He leaves Carter’s text unanswered, as per his MO, and watches the motorway become the town. It’s charming. Lots of pointy church roofs and chocolate-box-style buildings in yellows and reds, the lights of market-square Christmas trees twinkling off the river to give the whole place an angelic, magical feel. He catches glimpses of couples and families meandering through the side streets off the main drag, cradling steaming hot chocolates and brown paper bags of chestnuts, their breath visible as they laugh, their love a blanket from the cold. A woman lingers by a bridge, cradling a hot wine, her long blonde hair falling in waves over her shoulders. She looks wistful, pensive. In fact, she kind of looks like Evie Bird, the author of the book. He recognises her from a Google deep dive. He perks up at the sight of her. He can’t wait to meet her.

And Duke can see why she set her book here. It’s exactly where a person would want to wake up on December 1st, just in time for the festive season. Just as its name would indicate, it’s impossibly romantic. Perfect for a person who isn’t just somebody, but who has somebody too.

Duke heads straight to his room at the hotel, to see if his things have been safely unpacked. They have. He’s in a suite, and he drops his carry-on in the office nook: computer, scripts his agent has sent to look through, his On the Romantic Road script and the accompanying book. He looks at the cover: a hand-drawn couple facing each other, his hair over his eyes, her leg kicked up behind her. They’re on a bridge, the top of the cover darker than the middle, like a sort of blue ombre. Evie Bird’s name sits at the top, and the title is blocky white characters: ON THE ROMANTIC ROAD. Above it is the strapline: Love is a journey – is this one they will take together? He sighs. Doing a romantic comedy was very deliberate: the Nineties classics have been having a renaissance, and where once an actor skipped the genre so as to be taken ‘seriously’, now everyone needs one in their wheelhouse. But even in his misery, he can see there is a deep-seated irony to the timing here.

There’s a knock at the door. He looks through the peephole to see Daphne. She’s biting her bottom lip, looking down at her hands. She does that – picks at her nails when she’s nervous. It’s her one bad habit. Duke has half a mind to pretend not to be in.

‘Duke?’ she says through the door, like she can sense him. Bugger. He takes a breath, steeling himself.

‘Hello, Daphne,’ Duke says as he opens it. She looks at him. Those eyes, man. Those eyes are why she’s a star.

‘I thought you might ignore me,’ she says.