Sophie Kinsella - I've Got Your Number

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.”

“Violet?” He sounds taken aback. “You don’t mean Violet my flaky ex-PA?”

“I’m with her now. Listen to her, Sam. Please.” I pass the phone over.

“Hey, Sam,” says Violet easily. “Sorry about leaving you in the lurch and all that. But you’ve had Poppy to help you out, yeah?”

As she’s talking, I head up to the counter and buy myself another coffee, even though I’m so wired I probably shouldn’t. Hearing Sam’s voice has thrown me. I immediately wanted to talk to him about everything. I wanted to nestle up and hear what he had to say.

But that’s impossible. Number one, because he’s mired in massive problems of his own. Number two, because who is he? Not a friend. Not a colleague. Just some random guy who has no place in my life. It’s over. The only place for us to go from here is goodbye.

Maybe we’ll exchange the odd text. Maybe we’ll meet up awkwardly in a year’s time. Both of us will look different and we’ll say hello stiltedly, already regretting the decision to come. We’ll laugh about how bizarre that whole phone business was. We’ll never mention what happened in the woods. Because it didn’t happen.

“You OK, Poppy?” Violet is standing in front of me, waving the phone in front of my face. “Here.”

“Oh!” I come to and take it. “Thanks. Did you speak to Sam?”

“He opened the file as I was talking to him. He’s pretty stoked. He said to say he’d call you later.”

“Oh. Well … he doesn’t have to.” I pick up my coffee. “Whatever.”

“Hey, nice rock.” Violet grabs my hand. 93“Is that an emerald?”

“Yes.”

“Cool! So, who’s the lucky guy?” She gets out an iPhone. “Can I take a picture of it? I’m just getting ideas for when Aran becomes a gazillionaire. Did you choose it yourself?”

“No, he had it already when he proposed. It’s a family ring.”

“Romantic.” Violet nods. “Wow. So you didn’t expect it?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Were you like, ‘Fuck!’ ”

“Kind of.” I nod.

It seems a million years ago now, that evening when Magnus proposed. I was so giddy. I felt as if I’d entered a magic bubble where everything was shiny and perfect and nothing could ever go wrong again. God, I was a fool …

A tear splashes onto my cheek before I can stop it.

“Hey.” Violet looks at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” I smile, wiping at my eyes. “It’s … Things aren’t exactly brilliant. My fiancé might be cheating on me, and I don’t know what to do.”

Just letting the words out makes me feel better. I take a deep breath and smile at Violet. “Sorry. Ignore that. You don’t want to know.”