‘Bastards.’ Dabbing at the nick on his chin with a towel, Robert peered furiously through the curtains at the bay window of their bedroom, to find the press already baying for his blood on the street outside. Did they have nothing better to do than harass upstanding members of the public? To hound a hardworking businessman and valuable contributor to society, solely because a few of his staff had had the temerity, despite the rewards of working for him and the astronomical salaries he paid them, to make ridiculous accusations?

Christ almighty, they’ll be branding us sex fiends if we so much as smile at a woman soon. Fucking MeToo campaign, ruining lives, bringing great men to their knees. Attention-seekers and gold-diggers, the lot of them.

Fuming, Robert dropped the curtain, pulling the white towel, which was now stained crimson, away from his face as he walked back towards the bathroom to continue his shave. The mob out there would probably be ecstatic if he did cut his throat, trampling each other to death in their rush to get a photo opportunity and try him by press after his death. Tossers. Robert would like to see any one of them attempting to do half of what he’d done. He’d bet there wasn’t a single person amongst them who’d ever done a real day’s graft, working his fingers to the bone to set up a business, which provided employment to people and shored up the flagging economy.

Did that ever occur to them? That, in putting him out of business, they would be robbing the people they were supposed to be informing of their jobs?

Not a chance. They earned their fat salaries off the backs of people like him, destroying them and their families without compunction before going back to their cosy little homes to tuck into their dinners. God only knew how they slept at night.