Phyllis soon knew the routine of the Sage household well. A neat Spanish maid named Solacia came each day and stayed from midday until four, frequently bringing shopping with her. Early in September a coalman from Chessington delivered smokeless fuel. The man from Fortnum and Mason with the white fluffy dog in his van brought bottled water—Evian and Badoit—once a month, and on Tuesdays and Fridays at twelve o’clock a pupil arrived for a lesson: on Tuesdays a black tenor with a large vocal range rat-tat-tatted the knocker, and on Fridays a soprano with a celestial voice (and legs to match) rang the bell.

Subconsciously, Phyllis may have been intimidated by the superb voices at work inside, for she never thought to present herself for a lesson. She lost interest in modelling, took the job in Stratton Street, arranged to take her lunch break early, and fell into the habit of eating her lunch on the doorstep of the Sage residence, listening in on Tuesdays and Fridays. She didn’t start putting into practice what she overheard, and may never have, had not the soprano left her lesson early one day wearing a pair of soft-heeled shoes instead of the customary stilettos which tip-tapped across the parquet hall floor.

This time, with the soft-soled shoes and no warning, Phyllis was startled, and jumped to her feet, reaching the middle of the road before realising that the flask and its beaker were still sitting on the doorstep. Turning, she intended to retrieve them when she saw the soprano facing her. Phyllis froze, but the singer was so intent on stretching her tongue up to her nose and down to her chin in clockwise and anticlockwise rotations that she didn’t notice either the thermos or the flummoxed figure tempting fate in the middle of the road. Phyllis found herself imitating the palatal gymnastics on her way back to work, and realised that they were exercises to strengthen the tongue. As soon as she felt she was doing them correctly she practised religiously alone in the bathroom at home. She was soon doing other exercises that she overheard from the inner sanctum of the Sage residence.

Six weeks before Christmas both pupils disappeared and Phyllis, not realising that professional singers often take work in the provinces over the holiday (the soprano principal boy in Cinderella, the tenor the genie in Aladdin), began having serious withdrawal symptoms. She was prompted to send Miss Sage a Christmas card, stating that she had been a pupil of Miss Vincent and asking if she might call and say hello.

A few days later she received a reply on embossed Smythson’s notepaper; Imogen Sage would be at home for tea on Saturday or Sunday.

Phyllis decided on Saturday, as it was her monthly turn for the half-day at the office. She dressed that morning with a care that had been recently absent from her working life, choosing her fitted blue coat with tobacco-brown frogging and embroidered barrel buttons, and her brown Cossack hat. Phyllis never wore make-up, but she took a toothbrush to work, brushing her teeth—even scrubbing her tongue—in the cloakroom before she left the office. She whiled away an hour wandering around the park before buying a bunch of odorous rusty chrysanthemums from the flower man outside Green Park station, wondering what on earth she would say to Miss Sage as she slowly paced the route to number twenty-five that had become so much a part of her life.