Given how quickly he had sent me to have my heart checked after we lost Mum, surely he would get the gist of what I was trying to say. It had been an intense few months – long working days and almost impossible deadlines – and I feared that if I didn’t slacken the pace soon, I would end up doing myself some irreparable harm. After this current campaign was in the bag, I really was going to have to take a break. Surely, he would understand that?

‘Of course you can,’ he said stoically, drawing himself up to his full height as we stepped into the palatial kitchen. ‘You’re a Tyler, Tess. We don’t give up, remember? We thrive on stress. Our ability to power through is what keeps us one step ahead of the competition.’

I wanted to point out that I used to thrive on stress. Channelling my grief into my work was the very thing that had given me the strength to put in the increased hours, but now my mental as well as my physical energy was spent. I’d had enough and if I was being honest (to myself at least), it wasn’t just my grief that I was struggling with.

More and more often I was having to justify, cover up and even lie about certain so-called celebrities’ lifestyles and behaviours in order to make them an attractive enough proposition to match with our clients, and I didn’t like doing it. The pay cheque my position in the firm afforded me might have given me a fabulous car and an admirable apartment, but what did any of that matter if I couldn’t sleep at night?

‘Look,’ he said, when I didn’t defer to his tough Tyler ethos, ‘maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You dropped the ball this time, but—’

‘Dropped the ball?’ I interrupted.

I knew I sounded indignant but, surely, he wasn’t going to try and pin the footballer’s fall from grace on me?

‘It was his agent who gave him leave to go out and celebrate those goals,’ I said defensively. ‘I had no idea—’

‘But you should have,’ Dad interrupted, ‘and you know it. You should have known his schedule better than your own.’

I bit my lip to stop myself announcing that I was sick of babysitting adults who should know how to behave. This was clearly not the time to try and get my point across. The day was going to be tough enough and I didn’t need to fall out with ‘the boss’ on top of everything else.

‘Well, he’s on a tight leash now,’ I said instead, swallowing down my annoyance. ‘He won’t be straying again.’

‘But you can’t use him for the campaign, Tess,’ Dad countered. ‘The public won’t have an ounce of faith in him now.’