The room at the end of the hallway on the first floor had been empty for as long as we had been at The Ginnel. It was a tiny, awkward sort of space with a glass front and only one small, square window to the outside, slightly above head height. It was too little to be a meeting room and too dark to be an office and, so far, no one who had been to look around had been interested in setting up shop.

Until today.

The first thing I noticed as I approached the working home of my newest client was the panels of white paper that had been sticky-taped to the glass wall, effectively closing out the rest of his co-workers and pretty much defeating the object of being in a co-working space in the first place. The second was the sign on the door. It was a nameplate that appeared to have been pilfered from a 1970s polytechnic. Everyone else had identical signs in the same, slightly retro serif font but Dr S. E. Page MPhil PhD had got ahead of the game and glued a narrow blackboard with block white lettering onto the door himself.

Charlie and Martin had been positively joyous when our subject selected himself but what could they know from one look? There was no reason to think just because he wasn’t some kind of Adonis he wouldn’t be interesting. For all they knew he could be an amazing photographer or he might have a dancing dog or any number of incredible, Instagram-worthy skills. He already had more letters after his name than anyone I’d ever met and my sister knew some truly insufferable academic types who seemed to have been put on this earth solely to rack up qualifications.

‘There could be any number of reasons he’s covered up the windows,’ I told myself, tracing the edges of the white paper through the glass. ‘This space would make a decent dark room. Or he could be super light-sensitive.’

Inside the office, I heard papers rustling. I knocked, stepped back and waited.

The rustling stopped but he made no attempt to answer the door.

‘Or he’s an actual serial killer,’ I suggested to myself. ‘Making himself a nice skin suit for the autumn.’

I knocked again. Louder.

Still nothing.

‘Once more for luck,’ I said under my breath, rapping as hard as I could for as long as I could.

My hand was still mid-air when the door opened. The tall, skinny man had tied back his long hair in a man bun. His beard was still enormous, and not in a cool, hipster way and though it was huge, it completely failed to disguise the annoyance on his face.

‘Dr Page?’ I enquired with a forced, friendly smile.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, looking me up and down.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘At least, it wasn’t the last time I checked.’

‘Right, you can go away then?’

He phrased it as a question but it definitely felt more like an instruction.

‘I’m sorry, I’m Annie,’ I said quickly before he could close the door again. ‘We’re office neighbours. I work upstairs? I came to say hello, welcome you to the building.’

He pushed his smudged spectacles up his nose with a long, slender finger.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Hello.’

And then he slammed the door so hard, I felt it rattle my fillings.

‘Bugger,’ I whispered, the door a fraction of an inch from my nose.

There was the slightest of chances this was going to be more difficult than I had hoped.

‘That was quick?’ Miranda looked surprised to see me back in the office so soon. ‘How’d it go?’

‘He only answered the door after I cut up my knuckles knocking for half an hour, asked if anything was wrong and then told me to piss off,’ I replied. ‘So not great.’

‘So, he isn’t a natural conversationalist,’ Mir shrugged. ‘How did he look?’

‘Think Tom Hanks in act two of Castaway, only without the social graces necessary to make friends with a volleyball,’ I said, punching the call button for the lift. ‘He’s the least likeable human I’ve ever met – and I’ve met Jeremy Kyle, Katie Hopkins and the man who plays the Fox in the Foxy Bingo adverts.’

Miranda grimaced.

‘We’ll work it out,’ she promised. ‘Or we’ll call it off. It doesn’t matter, it’s only a stupid bet.’

‘Oh, absolutely not,’ I replied. ‘There’s no way we’re not winning this. I’m not giving them the satisfaction.’

‘You know you could just shag Charlie and get this out of your system,’ she said, holding her hands up in front of her to create a human shield. ‘Not saying you have to; just putting it out there as an idea.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said primly, tossing my long ponytail over my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mir; one way or another, we’re going to win this.’

I walked over to the huge whiteboard in the corner of the room and uncapped a bright blue marker. On one side of the board, I wrote the word ‘followers’ and added a big fat zero underneath. On the other, I put down the number thirty. Thirty days to make this man the internet’s latest leading attraction. Taking a step back, I folded my arms and stared at the board as though it might have the answers I needed.

‘This is going to be a piece of piss for you,’ Miranda said. ‘A month is practically forever. You’ve got this.’

‘Yeah,’ I replied. Now I had the numbers literally staring me in the face, I was suddenly not quite as sure as she was. Zero to twenty thousand with nothing to go on. Inside thirty days. ‘I’ve got this.’

Hopefully, the more times I said it, the more likely I was to believe it.

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