Chapter 19

Stan first had to take Anne back to her house so that she could change for work. Stan, in any case, normally arrived earlier than Anne, so they arranged to drive their own cars, for the time being at least.

The first thing that happened to Stan as he walked into The Firm was a surprise. Elaine came from behind the reception desk and hugged him. "Thank you, Stan," she told him, "thank you for being so kind and understanding yesterday." Stan protested, "But I didn't do anything!" But Elaine persisted...

"Yes you did, you gave me a hug when that's what I needed and then you discreetly cleared off out of the way when Susan and I needed space. We both noticed, both spoke about it, and we both thank you. Oh yes, this one's from Susan!" And she gave him another hug.

"Anyway, Susan and I did a lot of talking yesterday. Susan told me she's always in fear that I'll find someone else, someone more attractive or something. I told her I didn't need anyone else and I thought I'd demonstrated that I loved her. The rest is private, but the upshot is that I'm going to stop doing things that wind her up, and she's going to stop the unnecessary possessiveness that was getting to us both. Well, we'll both try, anyway."

"As part of that, with Susan's okay, I want to give Anne a thank you hug from us both as well, if she's not going to be upset or embarrassed by it. What do you think?" Elaine asked an overwhelmed Stan.

"I, er, well, er. Um. I can't really speak for her, but why don't you ask her? I know she's comfortable with you two girls, but being hugged by you might be different. "

"Okay then, Stan, I'll have to wing it," Elaine answered, sober faced.

Stan walked on through into the office, where Elizabeth was already at work as usual. "Hi Stan, good weekend?" she asked him, with a smile and a distinct twinkle in her eye.

He sat down at his desk as he answered, "Yes, very!" with an equal twinkle. Each looked at the other for a moment, and then both burst out laughing.

"Okay, you first!" managed Stan. Elizabeth retorted, "No, you first!" with more laughter from both.

"Okay, okay, I'll go first," yielded Elizabeth. "I suspect my weekend wasn't as exciting as yours, anyway. James drove over to my place and we had a nice dinner. What with an aperitif before the meal, wine with it and a brandy afterwards he couldn't drive home, so he stayed overnight."

Stan didn't say anything, but his eyebrows lifted in question.

"No, we didn't! He was a perfect gentleman. He was going to call a cab, but I offered him my spare room and he accepted. So you can get your mind out of the gutter! Now, you have a slightly more interesting tale to tell, I suspect?"

Stan couldn't help but smile, but he answered, "A gentleman never tells tales about a lady," in a fake posh voice with his nose held loftily up in the air. Elizabeth laughed again, put one finger beside her nose and told, him "Don't worry, I'll not pry into your affairs!" And they again smiled at one another.

Stan however added, "I can say that we'll be seeing each other again, often I hope. Tonight for certain, at our dance class, and I hope more often after that."

Elizabeth looked as pleased as Punch, Stan noted. "You can stop looking so smug!" he told her. "Why? I've got someone else to look after you now!" Elizabeth answered. She grew more serious and continued, "I was worried about you, Stan. But if you can snare as good a catch as Anne Berkely, I can stop worrying. That black cloud you used to carry along with you is gone, and you're out in the world, dating again."

Stan, now just as sober, simply said, "Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you."

Then they got on with their work.

When Anne arrived a few minutes later, she was greeted by a similar speech from Elaine, who came out from behind her reception desk. She looked up at Anne who this time was wearing a pair of jeans that must have been sprayed on along with a low-cut white top. Elaine practically purred, but she knew that Anne wasn't interested. That didn't stop Elaine from looking appreciatively, though.

"Anne, as part of our 'thank you', I've been asked by Susan to give you a hug. Would you mind?" she asked the older, taller blonde shyly.

Anne smiled, nodding. Elaine came to meet her and they hugged briefly. "Thank you, Anne, from both of us. What you and Stan did was really nice."

Elaine walked back behind her desk and sat down. Anne had a peculiar look on her face for a moment, then it cleared and she went on into the lab to get started on her day.

Denise was late arriving at The Firm that Monday. Elaine saw her, called out "Hi there, Denise! How was the holiday?" before noticing the bloodshot eyes, the fatigue around them and the set expression on her face.

Denise was not happy. Jim hadn't called, and his phone seemed to be out of charge or switched off. She couldn't believe just how stupid she'd been, giving herself to him like that. She'd told herself he'd call after all, but when she began to accept that he wouldn't she'd thrown things at the wall in anger. Now she was just depressed, and severe lack of sleep hadn't made things any better.

Denise mustered a "Hello, Elaine. Yes the holiday was great, but I'm afraid I've been let down since. I'll talk to you later, Laney," and moped on past towards the IT group office.

Elaine thought for a moment, picked up the phone, and called Stan. Elizabeth answered, and Elaine asked if Stan was free...

Elizabeth put the phone down and started to say something to Stan, when Bob called him over. With an apologetic glance to her, Stan walked the ten feet to Bob's office.

Once inside he sat down. Bob told him, "You remember we spoke before, about getting all the Quality Department paperwork accessible on-line? Well I've been speaking to Jon Kelly, and he says they've got some resources available and we can start to look seriously at it now. I want you to go over there and chat with him about what we want out of the system. You know, as we discussed earlier."

It had been a more and more pressing requirement for some time to get as many documents as possible available on-line to the internal network. The Firm was well behind in this respect. Jon Kelly was the IT manager and he'd been 'waiting for available resources' for quite some time. Now, at last, it seemed he'd decided he could spare the effort. Stan said he'd go straight over, and he bustled out of Bob's office. He saw Elizabeth motioning to him, but said, "Later, Elizabeth!" and hustled towards the IT group.

On his way over, Stan thought about Denise. He hoped he'd be working with her, he could ask about the holiday she'd had. A small part of him that he was slightly ashamed of wondered about the man she'd been talking about, as well.