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 right 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. Annalise, maybe? Annalise was at university with me, and now we work together at First Fit Physio, with Ruby, who was also in 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), Lucinda (my wedding planner, who’s kind of become a friend) and her assistant, Clemency, and Ruby and Annalise (not only 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 the 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 gray 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 calling out, “Careful!”

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 calling out the raffle numbers 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 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! Woohoo!” at top volume, she just raised her hand a few inches. Even those of us at her table didn’t realize she’d won.

As it dawned on me that Clare was waving 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 … 4403.”

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 began to call 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 never should have left the table. I never should have left the ring, even for a second. I can see how stupid that was. But, in my defense, 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 everyone was on their feet, heading for the exits in pandemonium. 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 onto the stage and started ushering me, the dark-haired girl, and the presenter toward a side door and wouldn’t let us go the other way. “Your safety is our priority,” he kept saying.3

Even then, it’s not as if I was worried. I didn’t think the ring would have gone. I assumed one of my friends had it safe and I’d meet up with everyone outside and get it back.

Outside, of course, it was mayhem. As well as our tea, there was some big business conference happening at the hotel, and all the delegates were spilling out of different doors into the road. Hotel staff were trying to make announcements into loudspeakers, and cars were beeping, and it took me ages just to find Natasha and Clare in the mêlée.

“Have you got my ring?” I demanded at once, trying not to sound accusatory. “Who’s got it?”

Both of them looked blank.

“Dunno.” Natasha shrugged. “Didn’t Annalise have it?”

So then I plunged into the throng to find Annalise, but she didn’t have it; she thought Clare had it. And Clare thought Clemency had it. And Clemency thought Ruby might have had it, but hadn’t she gone already?

The thing about panic is, it creeps up on you. One minute you’re still quite calm, still telling yourself, Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it can’t be lost. The next, the Marie Curie staff are announcing that the event will be curtailed early due to unforeseen circumstances and are handing out goody bags. And all your friends have disappeared to catch the tube. And your finger is still bare. And a voice inside your head is screeching, Oh my God! I knew this would happen! Nobody should ever have entrusted me with an antique ring! Big mistake! Big mistake!

And that’s how you find yourself under a table an hour later, groping around a grotty hotel carpet, praying desperately for a miracle. (Even though your fiancé’s father has written a whole bestselling book on how miracles don’t exist and it’s all superstition and even saying “OMG” is the sign of a weak mind.)4

Suddenly I realize my phone is flashing and grab it with trembling fingers. Three messages have come in, and I scroll through them in hope.

Found it yet? Annalise xx

Sorry, babe, haven’t seen it. Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word to Magnus. N xxx

Hi Pops! God, how awful, to lose your ring! Actually I thought I saw it … (incoming text)

I stare at my phone, galvanized. Clare thought she saw it? Where?

I crawl out from under the table and wave my phone around, but the rest of the text resolutely refuses to come through. The signal in here is rubbish. How can this call itself a five-star hotel? I’ll have to go outside.

“Hi!” I approach the gray-haired cleaner, raising my voice above the Hoover’s roar. “I’m popping out to check a text. But if you do find the ring, call me—I’ve given you my mobile number. I’ll just be on the street.”

“Right you are, dear,” says the cleaner patiently.

I hurry through the lobby, dodging groups of conference delegates, slowing slightly as I pass the concierge’s desk.

“Any sign of—”

“Nothing handed in yet, madam.”

The air outside is balmy, with a hint of summer, even though it’s only mid April. I hope the weather will still be like this in ten days’ time, because my wedding dress is backless and I’m counting on a fine day.

There are wide shallow steps in front of the hotel, and I walk up and down them, swishing my phone back and forth, trying to get some signal, with no success. At last I head down onto the actual pavement, waving my phone around more wildly, holding it over my head, then leaning into the quiet Knightsbridge street, my phone in my outstretched fingertips.

Come on, phone, I mentally cajole it. You can do it. Do it for Poppy. Fetch the message. There must be a signal somewhere… . You can do it… .

“Aaaaaaah!” I hear my own yell of shock before I even clock what’s happened. There’s a twisting pain in my shoulder. My fingers feel scratched. A figure on a bike is pedaling swiftly toward the end of the road. I only have time to register an old gray hoodie and skinny black jeans before the bike turns the corner.