Evie is still fuming, even by evening. That’s her face, all over the internet. It was basically the middle of the night back in Utah, when Magda saw it, but she hasn’t been sleeping, what with the divorce, and was apparently scrolling stupid gossip sites in bed so saw the story literally as it went up. After asking Duke to deal with it (or, rather, telling Duke to deal with it) she’s come back to the hotel, and she’s pacing up and down at the bottom of the bed, letting her thoughts run wild. She doesn’t want to be here. Her agent has said she has to be. She just wants to go home.

Evie hates herself for doing it, but she googles her name. The ‘story’ is everywhere. She is everywhere. There are hundreds of search results already.

It feels claustrophobic. It feels invasive. And in the pit of her stomach there’s a ball of something close to fear. When she examines it, the most she can figure out is that this fear relates to her dad. ‘Dad’. His fame destroyed her family. She doesn’t want anything even close to her own celebrity – notorious or otherwise – in case it destroys her. How did they even get hold of the fact that she’s related to him? Thank God Duke didn’t seem to push the issue. Nobody has. Still … she doesn’t want her stupid freaking face up there. She tells people she works in marketing at the coffee shop she works from sometimes, avoids literary festivals and bookshop events because people make her nervous. She hates talking in front of crowds. Sure, she doesn’t sell as many books because of it, because she won’t hop on TikTok or Instagram Live or run a Facebook group with read-alongs. But that’s okay. She doesn’t know a lot about life, but she does know that if you do what Duke has done – if you do what her father has done – and give the world a tiny piece of yourself, it will never be enough. Better not to give them anything. And besides, the lie she can tell herself is that maybe her father doesn’t know how to find her, how to track her down. If she’s offline and untraceable, there’s a reason he’s never been back in touch. But with her face and name all over the news, surely he’s going to see it, and then Evie will know for sure that it isn’t because he can’t find her that she hasn’t seen him in over twenty years. It’s because he doesn’t want to.

Her phone beeps. It’s her agent again.

Okay, the text says. Apparently, production have an idea about how to proceed with everything. They want you in suite 304 for a meeting at 8 a.m.

Evie exhales. A solution. Good.