Fearful Symmetry (32 page)
Her arrival on the stage brought applause and whistles. Smiling broadly, she wove her way through the orchestra, followed by Sir Simon Rattle, and bowed to the audience, taking in the vast arena, the promenaders’ floor with the fountain in the centre, the rows of stalls, behind them three crimson-curtained tiers of boxes, and higher, staggeringly high now, the circle and the colonnaded gallery. Then she turned to the orchestra and inclined her head towards them before taking her seat, thinking that really, she was quite stupendously, outrageously lucky, the luckiest person by far out of all the hundreds in this vast auditorium. To walk out of the darkness into this beautiful bright light, about to play the Dvo
ák Cello Concerto with this wonderful orchestra, to know with certainty that this thing that she was being allowed to do was what she was
for
, made her feel excruciatingly privileged. What
was
all that nonsense she had been thinking ten minutes ago?
She turned quietly to the orchestra and nodded to Simon on the rostrum. And now she was to be allowed a few minutes listening to the opening Allegro before her first entry. Another thing she liked about the Proms, she thought, tingling with pleasure, was that you see the audience properly. The arena lights were kept on throughout and were placed so high in the roof that from where she was sitting she could see everything, instead of being half-blinded by stage lights beaming on to her from a darkened auditorium. She looked round again, enjoying the pace of the Allegro, her left hand rehearsing her first fingering. She felt momentarily, madly, gratefully in love with
everyone
, Simon naturally, but everyone else too, from the most pedestrian rank and file players, including the reptilian brass section, the worried-looking BBC crew, the stage technicians, the stewards, the corporate toffs in the boxes, down to every last one of the Prommers: the daffy girls, the skinny blokes, the earnest music teachers in sandals and bifocals, the students, the tourists, the oddballs, even that crazy one in the awful pink suit. She glanced up at Simon and they exchanged a look, a mixture of
yes I’m ready, isn’t this wonderful
, with perhaps a fleeting hint of
what are you doing later
which they both knew was the occasion, rather than themselves talking. He really is sexy, she considered, smiling, at least with a baton in his hand. God, save me from conductors. Concentrate. Concentrate, it’s me in eight bars. Her eyes darted back to the pink suit.
The pink suit. That suit. Pink suit, pink suit, oh God it couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Watch, only six bars and I’m in. My God, it is. That pink suit. Two bars. Damn, I haven’t missed it, have I? It is her. Have I? She’s covering her eyes. Oh God, now,
now
. . . I’ll be late . . .
Don’t miss Morag Joss’s
first mystery featuring Sara Selkirk
“Exquisite.”—
Publishers Weekly,
starred review
Available from Dell Books
And look for
Winner of the CWA Silver Dagger Award
Available in hardcover in September 2005
from Delacorte Press
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M
ORAG
J
OSS
grew up on the west coast of Scotland. She began writing in 1996 when her first short story won an award in a national competition. She then wrote three Sara Selkirk novels, set in Bath, and with her fourth novel,
Half Broken Things,
she won the 2003 CWA Silver Dagger award. Her work is translated into several languages.
Morag Joss lives in the country outside the city of Bath, and in London, where she is at work on her latest novel,
Puccini’s Ghosts,
which Delacorte will publish in 2006.
Also by Morag Joss
FUNERAL MUSIC
FRUITFUL BODIES
HALF BROKEN THINGS
And coming soon in hardcover
from Delacorte
PUCCINI’S GHOSTS
FEARFUL SYMMETRY
A Dell Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Hodder and Stoughton hardcover edition published in 1999
Bantam mass market edition / June 2005
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1999 by Morag Joss
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33552-8
v3.0