Duke nods. ‘Unbelievable,’ he mutters.

‘She seems so normal,’ Magda says. ‘What’s the angle there, do you think? We’ve just been talking about it, and we can’t figure it out.’

Duke shakes his head once more. ‘Heck if I know,’ he says. ‘But I tell ya, if I see her on set today …’

‘You’ll what?’ Evie says, with a smirk. ‘Go for her?’

Duke shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. ‘Well, no …’ he says. ‘But she has to be held accountable, doesn’t she? It’s just a matter of how.’

‘I’m just going to ask her outright,’ says Magda, buttering her toast. ‘I don’t have time for games.’

‘And you think she’s just going to tell you?’ Duke asks.

She takes a bite. ‘Crazier things have happened,’ she replies, like it can be that straightforward. ‘I’ll let you know.’

36

Evie

Evie takes a long walk over lunchtime, starting on set where she sees Daphne and Duke working out the shots for an argument scene in which Hermione and George fight in the street, to the gasps of horrified onlookers, and Hermione storms off. Evie has never had a dramatic, public argument like that in her – albeit very limited – love life ever, and yet it felt right to put it in the book. She remembers exactly where she was when she wrote it: the coffee shop on the corner, Freddie’s, sat by the window with her MacBook at a strategic angle to avoid the sun across the screen. She’d written quickly that day, the words just flowing out of her as George and Hermione processed their feelings for one another almost like-for-like with how she’d processed her break-up with Bobby, and it had felt like an exorcism to get it all out on the page so that it didn’t have to live in her head anymore.

Even now, years later, watching the words she wrote unfold in live action in front of her is hard. She knows she doesn’t want to be with Bobby, and ultimately that it probably wasn’t ever right, but God, she’d opened her heart to him, and to hear that he didn’t like what he saw dented her confidence in a way she’s probably never recovered from.

Nobody notices her watching, and so she heads on out.

It’s too painful to be around this scene today.

She’s not sure why, only that it’s best to keep moving.