Lydia noticed Milan looking over at her and she turned away, her cheeks warming rapidly.
“I’d better get ready. Von Ritter will be here in a minute.”
“On the dot, I bet,” said Ben with a grin. “He’s the type.”
“Yes, isn’t he?” A little flush of more welcome heat joined the Milan-induced version, and she scurried away.
“Lydia.”
Milan had followed her, leaving his harpist harpy to her strings.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“But I want to talk to you. Please.” She saw the anxiety in his expression but she turned her face from it.
“I refuse to be at the centre of a public scene. Go away.”
“Talk to me. If not now, then later. Tonight.”
“I’m busy tonight,” said Lydia with vengeful satisfaction.
“You can cancel. Come on—who is it? Vanessa?”
“No. None of your business, actually.”
The hour struck and von Ritter walked in, dead on time. Everybody made a great show of looking ready, tuning up and breaking off their conversations.
Milan, with a ferocious scowl, left Lydia alone and went to his soloist seat.
“Good morning,” said von Ritter, beaming around the hall and tapping the music stand with his baton. “And it certainly is a very good morning for me.”
His eyes rested on Lydia, who ducked down to her violin case, took out some rosin, and distracted herself by applying it to her bow.
The rehearsal was a revelation, von Ritter having a level of expertise beyond any that they had experienced before. It was clear that the orchestra relished and responded to his sureness of touch and firmness of purpose. He was a perfectionist, but that was what was needed. Lydia could almost see the rough edges being smoothed and the ragged moments being sewn together.
The only person who seemed to have any objection to von Ritter’s style was Milan—not that he said anything, but the slight sneer that crossed his face whenever the conductor corrected a passage told its own story.
After a rousing Planets and a moving Lark Ascending, the orchestra was dismissed.
“You left early last night,” Milan commented to von Ritter, just loud enough for Lydia to hear. “You didn’t like the party?”
“On the contrary, it was very kind of you to throw it. I had a nice time. Thank you.”
“You left just after she did.” Milan jerked a thumb in Lydia’s direction.
“Did I?”
Milan looked between the pair of them. Lydia clicked shut her violin case in haste and stood to leave.
“Yes.”
But Lydia didn’t stay to hear how the discussion developed. When she checked her messages, on surfacing from the Tube in Shepherd’s Bush, there was one from Milan and one from von Ritter.
Von Ritter’s was first, a voicemail. “Hi, Lydia, just confirming plans for tonight. I think it’s easiest if we meet in the concert hall bar, maybe about seven. Call me if this isn’t good for you. See you tonight.”
Then she endured Milan’s beloved voice, scolding her for something that was his fault. “Hey, Lydia, why have you left me? Because of Sarah? It’s just sex. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you. Please call me, milácku. I can’t let it end like this. I won’t let it end like this.”
“Oh, God, you wanker,” she said out loud, so forcefully that a passer-by stopped to stare at her. “Sorry. Not you.”