‘She’s gorgeous,’ Kate breathed, peering over at Annie Chamberlain, swathed in pale violet silk. ‘Look at that dress.’

We took in fragments of conversation. There was much talk of the election and the downfall of Socialism, and of riots breaking up meetings of the New Party. Labour’s darling MP for Smethwick, carried on shoulders through the street after the 1929 election, dark and dashing with a red rosette, had soon fallen foul of the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. Oswald Mosley’s meetings in the Bull Ring were now broken up by hecklers, bottles and chairs flung into the crowd by irate members of the Labour Party.

‘Quite extraordinary, Mosley’s lot seem to be,’ a voice said. ‘Bunch of thugs. Fearful tribe.’

Oswald Mosley had become the bête noire, but of course the Tories weren’t complaining. I was fascinated by Mosley. He was so attractive. There was something diamond hard about him, and everything dark: his hair, clothes, heart, black and dangerous as a cobra.

‘Olivia?’ Daddy’s voice cut across the chatter of the guests. ‘Have you seen my girl? Where are you, Livy?’

I loved him so much I wanted to run into his arms, do anything I could to please him. My daddy, my handsome, adoring father. I was all to him, his kitten, his princess. He wanted to show me off in front of his friends. The piano. I felt my stomach lunge and buckle.

‘Olivia?’ Kate cried in alarm. I stood retching in the darkness behind the blossoms of buddleia, its drugging scent all around me. The guests couldn’t have noticed.

Wiping a spot of my mess from my shiny black shoe on to the grass, I walked from behind the leaves, standing up very straight.

Kate was big-eyed. ‘Here, drink this.’ She handed me her glass of ginger beer.

‘Been over-eating, Olivia?’ Daddy teased softly. He loomed over us both, immaculate in his evening dress. Kate beamed up at him. ‘Come on now, they want to hear you play.’

The piano was my passion. I knew I was good, brilliant perhaps. It was something I was sure of, deep in me. But my music was precious, intimate. I liked playing for myself, and for Kate, not for strangers. But I had to do it to make him happy.

A semi-circle of them were sitting, polite and expectant, in the drawing room, skirts carefully arranged, on chairs and on the sofa, some of the men standing and smoking, wafting the smell of it round the room. As I walked in and the talk lowered I could hear the ladies exclaiming to each other how pretty I looked, what a darling child.

I tried to pretend they weren’t there. I walked to the piano and sat down, closing my eyes for a second. But when I opened them I saw Kate had slipped into the room and was standing blushing by the door. I remember feeling aggravated by that. They weren’t looking at her, so why was she all tomato red?