‘You’d have to ask him. Mats will give me a full debrief when she gets back but I imagine she’s just had a nice lunch and a day trip. We’re not exactly busy here.’ She gave him a pointed look.

He got it. ‘I’ll keep working on him. I have been working on him. You can see what he’s like. What makes him a winner also makes him . . .’

‘A nightmare?’ she finished for him. ‘Ari, look. We’ve done all the B-roll and we’ve spent the best part of our first week here lying low. But that, just now, was the first time he’s literally looked at me, talked to me, shared a space with me – and only then because he had a good day at the office. But as a result of sharing air with me, he’s now knocking ten bells out of a punch bag. If you keep waiting for him to “come round”, we’re both going to be sporting impressive facial hair.’

Ari gave a surprised laugh, but Clover straightened up, getting to her point. ‘So we start rolling the cameras tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Ari looked horrified. ‘But—’

‘It’s that or we walk.’

Ari gave a defeated sigh.

‘We’ll begin by trailing him low-level.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Fly on the wall stuff. Daily life – meals, training, him on the slopes, coming back here. Everything that makes up his day. Only bedrooms remain private spaces – we won’t go into those unless invited, which I don’t see as necessary on this project. At this stage, we’ll just run the cameras, no one needs to look at or talk to us. They can carry on pretending we’re not there and go about their lives as normal. We won’t start the talking heads’ – Ari frowned – ‘sit-down interviews’, she clarified, ‘just yet; those can wait a little bit longer, till Kit’s further “acclimatized” to the situation.’

‘But—’

‘We need to start getting footage. On average, forty hours of film will give us five minutes of edited footage. We can’t lose any more time. Our exec producers want this film to debut at Cannes,’ she said, no word of a lie. She was now the executive producer and she needed it to get to Cannes or her flat was gone. ‘That means we need to wrap by Christmas. And even then, Johnny and I will need to work around the clock to make it.’ She picked up her laptop and stood up. ‘So will you tell him? Or should I?’

Ari looked drained. ‘Better from me.’

‘I agree. Thanks.’ She smiled. ‘Listen, I’ll tell Carlotta we’ll all take our meals in our room again tonight. We can at least give you a last evening without us.’

‘You really don’t have to—’

‘Yeah. We do.’