Georgie went back inside, nodding at the security guard on her way in. What might make more interesting reporting, she thought, was if The Real Byte solicitor, Charlie Priest, her employer, didn’t turn up in the next half an hour accompanied by the magazine’s main witness. It was this thought that was making her stomach churn.

‘Come on, Charlie,’ she said to herself through gritted teeth. ‘Now’s not the time to be late.’

Until 2012, Simeon Ali had been an Elias Children’s Foundation employee working at their Turkish branch. Georgie had never met him. As far as she was aware, Charlie had only met him a few times. He kept a very low profile and with good reason – Alexia Elias and her husband, Dominique, were powerful figures with powerful friends, and connections that went right the way to the top of government. There were plenty of images of Alexia sitting in conferences – a broad smile across her face – drinking tea with Cabinet ministers doing their rounds across social media. A lot of influential people had backed the Elias Foundation and its charismatic CEO. A lot of people had put their hands deeply into their wallets. In Georgie’s view, the charity had survived the Turkish scandal because of some very good spin. During the press conference in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, Alexia Elias, surrounded by PR managers and lawyers, had produced the performance of a lifetime:

‘We are hurt, and we are betrayed, but we will not succumb to evil, nor we will shrink in the face of oppression. We will rise up, in union, and remember why we are here, who we are and what we stand for.’ Then, with a tear in her eye: ‘We are the Elias Foundation, and we shall not be beaten by a tiny group of weak-minded traitors. I will use every resource available to me to right this wrong.’

After assuring the press that the corruption had been isolated and contained, the weeping CEO had stepped down to embrace her husband in a moment of rehearsed solidarity before giving way to her press officer to mop up any question from the awe-struck crowd.

The suggestion that Alexia had been lying when she said she knew nothing about the scandal until it was too late was unthinkable. The idea that she had been a part of it was heresy.

Nonetheless, a trace of doubt remained, and Alexia Elias was not without her critics. So far, though, the voice of dissent was small, confined to people who had been labelled conspiracy theorists: dismissed as part of the same group who supposedly believed the Rothschild family controlled the world and Hillary Clinton was an alien. Although perhaps the non-believers weren’t as insignificant as some first thought: The Real Byte’s advertising revenue had doubled following the media’s coverage of the libel action.