It doesn’t matter how or why, because I would never invade my children’s privacy like that, but a week ago a tiny piece of rag, full of holes and no longer blue, was left, let’s say by me (it wasn’t me), in a hotel. It used to be a blanket. It is still known to us domestically as Blanket. It smells of off milk in that way that everything too fragile to wash eventually does. It has been with us for nearly 13 years. Nobody knows for how much longer it will be needed, but please don’t triangulate this information to get any clues as to the age of the child who cares for it so deeply.
We were in Portugal, me and two children whose privacy I would never invade. We had arrived at our second destination, passed a delightful day and came to around bedtime, when one said: “Where’s Blanket?” I replied: “You tell me – it’s your blanket.” And the other one said: “I told you he didn’t check his room.” And the first took on an expression of blind panic that I recognised from the time I drove out of a motorway service station forgetting the dog.
As the options unfolded, it was soon plain to me that we would never see Blanket again. It was probably too small to find, and anyone who did find it would immediately throw it out, preferably with tongs. “Sometimes when we lose things,” I started gamely, “subconsciously, it’s because we’re ready to lose them.”
Look, I am not the thought police, I wouldn’t press charges; but in that moment I would say he was ready to strangle me. This, I thought, is going to be a long holiday, and not in a good way. I emailed the hotel under the pressure of his hooded gaze, not because I thought there was any point doing so.
They found it. The staff at Quinta dos Poetas Nature hotel, already quite the destination because of its turtles, went through their rubbish, found a tiny piece of rag and got it back to us. Then the obligatory Tripadvisor review request came through, but I don’t know how to give a critical opinion on this kind of heroism. It would be like trying to give Superman a quarterly appraisal.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
