Evie shrugs. What must it be like to just … ask people for help? To tell them your secrets so they don’t weigh you down and make you feel like you’re drowning? How do people get to be that way? Evie loves Magda with her whole heart and doesn’t know what she’d do without her. And yet. Even Magda gets the edited version of her life. Everyone does. It’s safer that way. Then when she’s inevitably rejected, it’s still on her terms. She can never be left for who she really is. A tear rolls down her face. She wipes it away. For crying out loud.

‘Dammit,’ Evie says.

‘Come here,’ Magda insists, and as they hug she says: ‘I think it’s Katerina who’s feeding the press.’

‘Wait, what?’ Evie asks, pulling away.

‘I heard her on the phone when I went to pee this morning, after I woke up. She was talking about you and Duke, and then said something about a link. And then this story hit.’

‘Why would Katerina feed the press?’ Evie asks. ‘She’s supposed to be my friend …’

Magda sighs. ‘No idea. I could be wrong – I don’t have proof. When I asked who was on the phone, she said nobody, and I didn’t want to accuse her without proper proof …’

‘Yeah,’ says Evie. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything in that moment either.’ Her tears are drying now. She’s over it. It’s her superpower: she gets sixty seconds to be upset, and then she gets the hell on with it all. ‘Is that the intervention then?’ she asks.

Magda shakes her head. ‘Only partly,’ she says. ‘I wanted to talk to you about everything, to be honest. Being here, Evie, I can see there’s a lot you’ve not been telling me – from your mom to the money stuff. I’ve been thinking, and your self-worth is, like, in the toilet. Sometimes it’s self-depreciating and droll. You’re funny, Evie, and you know you are. But Christ if that humour isn’t the strongest, best defensive mechanism I’ve ever seen. And now I know you don’t even let yourself enjoy your work, that you have to get rid of all the money you make because it makes you feel … well, I’m still not sure.’

‘Like crap,’ Evie supplies, playing with the hem of her jumper so she doesn’t have to look up. ‘I know I need to sort it out. This big movie money – I’m going to get a financial adviser. I’m going to face it head on. I’ve decided.’

Magda softens. ‘Okay,’ she says, slowly. ‘Well, that takes the wind out of my fighting sails, then. That was basically what I was going to suggest.’

‘Beat you to it,’ Evie says.