Chapter 2: The Loosened A and His Hand Over Mine

Forty-four days.

I’d bought ivory silk knickers on Saturday in Kendal, from a shop with a bell over the door and a saleswoman who called me madam. For no one, I told myself at the till. For me. They cost more than I’d spent on underwear in the whole of the previous year, and on Thursday morning I stepped into them and stood in the dressing room feeling the silk settle against me like cool water, and knew exactly who they were for.

Grey wool trousers over them. A cream cashmere jumper. Pearls, because pearls look innocent.

I’d ordered the lever the Friday after his first visit. A T-handle tuning lever, star head, from a website that sold them to hobbyists and people who, presumably, had a reason. It arrived in a padded envelope and I hid it in my cello case, in the pocket where I used to keep spare strings, which felt either very clever or very symbolic, and I didn’t care to decide which.

I watched a tutorial on my phone with the sound off. A bearded man in Ohio, explaining pins and torque with enormous tenderness.

Monday night, after Edmund had gone up, I went down to the music room in the dark. The lake was a black sheet with a single light far out on it. I raised the lid a crack, found the A above middle C by counting with my fingertip, fitted the lever on the second of its three pins, and turned it anticlockwise.

A hair. Less than a hair.

My heart was going as if I’d robbed a bank. I struck the key very softly and there it was, faint and unmistakable. Wah-wah-wah. A small wrong breath inside a perfect note.

Tuesday morning Edmund played his scales and frowned at the ceiling as if the fault was up there. “Something’s off in the middle.”

“It’s the lake air,” I said. “Fergus always said it was murder on pianos. I’ll ring the nephew.”

I rang the number on the invoice. He answered on the second ring with the sound of an engine behind him.