The launch was for a gin that tasted of nothing, in a railway arch in Bethnal Green, and neither of them had wanted to come.
Immy was there because Sunny had two tickets and had used the sentence you have not left the flat except for work since April, which was unanswerable.
Beck was there because Ola had said there will be women there, Beck, actual living ones, and because the clock had started at nine that morning and he had spent the whole day discovering that he did not have the faintest idea how to begin.
She saw him first.
He was standing by a pillar with a drink he was not drinking, in a good coat, doing the thing that Immy had spent four years of parties learning to spot: looking pleasant and being absolutely, catastrophically alone.
That one, she thought.
Then she thought: no, that's mean.
Then she thought about eleven names in a building of ninety, and a pub in Leytonstone, and Bronte Keane saying ask me again, and she picked up two glasses of gin that tasted of nothing and walked across a railway arch in Bethnal Green.
"You look," said Immy Shaw, "like a man who would rather be at home."
Beck Halloran turned round.
Here is what she noticed in the first four seconds, in order:
That he was better looking close up, which is unusual and almost always a disappointment in reverse.
That his coat was very good and his shoes were four years old and had been resoled, which she liked more than she wanted to.
And that when she said the thing about being at home, he laughed — properly, out loud, surprised, the whole face going — and she thought, with a small cold feeling somewhere under the ribs: oh, that's a lovely laugh, that's going to be a problem.
Here is what he noticed.
That she had said something true within four seconds of arriving, which nobody at that party had done all evening.
That she was holding two drinks and had clearly decided to be the sort of person who does that.
And that she had a small ink stain on the side of her middle finger, right hand, in exactly the place it goes if you write with a pen for a living, and that he had not seen one of those since his mother.
"I'd much rather be at home," he said. "I'd rather be at anybody's home. I would go to your home right now, and I don't mean that in the way it came out."
"That is an appalling opening."
"It's the worst thing I've ever said out loud."
"It's genuinely the worst," said Immy. "I write for a living and I'm going to be thinking about it in six weeks."
"What do you write?"
And Immy Shaw, standing in a railway arch on the first Thursday of the ten days, with a glass in each hand and a piece of A4 in her editor's drawer, said:
"Nonsense, mostly. What do you do?"
"Advertising," said Beck Halloran.
"So we're both liars."
"Professionally," he agreed. "Personally I'm extremely honest, which is why I've got no friends."
She laughed.
That was the first mistake and neither of them noticed it, because she laughed, and it was a real one, and Beck Halloran heard it and thought — with something that had absolutely nothing to do with a bet, and which he did not examine for another six days —
Oh.