Keeping an eye on the corridor where housekeeping and room service are bustling past with trolleys laden with both food and dirty laundry, I drag the moving image back to where Jacob and I enter the bar, willing myself to recall what Ian used to do every three months when the footage was no longer needed.

I frantically stab at the delete button on the keyboard, but the image is still goading me from the screen. Suddenly I remember Tristan in the Tattenhall security lodge, blocking out great swathes of time with his cursor, eradicating the events of the previous twenty-four hours. It takes a couple of tries, but I eventually manage to double-click the mouse to highlight the time period that compromises my future and am offered an option to delete the selected frame. My hand shakes as the cursor hovers over Yes.

I tell myself I have no choice. That it is far too incriminating for an innocent person like me to risk leaving. But then I fast-forward to the police dramatically storming the hotel after a tip-off that the missing man, whose photo will be all over the news by then, was here shortly before he disappeared. They’ll demand to see the CCTV, find that it’s been wiped, speak to Andy, who’ll have to admit to me being here and show them the hard drive back-up . . .

Stop! I scream at myself, my internal monologue threatening to spontaneously combust. This can’t get any worse than it already is. And what I need to do now is absolve myself of any involvement.

I look up to the heavens and ask Mom for forgiveness as I hit Yes, hoping she’ll understand my need to turn this investigation back onto the real guilty party, whoever that may be.

With all trace of myself now erased from the scene, I carry on watching the video as Jacob orders another whisky before answering a call on his mobile. He seems scared as he listens to whatever the caller is saying, looking around covertly as if frightened of what he might see.

I follow his gaze, but as his eyes fleetingly pass over the man at the other end of the bar, mine are rooted to the spot.

It can’t be. It just can’t be. I zoom in on the man’s face, the image becoming grainier the closer I get, but there’s no denying the blue checked shirt I’d laundered just this morning.

Numb, I watch the barman who’d served me just moments before put down a tumbler that Leon picks up and knocks back in one. What the hell was he doing there, and how had I not seen him? Had he been there all along or had he only come in once he’d seen me leave? I wince as I imagine what he might have heard . . . what he might have seen.