Nick hovered in the doorway of my studio. ‘Where were you? You didn’t tell me you were going out today.’

‘No.’ I didn’t answer his question. Why should I? And how did he know I’d been out – the alarm system, I supposed.

Nick blinked. ‘Are you feeling alright?’

No, I wasn’t. I was discovering that my lover, the likely father of my child, had died shortly after I’d last seen him, driving a car into a tree on a clear and dry day. Maybe my fault? And his wife, his widow, had moved in next door to me and become my friend, and she was in all likelihood out to ruin my life, sending me slowly crazy with music and lights and dead things and words in the snow. I shuddered at everything I’d told her. Damian. You. All the ways we had deceived your wife, who turned out to be the very person I was talking to. My burning question was what she would do now. Would she tell Nick? Why hadn’t she already, if she knew who I was? What was Nora’s plan?

‘What about dinner?’ Nick said, plaintive.

‘I’m not very hungry. I had a massive lunch.’ I knew Nick had meant I should cook dinner for him, but I didn’t care. There was thrill as well as fear in pushing back on the rules, playing with fire. ‘Could you shut the door? There’s a draught.’ After a moment, Nick went out, closing the door with a little too much force. Part of me was scared, but part of me wasn’t. I was also going to cross another boundary by googling dangerous things while Nick was at home. Specifically, the background of Nora Halscombe, aka Eleanor Sullivan.

The piano had been a stroke of luck, because the first thing I found was that quiet, dowdy Nora had indeed once been a successful concert pianist. Back then, she played under the stage name Elena Vetriano. I found an old article about her in Classic Times, a sultry shot of her leaning over a Steinway in a red evening gown. Her hair was long and dark and shinier than a raven’s wing, her full lips slightly parted. The article praised her work ethic, her technical skill, which was ‘not surprising, given Ms Vetriano’s tragic past, a past she transmutes into musical ecstasy for the listener’. My ears pricked up. What tragic past? So Nora had gone by at least three names that I knew of. There must be one more. There must have been a name she was known as when she was born, when this ‘tragic past’ occurred. But how was I going to find it? I was sure she’d have done her best to cover it up.