Page 40 of Just for December

Daphne grins as she looks at her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what else he’s said?’ she teases.

‘Nope.’

‘Because I’d tell you.’

Evie raises an eyebrow. ‘Remind me not tell youmysecrets then,’ she says, and Daphne laughs again.

‘You’re no fun!’ she mocks, and Evie hears it, then, the sound of a camera button being pushed.Click, click, click.The guy isn’t even trying to hide – although to be fair, where would he? It isn’t the same man from before, the one Duke said is called Clive. This is somebody else.

‘Afternoon, ladies,’ he says, in a British accent. ‘Don’t mind me.’

It surprised Evie when Daphne says, ‘Afternoon, Billy. Get my best angles, won’t you?’

Evie is learning that nothing about this business should surprise her, and yet it takes her a second to comprehend thatof courseDaphne knows the photographer, in the same way Duke knows some of them too. What had he said? That he needs them, sometimes, and it’s just best to work with them? Magda will be so shocked by the fakeness of it all when she tells her. Obviously Magda would have to answer her phone first though – Evie has sent three texts in a row now, all unanswered. The last few days of the semester at school must really be kicking her ass.

They continue for about half a mile, and Evie doesn’t know when the clicking stops but at some point it does and as mysteriously as he appeared the paparazzo is now gone.

‘So, seriously,’ Daphne says, as they stop at a snow-covered brick wall and admire the expanse of white fields and forest. ‘You and Duke? I ship it.’

Evie pulls a face. ‘Apparently only half the internet do,’ she says. ‘The other half shipyouand him.’

Daphne waves a hand. ‘We’re not a match,’ she explains. ‘We’ve known each other years – we have the same management. I think they would have loved for us to become some sort of Brangelina power couple, but it wouldn’t have been real. He thought he loved me but honestly? I’ve never seen him look at me the way he does at you. And, truth be told, I never looked at him in the way you look at him.’

‘Er, what?’ says Evie, stunned. ‘If you’re going off the photos …’

‘I’m not,’ Daphne insists. ‘I’m going off real life.’

‘Hmm,’ muses Evie. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘I mean … well … We get on, that’s true. We didn’t, at first. But relations have … thawed. I’ve made no secret of how hard I find all this—’ she gestures around her, meaningHollywoodland‘—and I was willing to give him a chance, but …’

‘But what?’ Daphne asks.

‘This sounds like I’m upset about him not being a fan of my work, and that’s not it at all,’ Evie starts, and Daphne furrows her brow in question. ‘He said he loved my books, but then I found a crib sheet he has on me, and I get the feeling that everything he tried to say was from his heart was actually just a brief from his people. So now I feel like I can’t trust him? Even though I want to?’

‘A brief?’ Daphne asks, blushing slightly. ‘Like an information sheet?’

‘Exactly.’ Evie nods. ‘Yeah.’

Daphne puts her hand on Evie’s forearm.

‘I hate admitting this,’ she tells Evie, ‘but that was mine. It’s me who asked for the information on you. I didn’t know your books before. I know for a fact Duke really has inhaled your back catalogue. Honestly – he hasn’t been lying.’

Evie considers this. Is Daphne just covering for her friend?

‘If you say so …’

‘I do!’ she insists.

Evie doesn’t say anything else about it. She doesn’t trust herself to. Instead she changes the subject.

‘How long have you been acting?’ Evie asks her. ‘I never expected you to have read my stuff, obviously, but I’ll admitI’ve seen you in a few things – the one with Olivia Colman, and I honestly thought you were superb as Joan of Arc. Like, whoa. I think there were people in the cinema actually applauding at the end? And, I was one of them …’

Another laugh. ‘Thank you,’ Daphne says. ‘Yeah, that one was a doozy, but I loved it. I grew a lot from it, and that’s all I ask for really. I just want to learn something new about myself and what I’m capable of on every job. That must be a bit like writing, I imagine?’

A bird swoops low in the sky, almost colliding with them.

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