‘I understand you and Duke really did fight, and Duke has held up his hands to say he accepts the blame for that.’ Evie doesn’t look at him when Marnie says that, but he can tell by the tiniest movement to her eyebrow that she’s registered it. ‘All we’re asking for is a few snaps over the next few weeks of you holding hands or going ice skating or whatever, so that we can salvage the reputation of the movie. There’s a lot of money at stake here, for all of us.’

‘You want me to sell myself,’ Evie supplies, and now she actually does look at Duke and for the life of him, he can’t figure out how she’s going to be persuaded. ‘You want me to pretend I’m dating him? Like an escort?’ Duke tries not to take the total disgust in her voice too personally. He isn’t exactly thrilled either. When he asked everyone to find a way to counter the press intrusion, what he’d meant was to stop it entirely, not encourage it but with a different angle.

‘We understand that you don’t like press,’ Marnie says, and Evie shakes her head, shooting more evil looks at Duke. Duke looks to the window, suddenly the most interesting framing of the sky there has ever been.

‘But this could be good for you, too,’ Marnie insists. ‘Your agent said after Duke was photographed with your book that sales spiked, and that other studios have expressed interest in adaptations of some of your other works. That’s amazing! Like, really cool. We can make sure they don’t mention Donald Gilbert again, if that’s the issue – this will just be Evie Bird and Duke Carlisle, and by the new year it will all have been forgotten about.’

‘It’s not that I don’t like the press,’ Evie says, her voice low. ‘I hate the press. I hate … all of this. Putting on a dog and pony show. It’s embarrassing.’

‘It’s lucrative.’ Marnie shrugs. ‘And we’ve all got a job to do.’ Duke feels Evie’s eyes on him, then, and he dares to meet her eye.

‘And you’re okay with this?’ she asks him accusingly.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ Duke says slowly. ‘I told everyone it’s down to you. I thought you might have some strong feelings about it all.’

‘You want me to be the bad guy?’ she asks him, and without waiting for an answer she says to the group, ‘Fine, I’ll be the bad guy. No.’

Nobody speaks.

Evie flops down on Duke’s bed and stares at the ceiling.

Duke’s heart thumps so hard the others must be able to hear it. He feels terrible, but the contract is iron-clad: Evie cannot go home early. So like everyone else, she needs to accept that, and find a way to make it work.