Sean flew out late Sunday morning, delayed by fog. We set up camp in the departure lounge. The hobbits ran around like children - there were some of them there as well, belonging to other people on the same flight. Elijah bonded with five-year-olds. Dom and Orlando took up two of the divider pylons cordoning off areas of the lounge and fenced with them, until security took an interest.

The men sat around, having those vague conversations that happen in circumstances like these. All in a relaxed, quietly-spoken, jean-clad sprawl - Karl, Dave, Sean, Viggo, Hugo, Ian. I loitered on the fringes, but I didn't really have a place in this strange ritual. I drifted over to the windows, and watched the fog slowly lift.

Liv arrived late, rushing into the lounge with her car keys still in her hand and her sunglasses pushed back on her head. "Oh, thank God you're still here," she declared. I turned to watch, leaning against the glass as she leaned over the back of the line of chairs to smack a kiss on Sean's cheek. "I have an announcement to make!"

Orlando, standing innocently with hands in pockets as far away as possible from the fencing pylons, said: "You're pregnant! Sean, you bastard, you can't leave her like this."

"Shut up," Liv shot back, laughing. "No. The announcement is that, well..." She paused, and giggled. Everyone gathered closer, sensing something truly momentous. "Roy flew in yesterday, a surprise." And now I had an inkling, could see it in the way she was practically glowing, even more so than usual. "He proposed!" she burst out. "We're going to get married!"

The departure lounge erupted. Complete strangers smiled as the entire cast exploded into raucous congratulations. All four hobbits tried to hug Liv at once. She was laughing; everyone was grinning.

I hung back, waited with a smile on my face until she could work her way through the crowd, to a place where I could step forward and give her my own hug, my own congratulations. She laughed, breathless with delight, and joined me leaning against the windows.

"So where is he?" I asked. "When do we get to meet him?"

"Sometime soon," she promised. "He's still asleep. I barely remembered this farewell; how embarrassing!"

I waved a dismissive hand. "Tell me all."

She shrugged, blushing faintly. "I talked to Roy Friday night," she told me. "I called him. We talked for, like, two hours, and I barely even noticed."

"You missed him?" I asked, watching her from the corner of my eye.

She looked wistful. "I did. Like, everything else, the being single, the time for me, the freedom, it was great. But I wanted to do it and still be able to talk to him. To have him around. Just..." She laughed. "Something was missing from my life, y'know? I didn't want to hang up that night. I wanted to talk to him forever." She looked vaguely like she hadn't been getting much sleep recently. There were shadows under her eyes. But she glowed in a way that just shone through. "And then he just got on a plane and flew out here. I could barely believe it."

I turned to her, smiling brightly. "That's fantastic."

She smiled back, honest and sunny. "Yeah."

When they finally announced Sean's flight, I gave him a big hug, a broad smile, a peck on the cheek. There were plenty of other people lining up to say goodbye. I was out of the building before the plane started to taxi down the runway.

I didn't sleep so well that weekend, either. I was restless, and the sheets got all tangled up around my legs. I got up for glasses of water I didn't really need, and just stood in the kitchen at the sink, one hand on the tap. Eric cast weird shadows, and moonlight made him look washed out.

The message from my father was still on my machine. I found it when I started fiddling with the machine at two in the morning. His voice seemed very loud at that hour, but when I deleted it, the silence was just as bad.

I showed up on time to make-up on Monday morning, but the girls tsked over the bags under my eyes.

"It's Sean's going," one said to the other with a wink over my head.

I smiled weakly.

The other girl - more practical and less prone to gossip - just shrugged. "It's Monday. Everyone looks like shit on Monday. The hobbits were hungover, as always," she told me. "And Viggo had faint bruising up his cheek, and round his eye."

"It was like the surfboard incident all over again."

"Give over, it was nowhere near that bad."

My smile was even weaker this time, but neither of them seemed to notice.

They'd done a good job of hiding any lingering mark I'd left on Viggo's face; when I showed up on the set, he looked purely Aragorn. The others were standing in small groups, chatting, but he stood a little apart, examining the grip of his sword. In character. In the zone.

"All right, let's get this show on the road," Pete called, clapping his hands. "Take your places. Except Legolas, let's try something different here..."

We moved into position, settling in as Pete set up the last-minute details the way he wanted them. As I crossed in front of Viggo, I murmered: "Good morning."

He nodded in return, face stern, and took up Aragorn's nonchalant alertness at his mark.

I told myself to stop feeling guilty. The slap couldn't have really hurt that much, and it's not as if he hadn't deserved it. Sticking his nose in. Ruining everything.

I poured righteous anger into my performance, remembered what it was like to be young and full of certainty. Driven by a blistering conviction that the world simply didn't understand you.

But I wasn't nineteen any more. I couldn't maintain that sort of thing, and I'd long ago realised that it was more than a little laughable in the first place.

"OK, that was nice, people. Let's do it again from the top. Ken, can I have that light further in?"

Back to where I began; replay. I looked up at Viggo. He wasn't looking at me - wasn't supposed to be - and I looked away again. Being Eowyn, being me… You learned as an actress that everyone really springs from a similar base of emotion, and certain experiences are more common than you might think.

It's humbling to realise that maybe the world does understand you all too well.

"Excellent. Now, again, with the camera from this angle."

When I looked up at him this time, he was looking back at me, just from the corner of his eye. I looked away, and heard repeated in my mind: "you're damaged goods."

When Paul had said that to me, we'd both been screaming, but I remembered it calmly. We'd been hurling abuse back and forth and it had just been one more brick in the wall we were building between us. It hadn't bothered me then. Hadn't bothered me at all.

"Miranda, concentrate."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, be Eowyn."

I'd lost the anger; I was full of uncertainty. But that was Eowyn too. The Shieldmaiden of Rohan was as confused as anyone else. She was lost and alone and out of her depth.

And she dealt with it by grabbing the first man to catch her eye.

I looked at Viggo, and away again.

I wasn't a blushing young maiden any more. I shouldn't really need to be saved. But I guess stupidity isn't entirely confined to teenagers.

"Cut; OK, take fifteen, people, but don't wander off."

I turned away, swore under my breath. There were the usual loiterers with the waiting crew, Elijah and Sean Astin chatting animatedly. Elijah had his mobile phone in hand, seemed to be checking something. It only took a few steps to reach them.

"Can I borrow your phone?"

He looked up, blinking. "Uh, sure Mir." He hit a button a few times, and handed it over.

I typed the number in with my thumb. A glance over my shoulder showed Viggo was still watching me, not even pretending not to. I curled my free arm across my torso, hunched my shoulders as I turned away from Elijah slightly. Held the phone up to my ear. I knew the number off by heart still. I'd called it often enough from America. I'd got the machine more often than not, then. I got it now.

"Hey, this is Paul, leave a message."

He'd changed the message. Of course. I didn't even nominally live there any more, there was no reason he should still have the part about me, with my laughter in the background.

I realised I'd missed the beep.

"Ah, hi. It's me. Miranda." I had no idea what to say. I should have thought about this. "Dad said you had, uh, y'know, mail for me or something. Maybe we should..." We should what? I didn't know. I wanted him to pick up. I wanted this call never to have started. "Uh, look, I have to go." I gave him my number, almost as an afterthought, and hung up quickly.

I took the phone away from my ear, and turned it over in my hand. It had a black, shiny back, with Ewan McGregor as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. Just in case I'd ever doubted it was Elijah's.

"You done?"

I looked back to Elijah, and smiled. "Yeah, thanks."

He took the phone back with a brilliant grin. "No problem."

Behind me, Pete clapped his hands. "OK, people. What we're going to do now is..."

I turned back to the action. Viggo was still watching me, kept watching until I stopped beside him.

"Don't fucking say anything," I told him.

"Didn't say a word," he replied. But he smiled at me. I smiled back.

"Hey, Miranda."

I turned back to face Elijah. "Yeah?"

I didn't trust his grin. "Where do you live again?"

"Why?" I asked suspiciously. Viggo shifted beside me; if I turned my head slightly I could see him looking away, to the activities of the crew. I wondered if I should say something. Perhaps apologise.

Elijah shrugged, all angelic innocence that didn't fool me for a minute. "Astin and I were trying to figure out the geographical spread of the cast."

I didn't trust him at all; I told him my address, grudgingly, and repeated: "Why?"

"I told you!" He had a very convincing act. I knew he was a talented actor. He turned to Sean. "I think that's further west than Karl's place."

"But does he count?" Sean countered, also very convincingly.

I shook my head, and turned back to Viggo. "Look, I just wanted -"

No chance. Pete called us all back to order. Back into it. "We'll talk later," Viggo promised me, as he walked away.

I supposed we would.