Duke cocks his head at her, like he’s trying to find where her tone lands on a scale of one to sarcastic.

‘I mean, I’m game if you are,’ he says, slowly, and Evie nods.

‘I’m not joking,’ she insists. ‘Merry-go-round! Merry-go-round!’ She claps her hands with the rhythm of the words. They pay for tickets and wait for their turn in companionable-enough silence. If it was a real date Evie would wonder if she should fill it, but as it goes she isn’t actually trying to impress Duke, so when the conversation naturally ebbs, she doesn’t force the flow. They shuffle forwards, and then suddenly she feels something land on her cheek.

‘Duke,’ she says. ‘I think I just felt snow!’

They both look up to the sky.

‘I did! Look!’ she squeals, holding out a mittened hand to reveal the tiniest snowflake. ‘This is incredible. I can’t believe this. Like, is the crew here trying to make this as much of a Christmas cliché as possible?’ She tips her head back then, cackling. She might be high on the saturated fat of all those snacks, or it might just be that she’s got no choice but to lean into the production of it all. She’s trying to trick literally the whole world into thinking this Adonis of a man is sleeping with her so that she can sell the film rights to some of her other books and what? Take some time off to relive it all as one psychotic dream? She hasn’t filled Magda in yet, but when she does, Evie knows she’s going to FREAK. OUT. This doesn’t happen to people like them. Even Evie, the crowned Queen of Cynicism, can admit that this is awesome.

‘We’re up,’ says Duke, pointing to where the man in charge has opened the gateway to let them through.

‘You should sit on the pink one.’ Evie giggles. ‘What did you say in that meeting? That “dating” me would make you seem down-to-earth? Well, what says mere civilian like sitting on a pink pony?’

Duke frowns and then hoists a leg over a unicorn-esque horse in shades of ruby glitter. It’s far down to the ground, having stopped on a ‘down’ instead of an ‘up’, so he has to tilt his chin to look at Evie, and it takes her aback, when he does so, how vulnerable he seems.

‘You look absurd,’ Evie tells him, happily.

‘I’m very aware of that,’ Duke grumbles back. ‘Thank you.’

The ride begins.

‘If we are being papped, they’d better be getting my good angles!’ yells Evie over the din of the fairground music.

‘What good angles?’ Duke shoots back, and it takes Evie by surprise. He’s good at keeping her at arm’s length, but Duke is seldom outright mean.