In the corridor outside Jelly’s dressing room – a dingy spot that in Vienna or Berlin would have been assigned to a broom rather than a soloist – Ulli watched Tovey watching Jelly, who was fluttering about like a scarlet-clad sparrow, embracing her family. Two little girls: who were they? Not hers? They couldn’t be; they adored her far too much for her to be their mother. Everyone received the same wild embrace from her, whether they were her close friends or unknown fans waiting for autographs. Great paprika-strong hugs, intense lingering handshakes, a smile that put the London Power Company to shame. And Tovey… Tovey was long married and settled, Ulli knew, but it was obvious to anyone with a sensitive eye – from his softened gaze, the gentleness with which he stooped towards her, the way he reached out to brush her wrist – that the professor might once have been head over heels in love with this woman. Time goes, passion with it, but the traces never quite vanish and sometimes the full feeling floods back as if to trick you. Tovey’s hands shook slightly when he returned Jelly’s hug, as if she were still the youthful violinist he had known in the century’s first decade. Her face powder left a pale streak along his dark lapel.

‘This is Ulrich Schultheiss, from Schott’s Music Publishers in Mainz,’ said Tovey to Jelly. ‘He is a grand fan of yours.’ And the whirlwind was upon him, Jelly grabbing his hand, and the current that coursed from her nearly jolted him off balance. He looked down into her face, stricken with vertigo. It was a very, very long time since this had last happened to him.

‘Darling, darling, you came all this way to hear me?’ she beamed. Did she preserve that accent deliberately, for its charm? If so, it worked.

He’d had a long day of travelling: the boat, the train, a taxi. Perhaps the giddiness was really from that… As if from a distance, he heard Tovey’s voice introducing him to someone else – Adila Fachiri, Jelly’s sister, and Adila’s husband, Alec; and one of the little girls was theirs, the other was Adila’s pupil, and an older girl, Jane, was the pupil’s sister, and a poised and strong-faced woman beside them was… good heavens, the pianist Myra Hess, who cast him an inscrutable stare; and they were inviting him back to their house for a party, a fair distance from his hotel, but he’d go, because now he couldn’t not.

‘I’m so glad,’ Jelly said. ‘I very much want to talk to you about something rather special.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Ulli was smiling like an idiot; he couldn’t help himself. ‘Tovey mentioned you have a… project… ’

*