‘We can sit here trading insults if you want,’ said Achilles. ‘Or we can just get on with our business. I get my five thousand pounds and you get my silence. After you pay me off, you won’t ever hear from me again. I don’t go back to the same well twice. What do you say?’

Jeremy looked down at the table and tapped his fingers against the woodwork. ‘It doesn’t feel as if you’re leaving me much choice,’ he said.

‘Probably not, no.’

‘It’s a lot of money.’

‘It could be a lot more.’

‘How soon would you want it?’

Achilles thought about it. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Six o’clock.’

‘All right,’ said Jeremy, sounding defeated. ‘And then you won’t contact me again?’

Achilles made the shape of a cross over his heart. ‘Scout’s honour,’ he said.

Jeremy shook his head. ‘Were you ever a Scout?’ he asked.

‘Oh, Jeremy,’ said Achilles, laughing a little. ‘That hurts me. It really does. I’m wounded.’

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

It was almost 10 p.m. when Beverley returned home, exhausted from her day. The house was in darkness and she went straight into the living room, kicked off her shoes and poured herself a large whisky. On the table in front of her, a copy of that day’s Evening Standard was lying folded in half and she picked it up, only to be confronted by her husband’s face.

TV CLEVERLEY IN FRESH SCANDAL!

screamed the headline, and she closed her eyes, wondering whether she would ever be given some respite from her family’s dramas. She felt something damp licking at her toes and looked down to see Ustym Karmaliuk standing on the carpet next to her feet, and smiled. Reaching down, she picked him up and placed him on her lap, stroking his shell tenderly.

‘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.’