In the pantry she found a basket of potatoes, onions, mushrooms and a cauliflower, plus some home-baked cake in a tin, made with what Adila called ‘desecrated coconut’, and on one shelf stood half a loaf of bread and a box of a dozen eggs. From the food saver – a silverish box that squatted by the pantry sink with a tray of ice and water at the bottom – she took out the butter and spread a little across two pieces of bread, which she cut meticulously into soldiers. She found a small pan on the shelf next to the stove, filled it with water and popped an egg into it. When everything was working, she stood watching the egg bobbing up and down in the bubbles.

Jelly wasn’t sure how long an egg needed to boil – about four minutes, she thought. Did it start to cook before the water was actually boiling? You couldn’t open an egg to see how it was doing, then put it back for longer. Her wristwatch had no second hand, so she ran upstairs to the hall to time it by the one on the painted face of Alec’s family’s grandfather clock. It was wrong too, of course. Every clock in the house told a different time.

Downstairs, the water was dancing in the pan and the egg’s shell had split, letting out some of the white. Jelly, resigned, fished it out and settled at the table to enjoy the messy yet welcome result of her endeavour.

*

The morning dawned foggy and Jelly found it difficult to wake up, having been more exhausted by Anna’s collapse than she’d realised. Between sleeping and waking, though, she found an idea coming into focus. She wondered why such things so often took shape in the morning, out of dreams. She did not, after all, ‘only play for rich people’.

Adila was downing coffee. Jelly pulled on her raincoat, tied a light scarf over her hair and fetched her violin case. ‘I’m going to see Anna in hospital.’

‘With your violin?’ said Adila.

‘Definitely with my violin.’

*

In the smog, London had sunk into slow motion. This stinking murk would surely be enough to give anyone consumption; it was like breathing in days-old porridge. After deciding to walk the last stretch, Jelly, looking down, could see only a suggestion of her own feet. When she rounded a corner and spotted the red-brick blocks of the hospital, she slowed further, wondering if they would allow her to carry out her plan.