Alice thought it was ugly. It was a big emerald set in the middle of a cluster of diamonds to look like a flower. It reminded her of a hibiscus for some reason and she’d never been a fan of the hibiscus, but what did she know, because every other girl in the world seemed to think the ring was divine, and apparently it was worth a small fortune.

And that was the other problem. This was the most expensive piece of jewelry Alice had ever owned, and Alice lost things. Constantly. She was always retracing her steps, emptying out garbage bins and calling up train stations, restaurants, and grocery stores to see if they had her purse or her sunglasses or her umbrella.

“Oh no,” said Elisabeth when she heard that Alice’s ring was an irreplaceable family heirloom. “You’ll just have to—I don’t know—get it surgically attached to your finger?”

Most of the time, except for special events or if she was seeing the Flakes, Alice just didn’t wear the ring. She wore her plain gold wedding band, or nothing at all. She’d never really been a jewelry sort of person anyway.

However, she loved the gold Tiffany bracelet. Unlike the ring, it seemed to represent all the wonderful things that had happened over the last few years—Nick, the baby, the house.

Now she fastened the bracelet around her wrist, laid her head back against the white hospital pillow, and held the backpack close to her stomach. The thought crossed her mind that there were probably a million bracelets just like this one around and it could just as easily belong to somebody else. It wasn’t like she recognized anything else in the bag, but she knew it was hers.

She was starting to get angry with herself. Come on, now! Remember! Furious, she shoved her hand back in the rucksack and pulled out a black purse. It was a long, luxurious rectangle of black leather. Alice turned it back and forth in her hands. “Gucci,” it said, in tiny discreet letters. Goodness. She opened the purse and the first thing she saw was her own face staring back at her from a driver’s license.

Her own face. Her own name. Her own address.

Well, here was the proof that the bag belonged to her.

The photo was typically blurry, but she could see she was wearing a white shirt and what looked like long black beads. Long beads? Had she become the sort of person who wore long beads? Her hair was cut in a bob just above her shoulders and it seemed to have been colored very blond. She’d cut her hair! Nick had once made her promise to never cut her hair. Alice had thought that exquisitely romantic, although Elisabeth had made gagging sounds when she told her and said, “You can’t promise to still have a fourteen-year-old’s hairstyle when you’re forty.”

When you’re forty.

Oh.

Alice put a hand up to the back of her head. She’d been vaguely aware that her hair was pulled back in a ponytail before; she hadn’t realized that it was actually more of a pigtail. She pulled out the elastic band and ran her fingers through her hair. It was even shorter than in the driver’s-license photograph. She wondered if Nick liked it. In a minute, she would have to be brave and face herself in the mirror.

Of course, she was still pretty busy at the moment. No hurry.

She put the license back in the wallet and began to rifle through it. There were various credit and ATM cards with her name embossed on the front, including a gold American Express card. Wasn’t a gold Amex just a status symbol for the sort of person who drives a BMW? Library card. Health Fund card.

A plain white business card for a Michael Boyle, “Registered Physiotherapist.” The address was in Melbourne. She flipped it over and saw a handwritten message on the back.

Alice,

We’re all settled and doing OK. I think of you often and “happier times.” Call anytime.

M. xxx

She dropped the card in her lap. What did this Michael Boyle mean when he presumptuously referred to “happier times”? She didn’t want to have had happier times with a physiotherapist in Melbourne. He sounded awful. She imagined a balding, paunchy type with soft hands and moist lips.

Where the bloody hell was Nick?

Perhaps Jane had forgotten to call him. She’d been acting so strangely at the gym. Alice should just phone him herself and explain that this was pretty serious and she really needed him to leave work right now. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Suddenly she was desperate to get herself a phone and hear Nick’s lovely, familiar voice. She had a strange feeling as if it had been ages since she’d spoken to him.

She looked feverishly around the small room and of course—there was no phone. There was nothing in the room at all, except for the basin, the mirror, and a sign about how to wash your hands correctly.

A mobile phone! That’s what she needed. She’d only recently got her first one. It was an old one belonging to Nick’s father and it worked fine, except that it had to be held together with an elastic band. Something told her that she would probably have a more expensive phone by now, and when she opened the zippered pocket at the front of the bag, she saw she was right; there was a tiny, sleek, shiny, silver phone sitting right there as if she’d known it would be. (Had she? She couldn’t tell.)

There was also a leather-bound day planner, which Alice opened quickly, just to confirm that it was indeed 2008, noting with sick wonder that her own handwriting filled the pages. “2008,” it said in no-doubt-about-it black letters at the top of each page: 2008, 2008, 2008 . . .

She stopped flipping the pages and picked up the shiny phone, breathing shallowly, as if a huge metal bar had been plonked across her chest.

Could she even work this strange phone? She was hopeless at working out how to use new appliances, but her elegantly manicured fingers seemed to know what to do, pushing the silver buttons on either side of the phone so it snapped open. She punched in the number for Nick’s direct line and held the phone up to her ear. It rang. Please answer, please answer. She felt like she would burst into sobs of relief at the sound of his voice.

“Hello. Sales Department!”

It was a young girl’s voice, frothy with good humor. Someone in the background was roaring with laughter.

Alice said, “Is Nick there at the moment? Nick Love?”

There was a slight pause. When the girl spoke again, she sounded as though she had just been sternly reprimanded. The laughter in the background stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry, you’ve come through to the wrong extension, but I could put you through to Mr. Love’s personal assistant if you like.”