“Given some of them help, too,” Miss Sage was saying. “Most of them only need reassurance—such babies they are, opera singers. Mind you, they have to be a little crazy to do what they do, if you think about it.” Phyllis smiled. She had. “Yes,” Miss Sage continued.” They all came to see Imo, at one time or another—so close to the Garden, you see. And we were a soft touch, always ready to drop everything and jump in a cab to go down the Strand.”

“We?”

“Doctor Punt and me. He was the throat specialist. Me with my exercises, he with his spray. We always got them through. somehow or other.” She gave another modest smile.

“Oh, it’s so nice to have a visitor. More tea?” She poured from the old silver teapot, which reflected the firelight, and Phyllis inhaled the tarry aroma from the steam.

“Now don’t let me do all the talking, or I’ll scare you away. Tell me about you.”

And so Phyllis, warm and secure in the company she had longed for, unwrapped her secret. And Miss Sage listened as only one trained in the art of listening can.

She heard how something had always been missing from Phyllis’s life, a piece which somehow kept the puzzle incomplete; even the woman she shared her body with didn’t fill this gap. Relief came when she sang, but it was temporary, and the need for this relief was held in check by her intense fear of performing. She spoke of having no defined ambition, of not being fuelled by potential fame or fortune. Her desire was resolution.

As her heart told its story, she became aware of an exquisite fragrance on the very edge of her senses. It appeared to be without source, and like nothing she had ever smelled before. It had the richness of a deep rose and the freshness of new-mown hay.

A cosy silence followed.

Miss Sage switched on some lamps and drew the curtains. Sitting in her carpet chair, Phyllis heard kitchen tinkerings through the open Victorian doors, and Imo returned with fresh tea, crumpets and a toasting fork. Phyllis took the iron fork and knelt in front of the fire, browning the spongy griddle cakes a safe distance from the heat, and passing them to her hostess for buttering. Miss Sage had a taste for tangy things, and the butter from Mont Saint Michel was salty to Phyllis’s palate. She crunched while she toasted, her hair lit by the flames, and Miss Sage, regarding the intent figure, was only aware of the halo around her head.

“You see, my dear,” began Miss Sage to the halo, “the voice is a unique thing. Darwin thought the throat area was the last remaining characteristic that humans have kept from their time as birds. Singing is our most natural expression. Which is why we feel good when we sing. But my own feeling is that the voice is a precious instrument, because it makes visible something which is invisible, namely the breath, and proves that something exists of which we are conscious, but the source of which no one knows.