‘That’s weird.’ Abby was really agitated. ‘I read a piece about Rachel’s suicide. It really influenced me, right, that she could drive off a cliff, because she’d caught Boris cheating on her. After I cut my wrist,’ Abby’s voice broke, ‘I wanted to write to Boris and tell him I was sure Rachel didn’t mean to kill herself. It was just a crazy gesture to wipe out the hurt, with an even greater hurt, anything to make the pain go away.’

‘Tell Boris that, I’m sure it would comfort him,’ said Marcus.

‘Boris was very well known in Russia when I was at the Moscow Conservatoire,’ sniffed Abby later, as Marcus edged the Aston Martin through the traffic. ‘We all went to his concerts. It was a great scandal when he fell in love with Rachel and defected to the West. She was a marvellous player.’

‘I wasn’t a fan of hers,’ said Flora with rare coldness. ‘She was an awful bitch. You couldn’t blame Boris for straying. He used to be one of Rannaldini’s assistant conductors, and Rachel so detested the influence Rannaldini had on him that she had an affaire with Rannaldini out of spite. Took him off me to be exact, that’s probably why I hate her.’

‘But I thought Boris and Rachel were reconciled,’ protested Abby.

‘They were,’ said Flora, ‘but Rannaldini and Boris were after the same job, running the New World Symphony Orchestra in New York. Boris looked as though he was going to get it. He was young, brilliant and back with Rachel. The Scorpion caught him coming out of Chloe’s, his ex-mistress’s, flat. I’m sure Rannaldini tipped them off. Typical shitty thing he would do. Rachel saw the photograph in The Scorpion and drove off the road. Hey presto. Rannaldini, crying crocodile tears over the death of the finest pianist of her generation, lands the New York job. Can we get some drink from that off-licence, Marcus?’

‘We can’t stop here.’

‘We’ll have to stop somewhere. Boris’ll have drunk any drink he’s got. Boris was shattered by Rachel’s death,’ Flora turned back to Abby. ‘Particularly because she left him two young children to bring up. Not a great aid to composition. Despite such set-backs, Boris has had loads of women since Rachel died, men get over these things much more quickly than women, because they’re in a buyer’s market, but he still misses Rachel and feels dreadfully guilty about her. People are always giving him money to write things, then he doesn’t deliver. The Rutminster Symphony Orchestra commissioned a requiem to Rachel more than two years ago. An old duck called Sir Rodney Mackintosh-’

‘I’m his protégée,’ said Abby sniffily, ‘I’ve only been stopping at his house for the past two and a half years.’

I can’t be expected to know her entire c.v., thought Flora irritated.

‘Rodney’s so darling,’ added Abby possessively.

‘Darling,’ agreed Flora. ‘So you probably know Rodney felt sorry for Boris, but again Boris has failed to deliver. Every time he picks up his chewed pencil he thinks about Rachel, starts crying and has to have another huge glass of red wine, and the RSO have to keep rescheduling.’

‘Boris was a great conductor,’ mused Abby.

‘But not especially focused. He’s going out with some big boobed Bratislavian bassoonist tonight. So Marcus and I said we’d babysit.’

ELEVEN


‘Don’t mention Rannaldini,’ muttered Flora as, clinking bottles in time to the clanking of the ancient lift, they slowly climbed to the sixth floor, ‘or Boris will foam at the mouth.’

Boris was already foaming at the mouth. Hardly concealing his manhood with a Ninja Turtle face towel, he was waving a toothbrush instead of a baton. Having opened the front door, he dived into a nearby bathroom to spit out the toothpaste. He had just had a bath and was trying to dry a pair of boxer shorts with a hair-dryer.

Despite a sallow skin, deep-set eyes almost entirely concealed by puffiness, dark hair like an unclipped poodle and a chunky, rugger player’s body, there was an undeniable Byronic smoulder about Boris.

Abby took one look at him, realized she was half an inch taller, kicked off her shoes and bolted to the 100 to repair her smudged eyeliner and even put on some lipgloss.

Boris took one look at Abby and decided to give the Bratislavian bassoonist a miss. He and Abby were soon gabbling in Russian about their Moscow days.

‘What have you got for us to drink?’ asked Flora.

‘I cannot drink, I am on vagon.’ Then Boris saw the bottles Flora was taking out of an Oddbins carrier bag, ‘Oh vell, perhaps I am not.’

Abby was even unfazed by the messiest living-room ever. It was very Russian with crimson and scarlet furniture and gold icons on the midnight-blue walls, but every chair was piled high with clothes. The grand piano buckled under scores, covered in drink rings, and upended silver photograph frames. The dark red velvet cloth on the big table could hardly be seen for hamburger boxes and bottles wafting stale remnants of drink. On the bookshelves were half-eaten apples, overflowing ashtrays, tapes and CDs out of their cases.

While the entire family obviously chucked their shoes and boots in one corner, the rest of the floor was littered with orange peel, pencil sharpenings, tissues and crumpled-up pieces of manuscript paper.

‘Oh Boris, you are a slut,’ sighed Flora. ‘Where are the children — hidden under the rubble?’

‘I forget to tell — the kids, they stay with friends.’

‘Good thing, they’ll get bubonic plague if they stay here.’

Flora removed a curling ham sandwich from the mantelpiece.

‘When did you last eat?’

‘I verk since midnight last night,’ said Boris proudly. ‘Nearly twenty hours.’

While Flora chided, Marcus, who was more practical, had found a black dustbin bag in the kitchen and now settled down to clear up the mess.

‘Where’s the stuff you’ve just written?’

‘I put it in the samovar for safety,’ said Boris.

‘Is it numbered?’ asked Marcus, retrieving it.

‘Not that it matters,’ Flora, who was opening bottles, murmured to Abby. ‘Play it back to front, upside-down, it wouldn’t make any difference.’ She blew a kiss at Boris.

‘Let me see,’ said Abby reverently.

Marcus held out a manuscript page covered in a mass of black corrections.

‘Looks as though a lot of centipedes have been doing the Highland Fling after a mud bath,’ said Flora. ‘Why can’t you use a rubber instead of crossing out?’

‘Because eef my first thought was best, eef I rub it out, it is gone.’

‘How can anyone copy that?’ grumbled Flora.

‘I can,’ said Marcus, removing the pages to the safety of his music case.

‘Vot does eet sound like?’

‘I’ll try and play it later when I’ve tidied up this dump.’

‘What a wonderful wife you’ll make someone.’ Flora lobbed some orange peel at Marcus’s black bag and missed. ‘If you want to make yourself useful,’ she said to Abby, ‘go and wash up four glasses. Abby had a dazzling début as a conductor,’ she was telling Boris as Abby returned with an assortment of mugs, cups and even a small vase.

‘Ear is the only theeng that matter,’ said Boris, filling them all up to the top. ’Ear and rhythm, telling the orchestra how and ven to play. A conductor must learn what is possible to ask, then ask the orchestra ten times more. He must also come into a room at any time and command attention.’

‘“You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master,” or rather maestro,’ quoted Flora, settling down to sort out the mountain of newspapers thrown down by the fireplace.

‘What piece did you do?’ asked Boris.

‘Bartók’s Viola Concerto.’

‘Ah,’ Boris gave a theatrical sigh and drained his glass. ‘Bartók is like me. His last Christmas he could never leave hees flat because he was so ashamed he had no money to tip lift man.’

‘Bartók had security till he was eight, then his father died like mine did,’ said Abby, taking a huge gulp of red wine.

‘He was Aries like me,’ said Flora.

‘Like mine, his genius was never recognized.’ Boris was near to tears. ‘He die in poorness like I shall.’

‘If you gave up drink and worked a bit harder, you’d be very rich,’ said Flora, tipping a pile of Guardians into Marcus’s dustbin bag. ‘Oh look, here’s your hairbrush, that must have been missing for months.’