Page 70 of Just for December

Evie looks horrified. ‘Not to mention making sure you’re actually okay,’ she says pointedly, and Duke shrugs.

‘That’s showbiz, baby.’

They fuss around, all taking seats near each other until Duke sees Magda walk into the lobby too, arm in arm witha man who is staring at him. Duke stares back. The man lifts a hand.

‘Markus,’ he says. ‘We met in the snow blizzard.’

Markus? Duke realises with a drop of the stomach that it’s the guy from the service station that day. It feels like a lifetime ago. He’d thought Evie was flirting with him and iced him out, and then eventually had been able to have Evie all to himself, setting up for that date in the store cupboard … He steals a look at her. She looks away, too quickly for Duke’s liking. He needs to talk to her. Something has gone wrong, here – because of his own stupid ego – and he might still be able to rescue it from the gutter.

Clive is suddenly there, too, coming out of a side room where the cast and crew doctor sees people.

‘Jesus,’ he says, bandaged up from his fall earlier. ‘You look worse than I do, Duke. What happened?’

‘Off the record?’ Duke says. ‘I have no idea.’

Clive chuckles.

‘You okay, man?’ Duke asks.

‘Just about,’ he says, wincing. ‘Gotta say though, I think this was my last hurrah. My whole life flashed before my eyes as I fell down that mountain.’

Duke thinks ‘mountain’ is a bit of a stretch – it was a big hill at most – but doesn’t interject with as much.

‘I think I lost consciousness, because I don’t remember you coming down to get me, but Evie says you didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even think twice about risking your own life.’

Risking his own life? Okay. Duke gets that Clive is a bit shook up, but he’s being more than a smidge hyperbolic about it all. He slipped down a grassy bank and bumped hishead, he didn’t snowball down a mountain peak in upper Nepal.

‘Clive …’ Duke starts, but Clive shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ve been good to me, Duke. And I’ve been a bloody gannet, a bottom feeder, making a living off of you, and people like you. I know it’s not nice. I know I’ve invaded your privacy – and Daphne’s, too. It was me who got the photos of her with Brad. I knew it wasn’t right, selling them, and at the very least I should have told you what I’d seen so you didn’t find out in the papers. I don’t know. I just know I want to get home to my wife and kids and get out of this game whilst I’m still bloody well alive. I’ve had an epiphany. Is that what you call them? When you have a big sudden realisation?’

The group nods in unison, everyone listening to this man spill his guts over Duke’s lap.

‘You didn’t have to come after me, Duke, and you did, and you saved my life, if I’m honest. So, how can I go back to sitting in bushes outside your house or accepting tips from people whilst they’re stabbing you in the back? I’ve seen the error of my ways. I have. And I just want you to know that.’

Duke doesn’t know what to say. Thanks? Cool? Clive reaches out a hand for Duke to shake, and Duke takes it.

‘Cheers, mate,’ Clive says. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’

‘I’m going to make some calls to the west coast for ten minutes, if you’ll excuse me too,’ Malcolm says.

‘Is it just me,’ Duke asks, when they’ve both gone, ‘or is everything he just said all a bit …’

‘Dramatic?’ Evie supplies. ‘Yes. When I went to check on him before, he was like this too. But, in case you’re interested,I know for sure now who took those first photos of us, and who has been selling stories. They’ve been working together, it seems. He’s confessed everything to me.’

Duke winces again as he adjusts the ice pack.

‘It’s not Katerina, is it?’ he says, once the pain subsides, and Evie nods incredulously.

‘How did you know?’ she asks.

‘I … had a feeling,’ he replies. ‘I don’t know what to do about it though.’

‘Me neither. I had this whole half-developed plan in my head to catch her in the act, but …’

‘But who’s got the time for that?’

‘Exactly.’ She smiles.

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