I have just refilled the little bowls of nuts and olives—the vape is obviously making everyone hungry—when Kira comes back from using the bathroom. She is holding something that glints in the light of the scattered candles.

“Something you need to tell us?” she asks me, holding out the object. It is my engagement ring, all two and a half carats of it. I’d put it in the drawer of the bedside table. Hadn’t I? Time hangs suspended as I remember I left it in a little glass of gin in the en suite to clean it. Fuck! How the hell can I explain this?

“Ooh!” squeals Joey. “Let me see!” She grabs it and holds it up to the light, turning it this way and that. “So, who is he, Leah?”

Four pairs of eyes bore into me as they wait for my answer. I’m frozen to the spot, trying desperately to come up with something. Anything.

“It’s just costume jewelry,” I blurt out. It’s the best I can do.

Amy lunges for it. “This is a real diamond, Leah.” How the hell does she know? “Bigger than two carats but less than three.” She looks even closer. “Good quality, not flawless but not too bad. I’d estimate somewhere around the twenty grand mark.” Chris spent fifteen on it, so she’s not too far off. I had been so livid with him when he bought it.

“So, Missy.” Kira is standing over me. I definitely don’t like her. “Who is he and why are you holding out on us?”

“Oh. My. God,” Joey suddenly wails. “I know!” I stare at her. She’s nodding her head and scrolling furiously through her Instagram feed. “Yep, yep, yep,” she says, still scrolling. What is she looking for? Eventually she stops and shows the picture on her phone to everyone except me. I wait to see my fate, trying to decipher the looks on the others’ faces. Eventually, she shows me the phone. The picture is of Leah and Jabir, the disgraced prince, having cozy cocktails a few weeks ago.

Kira pales. “Oh, Leah.” Her voice drips with pity and disappointment. “You didn’t.” Not a question. I don’t think the implication is that Leah is engaged to this man, but that he buys certain women trinkets.

“God no!” I stand up and grab the ring, plunging it on to the fourth finger of my right hand. It is too small but I try to avoid wincing. “Look, I bought it for myself, OK? A girl I was at school with got engaged, she’s the last of my old friends who was single. I treated myself.”

“To a twenty-grand diamond?” There is an edge of resentment in Kira’s voice. I’m assuming that writing about your husband’s masturbatory habits doesn’t pay as well as trashing your entire family does.

“Yes. Now can we move on, please?” The ring is cutting off my circulation but I will have to wait until they leave to remove it.