“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 Annalise.

“Breath mints?” Ruby turns to regard her scornfully. “Breath mints?”

“And some cinnamon swirls,” Annalise adds hurriedly.

“That’s more like it. Three cinnamon swirls … ”

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 Annalise, who are arguing about what 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 Annalise 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 cinnamon swirls, is all I can say. Violet turns out to be about ten feet tall, with skinny legs clad in frayed denim shorts and massive dark eyes with traces of 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 Annalise have gone back to work, which is a good thing, because I couldn’t 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 morning, and I see Sam talking about some memo and saying it must have been sexed up, and I think, yes!” She bangs her hand on the table again. “That’s what was going on.”

“How many voice mails were there in all?”

“Four? Five?”

“But there aren’t any voice mails on here now. At least, I haven’t found any.” I can hardly bear to ask the question. “Did you … delete them?”

“No!” She beams in triumph. “That’s the point! I saved them. At least, my boyfriend, Aran, did. I was writing one out one night, and he was, like, ‘Babe, just save it to the server.’ And I was like, ‘How do I save a voice mail?’ So he came into the office and put them all on a file. He can do amazing stuff, Aran,” she adds proudly. “He’s a model too, but he writes games on the side.”

“A file?” I’m not following. “So where’s the file now?”

“It must still be there.” She shrugs. “On the PA’s computer. There’s an icon called voice mails on the desktop.”

An icon on the PA’s computer. Just outside Sam’s office. All the time, it was right there, right in front of our face.

“Will it still be there?” I feel a blast of panic. “Won’t it be deleted?”

“Don’t know why it would be.” She shrugs. “Nothing was deleted when I arrived. There was just a big old pile of crap I was supposed to wade through.”

I almost want to laugh hysterically. All that panic. All that effort. We could have simply gone to the computer outside Sam’s office.

“Anyway, I’m going to the States tomorrow, and I had to tell someone, but it’s impossible to get in touch with Sam at the moment.” She shakes her head. “I’ve tried emailing, texting, phoning—I’m, like, if you only knew what I had to tell you … ”

“Let me have a go,” I say after a pause, and type a text to Sam.

Sam, you have to call me. Now. It’s about Sir Nicholas. Could be a help. Not a time-waster. Believe me. Call at once. Please. Poppy.

“Well, good luck with that.” Violet rolls her eyes. “Like I told you, he’s gone off radar. His PA said he’s not responding to anybody. Not emailing, not answering calls—” She breaks off as the tinny sound of Beyoncé comes through the air. Sam Mobile has already popped up on the display.

“OK.” Her eyes widen. “I’m impressed.”

I press accept and lift the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Sam.”

“Poppy.”

His voice feels like a blast of sunshine in my ear. There’s so much I want to say. But I can’t. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

“Listen,” I say. “Are you in your office? Go to your PA’s computer. Quickly.”

There’s the briefest pause, then he says, “OK.”

“Look on the desktop,” I instruct him. “Is there a file called Voice Mails?”

There’s silence for a little while—then Sam’s voice comes down the phone.

“Affirmative.”

“OK!” My breath comes out in a whoosh. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it. “You need to look after that file carefully. And now you need to speak to Violet.”