Margot Ellery-Booth has managed eight years at Pemberton & Associates through the reliable application of thorough documentation, well-structured memos, and the firm belief that any situation can be improved with a sufficiently detailed follow-up email. Then Desmond Okafor-Tremblay arrives — quiet, unhurried, already in possession of the solution — and she is assigned to co-lead a project with him in a converted storage cupboard that smells of toner. It is, she will eventually conclude, a perfectly satisfactory arrangement. It takes her ten chapters to get there.