‘I saw Tim walk into the kitchen stumbling’

Lane denied evidence that he stabbed Mr Edwards and claimed he ran off because he was “freaked out” by what happened.

“I see Tim’s bleeding,” he said. “I just didn’t know what to do. It just freaked me out. I wanted to get away from it. I left.

“Four or five of us left. It was the first time I had seen anything like it. No one wants to see that.”

Lane said he knew party host Josh Hyde but had not seen him for about two years before that evening.

He had been out with a friend in the town and went to Screwballs. Mr Hyde, he said, invited them to the house for the party.

Lane said he met Mr Edwards in the taxi. “He asked if we took drugs – cocaine mainly,” he told the jury. “A few people said they took cocaine every now and then.

“He said: ‘Try this stuff I have got. It is good stuff. I brought it down from London.”

Mr Edwards pulled out the drug at the house, saying he had got loads of it and telling guests to help themselves.

Lane claimed Mr Edwards added: “If you ever need any, I’m your man.”

He denied he was involved in an argument about wearing Nike and Adidas clothes together. It took place, he said, about 80 minutes before the “commotion”.

“I just carried on mingling around the house,” he said. “I carried on the night.”

Lane had later been to the toilet upstairs and when he returned Mr Edwards accused him of taking his cocaine.

“I was a bit shocked he said it,” he continued. “I said: ‘You have been giving your cocaine up all night, I wouldn’t need to steal it.’”

Lane admitted he sniffed three to four lines of cocaine at the party.

“To me the problem was resolved,” he said. “I saw it as a misunderstanding. Everyone carried on having a good time. The argument was 40 or 50 min- utes before the commotion.”

Lane he claimed he later saw a man he didn’t know standing at the bottom of the stairs as Mr Edwards came down.

“I saw Tim brush past me. I saw him walk into the kitchen stumbling. The (other) man walked out of the door. I didn’t think anything of it. I saw Tim’s bleeding.”

He denied a suggestion that he struggled with Mr Hyde’s girlfriend Amy Revell.

“That is wrong,” he said. “There wasn’t a struggle between me and Amy. I never saw a knife.

“I ran down the road. When I ran out of breath I stopped. I couldn’t work what happened. I was puzzled.”