Chapter 1

The most successful song Annie Jones ever wrote had been stuck in her head for the best part of forty years, and it would only be a slight overstatement to say she hadn’t had a moment’s peace from it in that time.

So it had been too much to hope that her father’s funeral soundtrack jangling inside her head. She wondered if this made her some sort of sociopath.

She’d managed to ignore it during her eulogy. She’d stood at the front of the blond wood crematorium chapel and paid tribute to the man who had always been in her corner — her most unwavering supporter, always ready to admire a lyric or fund a new instrument.

the tune, but no. Not even the clanking old Anglican dirges her father had stipulated by turning down pages in his hymn book could drown it out. There the song remained. Sometimes the volume went down a bit, so she could, for example, hear people in the church singing along to ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’ and later, back at the house, telling her how proud he had been of her; that he’d had a good innings.

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