Florence is practising the piano and I want to go out. I don’t want to go out with her but I want to go out and if I want to go out I have to run it past her. It’s an antisocial act, a marriage-betraying act, simply to leave. So I sit here behind her, watching her back, waiting for a pause.

When did I first notice that she really isn’t any good? Her Satie. She plays it very badly. Her grace notes are graceless. Instead of adding a promising, mysterious touch of dissonance, of something happening of which we would have remained unaware without the visit of the note next door, the mystery vanishes. All these years I’ve listened, it’s blurred together with the ideal performance of Satie, one I heard on the radio once, or at the beginning of a film. That must be why I found her interpretation beautiful: it wasn’t hers alone I was hearing. Or perhaps it was a potential performance I loved, one I’ve never yet heard, the one she might give some day. The evening passes and I do not go out.

What is she thinking, as she lies there beside me, under the brown duvet we bought at the BHV because it had to be brown, does she think I am happy with the way my life is going, does she think it is all grace notes, no dissonance?