‘You’re no fun!’ she mocks, and Evie hears it, then, the sound of a camera button being pushed. Click, click, click. The guy isn’t even trying to hide – although to be fair, where would he? It isn’t the same man from before, the one Duke said is called Clive. This is somebody else.

‘Afternoon, ladies,’ he says, in a British accent. ‘Don’t mind me.’

It surprised Evie when Daphne says, ‘Afternoon, Billy. Get my best angles, won’t you?’

Evie is learning that nothing about this business should surprise her, and yet it takes her a second to comprehend that of course Daphne knows the photographer, in the same way Duke knows some of them too. What had he said? That he needs them, sometimes, and it’s just best to work with them? Magda will be so shocked by the fakeness of it all when she tells her. Obviously Magda would have to answer her phone first though – Evie has sent three texts in a row now, all unanswered. The last few days of the semester at school must really be kicking her ass.

They continue for about half a mile, and Evie doesn’t know when the clicking stops but at some point it does and as mysteriously as he appeared the paparazzo is now gone.

‘So, seriously,’ Daphne says, as they stop at a snow-covered brick wall and admire the expanse of white fields and forest. ‘You and Duke? I ship it.’

Evie pulls a face. ‘Apparently only half the internet do,’ she says. ‘The other half ship you and him.’

Daphne waves a hand. ‘We’re not a match,’ she explains. ‘We’ve known each other years – we have the same management. I think they would have loved for us to become some sort of Brangelina power couple, but it wouldn’t have been real. He thought he loved me but honestly? I’ve never seen him look at me the way he does at you. And, truth be told, I never looked at him in the way you look at him.’

‘Er, what?’ says Evie, stunned. ‘If you’re going off the photos …’

‘I’m not,’ Daphne insists. ‘I’m going off real life.’

‘Hmm,’ muses Evie. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘I mean … well … We get on, that’s true. We didn’t, at first. But relations have … thawed. I’ve made no secret of how hard I find all this—’ she gestures around her, meaning Hollywoodland ‘—and I was willing to give him a chance, but …’

‘But what?’ Daphne asks.