‘I shall insist.’ Ulli dared to reach out and twist one dark strand of Jelly’s bob around his forefinger. And with that ballerina-like tilt of her head and neck, she leaned her cheek towards his hand and rested it in his palm for a second, eyes closed, lashes lavish and dark against her skin. Relishing it. As if it might not happen again.

*

Outside Hurricane House they paused by the drive.

‘I should go,’ said Ulli. ‘I have to pack.’

He half hoped she would invite him in, half waited for her to do so, but he could hear the squeal of children playing inside the house, the strains of two violins – Adila was teaching – and there, peering out of an upstairs window next door, was a nosy neighbour. This was no time, even if it were the only time.

‘And so… goodbye, then.’

‘Only auf Wiedersehen. That’s the only German I know!’

‘Auf Wiedersehen, my dearest Jelly.’ Ulli clicked his heels and kissed her hand. ‘Promise me we stay in touch.’

‘Of course we stay in touch. And the Schumann. Please don’t forget about the Schumann?’

‘I promise you, Jelly, that even if it is years before we meet again, even if the world goes to hell around us, I will get hold of that Schumann concerto and you will play it. I swear to you on everything I hold sacred.’

Jelly laughed. ‘You sound like a Wagner opera!’

‘Perhaps, but it’s true. We will do this together.’

‘Our shared endeavour… ’ Jelly smiled as if a window had opened in her mind.

‘We will write, and sometimes we can even telephone. So, auf Wiedersehen, dear Jelly.’

‘See you then, Ulli.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

Chapter 9

As the year slid towards its end, Jelly wrote letters. To Anna in Scotland, telling her how much she missed her, and about Ulli and how no day went by without her wondering if she would meet him again. To Ulli, too; and in Mainz, once he had learned to decipher her bizarre handwriting, he wrote back. He told her he’d prompted Willy Strecker to contact his old friend Johannes Joachim, Elisabeth Joachim’s brother.

‘What’s the matter with Elisabeth?’ said Adila. ‘Why can’t she persuade her brother?’

‘She doesn’t want a fight with Eugenie Schumann,’ Jelly pointed out. ‘It’s not in her interests. But it is in Ulli’s, or at least in Schott’s. They’d sell masses of copies of the piano score and solo part; and they’d hire out the orchestral parts for performances and that would be worth a fair bit.’

The financial practicalities of the concerto’s existence had clearly never occurred to Adila, paling for her beside the significance of the spirit messages; yet to Ulli, the latter were clearly of no concern whatever. Jelly, caught in the middle, mulled it over while she practised.

*