They’re only just getting back to the hotel at 5 a.m. Evie can’t believe that the time passed by so quickly. Even when they took a wrong turn and ended up looping around town in the opposite direction to the one they’d meant to go in they were chatting and laughing. But they’re here now; they’ve figured it out. Everyone must have a later call time than Duke, because it’s quiet. Evie expected to have to avoid inquisitive looks and impertinent questions but, like so much worry is, it was misspent. The place is deserted.

‘I’m going to need a triple,’ Duke agrees, looking around like he’s noticed the eerie calm too. ‘I don’t think I’ve pulled an all-nighter since the 2015 Emmy’s.’

‘He says, offhandedly,’ Evie quips, rolling her eyes.

‘Good morning, Mr Carlisle, Ms Bird,’ says the barista behind the bar. ‘I thought you’d left already with the others.’

Evie is already requesting a double-shot latte as Duke says, ‘Sorry, what? The others have gone already?’

‘Yes,’ the barista says, a pretty thing with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and delicate, elfin features. ‘The actress, she said there was an emergency schedule change, I think. Last night.’

Duke looks pointedly at Evie, who is aware that his spine has straightened and his shoulders have become broader.

‘I’ll still take that coffee to go,’ she tells the barista. ‘And one for him, please.’ But she’s already lost him. He’s pulling out his phone and the look on his face means, Evie can surmise, that something has happened.

‘They’ve gone without us,’ he says, shaking his head and reading off his phone. He thumbs through his missed call list – reams and reams of calls from what Evie can see – and then tells her: ‘I’d been on set all day so nobody told me – I hate being bothered by logistics when I’m working. It’s distracting. So they packed up my stuff and were expecting me to get back to the hotel after the shoot but I went for a quick walk and my driver didn’t know, I suppose … my phone was on silent, and … Did I really not check my phone this whole night?’

The barista sets down their coffees, and Evie fishes out her phone too. It never occurred to her that she hadn’t checked it. She often switches it off and puts it in a drawer when she’s working, so it’s not unusual for her to go hours or even days without it. If the nursing home needs her, they have her emergency home phone number, and whilst she’s here they have the number to the hotels.

She takes a look. She also has several calls from the producer, and Katerina, the DP, and her agent, all of whom probably assume she’s made a break for it like she threatened to. Ah.