‘Maybe it would be nice if I bought you something?’ he suggests. ‘You can pick out a bracelet or something – they sell those leather woven ones. It could be a moment, me tying it to your wrist?’

‘You’ve done this before,’ she titters, and Duke understands that he’s oversensitive, that the way she’s mocking the arrangement upsets him in a way he can’t articulate, but to infer that all his dates are manufactured hurts his pride.

‘Ouch,’ he replies. ‘I know you’re on a sugar high, but I do have feelings you know.’

She tugs on his hand. ‘I keep upsetting you, don’t I? I don’t mean to.’

‘No,’ he insists, though he’s quietly impressed that she’d be so direct. It inspires him to be as frank in return. ‘I just know you don’t want to be here. I get it, and it’s silly of me to feel rejected by that, but my therapist, she says rejection is my whole thing …’

‘Hell of a job to have when you don’t like rejection,’ she tells him, but that just proves she doesn’t get it.

‘The feeling when it all goes right though,’ he counters, ‘there’s nothing like it. Even when you know it’s empty and hollow and could all go away tomorrow, it’s like being addicted to heroin – I spend my whole life trying to top my very first high.’

‘Duke,’ Evie says, ‘you don’t mean that. Do you?’

She’s looking at him with those big brown eyes, circling something close to pity.

‘No.’ He smiles, changing his tone. Why did he think he could be honest? Why is he so desperate to feel seen by somebody, anybody, that he would say something like that to a virtual stranger? It’s her books. He meant everything he said about loving her books, loving their insights. But the author isn’t the work – that’s what he’s coming to comprehend. She’s beautiful and sharp and has a very specific sense of humour, and some of that goes into her work, but that isn’t her. Maybe it’s parts of her. The other parts are here, mocking everything he’s dedicated his adult life to, and actually, that’s not okay.