Page 124 of The Wake-Up Call

I look around. The spa area is an oasis of calm, the noise from the party a low background hum behind the sound of the water.

“Mandy... why do you have two phones?” I ask, approaching.

I catch Pedro’s eye. He mouthsNo sudden movementsat me in Portuguese.

“What? Oh.” Mandy looks from one to the other. “I thought if I put Twitter on this one and Instagram on this one then all the notifications wouldn’t be quite so overwhelming. But then I couldn’t get Twitteroffthis one and Facebook wouldn’t update on this one so now I’ve got everything everywhere and... it’s just... so...much.”

“I’m thinking maybe you’ve had enough screen time... Mandy?” Jem says, looking at me for confirmation.

She eases the nearest phone from Mandy’s hand and tosses it to me. I catch it. Thankfully. That was a very confident throw, and while I’m quite pleased that Jem rates my catching skills, I would also prefer her to never do that again, particularly this close to a swimming pool.

“Oh, wow,” Pedro says. He’s bent over Poor Mandy’s other phone while Mandy stares listlessly at the garden through thewindow opposite, eyes glazed. “You guys have ninety thousand Instagram followers?”

“What?” I say, starting forward and crouching down beside him.

“Hashtag the Ring Thing,” Jem says, looking over Pedro’s other shoulder.

I watch Pedro breathe in at her proximity and try not to smile. It looks like Pedro decided to introduce himself to Jem, then. Fascinating. I wonder if he haseverformed an emotional connection with a woman before. I am very much looking forward to my next morning coffee at Smooth Pedro’s—there is almost too much to tease him about.

“Hashtag save Forest Manor Hotel.Bothtrending,” Jem says.

“You need to use hashtags,” Mandy says faintly. “They’re good for engagement.”

“This photo of you and Izzy arguing over a Tupperware box has two hundred thousand Likes,” Pedro says, mouth hanging open.

“You need to add a personal touch,” Mandy says in the same vacant tone. “It makes your brand much more relatable.”

The last time I checked our social media profiles, they did not look like this.

“Mandy,” I say, “when did this happen?”

“Oh, sort of all the time, really, over the last few weeks,” she says. “The more pictures I posted about Izzy’s Ring Thing, the bigger it got.”

Pedro swears. “You have a direct message from someone with fifteen million followers here. And...”

“Thereyou are,” Arjun says, barging into the spa with his chef’s hat in hand and some tapenade on his forehead. “There’s a Harper Armwright outside the hotel with a six-piece band. What the fuck?”

“Oh, yes, Harper,” Poor Mandy says dreamily. “She’ll be here to collect her wedding ring.”

•••••

I’ve heard of Harper Armwright. She did a duet with Michael Bublé; Izzy has one of her old CDs in her box o’ bits. But I’m not a fan, particularly—I would choose Los Hermanos over Harper Armwright any day.

And yet even I feel somewhat starstruck when I see her outside the hotel. She carries herself like she’s special. It’s in her every move: the slow turn of her head, the set of her shoulders, the thoughtlessness with which she leaves the car door for somebody else to close. And it’s in the warm, well-practised smile she gives us, with an extra special moment of eye contact for Sameera, who is hopping on the spot and whiningOh my God it’s Harper actual Armwrightunder her breath.

“You must be Lucas,” Harper says to me with a voice like honey. She holds out her hand for me to shake. “One half of my Christmas miracle.”

•••••

We manage to smuggle her in under Izzy’s woolly hat and a pair of sunglasses I keep in my glove box. It’s her security team who draw attention. I glower at them when they refuse to look less conspicuous, and they glower right back. I have the vague sense that I may have found my people.

“I must have lost it when the paparazzi turned up—we left this place in such a hurry,” Harper says, sliding the ring slowly onto her finger and breathing out. “All those years it was just sitting here? It’s like... Wow.”

We’re in the lost-property room. It seems to pale around Harper’s glow. This woman belongs on stadium stages and in penthouse suites—as much as I am proud of Forest Manor Hotel, this is not the part of it I would most like her to see. Izzy shifts a couple ofsteps to her left, covering the sun-bleached section of wall where a large box sat for many years.

“My wife was gutted. She made it herself, did you know that? It’scompletelyunique, and it slots perfectly beside hers.” She smiles down at the ring on her hand. “When a friend sent her your Instagram post about this cute mission you’re on? To return all those lost rings? And then you put up a pic of this one earlier today and I just thought,No way.But there it was.” She shakes her head in wonder. “It’s literally priceless, this ring.”

We all wait with bated breath. Mrs. SB is gripping Barty’s arm; Izzy has her bottom lip between her finger and thumb. Poor Mandy is staring at a fixed point on the wall, fingers tapping at her sides as though she is still subconsciously responding to direct messages.

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