“Quite sure. They were talking about it only last week. Right from the start they weren’t very enthusiastic about me pinning all my hopes on the cello. Music’s a high-risk profession! You can be sidelined very quickly. So imagine what they’ll think now… But don’t worry about me, I’ll be able to play music on special occasions, so there we are. You mustn’t let it upset you.”

She stroked my shoulder, as though I was the one who needed comforting.

“It was a great adventure, though, wasn’t it…?” she said.

I began to yell, as though she was deaf as well as blind.

“Don’t say that! Listen to me: I swear to you on … on Dad’s Panhard, and on the three musketeers too, I swear you’re going to pass the audition! I don’t know what we’re going to do or how we’re going to make it happen, but what I do know is that in four days’ time you’re going to play your piece and the judges will be in shreds for at least a month, just as people always are when they hear your music. The red carpet will be yours for evermore.”

She didn’t look convinced by this. But all the same, she said, “You’re sweet.”

Then we said goodbye, because she wanted to fetch her cello and get to her music lesson. I walked past the church and once more I felt an urge to go inside. To be honest, it wasn’t really my sort of place, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I took out a few coins and bought a candle. It shone gently when I lit it, with a slight warmth, and the smoke seemed to rise, coiling, somewhere up above.

By the time I got home I was done in. Dad thought I had a fever – at least thirty-eight degrees, in his opinion. He said anyone would think I’d buried both my father and the Panhard on the same day.

“You’ve got that look about you again, old mate – like someone who’s not cut out for happiness,” he said.

I didn’t even dare look at myself in the mirror. I wanted to blurt out the whole story, right from the very start, but I held back, because he might have thought the most sensible thing to do would be to tell Marie’s parents. Then it really would all be over: dead and buried with a five-star funeral!