The Hallett brief came into chambers on a Thursday in June and by lunchtime everybody in the building knew about it.
It was the sort of case that arrives perhaps twice in a career: eleven claimants, a construction group, four years of documents, a fourteen-day trial in the Commercial Court and a silk on the other side who had once made a witness cry in a way that was still discussed. It was also, and this was the part that mattered, winnable, which is rarer than big.
Marguerite Achebe called them both into her room at half past four and put her hands flat on the desk.
"Right," she said. "I've been arguing with the solicitors for a week and I have lost, so this is now your problem. They want two counsel. They will not pay for a silk, which is madness but there we are, and they have asked for the two of you by name, and — " she raised a hand " — before either of you says anything, I am aware. Everybody is aware. The damp is aware."
"Who leads?" said Nate.
"That's the thing," said Marguerite. "Sit down, both of you."
"I have thought about this for four days," she said, "and I have decided that I am not going to decide it."
"Marguerite — "
"I could give it to Nathaniel. Six years' call, he's done three of these, and half of chambers would say that's the obvious answer and the other half would say I'd bottled it." She took her glasses off. "Or I could give it to Talia, on the grounds that she is the best pure lawyer under thirty I have seen in fifteen years — don't look pleased, Talia, it's an enormous burden and it will make you very tiresome — and then it becomes a statement, and this chambers will spend eleven months talking about the statement instead of the case."
She sat back.
"So you decide," said Marguerite Achebe. "Between yourselves. I want a name in writing by Monday and I do not want to know how you arrived at it, and I want you both to understand that whoever is second chair will be second chair for fourteen days in front of Mr Justice Ferris and will have to be seen to like it."
There was a silence.
"That's not a decision," said Talia. "That's a fight in a car park."
"Yes," said Marguerite, pleasantly. "It rather is."