Across the street, a couple stops on their walk and stands, looking past me and up at the open music-room window.

I take each step as quietly as I can. I will the front door not to creak. The inner door is open already, as is the door to the music room.

Lacy is playing from memory. She has her back to me. Her pyjama top swishes as she throws herself from one bow movement to another, swinging the cello like a dance partner, then dropping back, gliding the bow delicately, finding melancholy, swaying, feeling each moment. Her shoulders lift, her stroke finds more force for the final notes, her bow swings away. And she’s done. She hangs the bow by her side, exhales.

She turns around, glances over her shoulder. ‘Oh. Didn’t know you were there.’

‘You weren’t supposed to know. I wanted to be the audience.’ I can feel my heart, beating hard in my chest. ‘That’s nothing like when other people play it. You know that, don’t you? Not the people round here. Suck on that, Yo-Yo Ma.’

‘Ha.’ She swivels, so that she’s sitting side on, her cello beside her, against her thigh. ‘Well, it’s the Elgar, so Jacqueline du Pré, maybe. I was doing her fingering.’ She takes the neck of the cello as if she’s about to arm-wrestle it. Her ring finger trembles on a string. It’s a du Pré move. Lacy’s shown me the video, du Pré and Barenboim when du Pré was young and well. ‘But, yeah, suck on that.’ The veins on her forearm stand out like cords. ‘How’s your new BFF?’

‘Not finding the move easy. Still . . .’ I’m trying to find the best way to put it. ‘She’ll get there.’

She nods. ‘I came in here. I saw the case. The one I stepped on. I saw the styrofoam and the way you’d tidied it up.’

It’s in a dustpan. I swept the beads up after breakfast, but left the pan and brush on the floor. Still hoping, maybe.

‘Sorry, I should have finished. I should have binned it.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .’ She stops herself. ‘I thought of you, running around last night, doing anything to make it better when I was losing it. Anything. You down on your knees, cutting that seam, telling me it’d be okay.’ She taps the floor with her bow, without knowing she’s doing it. ‘I went to print something this morning. On your laptop.’ She watches me, waits. The grief counsellors – that’s the page I had open. ‘I thought the first one looked good.’

‘I thought so too.’