Vivienne turned to me with a beatific smile. “See how music can touch the soul?” She touched my arm. “Look. You have goose bumps, too.”

I looked at the pin-sized bumps along my forearm.

“I’m just cold, that’s all.”

I saw her stiffen. I knew I’d hurt her. I couldn’t bear her hope for me. I wanted to crawl away unnoticed. She wanted me to say, Yes, I felt it too. I know exactly what you mean. But I was quite certain that what I had experienced was not transcendence. I had felt dizziness and nausea. Nothing like the way she’d looked, that foreign expression of ecstasy that had felt too intimate to witness.

“Sorry.” I’d sneezed on her. I started wiping her jacket with my sleeve, but she waved me away.

“Just clean up your nose. Take one of these.” She pulled two tissues out of her purse, one for me and one for herself. As she carefully dabbed at her jacket, I could see that she was trying to manage a smile, but the effort made her look sad and a little exasperated. I said again that I was sorry.

“All right, Audrey,” she said, not looking at me as she pressed the tissue against her sleeve. “Never mind.”

We sat silently as the car climbed the steep, winding hill to Matilda Hospital, the crab cufflinks nestled snugly inside a small box wrapped in silver (not by Vincent Liu, not that I cared, but I still made sure I was the one who held it). With each bend and curve we left a little more of the city behind. Blotchy, low-rise apartment complexes and glowing supermarkets and filling stations gave way to lines of close, bending trees; a small, grey-tiled school for girls; a Spanish-style villa behind iron gates; more conspiratorial trees. The low engine drone made my skin hum and sent strange signals to my brain. We took another bend and passed a jogger, a fair Caucasian man in a t-shirt and thick white trainers. We took another bend and saw a young Filipina maid being pulled uphill by a large, salivating Doberman. We took another bend. My head felt muddy, and that dreadful swirling started again in my chest. I felt sick and sorry for myself.