Blast! Dammit! and what a cock up

Doing all the things you do on back from hols, like unpacking, catching up on emails and viewing the photos, only to find the latter is impossible as they are not there. How can I have deleted them without knowing? I didn't reformat the card, I did delete some earlier ones from months back but not the whole damn bunch of this holiday. They did include some rather good action shots, party stuff as well of course and just the odd one or two colourful pics of us having a little drinkie poo on some sunny mountain restaurant terrace. Can't even prove I was there now.