‘Now, look,’ said Myra. ‘I’m going to go home and leave you to get some rest. That’s what you need most. Call me when you feel better.’

She gathered up her music into its case and gave Jelly a kiss. Jelly, immobile, watched her reach up for her raincoat on the stand, fasten it, then disappear into the day. There came a brightening of light as the front door opened, and a darkening as it closed behind her.

*

Jelly was lying on the music-room sofa an hour later, drifting in and out of consciousness, when she heard Adila’s step on the front stairs and the clink of a key in the lock. With Myra’s departure, her panic had quietened; she wept, then slept. And in that space of her awakening, through the brief clarity of her mind, something began to take shape. Something prompted by Myra’s words, reinforcing the review of Erik’s book in The Listener: an understanding that she’d always rejected because she relied on nobody more than her sister.

Adila’s certainty, her conviction – with Erik, of course – that the ‘glass game’ was all it seemed. Adila’s pride as she told everyone they had been receiving messages from Schumann. Adila bringing over the crassest of journalists to meet her at the book launch, convinced that only good could come of it. She meant to help; she was so genuine and guileless that she could see no alternative agenda to her own, whether or not it bore any relation to empirical fact. Had Jelly perhaps depended too much on her for guidance, and trusted to excess her confidence on daily matters and glass-game messages alike? She could stay silent; it would be kinder. Yet if she only wondered and worried, nothing would be aired, resolved or changed.

‘Myra’s been and gone?’ Adila surmised now, glancing at the open piano.

‘I’m not playing well, so she went home.’

‘Oh, what rubbish. She’s in a bad mood. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you.’

Jelly tried to begin her question, and faltered.

‘What’s the matter?’ Adila planted herself down beside Jelly.

‘Adi… Erik’s book review – ’

‘That bloody nonsense in The Listener?’

‘He said these messages might come from our subconscious, from things we’ve forgotten we knew.’

‘Rubbish. How would this reviewer man know? He wasn’t there.’

‘You were close to Onkel Jo. You lived in his house. Are you absolutely sure he never said anything to you about a Schumann violin concerto?’

‘I told you, he never said a word.’

‘But are you sure? Because perhaps he did, and you forgot.’

‘The first message didn’t come to me. It came to you.’

‘But supposing you told me, when I was still a little girl, and I forgot too? People do forget. Even Donald forgets sometimes. Look at Elisabeth and the trouble we’ve had with her forgetting.’