‘Still looking for your ring?’ She shakes her head doubtfully, then brightens. ‘I expect you’ll find it safe at home. It’s probably been there all the time!’
‘Maybe.’ I force myself to nod politely, although I feel like screaming, ‘I’m not that stupid!’
On the other side of the ballroom I spot another cleaner clearing cupcake crumbs and crumpled paper napkins into a black plastic bin bag. She isn’t concentrating at all. Wasn’t she listening to me?
‘Excuse me!’ My voice shrills out as I sprint across to her. ‘You are looking out for my ring, aren’t you?’
‘No sign of it so far, love.’ The woman sweeps another load of detritus off the table into the bin bag without giving it a second glance.
‘Careful!’ I grab for the napkins and pull them out again, feeling each one carefully for a hard lump, not caring that I’m getting buttercream icing all over my hands.
‘Dear, I’m trying to clear up.’ The cleaner grabs the napkins out of my hands. ‘Look at the mess you’re making!’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’ I scrabble for the cupcake cases I dropped on the floor. ‘But you don’t understand. If I don’t find this ring, I’m dead.’
I want to grab the bin bag and do a forensic check of the contents with tweezers. I want to put plastic tape round the whole room and declare it a crime scene. It has to be here, it has to be.
Unless someone’s still got it. That’s the only other possibility that I’m clinging to. One of my friends is still wearing it and somehow hasn’t noticed. Perhaps it’s slipped into a handbag … maybe it’s fallen into a pocket … it’s stuck on the threads of a jumper … the possibilities in my head are getting more and more far-fetched, but I can’t give up on them.
‘Have you tried the cloakroom?’ The woman swerves to get past me.
Of course I’ve tried the cloakroom. I checked every single cubicle on my hands and knees. And then all the basins. Twice. And then I tried to persuade the concierge to close it and have all the sink pipes investigated, but he refused. He said it would be different if I knew it had been lost there for certain, and he was sure the police would agree with him, and could I please step aside from the desk as there were people waiting?
Police. Bah. I thought they’d come roaring round in their squad cars as soon as I called, not just tell me to come down to the police station and file a report. I don’t have time to file a report! I’ve got to find my ring!
I hurry back to the circular table we were sitting at this afternoon and crawl underneath, patting the carpet yet again. How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so stupid?
It was my old school friend Natasha’s idea to get tickets for the Marie Curie Champagne Tea. She couldn’t come to my official hen spa weekend, so this was a kind of substitute. There were eight of us at the table, all merrily swigging champagne and stuffing down cupcakes, and it was just before the raffle started that someone said, ‘Come on, Poppy, let’s have a go with your ring.’
I can’t even remember who that was, now. Annalise, maybe? Annalise was at university with me, and now we work together at First Fit Physio, with Ruby who was also on our physio course. Ruby was at the tea too, but I’m not sure she tried on the ring. Or did she?
I can’t believe how rubbish I am at this. How can I do a Poirot if I can’t even remember the basics? The truth is, everyone seemed to be trying on the ring: Natasha and Clare and Emily (old school friends up from Taunton) and Lucinda (my wedding planner, who’s kind of become a friend) and her assistant Clemency, and Ruby and Annalise (not just college friends and colleagues but my two best friends. They’re going to be my bridesmaids, too).
I’ll admit it: I was basking in all the admiration. I still can’t believe something so grand and beautiful belongs to me. The fact is, I still can’t believe any of it. I’m engaged! Me, Poppy Wyatt. To a tall, handsome university lecturer who’s written a book and even been on TV. Only six months ago, my love life was a disaster zone. I’d had no significant action for a year and was reluctantly deciding I should give that match.com guy with the bad breath a second chance … and now my wedding’s only ten days away! I wake up every morning and look at Magnus’s smooth, freckled sleeping back; and think, ‘My fiancé, Dr Magnus Tavish, Fellow of King’s College London,’1 and feel a tiny tweak of disbelief. And then I swivel round and look at the ring, gleaming expensively on my nightstand, and feel another tweak of disbelief.
What will Magnus say?
My stomach clenches and I swallow hard. No. Don’t think about that. Come on, little grey cells. Get with it.
I remember that Clare wore the ring for a long time. She really didn’t want to take it off. Then Natasha started tugging at it, saying, ‘My turn, my turn!’ And I remember warning her, ‘Gently!’
I mean, it’s not like I was irresponsible. I was carefully watching the ring as it was passed round the table.
But then my attention was split, because they started on the raffle and the prizes were fantastic. A week in an Italian villa, and a top-salon haircut, and a Harvey Nichols voucher … The ballroom was buzzing with people pulling out tickets and numbers being called out from the platform and women jumping up and shouting, ‘Me!’
And this is the moment where I went wrong. This is the gut-churning, if-only instant. If I could go back in time, that’s the moment I would march up to myself and say severely, ‘Poppy, priorities.’
But you don’t realize, do you? The moment happens, and you make your crucial mistake, and then it’s gone and the chance to do anything about it is blown away.
So what happened was, Clare won Wimbledon tickets in the raffle. I love Clare to bits, but she’s always been a tad feeble. She didn’t stand up and yell, ‘Me! Woo-hoo!’ at top volume, she just raised her hand a few inches. Even those of us on her table didn’t realize she’d won.
Just as it dawned on me that Clare was holding a raffle ticket in the air, the presenter on the platform said, ‘I think we’ll draw again, if there’s no winner …’
‘Shout!’ I poked Clare and waved my own hand wildly. ‘Here! The winner’s over here!’
‘And the new number is … 4-4-0-3.’
To my disbelief, some dark-haired girl on the other side of the room started whooping and brandishing a ticket.
‘She didn’t win!’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘You won.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Clare was shrinking back.
‘Of course it matters!’ I cried out before I could stop myself, and everyone at the table started laughing.
‘Go, Poppy!’ called out Natasha. ‘Go, White Knightess! Sort it out!’
‘Go, Knightie!’
This is an old joke. Just because there was this one incident at school, where I started a petition to save the hamsters, everyone started calling me the White Knightess. Or Knightie, for short. My so-called catchphrase is apparently ‘Of course it matters!’2
Anyway. Suffice it to say that within two minutes I was up on the stage with the dark-haired girl, arguing with the presenter about how my friend’s ticket was more valid than hers.
I know now that I should never have left the table. I should never have left the ring, even for a second. I can see how stupid that was. But in my defence, I didn’t know the fire alarm was going to go off, did I?
It was so surreal. One minute, everyone was sitting down at a jolly champagne tea. The next minute, a siren was blaring through the air and there was pandemonium with everyone on their feet, heading for the exits. I could see Annalise, Ruby and all the others grabbing their bags and making their way to the back. A man in a suit came on to the stage and started ushering me, the dark-haired girl and the presenter towards a side door, and wouldn’t let us go the other way. ‘Your safety is our priority,’ he kept saying.3