‘So I imagine you’re able to keep quite close tabs on each other?’

I have no idea where she’s going with this or what she’s trying to allude to, but it’s making my skin itch. ‘We both have demanding jobs and lead fairly independent lives,’ I say, looking straight at her.

‘Where would he have been on the night of the twenty-first of June?’

I shrug my shoulders far too quickly. ‘I have no idea.’

She rubs at her forehead as if she’s trying to massage a migraine away.

‘It was only a few nights ago,’ she says.

I picture Leon and me in the same hotel bar, only minutes apart, both of us within feet of a man who went missing that night.

‘As you’ll appreciate, Mrs Chandler, I’m having real trouble here.’

‘Because you think I’m lying?’ I ask, boldly.

‘Well, you can’t blame me, can you?’ she says. ‘You have a habit of holding out on me.’

‘I’ve told you why I wasn’t honest about going around to Jacob’s – I mean Michael’s – flat.’

She nods.

‘And what about when you met Mr Talbot at the Royal Garden hotel in Canterbury?’

A heat starts in my toes and creeps up my legs. All the while my ears are trying to rid themselves of the rush of blood that makes me feel as if I’m drowning. My lips feel like they’re forming the words I want to say, but no sound is coming out.

‘I . . .’ I start, my tongue suddenly feeling too big for my mouth. I have no idea what to say that can get me out of the very big mess I’m in. How can she possibly know about the hotel?

She leans in towards me, as if she’s hard of hearing and I’m whispering.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I manage.

‘We have a report from a member of the public who believes they saw Mr Talbot at the hotel on the night he disappeared.’

I shrug my shoulders nonchalantly.

‘I don’t know what that’s got to do with me,’ I say.

‘Apparently he was with a woman who matches your description,’ she says, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

I snort. ‘What – of average height with long brown hair? That just about covers half of the female population.’

Robson narrows her eyes. ‘Perhaps, but I’m hoping that what she was wearing might narrow it down.’

The heat returns to envelop me as I force myself to remember what I had on. An involuntary twitch pulses in my cheek as Robson looks to her notebook.

‘Apparently, the witness remembers Mr Talbot being in the bar with a woman who had on a rather distinctive blouse,’ she says. ‘It was red in colour, possibly depicting a fruit of some kind, though the witness can’t be sure.’