Eighty Days Blue by Vina Jackson Page B

channelling grief and frustration into my violin like a lightning rod, though inevitably, some of the loneliness lingered , and my thoughts were filled with memories of the scenes that Dominik had created in London and fantasies of all the things that I wanted him to do to me. I became irritable and withdrawn, annoyed by the intensity of my own feelings.
    I had tried emailing Charlotte for her advice, but she’d either mysteriously vanished or was ignoring me. Chris had completed his short tour with the band in America and had returned to London. He had no plans to visit New York again anytime soon, and besides that, he wasn’t keen on Dominik, so I hadn’t confided in him. I’d spoken to old friends in New Zealand over Skype, but they were settling down now with office jobs and long-term partners. My life was so different, with the orchestra, New York, Dominik, that I felt at odds with them as well.
    Socially, I was at a bit of a loose end, but musically at least, my efforts did not go unnoticed.
    Simón, the Venezuelan guest conductor the ensemble had been working with for the past season, had won a post with the orchestra permanently, and he seemed to have taken a shine to me, subtly praising my performance with the odd wink or lingering stare in my direction over the rostrum. I had only begun to notice his attentions once we began rehearsing for the series of Thanksgiving concerts, perhaps because I felt an affinity with the American style; it was influenced by the sound of faraway places, coloured by the infinite variation in cultural backgrounds of composers who emigrated to America to pursue a new life, filled with optimism and collecting the rhythms of new cities along the way, jazz and folk sounds blending with old European traditions.
    I had not been sorry to see the old conductor go. He’d had an academic approach that I felt lacked nuance. Under his control, the string section had been a little wooden. Simón was younger, and his methods were a radical departure from what we had been used to. Orchestral gossip discussed little else.
    He had a bit of a bohemian look about him, and at least in rehearsals, he could have passed as the lead guitarist in a rock band, dressing in jeans and loose T-shirts. He was vibrant all the way from his shoes, which varied from comfortable Converse to pointed snakeskin ankle boots, shined to gleaming, up to his hair, which sprouted from his head in a mass of thick, dark curls and bounced with a flourish with his more manic movements. He led the orchestra as if possessed by music, beating time with his hands snapping like the jaws of a crocodile. Every adjustment of his facial muscles responded to internal cues seemingly without thought: a lift of the eyebrow or pursing of the lips signalled an infinitesimal change of mood or tempo.
    I hoped that under his direction the string section might be encouraged to display more passion. If our last few concerts were anything to go by, his influence was just what we needed.
    Baldo and Marija, my Croatian flatmates, who played trumpet and flute respectively, were ambivalent about the change. They had recently got engaged, and the happiness that they found in each other reflected onto every aspect of their lives so that it would have taken a bolt from the sky of portentous doom to bring down their mood.
    Following the success of her own romance, Marija had become intent on setting me up, and she interrogated me regularly about the status of my relationship with Dominik with the rigour and cunning of a private eye.
    That morning, I had told her about the whole affair, if for no other reason than to explain why I had been so short-tempered at home.
    â€˜You know that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,’ she said prosaically, as we met in the kitchen over a late breakfast, before assembling our instruments and heading off for the concert.
    She’d just had a fringe cut into her