I smile, warming to the version I like best, but none of it accounts for the fact that a dangerous woman had threatened him the night before last, claiming to know where the safehouse he had tried so hard to make a home was.

At quarter to seven, unable to keep the worst-case scenario from whirring around and around in my head, I call the hotel I’d left him at.

‘Royal Garden, how may I assist you?’

‘Hello, could you put me through to Jacob Mackenzie’s room, please?’

There’s a deafening silence at the other end of the line. ‘Hello?’ I ask, checking I haven’t been cut off.

‘One moment, please,’ says a voice that wouldn’t sound out of place in an automated lift. ‘I’m just trying to locate that for you.’

I chew the inside of my cheek as I wait.

‘I can’t seem to find a guest with that name,’ she says eventually.

‘Well, he’s definitely staying with you,’ I say, knowing that Jacob wouldn’t risk going back to the apartment. ‘He checked in the night before last.’

I wonder if saying he was one half of the couple having a heated moment in the bar might jog her memory. It would almost certainly have been talked about. The barman would have told the restaurant manager who would have told the concierge, who would have told housekeeping, each version being embellished with every mouth that spoke and every ear that heard, like an elaborate game of telephone.

I’d learnt pretty quickly from working in that very same hotel when I first came to the UK that that’s how it works. As a receptionist, I knew who was stashing their complimentary toiletries, who had a drink problem, whose ‘wife’ was really a prostitute, and who’d left their vibrator behind.

‘How are you spelling that?’ asks the woman.

I sigh. ‘M-A-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E.’

‘Ah, that’s where I’m going wrong,’ she says, tapping noisily on a keyboard. ‘I’ve dropped the A.’

‘That’ll be it,’ I say, hoping she’s right.

‘Nope,’ she says, a few seconds later. ‘There’s still no one coming up with that name, I’m afraid. Can I try another for you?’

I’m sure that’s in the client services manual, but she’d do well to tweak it in this instance, as looking up another guest entirely is of no use to either of us. I make a mental note to mention it to Andy when I next speak to him.

‘No,’ I say, more abruptly than I intended. ‘Thank you.’

There’s a sickening thud in my chest. Something doesn’t feel right and with every passing minute, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Jacob’s wife has got something to do with it.