Again, there was a brief uptake in clicks, likes and retweets, but nothing substantial. She went to bed feeling miserable, and the next morning, only the Daily Express had bothered to run a piece on their online site, describing the ‘shame of telly host’s girl caught with her knickers down’, an article that received even less attention than a piece about the funding of an art installation by a lesbian poet that featured her bodyweight in Snickers bars.

‘My followers have increased by only ten per cent,’ she complained to Trevé when she dropped in to see him a few days later. ‘You said that they would double. Even triple.’

‘I may have overestimated the public recognition factor,’ he said, admitting defeat in the face of general indifference. ‘If it had been your father caught on a sex tape—’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ she snapped.

‘But it’s true.’

She’d stared at him contemptuously. ‘Are you seriously telling me that a sex video of my past-his-prime father rolling around in bed with some twenty-five-year-old model would prove more popular with the public than one of @TuscanyFields and me?’ She’d recently started to refer to her boyfriend by his full Twitter and Instagram handles, forgetting that, in real life, he preferred to be known simply as Tuscany.

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘The public know your father. Any opportunity to shame him is manna from heaven to them. You couldn’t get your hands on one, I don’t suppose? Perhaps if we were to release that and then you were to confront him outside Broadcasting House—’

He didn’t get to make any more suggestions as Elizabeth had already left his office, firing him by email the following morning. The entire experience had proved utterly dispiriting.

Lying in the bath now, she could hear her phone ringing in the distance and groaned. She felt cut off from the world. What was she doing wallowing in a pool of her own filth anyway? She stood up, wiping the bubbles from her body, and jumped into the shower, scrubbing any remains of the homeless from her skin, before wrapping a towel around her and emerging from the bathroom on to the landing, where Ustym Karmaliuk stood waiting to greet her at the top of the staircase.

‘How did you get up here?’ she asked, lifting him up and turning him around. Another few hours and he’d surely make his way back down to the living room. Her phone rang again and she ran towards her bedroom, but it stopped before she could answer. She glanced at the screen. Two missed calls from Achilles. She threw it back on the bedspread. Whatever it was, it could wait.