Her phone rang. A video call. The caller was ‘Ryan’.

Joanna saw the name and smirked a little. ‘You’d better get that.’

So she did, even though she had no idea who this Ryan was, and the image on the screen seemed too blurry to recognise.

But then he was there. A face she had seen, in movies and imaginings, many times.

‘Hey, babe. Just checking in with a friend. We’re still friends, right?’

She knew the voice too.

American, rugged, charming. Famous.

She heard Joanna whispering to someone else on the coach: ‘She’s on the phone to Ryan Bailey.’

Ryan Bailey

Ryan Bailey.

As in the Ryan Bailey. As in the Ryan Bailey of her fantasies, where they talked about Plato and Heidegger through a veil of steam in his West Hollywood hot tub.

‘Nora? You there? You look scared.’

‘Um, yeah. I’m . . . yeah . . . I’m . . . I’ve just . . . I’m here . . . On a bus . . . A big . . . touring . . . yeah . . . Hi.’

‘Guess where I am?’

She had no idea what to say. ‘Hot tub’ seemed entirely inappropriate as an answer. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

He panned the phone around a vast and opulent-looking villa, complete with bright furnishings and terracotta tiles and a four-poster double bed veiled in a mosquito net.

‘Nayarit, Mexico.’ He pronounced Mexico in a parody of Spanish, with the x as an h. He looked and sounded slightly different to the Ryan Bailey in the movies. A bit puffier. A bit more slurred. Drunker, perhaps. ‘On location. They got me shooting Saloon 2.’

‘Last Chance Saloon 2? Oh, I so want to see the first one.’

He laughed as if she had told the most hilarious joke.

‘Still dry as ever, Nono.’

Nono?

‘Staying at the Casa de Míta,’ he went on. ‘Remember? The weekend we had there? They’ve put me in the exact same villa. You remember? I’m having a mezcal margarita in your honour. Where are you?’

‘Brazil. We were just doing a concert in S?o Paulo.’

‘Wow. Same landmass. That’s cool. That’s, yeah, cool.’

‘It was really good,’ she said.

‘You’re sounding very formal.’

Nora was aware half of the bus was listening in. Ravi was staring at her as he drank a bottle of beer.

‘I’m just . . . you know . . . on the bus . . . There are people around.’

‘People,’ he sighed, as if it was a swear word. ‘There are always people. That’s the fucking problem. But hey, I’ve been thinking a lot recently. About what you said on Jimmy Fallon . . .’

Nora tried to act as if every sentence he said wasn’t an animal running into the road.

‘What did I say?’

‘You know, about how it just ran its course. Me and you. How there were no hard feelings. I just want to thank you for saying that. Because I know I am a difficult fucking person. I know that. But I’m getting work for that. The therapist I’m seeing is really fucking good.’

‘That’s . . . great.’

‘I miss you, Nora. We had great times. But there is more to life than fantastic sex.’

‘Yes,’ said Nora, trying to keep her imagination in check. ‘Absolutely.’

‘We had all kinds of great. But you were right to finish it. You did the right thing, in the cosmic order of things. There is no rejection, there is only redirection. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot. About the cosmos. I’ve been tuning in. And the cosmos has been telling me I need to get my shit together. It’s balance, man. What we had was too intense and our lives are too intense and it’s like Darwin’s third law of motion. About an action leading to a reaction. Something had to give. And you were the one who saw that and now we are just particles floating in the universe that may reconnect one day at the Chateau Marmont . . .’

She had no idea what to say. ‘I think that was Newton.’

‘What?’

‘The third law of motion.’

He tilted his head, like a confused dog. ‘What?’

‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’

He sighed.

‘Anyway, I’m going to finish this margarita. Because I’ve got an early training session. Mezcal, you see. Not tequila. Got to keep pure. Got this new trainer. This MMA guy. He’s intense.’

‘Okay.’

‘And Nono . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you just call me your special name for me again?’

‘Um—’

‘You know the one.’

‘Obviously. Yeah. Course.’ She tried to think what it could be. Ry-ry? Rye bread? Plato?

‘I can’t.’

‘People?’

She made a show of looking around. ‘Exactly. People. And you know, now that we’ve moved on with our lives, it seems a bit . . . inappropriate.’

He smiled a melancholy smile. ‘Listen. I’ll be there for the final LA show. Front row. Staples Center. You won’t be able to stop me, got it?’

‘That’s so sweet.’

‘Friends for ever?’

‘Friends for ever.’