The telephone rang. Jelly started so violently that her tea splashed onto her lap. A few moments later, the bespectacled figure of Myra’s assistant, Anita, appeared at the French windows: ‘Myra, I’m afraid it’s a newspaper person… ’

‘Thank you, dear – I’ll deal with it.’ Myra strode off to the hall.

‘Yes?’ came her distant voice, while Jelly mopped up the spilled tea with a napkin. ‘Yes, this is Myra Hess. Who’s that? What is this about?’

No, Jelly pleaded silently. Not here, too.

‘Have I spoken to whom?’ Myra put on her crystalline schoolmistress voice. ‘No, I have not.’

Jelly stilled, listening.

‘I have no knowledge of spirit worlds,’ said Myra. ‘Frankly, I find our present world quite bothersome enough… Jelly d’Arányi? No, I have not spoken to Jelly d’Arányi… That’s as may be, my dear fellow. But I do not know anything about this matter, and I cannot help you. Goodbye.’

‘Myra, you’re an angel,’ said Jelly.

‘Don’t worry.’ Myra, returning, patted her shoulder. ‘Everything will be fine.’

Jelly thought of Anna coughing blood on the station stairs; of Tom, slipping from one world into the next; of Tovey – much younger – pacing through Oxfordshire with Onkel Jo. George, auburn hair scraped back, painting walls gold and black in the Yeatses’ Oxford apartment. Bartók and Elgar, eating her up with their eyes while she played; all her years of concerts and premieres and fame and – how had it come to this? All that interested anybody was whether she believed she had been in touch with the spirit of Schumann – and if she did, it meant she was a liar, when she was not. Had everyone forgotten the cathedral tour? Had everyone forgotten Tzigane? Why must everything come down to this one bizarre incident?

‘I must go home,’ she said. ‘I am so tired.’

*

There, another disappointment awaited her.

‘Ulli telephoned,’ said Adila. ‘He says he will try again, but he’s writing to you in any case.’

‘I missed him?’ Jelly despaired.

‘He said I should tell you to concentrate on the music and don’t worry about anything else.’

It was just the sort of message Tom would have left. Jelly could see in Adila’s eyes that she had thought of that too.

Another sleepless night, more ringing of phones, more letters on the doormat. Adila opened and filtered them.

‘Head cases.’ She crumpled one and tossed it backwards over her shoulder. ‘Either they poke fun at spirit messages, or they say they’ve had them too. There’s not much in between.’

Jelly scoured the envelopes for any sign of Ulli’s writing. Nothing. Were letters from Germany being delayed by censors, perhaps? At their end, or in Britain too?