He lurched into the bathroom, keeping the door open and looking at me every few seconds, swaying so much I didn’t know how he managed to keep standing. I didn’t hear the tap running but there was a glass in his hand when he returned. He tripped over my bag, and saved himself from landing on the floor by grabbing the edge of the bed, the water spilling almost entirely, soaking his shirt. He was bent double and growling, while I looked on in horror, as if an enraged bear had stumbled into the room.

A tiny black rectangle fell from his pocket into a small pool of water that the carpet hadn’t absorbed. The rectangle was about one and a half centimetres across, a centimetre wide, and no more than a millimetre thick. I was pretty certain it was one of those micro SD cards for storing and transferring data. He shoved the glass at me, then snatched the card from the carpet in what I could only describe as a panic. He was muttering and swearing, wiping the card on his trousers, alarmed that the key had got wet and might be corrupted. Everything he said was interspersed with multiple repetitions of fuck fuck fuck, and he was so drunk and furious and out of control he seemed barely conscious of the fact that he was speaking aloud.

He blinked several times then turned to me, swallowing hard. ‘Drink it.’

I gulped down the few sips left in the glass. My fingers were white from clutching it so tightly. When I’d finished, he took the glass and hurled it at the wall. It shattered. Again, I started to get up and again he pushed me down. He crouched in front of me and put his hands on the velvet bench, beside each of my thighs, ready to stop me if I tried to get away.

His face was fierce red. His words came like an explosion. ‘Where the fuck have you been and why the fuck is your phone off and still at the shop and not with you?’

He was too angry to realise he’d slipped up – he knew the phone was at the shop through the spyware he’d put on it, which would tell him where it last pinged. ‘Have you been with someone else?’

‘No.’ My breath was shuddering, coming in gasps. ‘Of course not.’ A sob came from somewhere, and I realised it was me. I pictured Jane, cowering in the hotel in Ireland, screaming so her cries were heard through the walls. ‘You’re scaring me.’

When he moved his hands to my shoulders, I saw that he had ripped away one of the buttons on the silver upholstery. ‘Stop that noise. You don’t need to be scared of me. You don’t need to cry. You’re being over-dramatic.’

‘Can you please calm down, Zac?’

‘You don’t tell me to calm down.’