railway line beyond the fence until Hilda shouted through the kitchen window that she was disturbing the whole neighbourhood.
Almost forty years later, what Connie recollected most clearly about that day was the singing itself, and the complicated song, and the importance that both had assumed – like a reef in the turbulent currents of daily life. Music was already becoming her resort, in a family with a mother and father who would have had difficulty in distinguishing between Handel and Cliff Richard, and a sister who could not hear a note of music. Or any other sound.
In the new front room at Echo Street there was the upright piano that had come with them from their old flat. No one else in the family ever played it and it was badly out of tune, but the instrument had belonged to Connie’s father’s mother and Tony always insisted that it was a good one, worth a bit of money. Hilda kept it well dusted and used the top as a display shelf for the wedding photograph (Tony Brylcreemed in a wide-shouldered suit, Hilda in a ruched bodice, a hat like the top off a mince pie, and very dark lipstick), a photograph of Jeanette as a newborn asleep in layers of pink knitwear, and one of Connie as an older baby, propped up in Jeanette’s lap.
As soon as she was old enough to lift the gleaming curved lid for herself, Connie had claimed the piano for her own. When she perched on the stool her legs were too short to reach the pedals, but she loved the commanding position and the way the ivory and black notes extended invitingly on either side. She splayed her hands over the keys, linking sequences of notes or hammering out crashing discords. She could sit for an hour at a time, absorbed in her own compositions or in picking out the tunes she heard on the radio. To Connie’s ear these first musical experiments sounded festive in the quiet house.
In time, music and musical composition became Connie’s profession.
Success came early, almost by accident, with the theme music she wrote for a confectionery commercial.
The Boom chocolate-bar tune turned into one of those rare hits that passed out of the realm of mere advertising and drilled straight into the collective consciousness. For a time the few bars turned into a shorthand trill for anything that was new and saucy and self-indulgent. Builders whistled it from scaffolding, children drummed it out on cans in city playgrounds, comedians referenced it in their acts. The confectionery company used it not only for Boom, but in a variety of mixes for their other products so that it became their worldwide aural signature. The royalties poured in and Connie’s small musical world acknowledged her as Boom Girl.
Nowadays the money from her early work had slowed to a trickle, but Connie still earned enough to live on. When she needed more it was possible to make a rapid sortie from Bali to London and put in some calls to old friends like Angela. Quite often, she could bring the bacon of commissions home to Bali and work on them there.
She had no idea how long this arrangement would remain possible, but Connie didn’t think about the future very much.
The past was much more difficult to evade: it was there in her dreams, and the long bones and ridged tendons of it lay always just under the skin of consciousness, but in her quiet daily life among the villagers and the gamelan musicians she could easily contain it.
Now Angela and all the people with her had landed like a spaceship on Connie’s remote planet, and they brought London and memories leaking out of the airlocks and into this untainted atmosphere.
Not that her old friend was a taint, Connie hastily corrected herself, nor were her colleagues, or the business that had provided her with a living for more than twenty-five years. But their company, the banter and the jostling for position and the surge of adrenalin that came with them, caused her to examine her life more critically than she would otherwise have done. As she sat in the warm, scented night she was asking herself unaccustomed questions.
Is this a useful way to live?
Is this what I want?
These questions seemed unanswerable.
She shifted in her rattan chair and it creaked accommodatingly beneath her weight. She let her head fall back against the cushions and listened to the rustling of leaves and the throaty frogs.
And am I happy?
That was the hardest question of all. In this beautiful place, living comfortably among friends and making music with them, she had no reason for unhappiness.
Except that this island life – for all its sunshine and scent and richness – did not have Bill in it.
Connie had learned to live without him, because there was no alternative. But happiness – that simple resonance with the world that came from being with the man she loved – she didn’t have that, and never would.
The thought of him, as always, sent an electric shock deep into the core of her being.
Connie leapt from the chair and paced to the edge of the veranda. The invisible wave of leaves and branches rolled away beneath her feet, all the way down to the curve of the river.
By concentrating hard she cut off the flow of thoughts and brought them back to the present. She had work to do, and that was a diversion and a solace as well. She had learned that long ago.
She would do the work and maybe the questions would answer themselves, or at least stop ringing in her ears.
There was a seven-thirty call in the morning.
Noah headed downriver, towards the battlements of Tower Bridge and the pale shard of Canary Wharf tower in the hazy distance. It was the beginning of June, a warm and sunny early evening. The Embankment was crowded with people leaving work and heading home, or making for bars and cinemas. The girls who passed him were bare-legged, the skin above the line of their tops showing a pink flush from a lunchtime’s sunbathing.
Noah had sat with his mother for over an hour. He linked his fingers with hers, not talking very much, rubbing his thumb over the thin skin on the back of her hand. Sometimes she drifted into a doze, then a minute or two later she would be fully awake again, looking into his eyes and smiling.
‘Do you want anything, Mum?’ he asked, leaning close to her so she could see his face.
She shook her head.
At the end of an hour, she had fallen into a deeper sleep. He sat beside the bed for a few more minutes, then slid his hand from beneath hers. He stood up carefully, bent down and kissed her forehead where the faint lines showed between her eyebrows.
‘I’ll be in tomorrow, same time,’ he murmured, for his own benefit rather than hers.
Noah hadn’t worked out where he was going; he just wanted to be outside in the fresh air. Even though there was a thick waft of grease and fried onions from a hot-dog stand and a blast of beer and cigarette smoke rising from the crowded outdoor tables of a pub, it still smelled better out here than inside the hospital. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked more slowly, threading through the crowds, his head turned towards the khaki river. A sightseeing boat slid by, trailing a noisy wake of commentary and the smell of Thames water.
Under a plane tree, just where the shade from the branches dulled the glitter of dusty cobbles, one of the performance artists who regularly worked there was setting up his pitch. He was wearing a boxy robot costume sprayed a dull silver colour, and all the exposed skin of his body was painted to match. As Noah idly stood watching, the performer laid out a blanket and placed a silver-painted box on it, and positioned a small matching plinth behind the blanket. He made the arrangements with mechanical precision, his head stiffly tilted in concentration. Then he tapped a silver metal helmet over his silver-sprayed hair and took a step up onto the plinth. His arms rotated through a few degrees and froze in midair. A few of the passers-by glanced at him, probably wondering why an able-bodied individual should choose to spend an evening locked into immobility on a plinth instead of heading for the pub. Losing interest, Noah was about to walk on when he noticed the girl