For three weeks, someone had been eating Nadia's lunch. It always disappeared between ten and noon, while she was in meetings on the fourth floor. Each time, it left an empty container exactly where she had put it, as if the thief wanted her to notice.
整整三周，一直有人在吃娜迪娅的午饭。饭总是在十点到中午之间不见的，那时她正在四楼开会。每一次，那人都会把空饭盒留在她放饭盒的原位，仿佛是想让她注意到。
At first, she assumed it was a simple mix-up. The office fridge was crowded, and plenty of containers looked alike. However, she started writing her name on the lid in thick marker, and the food kept vanishing anyway. Someone, she decided, must have known exactly which one was hers.
起初，她以为只是简单的弄混了。办公室的冰箱很挤，很多饭盒长得都差不多。可是，她开始用粗记号笔把名字写在盒盖上，饭还是照样消失。她断定，一定有人清楚地知道哪一盒是她的。
Nadia mentioned it to Owen, who worked two desks away and had a habit of noticing things other people missed. "If I were you," he said, "I would set up a small camera." He suggested nothing dramatic, just something to record the fridge door for a day. She borrowed one from the security office and wedged it behind a jar of pickles.
娜迪娅跟欧文说了这件事。欧文坐在隔两张桌子的地方，有个习惯，总能注意到别人错过的东西。“要是我，”他说，“我会装一个小摄像头。”他的建议并不夸张，只是录一天冰箱门的情况。她从保安室借来一个，把它塞在一罐腌黄瓜后面。
The next afternoon, she watched the footage with Owen leaning over her shoulder. A woman from the finance team opened the fridge at eleven. She looked at Nadia's container for a long moment, then closed the door and walked away empty-handed. Ten minutes later, a maintenance worker in a grey uniform came in and checked a clipboard. He removed several containers, including Nadia's, and dropped them into a bin marked for expired food.
第二天下午，她看着录像，欧文俯身在她肩后。十一点，财务部的一位女士打开了冰箱。她盯着娜迪娅的饭盒看了好一会儿，然后关上门，空着手走了。十分钟后，一位穿灰色制服的维修工人走进来，查看了一块写字板。他拿出几个饭盒，包括娜迪娅的那个，扔进了一个标着“过期食品”的垃圾桶。
It turned out that Nadia's floor had switched cleaning contractors that month. The new company had been told to clear any unlabeled or expired-looking items every day at eleven, a policy nobody had explained to the staff. Her name on the lid hadn't helped. The worker had been told to check dates, not names, and her container's sell-by sticker still said it was two days old.
原来，娜迪娅所在的楼层那个月换了保洁承包公司。新公司接到的指示是：每天十一点清理所有没有标签或看起来过期的东西，而这项规定没有人向员工解释过。她写在盒盖上的名字根本没起作用。那位工人被告知要查看日期，而不是名字，而她饭盒上的保质期标签还显示它已经放了两天。
If Nadia had simply asked the cleaning staff on day one, she realised, she would have saved herself two weeks of quiet suspicion. Instead, she had spent that time imagining a rival at the office, when the truth was only a memo that had never reached her.
她意识到，要是第一天就直接去问保洁人员，她就能省下两周悄悄的猜疑。可她却把那段时间都花在想象办公室里有个对头上，而真相不过是一份从未送到她手里的通知。
She peeled off the old sticker and wrote the date in marker instead of just her name. Then she left a short, polite note taped to the fridge door, explaining the mix-up to whoever read it next.
她撕下旧标签，用记号笔写上了日期，而不只是名字。然后，她在冰箱门上贴了一张简短而礼貌的便条，向下一个看到的人说明这场误会。
