Page 14 of Just for December

‘What doyouthink, Duke?’ she asks. Typical. Duke sighs.

‘I think that it’s manipulative to try and make people like you, so I should try and stop. I think that’s what Evie probably represents, or whatever: I got her over here, I expected all these things from her, and now I’ve really screwed things up because I had no idea she was so private and she’s in the press. So … I can say sorry, and do what I said I’d do and get her out of here.’

Phoebe makes anotherhmmsound, and then announces, ‘Okay then, Duke, well that’s time for today.’

Duke looks at the clock. 8.55 p.m. He rings off the call with Phoebe and starts scrolling through his phone for the exec producers of the film, desperate to be a man of his word. He hates that Evie is right: he’s abused his power, here. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

9

Evie

Evie is still fuming, even by evening. That’s her face, all over the internet. It was basically the middle of the night back in Utah, when Magda saw it, but she hasn’t been sleeping, what with the divorce, and was apparently scrolling stupid gossip sites in bed so saw the story literally as it went up. After asking Duke to deal with it (or, rather,tellingDuke to deal with it) she’s come back to the hotel, and she’s pacing up and down at the bottom of the bed, letting her thoughts run wild. She doesn’t want to be here. Her agent has said she has to be. She just wants to go home.

Evie hates herself for doing it, but she googles her name. The ‘story’ is everywhere.Sheis everywhere. There are hundreds of search results already.

It feels claustrophobic. It feels invasive. And in the pit of her stomach there’s a ball of something close to fear. Whenshe examines it, the most she can figure out is that this fear relates to her dad. ‘Dad’. His fame destroyed her family. She doesn’t want anything even close to her own celebrity – notorious or otherwise – in case it destroys her. How did they even get hold of the fact that she’s related to him? Thank God Duke didn’t seem to push the issue. Nobody has. Still … she doesn’t want her stupid freaking face up there. She tells people she works in marketing at the coffee shop she works from sometimes, avoids literary festivals and bookshop events because people make her nervous. She hates talking in front of crowds. Sure, she doesn’t sell as many books because of it, because she won’t hop on TikTok or Instagram Live or run a Facebook group with read-alongs. But that’s okay. She doesn’t know a lot about life, but she does know that if you do what Duke has done – if you do what her father has done – and give the world a tiny piece of yourself, it will never be enough. Better not to give them anything. And besides, the lie she can tell herself is that maybe her father doesn’t know how to find her, how to track her down. If she’s offline and untraceable, there’s a reason he’s never been back in touch. But with her face and name all over the news, surely he’s going to see it, and then Evie will know for sure that it isn’t because hecan’tfind her that she hasn’t seen him in over twenty years. It’s because he doesn’t want to.

Her phone beeps. It’s her agent again.

Okay,the text says.Apparently, production have an idea about how to proceed with everything. They want you in suite 304 for a meeting at 8 a.m.

Evie exhales. A solution. Good.

Sure,she texts back.Thanks. Any clue what the solution is?

None,her agent tells her.But just stay open to hearing it, okay? I think you’ll have to stay out there, but at least there will be ways to make it bearable and worth your while.

Hmmmm. Evie considers this. She hasn’t written a word today, and she swore she’d try for a few thousand. She takes a shower to wash the day off her and sets an alarm for 6 a.m. She’ll do it first thing, bash out what she can before the meeting.

Tomorrow will be better, she tells herself. It sure as hell can’t get any worse than today.

10

Duke

‘Absolutely not. No. No way. That’sridiculous.’

Duke’s had an hour’s head start on coming to terms with what Evie has only just found out: that they should, according to the movie heads, fake-date.

‘It’s for the investors,’ Marnie, the head of production, clarifies. ‘I cannot overemphasise just how nervous what happened in London made them, and now there’s this. Gossip forums are rife with stories about the film being doomed, and you know what? We deserve more than that. I, for one, have worked too hard for this to all be dead in the water. Weallhave.’

Duke watches Evie size her up, eyes shooting daggers.

‘As a woman, you honestly think this is okay?’

‘Yes, actually,’ Marnie tells her. ‘Because as a woman I know that gossip is a tool of the patriarchy, a way for women –because it is mostly women on these sites, and it’s mostly women clicking on all the articles too … what was I saying?’ She appears to lose her train of thought.

‘The patriarchy,’ Duke supplies, and now Evie’s daggers are mentally fired at him. The fury in her face is enough to make it feel like she’s actually pierced skin.

‘Yes, right.’ Marnie takes a breath. ‘Gossip is a tool of the patriarchy. If women are gossiping about each other, they’re less concerned with altering structures of power. So in rewriting the narrative on purpose, with planted stories, we can use that to our advantage.’

‘If you’re so hellbent on changing structures of power, why don’t you opt out of the gossip in the absolute?’ Evie asks.

Marnie nods. ‘Because I am one woman,’ she says, ‘and I’ve got two and a half weeks left of this nightmare shoot. I just want to get home for Christmas, to be honest. Maybe in the new year I can dismantle the powers that be, but now, here, I’ve got to hold my hands up and say: I’m just trying to get through this, best I can. Aren’t you?’

Duke is impressed. He likes Marnie because she always shoots straight, and he considers this another example of her good character.

‘I understand you and Duke really did fight, and Duke has held up his hands to say he accepts the blame for that.’ Evie doesn’t look at him when Marnie says that, but he can tell by the tiniest movement to her eyebrow that she’s registered it. ‘All we’re asking for is a few snaps over the next few weeks of you holding hands or going ice skating or whatever, so that we can salvage the reputation of the movie. There’s a lot of money at stake here, for all of us.’

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