I reached out and brushed my fingers across the smooth metal casing of the watch.

Half a year earlier, that small, ordinary piece of consumer technology, the kind millions of people wear without a second thought, had been my life raft.

It had captured the confession of a man who believed he had successfully discarded me like trash on our living room rug, and it had broadcast a plea for help when I could not speak, and it had played his own words back to him in the dark at the moment they mattered most.

It was, now, a silent relic, resting on a charging stand in a quiet lounge.