing a dress…'

'Bah, I'm sure she can beat them back,' Georgie said, which was very insightful of her, considering she'd never met Elisabeth.

'But will she?'

'She will. She's just not ready,' Dean said again, sounding as exasperated as he ever allowed himself to. But then he did look tired, what with him still not sleeping right. And all over that fright of a woman…

But soon Will's thoughts turned back to their usual object:

'Seriously, I don't get it: how does this help?' he said over the hiss of his first pancake hitting the pan, 'Tell me, what could possibly be the point of not eating, not sleeping, not bloody even smiling over some tosser who's stupid enough to...'

'Will,' Georgie said with a meaningful look at her brother, then at Dean.

'Sorry, Dean,' Will said, 'Being a jerk, as usual.'

'That's OK, Will, don't worry about me. We all know you're right. Of course you are. But just let Elisabeth be, OK?'

No, that was not OK.

'You don't want to be her rebound guy anyway,' Georgie said.

'What if the last guy was her rebound guy? From after the PhD guy before?'

'Ah yes, possibly,' Georgie said, inclining her head to consider it, then walking up to Will to pick up the first pancake, 'If he was a complete tosser then it figures...'

If she said so.

'Well your quant's really lucky then,' she said from back on the sofa, 'she gets to get you for proper boyfriend after the tosser rebound guy!'

If only. Will heard the crush of whipped cream coming out of the can, then smelt generous amounts of maple syrup being poured onto hot fat breakfast carbs.

'I just hate seeing her like this, and not being able to do anything about it,' he said, 'She won't even barely talk to me.'

'Just be nice,' Dean said.

'Well perhaps I'm just rubbish at being nice, because it ain't working. I ask her how she's doing in the morning and she scowls and tells me not to worry, tradePad's on track. As if I cared about tradePad.'

'Except you do,' Dean pointed out.

Well, obviously, but nowhere near as much as he cared about Elisabeth.

'Will, do you remember the first time I tried to get into the Chopin competition in Warsaw?' Georgie asked. Still behind his back, but definitely with her mouth full.

'Which year was that?'

'Never mind. Remember when I got into Leeds the first time?'

'Oh God yes, that I remember,'

'Even I remember,' Dean said.

'Right, so, Will, I realise you're obsessed with her and everything. But have you considered she's got a job to do? I mean I don't know anything about writing trading systems, but if it's half as stressful as prepping for Leeds I think maybe you could cut her some slack?'

'Huh,'

When Will turned round Georgie was raising the Darcy eyebrow at him. The Kingsleys were much the sweeter-tempered side of the family.

'But, Georgie, she's got nothing to worry about! She's on track: of course she's on track. She's only some bloody genius who's gone and hired another weird bloody French genius. It's all going to be fine!'

'Again, not knowing much about trading systems, but if it's anything like piano competitions it's only going to be fine because she's working bloody hard at it.'

Ah. Fair point.

'So whatever you do, don't pounce until your thingy goes live, OK?'

'My thingy?'

'Whatever you call it. Anyway, don't pounce on your quant until then and just do what you did with me before Leeds.'

Will paused and tried to think what that might be, but he couldn't because:

'I didn't do anything with you before Leeds,' he said, turning to face his sister once the next pancake was flipped over.

'No no, you did. You were home from Cambridge for the holidays, remember? And you, Dean, you stayed over for some of it, and every dinner time Will would ask me how my day had gone, and every dinner time I'd bite his head off, in front of you, remember? And instead of eating, obviously.'

'Well, not quite,' Will and Dean said together, but,

'But close enough, right? So just do that, Will. Trust me, it works.'

Will turned back to the stove, slided the pancake off the pan, then poured another one in with a loud hiss and a heavy heart. Much though he didn't want Georgie to be right, she was. But she didn't seem to realise that there was one major difference between herself and Elisabeth. It had always been easy enough letting Georgie bite his head off, wherever and whenever the need took her, because Will knew deep down his sister always loved him. God only knew why, must be genetics, but he'd always known Georgie loved him. Elisabeth, on the other hand…

'Will?' Dean said.

'Aha?'

'First of all can you please get that gannet of a sister of yours to leave me some?'

'What, you mean you're hungry?'

'I am now, yes,'

Best news ever: Will hadn't seen Dean crave anything other than that stupid muppet-murderess for far too long.

'But also, what do you always say is the hardest bit of trading?'

'What.'

As in: what has any of this got to do with trading?

'What's the hardest bit of trading?' Dean asked again, after he was done wrestling Georgie for the next pancake.

'Sharing is caring,' Will said to his sister, then to Dean, in the same textbook drone, because this was so bloody textbook obvious, as well as irrelevant: 'The hardest part of trading is sitting on your hands and waiting for the market so come round to your point of view.'

'Correct.'

'So?'

'So: now would be an excellent time to sit on your hands, Will, and wait for her to come round to your point of view.'

On the Market is Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved

Gemma Woodhouse in A bee in her bonnet is a lot like Will. In fact, when I first thought of writing that story my premise was: what if I swapped things around and Darcy were a woman? Then of course I realised that JA, in her genius, had got there a couple of centuries before me and made a marvellous job of it too with Emma.

But it's interesting how even the divine Jane felt the need to preface that novel with a warning about how unlikeable a heroine she was about to present. To this day we all find Darcy swoon-worthy, but Emma is… one of those "difficult women", I suppose.

Isn't it about time we stopped being so much harder on our own sex than we are on Darcy's? You could start by giving A bee in her Bonnet a try, because it's a whole week before you get another helping of this Darcy anyway, so you might as well go and hang out with Gemma and Dylan instead. And the bees.

They're good fun too, I promise.

Though she is of course a bit of a difficult woman.

Til next week

Mel