EXTRACTS FROM THE BEGINNING:

Georgina was ever the optimist. She was immune to Chance, and would like to think she could treat those two imposters Triumph and Disaster just the same (though she hadn’t yet had enough of Triumph to fully test the hypothesis). When bad things happened, she put up, shut up and got on with the job, whatever it might be. She believed in making the best of it, refusing to tolerate unhappiness of any kind. In this spirit she had sailed through the ups and many downs of her career; and almost as smoothly braved the death of her mother and then her father, and in between these commonplace tragedies, weathered the nasty dose of breast cancer fate had thrust upon her.

She had been a positive kind of person for as long as she could remember, long before emerging into adulthood from a peaceful and protected childhood in the middle of this prosperous rainwashed country of ours. Perhaps it was an overhang from her parents’ generation, with their stiff upper lips and Dunkirk spirit. Or perhaps it was a result of her privileged character-forming education. Or perhaps it was the character she’d been born with, written indelibly into her genes.

Her career was no cause for regret. She had used her talents and her time on more important things, such as family and friends; and if it was true that she’d wasted them, well it was her own fault, on the whole. The deaths of her parents were regrettable but unavoidable events which had happened at about the usual time – you can’t expect to live half a century without losing someone you love. And she told herself that the cancer was a useful and necessary wake-up call, emphasising that she must enjoy every second of however may seconds were left to her. If she hadn’t had cancer she wouldn’t be taking such good care of herself, and if one had to get cancer, hers was definitely the best cancer to get. Furthermore, if it was her destiny to die sooner than she wished, well she’d had a happy childhood, wonderful schooldays and a jolly nice life, and no-one could ask for more than that.

There were other things, however, that she did not so readily understand.

She didn’t understand why her son Charlie had decided to live with Jim, his father, or why her daughter Joni had chosen such a bland and uninteresting boy to go to Peru with, and then been so angry at Georgie on the day she left; not realising that the five months before they would see each other again was a gaping chasm of time, assuming of course that they would see each other again, which none of them could take for granted. After that she would go to University, and things would never be the same again. It was a point Joni had incomprehensibly missed.

She didn’t understand why the architect firm whose reception she had organised for over ten years had ‘let her go’ while keeping the assistant she had herself interviewed and chosen. Was this last-in-last-out policy fair or usual? And why was fate so wayward that Georgie had received the news of her dismissal two little weeks after her father’s funeral, and on the same day as her boyfriend or whatever else you could call him – the man in her life, though he wasn’t a man in Kipling’s sense of the word; the companion, though he was a bit more than that; the friend, though he had behaved in a rather unfriendly manner throughout all five years of their friendship (if that’s what you were calling it); the lover who hadn’t loved her very often; Kevin was his name – Kevin had finally decided to call it a day and because he was calling it a day she was going along with it, but when she had called it a day he’d not listened and carried on ringing her up and bringing flowers &c as though nothing untoward had happened, though at that point he’d contrived to ruin two of her most valued friendships. The whole Kevin story was just one more bewildering example of her inability to be content with a man, which was something she refused to think about, along with the fact that those two cherished friends had decided to back him up and weren’t contacting her any more.

Why her parents had moved to Bristol was yet another mystery; leaving their spacious historic red brick house on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon, with its outdoor swimming pool, its swing, its climbing frames, and elm tree stumps, and replaced all that with this crumbling Regency terrace on a busy main road through Clifton? Though admittedly somewhat stretched by tourism, Stratford-upon-Avon had still been a pretty town in those days, while Clifton used to be decidedly down at heel. And why had they then insisted on staying long after it stopped being convenient and when they couldn’t really afford it any more, and as a consequence lost half of it to tenants and then to buyers, and had to cram their entire material world into half as much space? The sensible thing to do would have been to sell up, set light to the rubbish or stick it in storage if they really couldn’t face losing it (though they were about to lose a lot more than a few dusty old souvenirs), and buy a nice bungalow in Brighton or somewhere. Georgie could imagine Maureen and Larry in a bungalow by the sea. They’d have been cosy and happy, amongst one or two special ornaments and photographs. They could have gone for walks along the coast, and watched waves splashing against rocks. They could have breathed in good lungfuls of fresh salty air, lived on fish, lived a bit longer probably – fish, sunshine and fresh air being major allies in the fight against degenerative disease. (These three were all on her own list of Staying Alive.) But instead, her mum and dad had been cooped up with redundant objects and papers, slaves to asthma, coughing and sneezing and prone to flu.

By the time they started getting properly ill they’d moved into the dingiest dampest part of the property, where one room was stuffed to the girders with furniture they had no use for and boxes of stuff they never looked at. It was the basement, but they called it the Garden Flat; it was the garden that had drawn them down to it, that and the fact that you didn’t need to climb anything to go into or out of it. By then her mother’s stroke and her father’s arthritis precluded any gardening and the outside had turned into a wilderness of brambles and ivy. Georgie sighed as she stared through the French windows at the greenery, wet and darkly glossy in the winter sunshine. She must do something about that. And about everything else – the boxes and the furniture. It belonged to her now – to her and to Will, her brother, who was too busy and too living in Brussels to help. It was lucky really that she had nothing else to do, which was another thing she didn’t really understand.

She struggled with herself about whether to ring Jim, a battle she fought regularly, as she didn’t want to expose herself to his unkindness, or breathe down Charlie’s neck, or annoy anyone.

Charlie was out. He was fine. Jim was fine. Georgie told him she was fine, in case he was interested.

‘Have you heard from Joni?’

‘No.’

‘Nor have I. Should we worry?’

‘No.’

‘It’s been three weeks.’ Georgie regretted her slightly wingeing tone. Jim reacted with impatience.

‘I’m sure she’s fine. She’ll call us if she isn’t.’

Georgie wasn’t reassured, but she was pleased he’d said ‘us’.

‘I’m happy that you said ‘us’.’

‘D’you think she only calls you?’

‘No, I meant ‘us’ not ‘me’. Not you, I mean.’

‘You seem to think I have no input.’

‘No, I think the opposite. You seem to think I have no input.’

‘Georgina I’ve got things to do. But I’ll let you know if Joni calls, OK?’

It must be her fault, she thought, that they couldn’t communicate.

‘Jim, I think it’s great that Charlie wants to spend time with you. You know I think you’ve been a wonderful father don’t you?’

‘Georgie, I’ve got things to do.’

Ah, he called her Georgie and not Georgina. She must be thankful for that.

Oh, here it came again! The sudden gush of heat, in her breast and shoulders and neck, rising and all pervading, flashing into her cheeks and forehead, under her hair, and bursting into sweat. She fanned herself with a photograph. Five minutes later she was shivering. It was cold and she hadn’t packed enough cardies. She didn’t own enough cardies. She’d only recently recognised the significance of cardies because she’d only recently been thermally challenged – unlike a jersey which wrecks your hairstyle and scratches your face, you can slip a cardy on and off with ease.

When her mother died her father had simply avoided the question of what to do with her clothes. They were all still intact, still in the flat somewhere. Georgie wondered if she might find a cardy of her mother’s she could borrow. ‘Borrow!’ she thought sarcastically. ‘I promise I’ll give it back!’

The wardrobe smelt of lily of the valley, of dust, mothballs and furniture polish. And it smelt of the past because it had always smelt of these things. She was shocked to feel a sense of guilt on opening it. Its contents were secret and forbidden, more so even than those of the letters she had read. Clothing is more intimately personal, perhaps, being of the body not of the mind. She saw a summer dress she remembered – a full cotton smock hand made and worn by her mother sometime in the seventies when such things were briefly fashionable. It saddened Georgie that her mother had kept it long after she could have worn it, and that no-one would wear it now. She took up the flowered cotton in her hands and buried her face in it, stroking her cheek with the cloth that her mother had chosen, cut, sewn and worn, that had touched her and moved with her. She breathed in its scent as if she might smell her living mother, but it was faintly chemical, it was only an object after all. She let it go, smoothing out the crease she had given it.

And that was when, with a shock of recognition that made her gasp, she saw the cello case. ‘Oh my God, ‘ she whispered, staring in disbelief. ‘Oh my God, they kept it.’ Without ever mentioning that it was there. Expecting her to retrieve it? Willing her to ask about it? They kept it in a place where they might see it every day, but Georgie never would.

She reached down for the handle. Awkwardly she manoevered the case out of its home amongst shoes and bags, tugging it between dresses and jackets, polythene sliding over polythene, coat hangers jangling. The case was in perfect condition, just a little dusty. She rested it on the floor, tentatively undid the catch and lifted the lid. There lay the cello like a sleeping beauty, unconcerned, shining, waiting for its moment, beside the bow which was still secure in its velvet loop, though it had lost some hair. Gently she lifted the instrument from its coffin. She drew one finger down the glossy burnished surface of its belly, and let it rest on the fattest string. The string was rusty, but it murmured – bottom C, very flat. She adjusted the endpin, sat down on the bed, wedged the cello’s wooden body between her thighs and hesitated. How long ago? It must be thirty-five years. Oh so many! No it couldn’t be so many! The knobs creaked as she adjusted the tension of the strings, gingerly testing each with a finger tap.

For a moment she thought that nothing would come to her hands. Silently she decided she must lay it down, she must forget again what she had already so studiously forgotten. But without her willing it, some unconscious force came to her aid. Something touched her left fingers and placed them against the strings, something leant against her right arm and encouraged the bow across them. Sounds came out, scrapey and ancient, but singing, just about.

It was the first tune she had ever played properly, taught by someone who had taught her so many things. It caught at Georgie’s heart, confusingly. She hadn’t thought about that someone for a long long time.

‘Full fathom five, thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him which doth fade but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his nell. Ding dong ding dong ding. Ding dong ding dong ding. Ding dong ding dong ding. Dong dell.’

Through decades of rust the cello’s plangent tones called everything back to her, all at once and as it was. The pinks and creams of her bedroom, her dolls, Silas, the dark wood flooring and the home-made rug, the view from her window of silver birch and elms, her satchel, annuals, fountain pens and dog-eared exercise books, French and Latin, the smell of talcum powder and lemon soap, the wobbly landing, the glossy wooden staircase and the front hall full of coats and hats and wellies, the glass shelves, the kitchen table, the Welsh dresser, parquet floor, bookcases, sofas, huge sliding windows and the garden, the apple trees, the pool, the summer house. Will.

Her mother, her father, fixed in that special time and place. Swimming in gold, drenched in heat.

She could picture it all so clearly it seemed absurd and impossible that it had gone. And that strange person had gone – blotted out of memory.

Come on Geegee don’t waste time, she thought. This is nothing to do with anything at all and there’s work to do.

She laid the cello carefully back in its case, and knelt down beside it, wrestling with unnameable feelings.