Jelly’s old teacher, Jenő Hubay, took Gypsy songs and made them into concert arrangements, following in Brahms and Joachim’s footsteps. Hejre Kati was more than a little bit suggestive, but the audience in the Savoy didn’t need to know that. Jelly invited them all with the sweetness of her sound, then snapped into the fast section, and Bernhard at the piano laughed aloud as he played. For the length of this piece, they could all share the present and rediscover the zest for living that they’d lost, or forgotten, or put on hold. Rushes of cool air betrayed the door opening and reopening; dark figures milling towards them, closer than before as the room surged with listeners, and Jelly wanted to hug them all; she sent her embrace into her music and hoped they could hear it there. They whirled the piece to its end and she whisked her bow up into the air with a shout.

Applause crashed back at her, and she couldn’t see the Savoy any more for the people inside it, some still with snowflakes melting on their lapels, hats cradled under their arms while they clapped. How many? Several hundred, surely? How had the Savoy accepted this? How on earth – ?

‘Jelly, my dear,’ came a familiar tone, and there, elbowing his way forward, was Sir Adrian Boult himself. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

‘I could ask you the same thing, darling,’ Jelly cried, pressing his hand. ‘This is Sir Adrian Boult, the great conductor,’ she shouted to the crowd. ‘We perform together next week, at the Queen’s Hall!’

‘We will all be there to hear you,’ came a reply from somewhere in the throng, and Jelly, remembering Erik reporting a spirit message of those very words before Westminster Abbey, laughed aloud.

‘I was just having a quiet dinner with my wife, Ann,’ Boult told her, ‘when I heard a violin sound that seemed strangely familiar. I’d know your tone anywhere, Jelly. Now, I don’t know what you’re up to, playing here, my dear, but you’re extremely pale. Have you eaten?’

‘No,’ Jelly beamed. ‘I’m far too busy.’

‘You can tell me all about it in a little while. Come and join us for dinner, I beg of you.’

Jelly bent to put the Bergonzi back into its case. As she straightened up, the room began to fill with odd, dancing grey dots. She had just enough consciousness left to wonder how they got there.

*

When she came round, she was in her bedroom and a first-aider from the St John’s Ambulance Brigade was rubbing her right hand, which ached, but for once in a good way. Boult was pacing up and down near the window and the manager of the Savoy himself was beside the bed, asking her how she was feeling.