It wasn’t until I was in a cab on the way to lunch with my Dutch editor that I remembered:

I gave Evan Alex’s name and his hotel. After he’d said he’d ‘sort Alex out’ for me if I wanted. Oh God.

I’m sure Evan wouldn’t really have done anything, though. I’m sure he was only trying to act all macho to impress me. Once he realized there wasn’t a shag in it for him, I’m sure he wouldn’t have bothered hauling ass all the way over to Alex’s hotel….

Would he?

Now that I think about it, there was an awful lot of talk last night of heads being kicked in and retribution being exacted. Not by Evan, though. I wouldn’t have stayed up late flirting with a thug; I mean, I do have some standards. But what if his mates egged him on? And I suppose there is the remotest possibility that I very slightly exaggerated the wrongs Alex and his girlfriend had perpetrated on me. Well…if I’m honest, I made them sound like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

Even if Evan did do something to Alex, I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. He asked for it.

It’s just, I suppose, I feel a little bit – what? It’s hard to pin down but weirdly enough, I think I feel a little bit worried about Alex.

I was thinking about all this so hard that I didn’t even notice that my cab had pulled up outside what looked like a sandwich shop.

‘Here you are, miss,’ said the cabbie, a tired-looking middle-aged man with a droopy moustache.

‘Are you sure?’ Mareliese had said she was taking me to lunch, and so I was expecting at least a place with white linen on the tables and a maitre-d’. Not formica and a queue at the till.

It seems that my capacity for optimism is stuck on ‘high’, in the face of repeated disappointment. This was indeed our venue for lunch. Mareliese was a dumpy lady in her mid-forties with an unfashionable mass of out-of-control corkscrew curls which kept shedding into her egg salad sandwich. She seemed to begrudge me even a paltry three quarters of an hour of her time, and banged on continuously about how busy she was with her surprise ‘hit’ of the year, a novel written by a man who’d had a sex change called Kicking the Balls Into Touch. Yawn. I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu – a seafood salad (which turned out to be a couple of crabsticks and some barely defrosted prawns, hidden in a huge bowlful of lettuce) and kept trying to turn the conversation back to TLA but she didn’t seem that interested, beyond saying that the bookstore round the corner had four copies which I could sign – if I liked. And that it had done ‘OK’ in Holland, but it would have been much better if I could have come over and done one of the literary festivals or a reading some months ago when she first suggested it. Now people had forgotten about me and moved on to the next big thing…

Oh please, I felt like saying. Contain your enthusiasm for me and my book, all this fawning is quite embarrassing. My thoughts kept drifting back to Alex, with a sort of appalled anticipatory thrill. I even had an image of me at his hospital bedside, his face pale and bruised on the pillow, a sickly puppy, wan with gratitude and overcome with emotion at my presence. (Emily of course was out of the picture, as Alex had seen the error of his ways and ditched the bitch long ago.)

Mareliese made her excuses and escaped, after pointing me in the direction of the bookstore, without even offering to accompany me to the signing. I did walk over there, and searched long and hard along the shelves for both the English version of TLA and the Dutch translation, but failed to find either. I asked a lanky male assistant, who brightened.

‘Yes,’ he said, in heavily accented English, after consulting his computer. ‘We have it. Please follow me.’ He strode purposefully across to the back of the store, to a crate on the floor full of dog-eared books with torn or stained covers. Kneeling down with an expression of intense concentration, he plunged his hand into the crate, right down to the bottom, rummaged around and triumphantly pulled out one rather battered copy of TLA.

‘Here!’ he beamed, thrusting it at me.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said abruptly, turning around and walking out of the shop. Bloody great. What a waste of time.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and the water in the canals sparkled, superficially disguising their murky depths. I strolled alongside one for a while, past a small, fragrant flower market, where I bought two packets of tulip bulbs, and several gift shops. I stopped in one and bought Paula a money-box Dutch clog, as a thank-you for agreeing to feed Biggles while I was away (I hope he’s OK. I hope she hasn’t forgotten), and then walked on further.

I’m now in a coffee shop – having actual coffee this time – writing this diary and wondering if Alex’s bloated body is being dragged out of a canal somewhere. I can’t stop thinking about it, although whether out of mere curiosity or concern I still haven’t quite decided…

No. It’s no use, I’ve got to know.

Later

I remembered the name of Alex’s hotel and got a cab over there, wishing that I’d thought to bring my disguise. My heart was pounding as I walked into the dingy little lobby with its smeary faux-marble counter, and my head was practically swivelling 360 degrees in my attempts to keep an eye out for Alex or whatsherface – Emily.

‘I’m here to meet a friend of mine,’ I whispered to the receptionist. ‘Alex Parkinson. Is he – um – all right, do you happen to know?’

Her face instantly settled into creases of sympathy. ‘Jah, it was very bad,’ she said, tutting. ‘They took him off in an ambulance last night.’

‘An ambulance?’ Oh God, it wasn’t just my imagination working overtime. Evan really had done something to him. ‘Is he in hospital?’

The receptionist looked at me with dual suspicion and guilt, realizing that she had been less than discreet. ‘I am sorry, I thought you knew what had happened.’

‘Well, um, yes and no. Not exactly. I just got a message that he was hurt.’ I felt sick with nerves now. What if Emily walked in? Or Alex – unless he was in traction somewhere. How could I explain my presence, or worse, what if the receptionist let on that I knew Alex had been hurt? Or – horrors – what if Evan had said in Emily’s earshot, right before plunging a six inch knife into Alex’s heart: “this is from Siobhan”…

‘So – could you tell me if he’s here or in hospital?’ Or dead, I thought in a panic. Sweat was actually running down the side of my face, even though it wasn’t at all hot. That bloody Evan. What had he been thinking? I could go to jail!

‘He’s not in hospital. He stayed here last night. After he’d talked to the police.’

Not dead. But talking to police. Oh God.

‘He and his friend have checked out. They are going home this afternoon. I think they went to have some lunch first. Would you like to leave a message for them?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I think I know where they went for lunch. I’ll catch up with them there. Thanks for your help. By the way, is there a Ladies’ I could use first?’

I did actually really need the toilet. It must have been nerves. The receptionist pointed me in the right direction, and I shot off, on legs of jelly. Locking myself in a cubicle, I tried to shepherd my straying, panicked thoughts into some sense of cohesion.

Right. Alex wasn’t dead, but bad enough to have needed an ambulance. He couldn’t be in too bad a state though, because he’d gone out to lunch with Emily. So his injuries were clearly more superficial than had at first been believed. Probably just a black eye, maybe a couple of stitches. I heaved a sigh of relief, then instantly began to panic again. He’d been talking to the police. I just had to pray that Evan had the sense not to mention my name, otherwise I really was in trouble.

Still on the loo, I delved in my handbag for my compact, to powder my terror-shined face. My fingers closed around an unfamiliar plastic bag, which I pulled out, puzzled. I was holding a small Ziploc bag containing a rather large amount of cannabis, a mess of leaves and stalks compacted into a clump the size of a squashed tennis ball. How the hell had that got there?