‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered to my furious boyfriend, but he wasn’t listening, he was squaring up to Johnson.

‘Alex, for God’s sake.’ I tried to pull him back before he punched Johnson too, but Alex grabbed my arms now in an unremitting hold, staring down at me like he didn’t know me, like he’d never seen me – and when I looked back into his eyes I saw that they were blank. Despite the heat of the night, I shivered. ‘You’re hurting me,’ I whispered. ‘Let go, please.’

The music was still banging, but other people were coming towards us now. Naz was there, and Alex was still holding on to me as Sam leaned over the huge bath, groaning, blood splashing onto the white porcelain – and then Alex suddenly looked at him.

‘Sorry, mate.’

I grabbed some loo-roll to offer Sam, to staunch the blood – and then Alex picked me up like a small child.

‘Get the fuck away from him,’ he snarled, dragging me outside into the suite, banging me against the wall, and he had his hands around my throat, and I could see he was gone, he wasn’t there any more, he was in a netherworld. He didn’t know what he was doing and I was struggling to get free and then Johnson was trying to pull Alex off, and Naz was yelling at him, and then hotel security were there and suddenly one of them headbutted Alex and I was screaming like I couldn’t stop – actually, the thing was I couldn’t stop – and then I was trying to get in-between the security guard and Alex and somehow my suit got torn and my shirt was still undone, and then I got punched too by a random fist before Naz pulled me away. Then Alex got arrested, and I was so utterly hysterical by this point that for some reason they took me in too.

And that was when Charlie had to bail me out.

Dickie Crosswell wanted to press charges against Alex. Sally told me later that he’d been in Charlie’s office the next day with Sam, absolutely furious, and Charlie had been utterly sycophantic – but it was Sam who’d apparently dissuaded his father in the end. Somehow the Awards people managed to hush it all up, paranoid that it would get out that so many industry bods were taking drugs at their do, and apparently there had even been a couple of Eastern European hookers in the room who’d wandered up from the bar, and so it was in everybody’s general interest to cover it all up. Thank God no names made it into the press – although a fracas was alluded to in various gossip columns. And thank God Renee never found out exactly what happened. That would really have been the end of me.