In his hotel, Ulli was still awake, experiencing a form of turmoil that he’d prided himself on having avoided for a long while.

His former fiancée, Lotte, led him on for four years – now the engagement was on, now it was off. Now she was after someone else, usually richer than he was; then she arrived back at his doorstep, hair in her eyes, wanting to weep on his shoulder; and each time she put him down only to pick him up again, he loved her still more.

He visited her one evening and found her running a fever, but walking her dog. The next day he arrived at the same time to find the house plunged into mourning. Lotte – with whom he’d fully intended to spend the rest of his life, even if she was impossible – had been carried to a better world by a lethal strain of pneumonia.

The shock floored him for months; after that it lingered. His mother needled him to tell her how he was coping, but he never spoke of it. If he felt lonely, he played the piano: the necessary concentration let him think of nothing else. The rest of the time he worked hard, keeping his mind occupied. His colleagues valued his devotion to the firm; he loved the company and the composers he couldn’t help considering ‘his’, even if they were really Ludwig and Willy’s. Taking calls from Richard Strauss or Igor Stravinsky, proofreading their new works, often becoming one of the first to play their pieces through, in private at his piano, he could still flourish in his natural habitat. He dined with Willy and his family once every week, and with Ludwig in the Biergarten once every other week. Every two Sundays he took a train out to the village to see his mother. Life was good. Yes, the Nazis held power and the Depression held sway, but he was employed, in his dream job, and he gave thanks for that every day in his prayers. Things must change if he could only hold on long enough…