Her confidence grew. After Durham, she had four days to get her breath before Lincoln; then time to go home briefly before starting the southern route to Winchester, Salisbury, Chichester, the big day at Westminster Abbey, and finally Gloucester. She began to experiment. In Chichester she started by playing in the organ loft, then came downstairs for the Bach and only then noticed that the audience wasn’t packed only through the nave, but through every side-chapel and outside in the cloisters. The south was less harrowing, the concentration of poverty less intense; from Winchester, 75 per cent of the takings would go to the Northern Industries Workroom Council, where it was most needed, and the remainder to the unemployed of Hampshire.

English summers, though, were English summers, and cathedrals were difficult to keep warm when it rained – as it did, copiously. Before the concerts, while she paced about in the vestry, sometimes Jelly’s hands were so cold that the knuckles hurt as if she’d rammed nails into them. Her gowns might be simple, but the backs usually involved the fashionable plunge, exposing her shoulder blades to the chilly church air. Waking in hotels or deaneries the morning after, she would feel pain colonising her spine, arms and sacroiliacs as if injected while she slept. Everywhere her audience came up to thank her for giving them so much of her spirit. She fixed her smile, looked them in the eye and thanked them in return, while in truth she wanted to crawl away and howl. The spirit wasn’t the problem. It was her body that was wearing out.

July arrived. Jelly, aching and exhausted, was home at last with just two more concerts to go, sitting in a Chinese silk dressing gown on her bedroom floor surrounded by mounds of unopened correspondence. She felt she had scarcely enough energy to slit the envelopes, until she found one she really wanted. How I wish I could be with you for the Westminster Abbey concert, Tom wrote. Please don’t waste your time worrying about me. Go there and play wonderfully. That’s all I ask.

Jelly hunted for a handkerchief. There was one by her bed. She sat down to mop up, but a cricket bat of exhaustion seemed to swing into her face. Surely she could take just 15 minutes for a nap. Caesar found her there and jumped up to lick her face before settling by the crook of her knee.

Four hours later, Adila, who was joining her to perform in the Abbey, was less easy-going.

‘Sai! What’s going on? I’ll call the doctor.’

‘No, Adi, I just need to rest. Let me sleep.’ Jelly smiled at her sister, who leaned over and hugged her as if trying to transfer her overwhelming energy into Jelly’s delicate frame. She was in such pain that she could scarcely turn over.

*