Sure, she texts back. Thanks. Any clue what the solution is?

None, her agent tells her. But just stay open to hearing it, okay? I think you’ll have to stay out there, but at least there will be ways to make it bearable and worth your while.

Hmmmm. Evie considers this. She hasn’t written a word today, and she swore she’d try for a few thousand. She takes a shower to wash the day off her and sets an alarm for 6 a.m. She’ll do it first thing, bash out what she can before the meeting.

Tomorrow will be better, she tells herself. It sure as hell can’t get any worse than today.

10

Duke

‘Absolutely not. No. No way. That’s ridiculous.’

Duke’s had an hour’s head start on coming to terms with what Evie has only just found out: that they should, according to the movie heads, fake-date.

‘It’s for the investors,’ Marnie, the head of production, clarifies. ‘I cannot overemphasise just how nervous what happened in London made them, and now there’s this. Gossip forums are rife with stories about the film being doomed, and you know what? We deserve more than that. I, for one, have worked too hard for this to all be dead in the water. We all have.’

Duke watches Evie size her up, eyes shooting daggers.

‘As a woman, you honestly think this is okay?’

‘Yes, actually,’ Marnie tells her. ‘Because as a woman I know that gossip is a tool of the patriarchy, a way for women – because it is mostly women on these sites, and it’s mostly women clicking on all the articles too … what was I saying?’ She appears to lose her train of thought.

‘The patriarchy,’ Duke supplies, and now Evie’s daggers are mentally fired at him. The fury in her face is enough to make it feel like she’s actually pierced skin.

‘Yes, right.’ Marnie takes a breath. ‘Gossip is a tool of the patriarchy. If women are gossiping about each other, they’re less concerned with altering structures of power. So in rewriting the narrative on purpose, with planted stories, we can use that to our advantage.’

‘If you’re so hellbent on changing structures of power, why don’t you opt out of the gossip in the absolute?’ Evie asks.

Marnie nods. ‘Because I am one woman,’ she says, ‘and I’ve got two and a half weeks left of this nightmare shoot. I just want to get home for Christmas, to be honest. Maybe in the new year I can dismantle the powers that be, but now, here, I’ve got to hold my hands up and say: I’m just trying to get through this, best I can. Aren’t you?’

Duke is impressed. He likes Marnie because she always shoots straight, and he considers this another example of her good character.