‘Yeah, I do,’ he says. ‘You know. Choices are good, right? So many people don’t have choices.’ And then he’s off. ‘This has been a big year for me. The end of this year has been huge. Everything that has come to pass whilst I’ve been in Germany feels like the culmination of years’ worth of work – professionally, but personally, too. You ever had that? That work-life balance thing? We can go too far one way and miss out on what it’s all about, can’t we?’

The driver looks again at him in the mirror. Duke answers for him.

‘Yeah, we can. I haven’t always got it right. I think that’s okay. We’re all learning, aren’t we? That’s the point of it. Where would the fun be if we came here already knowing all the answers?’

‘Love and fishing,’ the driver says. ‘That is my purpose.’

Duke laughs. ‘That’s cool. Yeah. You married?’

The driver takes a hand off the wheel to grab his phone off the passenger seat, showing his wallpaper to be a smiling woman and two tween boys.

‘My reason for everything,’ he says, and Duke peers at the screen.

‘Your family is beautiful,’ he admires, and then he looks out of the window, wistful and deep in thought.

He’s ending the year more sure of who he is and what he wants than ever before: less people-pleasing, less outsourcing his sense of self-worth, more saying no so there’s room for a really big yes … He’s excited. But more than that he’s ready to take himself seriously as a person. As a man. He’s got the career he has through sheer force of will – but it doesn’t keep him warm at night, doesn’t look after him when he’s sick or watch the sun come up over his garden with a fresh pot of coffee. You can’t force that, but he also understands, now, with Evie, that there’s a difference between forcing it when it is wrong and giving it your all when you know it is right. If he doesn’t at least try to give this a go, to spend some proper time with her, he’s a damned fool.