Sandi, her hands full with enquiries, suggests that the time might be ripe to take on a couple of assistants and establish Simmonds Inc. in a vacant shopfront on 57th Street, opposite Carnegie Hall. I accept her proposal with alacrity and relief, glad to remove an outsider from the heart of our firm while retaining her eagerness, expertise and uncorseted goodwill. Sandi becomes chief executive of Simmonds Inc. (USA), renouncing (in an Edgar-drafted letter) all shares and entitlements in Simmonds (Symphonic Scores and Concerts) Ltd. She is gone from our story, her catalytic function fulfilled.

Myrtle’s relief is conveyed by a cocked eyebrow and the immediate reallocation of Sandi’s London space to a new publicity director. She points out that I now employ more people than my father did at his peak – eight more – and with greater focus and efficiency. Our growth is controlled, in every sense of the word. Work is kept in check, never being allowed to overwhelm us as it did my parents. Myrtle and I have time to travel to exotic destinations, to read, to share. We will never spend another summer in a deadly Swiss resort.

All of this fills me with an immense satisfaction, a satisfaction so great that it almost vindicates my wasted years and obliges me to reassess, da capo, the assumptions on which my previous life was lived. Losing Dovidl a second time has granted me a second life. Could it be that he destroyed the first? Is it conceivable that he was, from the day he arrived, a malignancy that blighted my youth and condemned me to subservience? The thought is heretical enough to keep me awake through two miserable nights.

Consider, I urge myself over a milky dawn cocoa, how your life might have proceeded had he not invaded it. In two or three years, I would have overcome puppy-fat, beaten up Johnny-Isaacs-next-door and emerged from social isolation. In another four or five years, I would have brazened my way into bed with the maid and brainstormed to Cambridge. Admired and loved by my parents, I would have nursed my mother back to health from menopausal depression. In time, I would have inherited the firm and taken it to greater heights, or dominated a different field of endeavour, lucrative or contemplative. In short, I would have enjoyed a rewarding existence, coping with ups and downs like every other competent and reasonably fortunate adult.