“Of course. Why not?” Mrs. SB says.
“Mrs. SB, I get it, I know how important the money is, but . . . these aren’t just pieces of jewellery. They’re wedding rings. Engagement rings,” Izzy says, her voice rising. “These are little love stories, right here in this box.”
I look over their shoulders. There are five rings lying haphazardly on a folded piece of yellowing kitchen paper inside a Tupperware box. One of them is diamond studded; another sports a giant emerald at its centre, framed by two pink stones. Each one has a tiny sticker looped around it with a date printed in different handwriting.
“What is all this?” I ask.
“They’re from the swimming-pool lost property,” Izzy says to me. “I want to return them.”
“Return them? Aren’t we supposed to be making money, not giving it away?” I ask, and then I catch Izzy’s expression.
She’s really upset about this. Her eyes are swimming. She blinks fast and looks away again.
“Losing a wedding ring isn’t like losing an umbrella,” she says. “I know the law says you have to keep items for a reasonable length of time—but what’s reasonable when it’s something with such sentimental value?”
At the mention of the law, Mrs. SB looks a little distressed.
“Oh, well . . .”
“Just give me one week. Please, Mrs. SB. We’re doing brilliantly at selling off the other items already. But do we really want to be the sort of hotel that pawns off someone’s wedding ring?”
“Yes?” I say.
“No,” Mrs. SB says with a heavy sigh. “No, I suppose we don’t. Thank you, Izzy.” She squeezes her shoulder. “Our resident angel. You mustn’t let us lose our heart here, all right, dear?”
I stare between them, and then back at the rings. What has heart got to do with it? These are just expensive items of jewellery. Who’s to say they’re more sentimentally valuable to people than their favourite umbrella?
“You can’t be serious,” I begin, but Mrs. SB is already striding off towards Barty, who has just appeared in the doorway, wearing a panicked expression and holding two laptops at once.
“One week!” she calls over her shoulder at Izzy, who immediately starts checking the dates on each ring. “And then our duty is done!”
“There is no duty here,” I say. “These are just the same as all the rest of the junk in there.”
Izzy brandishes an old booking book at me. There was a digital system before I arrived at Forest Manor, though a very bad one—and yet Izzy still insisted on writing things in that book as well as putting them on the computer. She continues this practice now, even with our superior new online system. It is one of the many ridiculous things she does.
“What’s the date on that one?” she asks, pointing to the gold wedding ring I’ve picked up between thumb and forefinger.
“The first of November, 2018,” I say. “Do you honestly think you can find the owner of a ring that was lost here four years ago?”
She flicks through the book and stabs a finger at the page. “Ha!” she says. “Five pool bookings that day, six spa sessions. All noted down in the . . .”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“Sorry, I just can’t quite . . . what’s the word . . .” She taps her bottom lip, eyes wicked.
“Izzy. You are such a child.”
She grins at me, and there it is—a traitorous flicker of sensation in my gut. This happens sometimes. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, I think Izzy is the most annoying woman I have ever met, but very occasionally I can’t help noticing how beautiful she is.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, looking back down at the rings.
“Tiffany Moore,” Izzy announces, flicking back to check the guest’s original booking. “And here’s her landline number.”
“Izzy, this is a waste of your time.”
“OK, well, as you say: my time, so . . .” She motions at me to be quiet as the phone rings.
For one childish second, I am inclined to reach over and hang up the phone. I have no reason for this other than the satisfaction of knowing that she will find it deeply irritating. I don’t understand how she does this to me, but something about Izzy Jenkins makes me want to behave very badly.
I don’t even move—don’t even twitch—but Izzy reaches a hand out and clamps it over mine on the desk. There is another twinge in my stomach, a sensation like cool seawater hitting sun-baked skin.
“Don’t even think about it, Mr. da Silva,” she whispers, and then slides her hand from mine. “Oh, hello! Is Tiffany there, please?” she says into the phone, all sugar and sweetness again. As though I can’t still feel the imprint of her nails tingling on the back of my hand.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
I leave her to this ridiculous task and manage at least two hours of jobs before the next crisis hits. You can tell we are at one-sixth of our usual capacity. Generally, at Forest Manor, the crises come at least every fifteen minutes.
I am in Bluebell, the room where Mrs. Muller is currently staying. Behind me, Dinah—our head of housekeeping—enters the room carrying a Hoover in one hand and a large bag of cleaning products in the other.
“There is nothing that will get that off. Nothing,” Dinah says immediately, dropping the Hoover with a thump. “White spirit, maybe, but how will you avoid taking off the paint underneath?”
The wall is splattered in oil paint—red, green, and blue. The apparatus of Mrs. Muller’s latest form of artistic expression is still lying on a token dustsheet beneath her easel. It looks like a cross between a catapult and a leaf-blower.
“I apologise—when the muses strike, they strike, you see. I’ll be needing another room, of course,” Mrs. Muller says. “I can’t very well work in all this mess.”
Dinah begins vacuuming behind us. Leave Dinah anywhere for any amount of time and she’ll start aggressively vacuum-cleaning something. This helpfully masks the sound of me growling under my breath.
“Mrs. Muller,” I say, “you know we only have five rooms at present.”
She stares up at me from the armchair in the corner. I notice a splodge of blue paint on its fabric and am once again grateful for the sound of Dinah’s Hoover. Mrs. Muller is a regular at the hotel—she is an important guest. She is also a demanding one, but I understand that. I suspect I would be a demanding guest, too.
“I will see what I can do, Mrs. Muller. Leave it with me.”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
“Well?” I ask Izzy when I return to the lobby.
“Well what?” she says, distracted as she sorts through a box of paperback books. “Could we take some of this to a car boot sale, maybe? Use your car? My boot is teeny.”
I stare at her in horror. “You want me to put all of this rubbish in my car?”
“It’s not rubbish! These paperbacks will make a pound each. Every little helps.”
“We need tens of thousands of pounds of investment, so one pound does not particularly help.”
She dims a little and says something about the quantity of items still to be sold. I watch her counting out books on the floor behind the desk and feel an unexpected twinge of guilt for making her shoulders sag that way. Our endless back-and-forth is built into the rhythm of my day here: I had expected a sharp retort. Perhaps she will take revenge later—she likes to do that sometimes. I will probably find something sticky “accidentally” spilled on my keyboard again this afternoon.
“So was it Tiffany Moore’s wedding ring?” I find myself asking.
Izzy looks up at me, surprised and then smug. “Look who’s already getting on board with the Ring Thing!”
Of course this mad plan now has a rhyming name.
“I’m not on board. I was just making conversation.”
“Gosh, I wasn’t aware you knew how to do that. Well, it wasn’t hers,” Izzy says, returning to the paperbacks. “She said her wedding ring is still firmly on her finger. I’ve tried a couple more people, but I’m hitting the rest of the list after this box. Unless you want to help, and give someone a call now?”