He can’t keep doing this. He doesn’t mean to feel sorry for himself but genuinely, he really feels empty, in so many ways. He’s not talked to his people about what he’s thinking, but the longer he sits with the idea of starting a production company with Daphne, of doing the deals of getting great movies made without walking the red carpet or being in front of the camera, the more he feels that it’s the right thing for him. Especially now his mum has relapsed. God, that was the worst two and a half hours of his life, waiting for confirmation from Auntie Patricia that she was there, she’d gotten into the house, that his mother was fine, if not having been on quite the bender.

He’s one of the most well-known people on the planet, and for half a second, he thought that would cure his mother, and now he knows nothing will – not if she doesn’t want it. He’s spent his whole life thinking it was him: that being better, nicer, funnier, more charming, more well known, more loved by the world would eventually mean she’d love him too. He understands now that her drinking isn’t anything to do with him, and that knowledge is both tremendously upsetting and, at the same time, totally liberating.

‘I just wanted to let you know …’ Katerina pushes, and Duke braces himself for the ask ‘… a bunch of us are going out later. Tomorrow is a lighter day, and when we wrap everyone flies home so quickly for Christmas that there won’t be time to have a proper goodbye, so we thought tonight could work. I wasn’t sure if you’d been formally told. You disappeared at the bar the other night …’

Yeah, he did. He disappeared with Evie.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Okay. Great. Have somebody leave the details in my trailer then, could you?’ He could do with a bit of a party, a bit of a blow-out.

‘Yeah,’ Katerina says. ‘For sure.’

He nods. He has a sense he’s supposed to be making better conversation but there’s nothing to say and he really does just want those quiet five minutes.

‘See you there.’ He smiles, forcing himself to sound bright and friendly.

‘See you there.’ She smiles back, and for a moment it’s like she might say something else, but then she laughs, shakes her head like she’s being silly, and repeats: ‘See ya.’