She looked so peaceful it felt borderline mean to nudge her, but she laid down the gauntlet with such provocation that Duke has to act before he loses his nerve. He doesn’t know what it is about her exactly, why she can unnerve him so deeply. It might be her wildly obvious lack of regard for his work and his fame. She acknowledges it, but pushes him to show her what else there is. It terrifies him and exhilarates him. It’s an addictive rush. She’s calling him on his bull: he wants to be truly appreciated for who he is, and she’s daring him to show her who he is, without the fame, first.

He watches as Evie lifts her head from where she’d been resting it on a café table. It’s the middle of the night. They’re still in the service station awaiting word that it’s safe to go back to the car. Traffic northbound is moving, but it won’t be until sunrise that the debris from the car crash on the southbound road is lifted, and that’s after the snow has been cleared. It’s stopped, now, but there’s a lot of it out there. Inside, the only lights come from the covered fridges in the food outlets and the Christmas decorations. The music has been turned off so people can rest, as if they’re all on a flight somewhere over the Atlantic and will be awoken with lemon-scented wet towels by a smiling air hostess when it’s time to think about their destination. There’s fifty or so people stuck with them, so it’s not too crowded – luckily so, since that’s what sparked Duke’s plan. This is the most public privacy he’s had in years.

‘Hey,’ Duke says, as she eyeballs him. ‘You okay?’

‘I was,’ she mutters quietly. She wipes some drool from her mouth and sits up. She’s got creases down one side of her cheek. Duke wants to reach out a hand to them, to caress her face and cup her chin, but he doesn’t.

‘Yeah,’ he whispers back. ‘Sorry to wake you. I was just wondering if you wanted to go on a non-fake date with me.’

She quasi-smiles. ‘What?’ she asks. ‘Now?’

She says it like it’s a joke, but Duke nods. ‘Yeah. Come on.’

He holds out a hand for her and with a puzzled expression she takes it. He leads her to the other end of the services and behind the counter of one of the outlets. Fingers entwined, palms touching, he takes her around another corner and holds back a curtain. He lets go of her hand to step aside and reveals what he’s spent the past few hours working on.

‘Ta-da!’ he says.