‘But I thought newspapers were about reporting what happens, not about rubbishing it because people are too narrow-minded to listen.’

Adila passed her a fresh handkerchief. ‘They’ve got to fill those pages with something.’

‘But the world’s falling to pieces. Why pick on us?’ She scoured the reports for any mention of Anna; mercifully, there was none. ‘I can’t stop it being true just because it doesn’t suit them! We were there. We saw it. We experienced it. They weren’t. They didn’t. They know nothing.’

Jelly felt a pang of envy, glimpsing the closed bedroom door that protected Adila and Alec. She was accustomed to being alone, but last thing at night, exhausted and with her defences down, that weakness, a longing for love, might invade her. She refused to feel sorry for herself: she had chosen music over marriage, and, in the past, the dead over the living, so she must stand by her decision and manage without a human sanctuary. Her sister, though, could rely on an understanding husband with a sensible mind and a warm, embraceable body. Perhaps, thought Jelly, that was why Adila was so calm and strong: she was not facing this mess alone.

Just for a few minutes, she allowed herself to consider what might have happened if Ulli Schultheiss were in London – and not German, and not so much younger, and not an impossible target for her pathetic longing. That was a mistake; in the morning his image was still in her mind, with the remembered sound of the Schumann piece he’d played on their Bechstein, once, several years previously.

‘For God’s sake, just speak to him,’ said Adila, when Jelly confessed her preoccupation. ‘Book yourself an international call. It can’t make things any worse.’

The Fräulein Kammerling who answered the phone in Mainz explained that Ulli was away, attending a premiere in Berlin. A softness in her voice told Jelly that she understood more than she was saying.

‘May I give him a message, Fräulein d’Arányi?’

‘Please don’t worry – it’s not important. Thank you for your help, Fräulein Kammerling.’

How kind she sounded. Jelly thought of the acid that ate through the newspaper columns, moulding every German to the same image, no more real than the derisory caricatures of herself written by people who’d never met her, never heard her play and never attended a glass-game session, let alone one with Adila. Why do people think they know things that they don’t know, then crucify other people who do know those things – because they don’t want to know, because they are afraid of truths that would dent their own preconceptions?

‘I need to go out somewhere,’ she told her sister. ‘I need to make sure the world is still there.’

‘Don’t be alone. I can’t go with you, I have to teach, but why not call Myra?’

*