‘Evie,’ Duke starts, and that’s it, he’s walking through the hotel with nothing on his feet, right towards her, even though he can see that there’s nothing she’d like less right now – but she doesn’t understand, that’s all. She will do in just a second.

‘That was totally innocent,’ Duke says. ‘Honestly. You’ll laugh about this when I explain. You see—’

‘I don’t think she wants to hear this,’ Magda says, looking cautiously at her friend for confirmation.

‘Evie, please,’ Duke begs. ‘Just listen.’

‘Duke,’ Magda warns again, and she’s serious, holding his gaze, and it makes Duke’s blood freeze in his veins. Heaven have mercy on the man trying to fight a woman’s best friend – holy hell, she could control the weather with that glare. Duke gulps. He stops talking. They stay like that, in vignette of a pleading man, a scorned woman, and the friend protecting them both from each other with arms outstretched. He glances between Evie, who is gazing fixedly at the ground, to Magda, who is gazing past him, now, with her head tipped to one side, computing something. Her expression – focused, confused, doing some mental maths – makes Duke turn to see what she’s clocked, and it’s bloody Katerina, with her phone up to them.

Duke thinks of the improv games he’s played with acting coaches or on cast get-to-know-you afternoons over the years. It’s like the narrator has put them into a tableau, and they have to hold their pose. Then, when the narrator has issued new instructions, they say, Okay go, and everyone continues the movement they were captured in. Somebody must be saying okay go right now, because Evie turns, Duke and Magda see her clock Katerina, and then all at once the three of them are lunging towards her – Evie going for Katerina, Magda holding Evie back, Duke being, on reflection, not very helpful at all but generally flapping and flailing.

‘YOU!’ Evie screams at Katerina, who has entered her own freeze frame as the three bodies come towards her. She looks each one of them in the eye, then down at the floor, pulling her phone into her body like she couldn’t possibly have been doing anything wrong. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Evie presses on. ‘You’re a freaking vulture. A vampire! Why the hell would you be taking our PICTURE?’

Evie reaches Katerina and seems to realise she doesn’t know what to do next. Duke thought she might go for her throat but she reins it back in, standing literally toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose, breathing like a dragon, waiting for Katerina to say something.

‘I wasn’t—’ Katerina starts, but Evie cuts her off with a sharp ‘NO’.