The bet was made at twenty past six on a Wednesday by three people who had been in a room since half past eight in the morning, which is the only defence any of them ever offered.
"Nobody in this building," said Dev, "knows the first thing about love."
"Here we go."
"I'm serious. Halcyon want a campaign about real love. That's the brief. Two words. And there are forty-one people in this agency and I have looked at all of them and I would not trust a single one of us to write a birthday card." He put his feet on the table. "Ola's been with Tomasz eleven years and calls him the flatmate. Marianne has been divorced twice and once was from the same man. And you — "
"Don't," said Beck.
"And you," said Dev, "have not been on a second date since 2022."
"That's not true."
"Name one."
Beck Halloran, thirty-three, creative director, nine people on his team, opened his mouth and could not do it, and Ola Adeyinka made a noise like a kettle.
"It isn't that I can't," he said, eventually.
"Oh, here we go."
"It is genuinely not that. I could make somebody fall in love with me in a fortnight if I wanted to and so could you and so could anybody in this building, because it's a craft, Dev, it's the same craft we do for money — you find out what somebody wants and then you are the shape of it."
The room went quiet in a way he did not like.
"Ten days," said Dev.
"What?"
"Ten days, not a fortnight. You said a fortnight, I'm saying ten." Dev took his feet off the table. "One woman, a stranger, ten days, and at the end of it she's in love with you and you can prove it. And when you can't, I get Halcyon."
"You want the account."
"I want the account and I want you to admit you've been hiding behind a job for three years," said Dev, "and I'd take either."
It should have died there. Everybody who was in that room agrees that it should have died there, and that the person who killed it should have been Marianne Fitch, who came in at twenty to seven to find out why the lights were still on.
She listened to the whole thing standing in the doorway with her coat over her arm.
"Halcyon on it," she said.
"Marianne — "
"If he does it, he leads Halcyon. If he doesn't, Dev leads Halcyon." She was already turning away. "Ten days. And Beck — the pitch is on the twenty-fourth and I would like something in that room that has actually happened to somebody, because we have got four weeks and I have got a piece of paper in my drawer that I would very much like to put in the shredder."
The door shut.
"What's the piece of paper?" said Dev, after a moment.
"Eleven names," said Beck Halloran.