Clara had made a sponge cake, which Jelly enjoyed with gusto after her journey; at the kitchen table they chatted about family matters and life at Hurricane House. Jelly had to break the news to the Toveys that things at home were not what they had been. Soon the house would feel emptier than she had ever known it. Caesar, their beloved fox terrier, had passed away in his basket at a ripe old dog age of 15. And to her distress and Adila’s, Alec had decided that in September Adrienne, who was nearly 12, must be sent away to school. They were dreading it, for much of the house’s internal sunshine came from the lively, lovely girl who wasn’t so little any more, yet was still small enough for them to spoil. The school was far away in Somerset.

‘Alec won’t hear a word against it,’ Jelly said, confessing her misery. ‘He wants to get her out of London, in case there’s… trouble.’ Alec was convinced there would be another war with Germany.

‘That’s sensible, you know – and besides, she has to grow up sooner or later,’ Clara pointed out, cutting more cake. ‘Before you know it she’ll be writing you chirpy letters about lacrosse and sponge pudding.’

‘Do you think there will really be a war?’ Jelly asked.

The moment of silence before Clara said, ‘Let’s pray that there may not be,’ spoke louder than her response.

While Jelly and Clara talked, Tovey sloped away into the drawing room with the Schumann score. They could hear him humming and singing out loud to himself as he read through it at the piano.

‘Go on, Jelly,’ Clara said. ‘You’re itching to go and play it, I can see. Don’t worry, I won’t eat all the cake while you’re gone.’

*

Tovey launched into the first movement at exactly the pace Jelly wanted. Despite the pain and stiffness in his fingers, the music took wing: she was hearing it at last as it should sound, full of energy and great generous sweeps of Schumannesque heroism. She hadn’t told him that what he read of her violin part in the piano score might not be precisely what he heard; she and ‘Schumann’, together, via the glass game, had tweaked at some 200 bars, dotted about through the piece. Tovey kept going, lost in the music, his face ablaze with the thrill. Halfway through the slow movement, she noticed he was also blinking aside tears. Whether they were for the music, the long-desired playing of it, or the passing of time and of life, she couldn’t tell.