This time I was sure the knock was at the front door. There was nothing left to say anyway, so I put the phone down and strode up the hall, plucking the door back to find no one there. Naked wisteria twigs tapped the glass like fossilised antennae; a breeze shivered through the trees and the few tenacious leaves left trembled gently. Digby shot out between my feet but I called him back uneasily, locking the doors before drawing every set of curtains in the cottage. I struggled with the broken blind in the kitchen for a bit, peering out into the gloom, wishing now that I’d had it fixed when I’d meant to. Tomorrow I’d go back to Greenwich, safely home to my father.

* * *

I tried to ring Bel, but God alone knew what time it was in Australia and she didn’t answer. I had a long bath and then lit the fire, and made some potato puree to go with the turbot, though I really wasn’t hungry. I took the plate into the sitting room and pushed the food around in front of a rerun of Parkinson until he introduced a simpering Renee to join the indomitable Billy Connolly. I pulled a face and put some Bach on instead, opening the bottle of wine I’d been trying to resist. I lay on the sofa nursing my glass, pondering my strange new life, until the final movement jogged to a close.

As I went to change the CD the muslin cloth caught on the belt of my jeans and slithered down from the piano. I untangled myself, and then, on a whim, I pulled the whole thing off, the swirling dust cloud making me cough. I ran a finger across the polished oak of the lid and then tentatively I opened it and, still standing there, played a note, and then one more. The wisteria tapped against the windowpane again as, slowly, very slowly, I sat down on the stool, and my fingers were cold and stiff but I slid up a scale and down again, and then I started to play. Instinctively I played Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and at first I was rusty, hitting the wrong notes as my fingers slowly unfurled after all these years, like they’d been clamped in tight cat claws – but after a while I began to feel like I’d never stopped.

The lights went off. My right hand shot out inadvertently in shock and hit the high keys as my gasp reverberated round the room – a gasp that sounded like the sea being sucked over shingle. And then it was silent and utterly dark as the piano notes died slowly.