Purchasing another Glühwein for the road, she heads back to the hotel. She can do this. She can enjoy the country if this is what it is like. She’s not even tired right now – the walk has blown away the proverbial cobwebs.

Yeah.

She’s okay.

Her room, when it is ready, is clean and pretty spacious, and she puts on a playlist and unpacks half of her things. The cast and crew will be moving several times over the coming weeks – literally heading down Bavaria’s Romantic Road – so it’s pointless putting everything away. But she finds a home for her toiletries and anything that would crease otherwise, figures out where her nightwear is, finds a sleep mist she likes to use and her work stuff: laptop and charger, notebook, diary, a folder with ideas and research that isn’t exclusive to only this project, but more her writing life in general. She keeps anything that strikes her as interesting, without analysing the reason too much. Evie often finds the strangest things cropping up as she types, and it is almost always because she read or watched something about it weeks ago, stashed it away for later use and somewhere in the mental compost of her mind it has served to grow the first bud of a plotline.

As she plugs her phone in to charge, the screen lights up with a couple of missed calls from Carl, as well as texts from him, Magda, and her agent, Sabrina. Carl asks her to call him back, Magda is just checking in, and Sabrina has texted to tell Evie to check her emails asap about a cover brief the publishers are going with for her summer book next year.

She reads them all, one after the other, and then goes back to Carl’s message. They hardly ever speak on the phone. Why would he ask her to do so all the way from Germany? Evie hadn’t really thought they’d stay in touch at all whilst she is here. That isn’t the sort of dynamic they have. When Carl went away for a month over the summer they didn’t talk until he was back. Why would they? They’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. They’re … well, like she told Magda: it works for them.

‘Hey,’ says Evie when he picks up on the third FaceTime Audio ring. ‘You okay?’

‘Evie, heyyyy,’ Carl says, and immediately Evie can tell he’s stalling for time. She knows how this goes. His tone. Why can’t men hide the pity in their voice when they’re delivering a sucker punch? In her experience, both men and women lie: it just tends to be the men who can’t keep a poker face about it. She braces for impact. Now she thinks about it, she knew even by dint of him asking for the call in the first place what is about to happen.