‘Well, Sue, it turns out that I did. There was this big role I had to audition for. I’ve been in the frame for a long time, but it’s never come off and then suddenly I needed to shoot a screen test and send it over, you know how it is.’

‘So listen, did you get fixed up? With Santa?’

‘Oh yes, yes, we did. He’s a bit bonkers, but basically a very nice Santa indeed.’

‘Great, and can I take you to dinner tonight to apologise?’

Sue stood up so quickly she tipped the chair back, crashing into the row behind.

‘Sue? Are you OK?’ Blake asked.

‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you, Blake Fletcher,’ Sue managed to say.

‘So dinner, you and me. There’s this little place I know up the coast. The Pickled Egg?’

‘The two Michelin-starred place, that only seats eight at a time? That Pickled Egg?’ Sue struggled to lower her voice an octave, back to a pitch that couldn’t be heard by passing dolphins and any dogs in a ten-mile radius.

‘Yes, except tonight, it’s only going to be seating two – you and me. I booked the whole place out. So shall I swing by and pick you up at eight?’

‘One moment, please.’ Sue put her hand over the phone. ‘Alex, you know you said you wanted to help?’

‘Yes?’

‘Any chance you’d co-ordinate tonight’s silent walk-through rehearsal so that I can have dinner for two, alone, just us, in the Pickled Egg up the road, with Blake Fletcher.’

‘No way!’ Alex shrieked.

‘Shhhhhhhh.’ Sue took her hand off the phone to hush Alex, hastily covering it again. ‘I don’t want him to think I’m bothered. I mean I’ve had dinner with movie people before. I had tea with the Queen once. Well, near her, anyway.’

‘NO. WAY,’ Alex repeated.

‘Oh, oh right.’ Sue looked crestfallen

‘No, you idiot. I mean no way you’re going to dinner with Blake Fletcher? Yes way, of course I can co-ordinate the silent walk-through, as long as by co-ordinate you mean follow everyone very quietly around the town on the basis that mostly people have been doing it for years and they all know what they are doing, which is why they muck around so much in rehearsal, because perhaps you should trust them all just a little bit more?’

Sue stood there, her hand still over the phone. ‘Maybe I should just turn him down.

‘Sue Montaigne, if you don’t go for dinner with Blake Fletcher tonight I will actually kill you,’ Alex warned her. ‘Of course you are going. If you don’t go, I’m going. Except that would be a waste because I can’t drink because—’