Page 71 of Just for December

And then they’re doing that thing that they do, where she looks at him with her mouth open just the right amount, and her tongue snakes up to the top corner of her lip, and it’s like she’s going to say something but doesn’t, and it drives Duke crazy because he wants to know every thought in her head, he doesn’t want to miss anything. He should say something. He was hot-headed the other night. He’s always being hot-bloody-headed lately, but he can say sorry, he can ask to talk it out.

‘Duke? The hotel medic is going to look at you now,’ says Malcolm, reappearing suddenly.

He looks from Evie to Magda to Markus, who appear to only have eyes for each other, strangely. How do people do that? Meet, and get on, and own the obvious connection they have? Duke can only dream of such a thing. Maybe there’s something in what Phoebe has said about how hesayshe wants to be seen, wants a relationship, and yet still hides behind being ‘Duke Carlisle’.

‘Duke?’ the producer prompts him.

‘Yes, yeah,’ he says, and it’s almost dream-like.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Evie says, as a statement, not a question. He likes that. It feels like an invitation.

‘Yeah,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll find you.’

‘Okay,’ she says, and she nods. ‘Look forward to it.’

So there’s that, and it’s not nothing.

Duke has avoided any major damage, says the medic, and back in his room, after a good night’s sleep, a hot shower and a close examination in the magnifying mirror, he feels confident that although it’s tender and sore, Kayla will be able to work her magic in the make-up chair and the show can go on. He’s received a cursory text from the producers, but it’s about as warm as the winter weather outside. He checks in with his Auntie Patricia, seeing that his mum got into the rehab facility okay, and gets a text straight back to say she has, and thanking him for sorting it out.I’m her son,he types back.It’s the least I can do.And then downstairs, in the lobby, he sees Evie sat with Magda eating breakfast, and she tentatively waves at him.

‘How’s the patient?’ she asks, in between bites of an omelette.

‘Walking and talking,’ Duke says. ‘If a little mortified.’

Evie looks at Magda, and then back at Duke.

‘What?’ he says, but he knows what she’s going to tell him even before she says it. It’s what all the texts and emails from his people say, the ones he’s left unopened because honestly, he doesn’t have bandwidth for this right now. He has run out of craps to give.

‘Katerina must have sold the pictures,’ she says. ‘They’re out there.’

Duke nods. ‘Unbelievable,’ he mutters.

‘She seems so normal,’ Magda says. ‘What’s the angle there, do you think? We’ve just been talking about it, and we can’t figure it out.’

Duke shakes his head once more. ‘Heck if I know,’ he says. ‘But I tell ya, if I see her on set today …’

‘You’ll what?’ Evie says, with a smirk. ‘Go for her?’

Duke shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. ‘Well, no …’ he says. ‘But she has to be held accountable, doesn’t she? It’s just a matter of how.’

‘I’m just going to ask her outright,’ says Magda, buttering her toast. ‘I don’t have time for games.’

‘And you think she’s just going to tell you?’ Duke asks.

She takes a bite. ‘Crazier things have happened,’ she replies, like it can be that straightforward. ‘I’ll let you know.’

36

Evie

Evie takes a long walk over lunchtime, starting on set where she sees Daphne and Duke working out the shots for an argument scene in which Hermione and George fight in the street, to the gasps of horrified onlookers, and Hermione storms off. Evie has never had a dramatic, public argument like that in her – albeit very limited – love life ever, and yet it felt right to put it in the book. She remembers exactly where she was when she wrote it: the coffee shop on the corner, Freddie’s, sat by the window with her MacBook at a strategic angle to avoid the sun across the screen. She’d written quickly that day, the words just flowing out of her as George and Hermione processed their feelings for one another almost like-for-like with how she’d processed her break-up with Bobby, and it had felt like an exorcism to get it all out on the page so that it didn’t have to live in her head anymore.

Even now, years later, watching the words she wrote unfold in live action in front of her is hard. She knows she doesn’t want to be with Bobby, and ultimately that it probably wasn’t ever right, but God, she’d opened her heart to him, and to hear that he didn’t like what he saw dented her confidence in a way she’s probably never recovered from.

Nobody notices her watching, and so she heads on out.

It’s too painful to be around this scene today.

She’s not sure why, only that it’s best to keep moving.

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