‘Then, times changed – the world changed – and they said sport needed to change, too. Suddenly athletes were expected to be caring, compassionate and filled with marshmallow goodness and unicorn-sprinkled tenderness.’

More resounding laughter and applause, and Hannah felt a bit nauseous at the nasty undertone in the guy’s words.

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to go back to the way things were, folks – back to when a man was a man and didn’t wear dresses, back to when nobody but nerds gave a damn about what a friggin’ pronoun was, back to the days when an athlete could live his life on his own terms off the field without having to worry about whether he was going to be “cancelled”.

‘Some of you might not know this, but I was Ward McKenzie’s first coach after he went pro, so I guess you could say I’m the man who turned him into the badass predator we all know and love. And now that power duo is reunited! No doubt about it, by the time I’m done, WildCat McKenzie will be back bigger and better than ever. Back on the ice with the Panthers where he belongs, and back in the world of real men.’

Hannah couldn’t find him in the lobby or anywhere else in the hotel, so she hurried outside and quickly spied Ward across the road pacing on the sidewalk by the park’s south entrance.

The streets were quiet and largely traffic-free at this time of night, so she hurried across with ease, approaching with some hesitation, deeply cognisant of this latest public humiliation.

And doubly annoyed that she (albeit on the instructions of his agent) had played a part in it by encouraging him to attend tonight in the first place, and thus helped set up his participation in that nasty reputational flogging. His instincts had been spot on all the same.

He’d worked so hard to turn himself around and rehabilitate his behaviour on the advice of a coach who understood that it was doing him no favours, only to be returned into the arms of a man who it seems stood for pretty much everything toxic about pro-athlete culture.

As Hannah got closer and got a better look at his face, her heart dropped at his pained expression and the raging maelstrom behind his eyes. She reached out and gently touched his arm. ‘That guy, he was your first coach, the one you talked about before?’

He nodded, the hard set in his jawline brimming with anger, and his hands clenched as if ready to punch through the low sandstone wall.

‘I knew it, I fucking knew it was some kind of set-up. I could never trust Sumners as far as I could throw him, and now I wonder if this whole image rehabilitation thing was a smokescreen all along too.’

‘What? How so?’