‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Adi, is it Ulli? Did he phone again?’ Despite the message he had left, there had been no sound – and no letter. She felt distraught. Something must have happened to him, and in Germany that could mean anything.

‘Sai… ’ Alec got up and came over to Jelly to press both her shoulders. ‘It’s Yehudi. He’s going to play the Schumann in London. Erik has just heard about it.’

The shock struck like a missile. ‘Has Boult cancelled mine?’

‘No, no, you will play it. But he will play it too. A little after you, with a different orchestra.’

‘But – when? As soon as next season?’

‘As soon as – oh, Sai. Three weeks after you.’

‘Where?’

‘In the Queen’s Hall as well.’

As if they were simply ignoring her existence. As if the hall, the promoter, perhaps the audience, had all decided she didn’t count. Let’s indulge the silly little woman and her spirit messages and let her play it first. And afterwards we’ll have the real premiere.

Everybody’s darling Yehudi. First he played the Schumann with piano accompaniment at Carnegie Hall in New York; then a couple of weeks later with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra at their home venue. He was making the Schumann Concerto his comeback work, when it was supposed to be hers. With less than two months until her own performance – confirmed for 16 February 1938, nearly three months after the German airing – a chasm appeared in Jelly’s mind, like a lightning bolt in a tree. In her bedroom mirror, her reflection stared at her with furrows in her forehead that she’d not noticed before, a line across the top of her nose that was definitely new. Her elbow fired bolts of pain along her arm. What would Ulli think if he saw her now? What would Elgar say, or Ravel, or Holst? Muses are not supposed to go grey, or to develop wrinkles, or to suffer from arthritis. Muses are young, beautiful and perfect.

Like Yehudi. An artistic photo in the press showed a youth almost too handsome for his own good: those long eyelashes shielded fine-shaped eyes and the high cheekbones supported the glow of youthful skin above his violin. That was a muse. And if one muse grew old and ill and crumbled, there’d always be another ready to slide into his, or her, place.

*

Erik rang their doorbell one Sunday lunchtime shortly before Christmas, when they were just back from Mass – arriving alone, unannounced and unexpected. Before Adila could quiz him, embracing her with one arm and Jelly with the other, he declared, ‘I have some news for you. I’ve resigned. Soon I shall no longer be the Swedish minister.’ Adrienne, home for the holidays, gasped aloud, then clapped a hand over her mouth.