In less than half an hour, it was over. Thomas Hardy, Tom’s favourite novelist, once wrote that experience is not as to duration, but as to intensity; the expression drifted into Jelly’s mind while she shook Adrian Boult’s hand, accepted the flowers that were brought to her, and swished her sweat-soaked dress, puffed sleeves and all, into a deep bow. Some of the audience were standing. She thought she could glimpse Anna at the side of the stalls, snow or none. She couldn’t see Tovey, though imagined he’d be holding forth to Alec, or the friend he had brought, in an enthusiastic mini-lecture about why Schumann chose to finish the piece with a polonaise. Nor could she see Adila; she’d be clasping Alec’s right hand with her left and Erik’s left hand with her right. Jelly could scarcely see at all, so blurred was her vision with tears of relief.

It was done. Now she could begin to let go.

*

Jelly ushered the throngs of well-wishers and autograph hunters out of her dressing room so that she could change before they went home for the party, for which Adila had been cooking these past three days. Through a tiny window she glimpsed falling snowflakes, generous clumps of them, sliding down from heaven to bless the earth. Her blood was rushing through her so fast that she could scarcely feel her feet touching the ground inside their sensible winter boots.

The rustling dress was back in its carrier, the room cleared of her make-up, violin case and enough bouquets to fill a greenhouse. Even within the hall’s corridors there lay a snow-hush, despite a Sibelius symphony blustering through from the distant stage, the music of winter.

At the artists’ entrance she paused in the doorway, sniffing the ice in the air, looking for Alec’s car. An eiderdown of snow sapped London’s colour: a red bus seemed filtered to black and white, a sepia wash of clouded night sky hovered over the sooty façades, while dark silhouettes hustled along Upper Regent Street, anonymous against the whitening pavement. Around her, could she feel the spirits of those who had lived and died and been reborn tonight? In the end, that was all there was: music and consciousness, both eternal.

‘Sai, quick! Out of the snow!’ came Adila’s cry, with the purring of the car engine.

Jelly looked back into the arc of the Queen’s Hall entrance, empty but for the ghosts of her concerts. What did it matter if she had lost the world premiere? That was no longer the point. Now, whatever lay ahead, she was ready. No certainty could be greater than the one she had attained.