Jelly pored over the paper as the train bowled eastward, trying to explain the difference between claiming to have found, via spirit messages, a work that nobody knew existed, which she had not done, and finding and wishing to play a piece that she, personally, had not known about before, which was the reality of it. It should have been so simple, she mused, reading back her text. Why all the hysteria?

Once they’d disembarked at Paddington and were climbing into a cab, Alec ordered it not to Netherton Grove, but to Fleet Street.

‘The Times,’ he told her. ‘This letter is going straight in, if I have anything to do with it.’ He looked pale and tired and sounded short of breath, but his eyes were tender over his moustache. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Oh, Alec, you’re a wonderful, wonderful brother. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

‘Steady on, old girl.’ Alec peeled her arms away from his neck. ‘It’s all for the sake of world peace… I can’t make that a reality, but this is within my power. At least, I hope it is. Let’s get it over with, Sai, before you do something impossible, like growing up. I wouldn’t like to see that happen, not now.’

*

Jelly woke at 2am from a dream in which her wrists and ankles were enskeined in a web like a spider’s, but many times bigger. The more she struggled, the harder the fine threads cut into her flesh. Eyes open into the night, barely able to make out the shapes of her table, wardrobes and music stand, she could still feel the pain. It was real. It was back again. Part of her longed to give way, to let the web – and presumably its outsized spider – finish her off so that the agony would be gone for good.