The women sit, neither sure what happens now.

‘I think,’ Evie decides, speaking slowly, ‘I’m going to call it a night. I’m gonna put on some music, pack, take one last long hotel bath …’

She hates how Magda looks at her then. Evie has spent her whole adult life trying to avoid the exact expression on her best friend’s face right now. Magda feels sorry for her.

‘Do you want me to come up too?’ she offers. ‘I can bring a bottle. I’m stealthy. Nobody will know …’

Evie shakes her head. ‘Nah,’ she says, and her voice is too bright. She’s acting stronger than she feels. In fact, she might even cry. Not now, not even in the elevator, but she might do upstairs, once the hotel door is closed behind her. It’s a lot, all this, and now it’s over and she thought she was going to get a shot at a big happy ending chapter – her Happily Ever After, HEA, like Duke said, back when they first met – but she’s alone. And, yes, that’s better than being with the wrong person, but damn if she hadn’t thought Duke could be the right one, when it came down to it.

She waits for the elevator to come down, and when the one on the right pings its doors open, she gets in.

She’s already on the eighth floor by the time the elevator on the left pings its doors open downstairs with Duke getting out, looking for her.

41

Evie

‘You know,’ Evie says, rolling her case out to the kerb. ‘I’m fine. This is fine. I’m ready to get out of here. That song can be the last thing anybody remembers of me. That’s cool. I think now is a good time to call it.’

It’s morning twilight and the birds are barely awake. Evie is so used to early call times after three weeks on set that she can almost enjoy it – there’s a peace that permeates the air at this hour, before the sky breaks into pink and purple stripes and the business of people gets too hectic.

Magda takes a breath.

‘I trust you,’ she says, smiling. ‘If you say it’s time to go, then I say: let me get you a cab.’