‘Right, yeah, okay thanks,’ says Evie, her chest getting tighter. She’s hot in her face, and the back of her neck too, despite the temperatures being freezing. She can see the hotel across the way, and doesn’t even realise she’s heading in that direction until she’s searching for her key card, using it to take the elevator, pushing through to her room to rip off her coat and jumper and then standing in her bra in front of the bathroom mirror, desperately splashing her face with cold water.

She looks at her reflection. She cannot have that money. That money will kill her. She can’t have half a million dollars – more, if her agent keeps pushing. God only knows what the royalty cheques will be if she’s charted in multiple countries, with several other countries having put in foreign rights bids too. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t deserve that. It’s too much. She comes back to that thought again. It’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too much.

She thinks of her father leaving, the last thing he said to her: This isn’t enough for me. This wouldn’t be enough for any man. She thinks of her mother in the home. And here she is about to get a freaking lottery win for books that aren’t even that good. She just got lucky. But this is more luck than any one person needs. Her breathing gets shorter. Duke springs to mind, but she doesn’t trust him. She likes him, but she doesn’t trust him. Somewhere in the back of her mind she can see that she’s gone pale, really pale, and she stumbles to the bed and looks at the hotel phone and she thinks to herself: But there’s nobody I can call. There’s nobody here to help me.

20

Duke

Duke pulls out his phone to see where Evie is so they can get another fake date underway, but as he goes to type her name into the search bar he realises he doesn’t, actually, have her number. He’s never had to use it before, since they’ve always been in the same space on set, or in snow blizzards.

He decides to burn off his excess energy in the hotel gym. Maybe he’ll bump into her at dinner or in the bar. He doesn’t want to chase or seem desperate. He grabs his workout shorts and vest and heads to the state-of-the-art gym in the basement. He has his AirPods in and is scrolling emails as he walks, so it’s not until he practically bumps into Brad that he looks up and sees he’s not alone. He pulls one headphone out. Daphne is there too. They’re arguing, and he’s interrupted.

‘Oh, hey – sorry,’ he says, looking between them both.