‘Try the truth for a change. They won’t love you any the less for bringing home a million dollars.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘I don’t think you have that luxury. You have legal obligations to my firm, quite apart from a moral debt to my family. Should you be foolish enough to try to evade them a second time, I will take steps to ensure that your wife and children are introduced to your interesting past: the clubs, the whores, the betrayal, the theft of a violin. A mysteriously well-researched article will appear in the Jewish Chronicle on the fortieth anniversary of your disappearance. A Daily Mail reporter will turn up on your doorstep. Must I elaborate? It would be a terrible chilul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. The yeshiva will never live it down.

‘On the other hand, when you make your appearance as the vanished virtuoso rabbi on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Musikvereinsaal in Vienna, fearlessly scaling the summits of European culture without concession to its corruptions, you will be fulfilling a kiddush Hashem, sanctifying the Holy Name with a fusion of piety and art. You will be a credit to your faith, vindicating by way of bonus the final wish of your last mentor, the Rosh yeshiva. Those are the binary alternatives – it’s not much of a choice, is it?’

He squeezes past me and, without another word, clambers into the driver’s seat and revs us back on the road to town, his jaw clenched. As he drops me off around the corner from my hotel he asks, ‘How long have I got?’

‘Until Friday morning,’ I reply, ‘I shall need an answer before I go back to London. I’m catching the nine-seventeen.’

‘I’ll come by tomorrow before lunch,’ he suggests.

‘Thank you, Dovidl,’ I say sweetly. ‘I am sure we can work something out.’

Bristling with vigour, I march into the lobby, pick up my room key, no messages, and take the stairs two at a time, whistling the main theme from the Bruch concerto. So much to do, so little time. I phone the Albert Hall just before close of business to confirm the booking. I call a colleague to check current rates for orchestral sessions. I alert a printer that I am about to place a large order for handbills and programmes, and then obtain competitive quotes from two others. A quick doodle on the bedside telephone pad tells me I can clear a hundred grand on the first concert alone, assuming a seating capacity of five thousand. Then there will be radio and recording rights, possibly television, Sky the limit. These tasks accomplished, I pour myself a double malt from the mini-bar and run a deep bath, the better to contemplate my magnificent future.