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the door. “Come on. Comfort food’s what you need. We’ve got half an hour. Let’s cram it in.”
When Ruby gets an idea, she goes for it. She’s already striding along the pavement and
into the Costa two doors away. As A
“Hello there!” she begins cheerfully. “I“d like three lattes, three doughnuts, three plain
croissants, three almond croissants—”
“Ruby, stop!” I start giggling.
“Three pains au chocolat—we’ll give them to the patients if we can’t finish them—three
apple muffins—”
“Three tins of breath mints,” chimes in A
“Breath mints?” Ruby turns to regard her scornfully. “Breath mints?”
“And some ci
“That’s more like it. Three ci
My phone rings in my pocket, and my stomach lurches. Oh God, who’s this? What if it’s
Magnus?
What if it’s Sam?
I haul it out, taking a step away from Ruby and A
kind of cookies they should buy. As I see the screen, I feel a dreadful squeezing sensation inside.
It’s Unknown Number. Whoever-it-is has finally phoned me back.
This is it. This is where I find out the truth. For good or for bad. I’m so petrified, my hand
is actually shaking as I press accept, and at first I can’t catch my breath to speak.
“Hello?” a girl’s voice is saying down the line. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
Is that Clemency? I can’t tell.
“Hi,” I manage to utter at last. “Hello. This is Poppy speaking. Is this Clemency?”
“No.” The girl sounds surprised.
“Oh.” I swallow. “Right.”
It’s not Clemency? Who is it, then? My mind is scampering around frantically. Who else
could have sent me that text? Does this mean Lucinda’s not involved after all? I can see A
and Ruby eyeing me curiously from the register and I swing away.
“So.” I try desperately to sound dignified and not at all like someone who’s about to be
totally humiliated and have to call their entire wedding off. “Was there something you wanted to
say to me?”
“Yes. I’m urgently trying to get in touch with Sam Roxton.”
Sam?
The tension that’s been growing inside me breaks with a crash. It’s not Unknown
Number after all. At least, it’s Different Unknown Number. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or
relieved.
“How did you get this number?” the girl is demanding. “Do you know Sam?”
“Er … yes. Yes, I do.” I try to gather myself. “Sorry. I misunderstood for a moment. I
thought you were someone else. Can I take a message for Sam?”
I say it automatically before I realize that I’m not forwarding things to Sam anymore.
Still, I can get a message to him, can’t I? Just for old times’ sake. Just to be helpful.
“I’ve tried that.” She sounds quite high-handed. “You don’t understand. I need to speak
to him. Today. Now. It’s urgent.”
“Oh. Well, I can give you his email address—”
“That’s a joke.” She cuts me off impatiently. “Sam never reads emails. But, believe me,
this is important. I have to speak to him, as soon as possible. It’s about the phone, in fact. The
phone you’re holding right now.”
What?
I gape at the receiver, wondering if I’ve gone crazy. How does some strange girl know
what phone I’m holding?
“Who are you?” I say in astonishment, and she heaves a sigh.
“No one remembers who I am, do they? I worked for Sam. I’m Violet.”
Thank God I didn’t eat the ci
ten feet tall, with ski
makeup around them.92 She looks like a cross between a giraffe and a bush baby.
It turned out that she lives in Clapham and it would take her only about five minutes to
get here to see me. So here she is, in Costa, chomping on a chicken wrap and swigging a
smoothie. Ruby and A
cope with having to explain the whole saga to them. It’s all too surreal.
As Violet has told me several times, if she hadn’t happened to be in London, between
jobs, and happened to see the headlines as she went to get a pint of milk, she would never have
known about the scandal. And if she hadn’t happened to have a brain in her head, she wouldn’t
have realized that she totally knew what had been going on the whole time. But are people
grateful? Do they want to hear? No. They’re all idiots.
“My parents are on this stupid cruise,” she’s saying with disdain. “I tried to look in their
telephone book, but I don’t know who’s who, do I? So I tried ringing Sam’s line, then Nick’s
line … but I only got snotty PAs. No one would listen to me. But I need to tell someone.” She
bangs her hand on the table. “Because I know something was going on. I even sort of knew it at
the time? But Sam never listened to me? Do you find he never listens to you?” She focuses on
me with interest for the first time. “Who exactly are you, anyway? You said you’d been helping
him. What does that mean?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” I say after a pause. “He was left in the lurch a bit.”
“Oh, yeah?” She takes another bite of chicken wrap and regards me with interest. “How
come?”
Has she forgotten?
“Well … er … you left with no notice. Remember? You were supposed to be his PA?”
“Riiiight.” She opens her eyes wide. “Yeah. That job didn’t really work out for me. And
the agency called and wanted me to get on a plane, so … “ Her brow wrinkles in thought as
though she’s considering this for the first time. “I guess he was a bit pissed off. But they’ve got
loads of staff. He’ll be all right.” She waves her hand airily. “So, do you work there?”
“No.” How am I going to explain it? “I found this phone and borrowed it, and I got to
know Sam that way.”
“I remember that phone. Yeah.” She peers at it, screwing up her nose. “I never answered
it.”
I suppress a smile. She must have been the crappest PA in the world.
“But that’s why I know something was going on.” She finishes off her chicken wrap with
a flourish. “Because of all the messages. On that.” She jabs a finger at it.
OK. At last we’re getting to it.
“Messages? What messages?”
“It had all these voice mails on it. Not for Sam; for some guy called Ed. I didn’t know
what to do about them. So I listened to them and I wrote them down. And I didn’t like the sound
of them.”
“Why not?” My heart starts to thud.
“They were all from the same guy, about altering a document. How they were going to do
it. How long it would take. How much it would cost. That kind of thing. It didn’t sound right,
you know what I mean? But it didn’t exactly sound wrong either.” She crinkles her nose. “It just
sounded … weird.”
My head is wheeling. I can’t take this in. Voice mails for Ed about the memo. On this
phone. This phone.
“Did you tell Sam?”
“I sent him an email and he said ignore them. But I didn’t want to ignore them. You
know what I mean? I had this instinct.” She swigs her smoothie. “Then I open the paper this