‘You’re going to live with me from now on,’ she whispered. ‘Instead of with that nasty, lying, deceiving piece of shit.’

The tortoise remained silent, expressing no preferences about his accommodation, and, after a moment, she placed him on one end of the table, where he began to make gallant efforts to make his way to the other side, where the promise of an uneaten After Eight lay within its wrapper. As he crawled along, she returned to the newspaper, where the head of Disability Rights UK was calling on the BBC to sack ‘the prominent and much-loved television presenter George Cleverley, who referred to those with physical disabilities as “cripples” in a now-deleted tweet’.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said, taking another swig from her glass and, a moment later, her husband plodded into the room with a forlorn expression on his face.

‘I see you’ve fucked up again,’ muttered Beverley, nodding towards the newspaper.

‘So it would seem.’

‘First you’re transphobic. Then you’re a racist. And now you hate disabled people.’

‘Apparently, I’m anti-Semitic too, although there doesn’t seem to be any real evidence for that one. Why are you home anyway? I thought you were going to stay in Ukraine for a few days?’

‘My plans changed,’ she said. ‘There was nothing there for me.’

‘Nothing for your novel, you mean?’

‘Nothing for my novel. Is this going to blow up even more?’

‘I expect so,’ he said, collapsing into an armchair. ‘They’re out to get me and won’t be happy until I’ve been stripped naked, dragged through the streets of London and dumped head first in the Thames.’

‘Who?’ asked Beverley. ‘Who won’t be happy?’

‘The POOTs.’

‘Oh, why do you even pay attention, George?’ she asked, frustrated by how personally he took all of this. ‘Who cares what they think? These people live in an echo chamber. Well, most of them still live with their parents, but you know what I mean.’

‘Because I don’t like it when they say terrible things about me. A man’s reputation is all he has.’

‘You also have this house,’ she pointed out. ‘And about ten million quid in the bank. None of the POOTs has that.’

‘It just frustrates me, since I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool liberal my entire life. You of all people know that.’

‘I do, yes,’ admitted Beverley.

‘What’s most upsetting is how things seem to have changed. I’m starting to feel that nowadays there’s no one more bigoted than a liberal. The right-wingers, at least they own their hatred and don’t try to dress it up in anything other than the intolerant, narrow-minded, self-serving bullshit that it is. You know where you are with the Right. But the Left? My God, disagree with them for even a moment, dare to ask a question or deviate from the company line, and they’re on you like flies on shit. They won’t stand for even an iota of disagreement, pleading for kindness while masking their own intolerance in sanctimony. It’s McCarthyism hidden beneath the umbrella of Wokeness.’