“Quite a bit, I suppose. I mean, there’s always insurance….” I trail off lamely.
“When are you planning to tell Magnus?” Ruby has her disapproving face on. I hate that face. It makes me feel small and mortified. Like that awful time she caught me giving ultrasound and texting at the same time.27 Ruby is someone you just instinctively want to impress.
“Tonight. Neither of you guys has seen it, have you?” I can’t help asking, even though it’s ridiculous, like they’ll suddenly say, “Oh yes, it’s in my bag!”
They both shrug no. Even Annalise is looking sorry for me.
Oh God. This is really bad.
By six o’clock it’s even worse. Annalise has Googled emerald rings.
Did I ask her to do this? No. I did not. Magnus has never told me how much the ring is worth. I asked him, jokingly, when he first put it on my finger, and he joked back that it was priceless, just like me. It was all very romantic and lovely. We were having dinner at Bluebird, and I had no idea he was going to propose. None.28
Anyway, the point is, I never knew what the ring cost and I never wanted to know. At the back of my mind I keep trying out lines to Magnus, like, “Well, I didn’t realize it was so valuable! You should have told me!”
Not that I’d have the nerve to say that. I mean, how dumb would you have to be not to realize that an emerald out of a bank vault is worth something? Still, it’s been quite comforting not to have a precise figure in my head.
But now here’s Annalise, brandishing a sheet of paper she’s printed out from the Internet.29
“Art deco, fine-quality emerald, with baguette diamonds,” she’s reading out. “Estimate twenty-five thousand pounds.”
What? My insides turn to jelly. That can’t be right.
“He wouldn’t have given me anything that expensive.” My voice is a bit shaky. “Academics are poor.”
“He’s not poor! Look at his house! His dad’s a celebrity! Look, this one’s thirty grand.” She holds up another sheet. “It looks exactly like yours. Don’t you think, Ruby?”
I can’t look.
“I never would have let it off my finger,” Annalise adds, arching her eyebrows, and I almost want to hit her.
“You’re the one who wanted to try it on!” I say furiously. “If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still have it!”
“No, I wasn’t!” she retorts indignantly. “I just tried it on when everyone else did! It was already going round the table.”
“Well, whose idea was it, then?”
I’ve been racking my brains about this again—but if my memory was hazy yesterday, it’s even worse today.
I’m never going to believe a Poirot mystery again. Never. All those witnesses going, “Yes, I remember it was 3:06 p.m. exactly, because I glanced at the clock as I reached for the sugar tongs, and Lady Favisham was quite clearly sitting on the right-hand side of the fireplace.”
Bollocks. They have no idea where Lady Favisham was, they just don’t want to admit it in front of Poirot. I’m amazed he gets anywhere.
“I’ve got to go.” I turn away before Annalise can taunt me with any more expensive rings.
“To tell Magnus?”
“Wedding meeting with Lucinda first. Then Magnus and his family.”
“Let us know what happens. Text us!” Annalise frowns. “Hey, that reminds me, Poppy: How come you changed your number?”
“Oh, that. Well, I went out of the hotel to get a better signal and I was holding out my phone—”
I break off. On second thought, I can’t be bothered to get into the whole story of the mugging and the phone in the bin and Sam Roxton. It’s all too way-out, and I haven’t got the energy.
Instead, I shrug. “You know. Lost my phone. Got another one. See you tomorrow.”
“Good luck, missus.” Ruby pulls me in for a quick hug.
“Text!” I hear Annalise calling after me as I head out the door. “We want hourly updates!”
She would have been great at public executions, Annalise. She would have been the one at the front, jostling for a good view of the ax, already sketching the gory bits to put up on the village notice board, in case anyone missed it.
Or, you know, whatever they did before Facebook.
I don’t know why I bothered rushing, because Lucinda’s late, as always.
In fact, I don’t know why I bothered to have a wedding planner. But I only ever think that thought very quietly to myself, because Lucinda is an old family friend of the Tavishes. Every time I mention her, Magnus says, “Are you two getting along?” in raised, hopeful tones, like we’re two endangered pandas who have to make a baby.
It’s not that I don’t like Lucinda. It’s just that she stresses me out. She sends me all these bulletins by text the whole time, of what she’s doing and where, and keeps telling me what an effort she’s making on my behalf, like the sourcing of the napkins, which was the hugest saga and took her forever and three trips to a fabric warehouse in Walthamstow.
Also, her priorities seem a little screwy. She hired an “IT wedding specialist” at great expense, who set up whizzy things like a text alert system to give all the guests updates30 and a webpage where guests can register what outfit they’re wearing and avoid “unfortunate clashes.”31 But while she was doing all that, she didn’t get back to the caterers we wanted, and we nearly lost them.
We’re meeting in the lobby of Claridge’s—Lucinda loves hotel lobbies; don’t ask me why. I sit there patiently for twenty minutes, drinking weak black tea, wishing I’d canceled, and feeling sicker and sicker at the thought of seeing Magnus’s parents. I’m wondering if I might actually have to go to the ladies’ and be ill—when she suddenly appears, all flying raven hair and Calvin Klein perfume and six mood boards under her arm. Her suede spiky kitten heels are tapping on the marble floor, and her pink cashmere coat is billowing out behind her like a pair of wings.
Trailing in her wake is Clemency, her “assistant.” (If an unpaid eighteen-year-old can be called an assistant. I’d call her slave labor.) Clemency is very posh and very sweet and terrified of Lucinda. She answered Lucinda’s ad in The Lady for an intern and keeps telling me how great it is to learn the ropes firsthand from an experienced professional.32
“So, I’ve been talking to the vicar. Those arrangements aren’t going to work. The wretched pulpit has to stay where it is.” Lucinda descends into a chair in a leggy, Joseph-trousered sprawl, and the mood boards slide out of her grasp and all over the floor. “I just don’t know why people can’t be more helpful. I mean, what are we going to do now? And I haven’t heard back from the caterer….”
I can barely concentrate on what she’s saying. I’m suddenly wishing I’d arranged to meet Magnus first, on my own, to tell him about the ring. Then we could have faced his parents together. Is it too late? Could I quickly text him on the way?
“… and I still haven’t got a trumpeter.” Lucinda exhales sharply, two lacquered nails to her forehead. “There’s so much to do. It’s insane. Insane. It would have helped if Clemency had typed out the order of service properly,” she adds, a little savagely.
Poor Clemency flushes beet-red and I shoot her a sympathetic smile. It’s not her fault she’s severely dyslexic and put hymen instead of hymn and the whole thing had to be redone.
“We’ll get there!” I say encouragingly. “Don’t worry!”
“I’m telling you, after this is over I’m going to need a week in a spa. Have you seen my hands?” Lucinda pushes them toward me. “That’s stress!”
I have no idea what she’s talking about—her hands look perfectly normal to me. But I stare at them obediently.
“You see? Wrecked. All for your wedding, Poppy! Clemency, order me a G&T.”
“Right. Absolutely.” Clemency leaps eagerly to her feet.
I try to ignore a tiny rub of irritation. Lucinda’s always throwing little references like that into the conversation: “All for your wedding.” “Just to make you happy, Poppy!” ?
??The bride’s always right!”
She can sound quite pointed sometimes, which I find disconcerting. I mean, I didn’t ask her to be a wedding planner, did I? And we are paying her quite a lot, aren’t we? But I don’t want to say anything, because she’s Magnus’s old friend and everything.
“Lucinda, I was wondering, have we sorted out the cars yet?” I say tentatively.
There’s an ominous silence. I can tell that a wave of fury is rising inside Lucinda, from the way her nose starts to twitch. At last it erupts, just as poor Clemency arrives back.
“Oh, bloody hell. Oh, fucking … Clemency!” She turns her wrath on the trembling girl. “Why didn’t you remind me about the cars? They need cars! We need to hire them!”
“I …” Clemency looks helplessly at me. “Um … I didn’t know….”
“There’s always something!” Lucinda is almost talking to herself. “Always something else to think about. It’s endless. However much I run myself into the ground, it goes on and on and on—”
“Look, shall I do the cars?” I say hastily. “I’m sure I can sort them.”
“Would you?” Lucinda seems to wake up. “Could you do that? It’s just, there’s only one of me, you know, and I have spent the entire week working on details, all for your wedding, Poppy.”
She looks so stressed out, I feel a pang of guilt.
“Yes! No problem. I’ll go on yellow pages or something.”
“How’s your hair coming along, Poppy?” Lucinda suddenly focuses on my head, and I silently will my hair to grow another centimeter, very quickly.
“Not bad! I’m sure it will go in the chignon. Definitely.” I try to sound more positive than I feel.
Lucinda has told me about a hundred times how shortsighted and foolish it was to cut my hair to above the shoulder when I was about to become engaged.33 She also told me at the wedding-dress shop that with my pale skin,34 a white dress would never work and I should wear lime green. For my wedding. Luckily the wedding-dress-shop owner chimed in and said Lucinda was speaking nonsense: My dark hair and eyes would set off the white beautifully. So I chose to believe her instead.
The G&T arrives and Lucinda takes a deep slug. I take another sip of tepid black tea. Poor old Clemency hasn’t got anything, but she looks like she’s trying to blend into her chair and not attract any attention at all.
“And … you were going to find out about confetti?” I add cautiously. “But I can do that too,” I backtrack quickly at Lucinda’s expression. “I’ll phone the vicar.”
“Great!” Lucinda breathes out sharply. “I’d appreciate that! Because there is only one of me and I can only be in one place at once—” She breaks off abruptly as her gaze alights on my hand. “Where’s your ring, Poppy? Oh my God, haven’t you found it yet?”
As she lifts her eyes, she looks so thunderstruck, I start to feel sick again.
“Not yet. But it’ll turn up soon. I’m sure it will. The hotel staff are all looking—”
“And you haven’t told Magnus?”
“I will!” I swallow hard. “Soon.”
“But isn’t it a really important family piece?” Lucinda’s hazel eyes are wide. “Won’t they be livid?”
Is she trying to give me a nervous breakdown?
My phone buzzes and I grab it, grateful for the distraction. Magnus has just sent me a text which dashes my secret hope that his parents would suddenly catch gastric flu and have to cancel:
Dinner at 8, whole family here, can’t wait to see you!
“Is that your new phone?” Lucinda frowns critically at it. “Did you get my forwarded texts?”
“Yes, thanks.” I nod. Only about thirty-five of them, all clogging up my in-box. When she heard I’d lost my phone, Lucinda insisted on forwarding all her recent texts to me, just so I didn’t “drop the ball.” To be fair, it was quite a good idea. I got Magnus to forward all his most recent messages too, and the girls at work.
Ned Murdoch, whoever he is, has also finally contacted Sam. I’ve been looking out for that email all day. I glance at it distractedly, but it doesn’t seem particularly earth-shattering to me. Re: Ellerton’s bid. Sam, hi. A few points. You’ll see from the attachment, blah blah blah.
Anyway, I’d better send it on straightaway. I press forward and make sure it’s gone through. Then I type a quick reply to Magnus, my fingers fumbling with nerves.
Great! Can’t wait to see your parents!!!! So exciting!!!! PS: Could we meet outside first? Something I want to talk about. Just a really tiny thing. Xxxxxxxxx
22 OK, it wasn’t a couple of texts. It was about seven. But I only pressed send on five of them.
23 Poirot would probably have worked it out already.
24 There are only three of us, and we’ve known each other for yonks. So occasionally we lurch off onto other areas like our boyfriends and the Zara sale.
25 Or, rather, her dad did. He already owns a string of photocopy shops.
26 She also completely ignores all the poor women with twisted ankles. If you’re a girl, never do the marathon with Annalise on duty.
27 It was an emergency, in my defense. Natasha had split up with her boyfriend. And it’s not like the patient could see what I was doing. But, yes, I know it was wrong.
28 I know girls say that and what they really mean is, “I gave him an ultimatum and then let him think he’d come up with the idea himself, and six weeks later, bingo.” But it wasn’t like that. I honestly had no idea. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, after a month?
29 Which I bet she did not do in her lunch hour. She should be the one getting the disciplinary hearing.
30 Which we’ve never used.
31 Which no one has registered on.
32 Personally, I’m doubtful about Lucinda’s so-called experience. Whenever I ask her about other weddings she’s done, she refers to only one, which was for another friend and consisted of thirty people in a restaurant. But obviously I never mention this in front of the Tavishes. Or Clemency. Or anyone.
33 Was I supposed to be psychic?
34 “Deathly white,” as she called it.
I now have historical insight. I actually know what it felt like to have to trudge up to the guillotine in the French Revolution. As I walk up the hill from the tube clutching the wine I bought yesterday, my steps get slower and slower. And slower.
In fact, I realize, I’m not walking anymore. I’m standing. I’m staring up at the Tavishes’ house and swallowing hard, over and over again, willing myself to move forward.
Perspective, Poppy. It’s only a ring.
It’s only your prospective in-laws.
It was only a “falling-out.” According to Magnus,35 they never actually said straight out they didn’t want him to marry me. They only implied it. And maybe they’ve changed their minds!
Plus, I have discovered one tiny positive. My home insurance policy will pay out for losses, apparently. So that’s something. I’m even wondering whether to start the ring conversation via insurance and how handy it is. “You know, Wanda, I was reading an HSBC leaflet the other day—”
Oh God, who am I kidding? There’s no way to salvage this. It’s a nightmare. Let’s just get it over with.
My phone bleeps and I take it out of my pocket for old times’ sake. I’ve given up hoping for a miracle.
“You have one new message,” comes the familiar, unhurried tone of the voice-mail woman.
I feel like I know this woman, she’s talked to me so often. How many people have listened to her, desperate for her to hurry up, their hearts pounding with fear or hope? Yet she always sounds equally unfussed, like she doesn’t even care what you’re about to hear. You should be able to choose different options for different kinds of news, so she could start off: “Guess what! Ace news! Listen to your voice mail! Yay!” Or: “Sit down, love. Get a drink. You’ve got a message and it’s not good.”
I press 1, shift the mobile to the other hand, and start trudging again. The message was left while I wa
s on the tube. It’s probably just Magnus, asking where I am.
“Hello, this is the Berrow Hotel, with a message for Poppy Wyatt. Miss Wyatt, it appears your ring was found yesterday. However, due to the chaos of the fire alarm—”
What? What?
Joy is whooshing through me like a sparkler. I can’t listen properly. I can’t take the words in. They’ve found it!
I’ve already abandoned the message. I’m on speed-dial to the concierge. I love him. I love him!
“Berrow Hotel—” It’s the concierge’s voice.
“Hi!” I say breathlessly. “It’s Poppy Wyatt. You’ve found my ring! You’re a star! Shall I come straight round and get it—”
“Miss Wyatt,” he interrupts me. “Did you listen to the message?”
“I … Some of it.”
“I’m afraid …” He pauses. “I’m afraid we are not presently sure of the ring’s whereabouts.”
I stop dead and peer at the phone. Did he just say what I thought he did?
“You said you’d found it.” I’m trying to stay calm. “How can you not be sure of its whereabouts?”
“According to one of our staff, a waitress did find an emerald ring on the carpet of the ballroom during the fire alarm and handed it to our guest manager, Mrs. Fairfax. However, we are uncertain as to what happened after that. We have been unable to find it in the safe or in any of our usual secure locations. We are deeply sorry, and will do our utmost to—”
“Well, talk to Mrs. Fairfax!” I try to control my impatience. “Find out what she did with it!”
“Indeed. Unfortunately, she has gone on holiday, and despite our best endeavors, we have been unable to contact her.”
“Has she pinched it?” I say in horror.
I’ll find her. Whatever it takes. Detectives, police, Interpol … I’m already standing in the courtroom, pointing at the ring in a plastic evidence bag, while a middle-aged woman, tanned from her Costa del Sol hideout, glowers at me from the dock.
“Mrs. Fairfax has been a faithful employee for thirty years and has handled many valuable artifacts belonging to guests.” He sounds slightly offended. “I find it very hard to believe that she would have done such a thing.”