He reached forward to shake it, but before she could step away her hand was pulled closer and placed on the soft, synthetic fleece of the pouch. She could feel it, gently pulsing between her fingers. Had to force her eyes away from the subtle stretching and contracting of the fabric back to the man’s face. He seemed to be watching her earnestly.

‘She was kicking,’ he said. ‘I think she wanted to say hello to you.’

He smiled, openly this time.

‘Goodbye,’ Eva managed, pulling her wrist from his grip and backing away.

At home, after a busy Tube ride and an empty train journey out of the city, Eva sat at her piano and rested her fingers over the keys. For the first time in a long time, it was the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week and there was nothing that she had to do. She didn’t even have a plan. The book was open at the Adagio of Mozart’s D major sonata, but she didn’t start to play. The instrument had intricate carvings in the wood, swirls and leaves outlined on either side of the front panel.

There had once been silk behind the carvings, so she’d been told – delicate handmade silk from China, from the nineteenth century. The attachments for the candleholders were still visible, though the candleholders themselves had been lost years before she inherited it. Her mum claimed that her great-grandfather had been given the piano as a gift from the tsar, but it was hard to know when to believe what Avigail Goldsmith said. She’d enjoyed her mysteries. It was old, though. You could tell, from looking at it, from the feel of the wood, the way the pedals didn’t work, the sticking of the notes because the felt had long since rotted away. There was no value to it at all now. The world was full of old, broken pianos. Nevertheless, as she started to play, she smiled at the distinctive, incorrect sound that it made.

Walking into the kitchen that evening, the last rays of sun reaching the windowsill, she switched on the radio more out of habit than for any particular programme. The voices in the background kept her company while she cooked, though today they felt intrusive in her kitchen. She chopped an onion coarsely, turned on the hob to heat some oil.