On the way to the gate, there was a shop with a newspaper stand. The French and Spanish newspapers were all over it. Not so much the Italian ones. There wasn’t time to stop and take a closer look but I got the gist:

ASESINATO EN SÉRIE OCULTOS EN EL MEDITERRÁNEO: La policía cree que ella escapó en un crucero desde Southampton

Translation: SERIAL MURDER IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: Police believe she escaped on a cruise from Southampton.

I was waiting for it, always looking over my shoulder at the tooled-up police on the way to the gate, but nobody stopped me. There was a curt smile from the steward as I stepped aboard the plane and turned left.

And soon I was reclining in my leather seat, sipping complimentary Krug, chowing finest pork sword in a delicate jus prepared by a Michelin-star chef and rifling through a travel kit of soft pyjamas, blindfold and Kiehls vanity case. It was only then that I could truly breathe out.

I took one last look at the address Dannielle Fairly had supplied me: Tenoch. Espinoza, Hacienda Santuario, Camino Cabo Este, Rocas Calientes… Mexico.

Opposite me sat two honeymooners, holding hands in their recliners, reading the dinner menu. She leaned into him, butting her forehead playfully against his to make him laugh. Money could buy me all the freedom and luxury I wanted, apparently. But it couldn’t buy me that.

It wasn’t until they turned the lights off that it dawned on me: when they came back on, I’d be the other side of the world. Chance to wipe the slate clean. Tenoch would arrange another passport and then there would be no more Hilary Sharp or Rhiannon Lewis. Nobody would know who the hell I was.

Least of all, me.

Part 2: Mexico

Sunday, 13 January – Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez

1. People who try to ram enormous carry-on bags into overhead lockers
2. Everyone on planes who stands up the second the seatbelt sign bings. You honestly think your bag’s gonna be first off?
3. People who studiously take note of the safety demo on flights – what good is a whistle and an oxygen mask when you’re crashing 500mph into a mountain?
4. People at airports who hog any plug socket to charge their phones – a woman at Los Cabos found the plug to a departures board and removed it so she could juice up her Samsung
5. Paris Hilton

Crowded airports are concentrated Hell on Earth.

After changing some money for Mexican pesos and paying a ridiculously high fee for the privilege, I had to wait six hours for my connecting Aeromexico flight to some tiny airport out in the super sticks – the nearest one to Rocas Calientes at the southern end of the Baja Peninsula. I spent most of this time eating, pissing and nodding off on an uncomfortable metal seat that had a small puddle of jizz beneath it.