Chapter Two

Ksenia Tokarycz had always known what she wanted in life.

She wasn’t going to be swayed by the posturing of a knock-off fortune teller with a fake crystal ball and a few metres of purple velvet.

She wanted three things.

One. She wanted to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

That had always been the biggy, back when she was young and idealistic. Her mother had a great pile of records, all of them old, all of them carefully thrifted to replace the vinyl collection they’d had to leave back in Korovinja. Their bright yellow labels – ‘Deutsche Grammophon’ in ornate frames above pictures of stern, suited men – had glowed like golden windows into Toks’ future. As a kid, she’d stared and stared at them, begging her mum to put the needle gently down on the Mahler, the Beethoven, the Tchaikovsky and make them play again. She’d shaped that desire before she even knew what it was to dream, but the fact that, one day, she was going to lead those earnest musicians through symphonies and concertos was a certainty.

When she was ten, she practised when no one was looking – a stick from an old gum tree, straight and smooth, the cows as her orchestra, noble in their black and white tuxedos, their brown eyes watching her faithfully. Her podium was the tree stump next to their water trough. The music was perfect in her ears.

One day it would be the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Her brother caught her at it once. He said classical music was old and stupid, and anyone who liked it was dumb. Mikheil possessed a grand total of four CDs. They were the future, he jeered, even daring to do so at the dinner table where everything was quiet and respectful and where nightly prayers were offered to honour the past and everyone lost to it.

“What is this hair metal?” her mother would yell when their father wasn’t around. “Turn this rubbish off and practise your scales, Mikheil.”

“It’s Micky now, mum. How many times? And speak English. We’re Australian now.”

Draga Tokarycz never had to urge her daughter to practise. Toks had decided that mastering the piano was the first step to conquering Berlin. She played incessantly.

It had paid off.

She stood in front of the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic now, thirty years later, as she had countless other times, right in the very centre of the golden warmth of the city’s iconic concert hall. She wore a tuxedo of her own. Carefully, masterfully, she brought an hour and twenty minutes of Mahler’s second symphony crashing to its glorious, sublime, agonising end and let the sound wash over her. One hundred and eighty players and vocalists watched her closely, surrendering their creativity to her direction, all of them as exhausted as she was. This was their fifth performance of the thing – and Mahler never let anyone rest easy in his symphonies. Neither did she. There’d been four full days of rehearsal too, but she still insisted every one of them give their utmost to the music. She had a reputation for being relentlessly demanding of her orchestras.

She also had a reputation for being the best.

If the five calls the audience gave her before they permitted her to leave the stage that night were any indication, she still had a firm grip on that title. Berlin loved her.

It was funny how things turned out.

Sixteen years ago, the Berlin Phil had closed its doors to her.

There’d been snow that day and the cold had seeped into every bone of her body.

It was only her second European winter – that she could remember, at least – and she wasn’t used to it. Back in Australia, their farm on the escarpment enjoyed a climate moderated by the ocean. Even the most fiercely hot days were tempered by afternoon storms or a sea breeze that whispered up the cliffs telling secrets of salt and eucalyptus on a life-saving cool-change. The coldest winter days were warmed by ocean waters that carried a three-month heat lag. Her parents told her stories about the four of them playing in the snow back in Korovinja when she was a kid and she’d thought, since she’d been born to it, that she’d be able to handle the cold.

But Berlin was fucking freezing.

Her first winter had been a shock. She’d stepped out of the plane that January, leaving a Sydney heatwave and arriving into a Berlin blizzard just twenty-four hours later. Alone. She’d dragged her luggage to an attic apartment in Kreuzberg – long before the place was trendy – and heaved it up five flights of stairs only to find the radiator didn’t work and the water had frozen in the pipes. All the conversational German she’d been practising turned out to be no help at all when it came to plumbing. She did learn how to swear, though, as she listened to the janitor lay into the pipes with a wrench – good, round, versatile swears with a thick accent that still spoke of the old East.

They came in handy later.

But the cold was nothing. Neither was the loneliness. Toks was prepared to bear all the hardships of that first year because she knew she was on her way – and because she was waiting for someone. She was creating a home.

Being a year older than Polly Paterson meant Toks had always been ahead in school – plus that extra year because she’d skipped a grade coming from Korovinja to Australia. But she’d always had a plan. A deliberate and calculated blueprint – for her and for Polly. Two years as répétiteur for Opera Australia straight out of music college for Toks while Polly finished her cello studies. She’d had to fight for that role, but she won it with the skills her brother had always mocked her for – an absolutely unparalleled ability to sight read and a gift for real-time orchestral reduction. Toks could read an open orchestral score of all instrument and voice lines and condense it down to a piano part on the fly, and play it flawlessly and with nuance from first glance. It was a rare skill and one that made her the kind of assistant that conductors fought over. It wasn’t long before big-name maestros from top tier orchestras around the world were angling to have her under their wings.

Toks chose Claudio Abbado, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Of course she did.

He tested her skill by dropping a world-famous violinist and the full orchestral score of the Sibelius violin concerto in front of her in a rehearsal room. She played for her life, stopping and starting as the soloist and the conductor worked and reworked their interpretation before bringing it in front of the orchestra.

When she was done, Maestro Abbado sat down next to her at the keys.

“The last person to do something as impressive as that in this building was me. I think I hate you.” But he grinned and they jammed their way through a four-handed rendition of the same concerto to celebrate her appointment.

She had a year under his mentorship while Polly Paterson finished music college back at the Sydney Conservatorium and then joined her in Berlin. Then they’d take over the world, the two of them, coming home each evening together to the apartment in Kreuzberg that had excellent plumbing now – and a tattered sofa in purple velvet that Toks had found at a flea market and seized knowing Polly would love it. There were some endearingly risque black and white photos of 1920s lesbian love as wall art, and Toks had been carefully nurturing three pots of herbs on the tiny kitchen counter. Polly had a big garden back at Jerinja. Toks knew she loved it.

She waited at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof that day for Polly’s train with red roses in her hands and her heart in her mouth.

She waited all day.

The snow had curled in in flurries under the massive domed roof over the platforms. Train after train had come and gone and Polly hadn’t been on any of them.

The cold seeped into her bones and dread seeped into her heart.

Dread, and panic, because Polly hadn’t answered her phone either.

By late afternoon, as the grey clouds dimmed and the hidden sun had set, Toks realised she’d waited too long. She dashed back to the concert hall where she was late for an audition – the role of assistant associate conductor, lowest of the low.

German punctuality and two-hundred years of rules and traditions of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra hadn’t been able to forgive her.

She’d lost her chance at the Berlin Phil – and so much more – that day.

Lena Ziegler elbowed her way into Toks’ dressing room after the concert. Lena was the associate concertmaster and she and Toks hooked up every time Toks guested for the Berlin Phil. That happened three times per year and Toks suspected Lena was just as welcoming to other guest conductors too. She was the type who enjoyed submitting to a more dominant personality.

That suited Toks fine.

They’d spent the week at it, after rehearsals, before performances. They’d shagged in Toks’ dressing room before the concert tonight – Lena pressed up against the door and begging for Toks’ clever fingers until she’d been too loud and Toks had had to cover her mouth with hers. Lena was clearly keen for another round. It was one of the perks of being Principal Guest Conductor, Toks supposed. She flew in, had her fun, and flew out again. All the glory and none of the responsibility.

“Coming out with us tonight, Maestro?” Lena murmured.

She knew Toks always put her card down on the bar. The maestro was always up for a good time.

“Drinks first, then dancing.” Lena leaned her hips against Toks’ and undid the top button of her shirt. “One of those clubs in Nollendorfplatz, unless you just want to go back to your place, of course…”

These days, Toks owned a handful of luxury apartments in cities across Europe.

None of them had sofas.

Lena seemed to remember that.

“Come out with us, Toks.”

Toks walked her backwards to the door and kissed her hard. Toks didn’t really care where they ended up, but she’d take what she could get. She slipped a hand under Lena’s top and squeezed a healthy handful of the woman’s breast. Lena moaned into her mouth and hooked one leg over her hip.

She was pretty.

But she wasn’t Polly Paterson.

Toks ended up in Vienna after that awful day in Berlin sixteen years ago.

Polly Paterson never showed up, never answered her calls, never even sent a message.

After a frantic, agonising week of calling and calling, she was sick of the sound of the message on Polly voicemail. And then Polly’s phone went utterly silent. Toks went back to the train station and prowled around it for days. She called her mother, but Draga hadn’t heard anything either. The Patersons were up in Sydney, she said. There was no one else to ask. When conversation turned to Toks’ failure to audition for the Berlin Phil, she ended the call. Cowardly, she knew, but that failure hurt almost as much as not knowing about Polly.

After another week, she ran out of ideas. Police and embassies in Berlin, London and Sydney had nothing to tell her, aside from patronising remarks about messy breakups. She was alone, on the wrong side of the world – and everyone who might have known anything about Polly was ten-thousand miles away and just as ignorant.

Eventually, she ran out of tears. The sun came out and glittered on the snow and suddenly everything was clear. Painful and bright. She’d been wrong. Polly hadn’t loved her the way Toks loved Polly. That was all. Her plans simply needed adjusting. The framework was still there. She could still do it.

She just had to do it without Polly Paterson.

Toks dragged the purple velvet sofa to the top of the stairwell and tipped it over the edge, along with the bruised remains of her hopes and dreams. It thudded dully against the cheap 1960s mosaic when it hit the bottom. She wanted it to shatter, wanted it to break into a million pieces, but it simply sagged, its backbone broken. She looked at it for just one moment, then packed her bag and travelled to Vienna.

Her apartment in Vienna was lonely too, but at least the plumbing worked this time. She bought a single armchair and a piano, and never looked back.

Getting a job as répétiteur for the Vienna State Opera was easy. The artistic director was chummy with Maestro Abbado back in Berlin and calls were made. Toks may have been tardy that day but her talent was undeniable.

It paid the bills.

Draga Tokarycz called her daughter every Monday.

During that first lonely year in Berlin, Toks had hung on every call desperate for news about home – the Patersons over at Jerinja, gossip from the village, her brother’s architecture degree up in Sydney, even the damned cows.

By the time she got to Vienna, Toks let the calls go to voicemail. She watched them – nine in the morning on the dot – buzzing vainly for her attention, then surrendering to the message bank. The first three Mondays of the month she would pull her phone from her pocket, stare at the tiny green screen and wait while it rang out.

On the fourth Monday of each month, she’d answer.

Apparently, there’d been an accident.

Draga used the word incident. Her handle on English had never been perfect. Toks wished she’d just speak Korovinjan but her mother was proud of the life she’d built in Australia and even had hints of that broad, round twang in her voice now.

Toks couldn’t stand it.

“And you’ll be pleased to know Polly is back home from that dreadful hospital in Sydney after the Incident.”

“Accident, mum.”

“Poor, poor girl.” There was a funny tone in Draga’s voice that Toks found she didn’t quite have the patience for. “So many scars…”

If it had put Polly into a hospital in Sydney rather than their local hospital just down the coast it must have been quite an accident. Toks was prepared to admit that, but that was the limit of the sympathy she allowed into her heart. Draga hadn’t bothered to share this information until two months after Polly had stood her up at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. And even if the girl had been in a full body cast, that was still plenty of time to give Toks a call.

It was another three months before Draga shared any more news from Jerinja.

“She’s pregnant. Polly!” Draga tsked. “I mean, that poor girl, after everything she’s been through.”

It froze all the blood in Toks’ body. Pregnant. From one swift, snapping moment to the next, Toks’ heart solidified. Crystallised. It was diamond – no, it wasn’t anything so elegant. It was granite – rough, ugly and black – and it tumbled out of her chest and smacked to the floor. Toks gripped the handhold of a Vienna tram and didn’t even see the morning commuters shuffling nervously away from her pain.

Her Polly? Pregnant?

“And, of course, it’s been so long now. She’ll have to go ahead with it.” Draga went on, but Toks barely heard her.

After that, she answered her mother’s calls on their birthdays, Easter and at Christmas.

She gave the Vienna State Opera six months.

She was done with being patient, polite and respectful.

She flexed her muscles and toppled the associate conductor from his role there. He was a poser. Rich parents and some minor ability with the baton, but she had the entire Ring Cycle in her head and he still stumbled over transposing the tenor clef.

The Wiener Symphoniker poached her not long after and made her their chief conductor – the first woman and the youngest ever to grace their podium full time. She gave them three years, then conquered Dresden, Cologne, London and the newly re-formed orchestra in Severin, Korovinja. By the time her agents and management teams had negotiated a fee that was almost filthy in its extravagance for her to become chief conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic and simultaneously the executive director of the Hamburg State Opera company, she’d almost forgotten Polly Paterson.

Almost.

Berlin and Polly Paterson were fools. They both didn’t know what they were missing.

She’d wanted Polly Paterson. She’d always wanted her. Since the first time she set eyes on her when she was ten years old. She wanted to love her.

She wanted to be the one Polly Paterson loved.

That was Two.

“We’re going to miss you, Maestro.”

“Well, some of us are.”

“No offence, but I think the trumpets will be pleased to see you go. You were ruthless during the Rautavaara.”

“Even the trumpets will miss you.”

Toks lifted her chin proudly. “You know I’m not actually going anywhere.”

She had taken those members of the orchestra who were up for it out on a night on the town.

She had a reputation to uphold in that regard too.

Dominik was a double bass player. He slung his arm over her shoulders with a casual disregard for her status that Toks tolerated only because he was a foot taller and he was one of the musicians who currently held a representational position on the executive board of the BPO. He smashed his glass cheerfully against hers, relaxed and happy in the knowledge that he didn’t have a rehearsal until Monday morning and that Toks wasn’t going to be the one making him work.

“You’re going to miss her tab on the bar, you mean,” said Sumi, dryly. She didn’t lift her face from her phone.

Sumi Abe was twenty-eight, bored and yet an extremely fine violin player. She was also lazy. She’d accepted long ago that she had neither the ambition for a solo career nor the diligence for an orchestra. What she did like was the lifestyle that came with being Toks’ personal assistant.

Sumi was never one for trills or harmony. A single line of truth was just fine.

They were on some rooftop bar in Nolli, glassed in like a conservatory, filled with palms and utterly incongruous against the cold outside and the light dusting of snow brushing the glass. The venue was a good compromise. Nollendorfplatz was Berlin’s queerest district but corners of it were mainstream enough that more conservative members of the orchestra didn’t feel too uncomfortable drinking there. They were celebrating another critically acclaimed season with Maestro Ksenia Tokarycz and wishing her well for the next appointment of her career.

There was dancing on the lower floors.

Toks stuck her middle finger up at Sumi and those nearest laughed.

“You might go and actually sort that out rather than just sitting there,” Toks told her.

Sumi rolled her eyes, sighed dramatically and slipped off her bar stool. Their relationship as maestro and assistant was infamous across Europe. If Toks appeared stridently organised as she flew around the globe working with the world’s finest orchestras in a busy and endless parade, it had everything to do with Sumi’s management and patience. There was a team behind them both, of course. Agents, media managers, lawyers, associate conductors in each of Toks’ resident orchestras – but most of it was down to Sumi’s expert, if a touch sullen, wrangling of the maestro herself.

Toks maintained meticulous standards of musical brilliance, commanded the awe and respect of musicians, board members and philanthropists everywhere and tolerated absolutely zero disrespect from anyone other than her closest friends. Sumi was the only person she’d take any shit from.

Everyone knew they fucked too.

“But Sydney is miles away, Maestro,” whined Lena. She was already tipsy. She crossed her legs, leaned toward Toks and let the V of her shirt gape.

Toks ignored her.

“I’m not going forever,” Toks told the group. “You’ll barely notice I’m gone. I’ll be back for my usual programme. I’m still your principal guest conductor. We’re doing Turangal?la in May.” She ignored the groans that met that announcement. “I’m principal of the Korovinjan Symphony, I’ve got the Women on the Podium Academy, I’ve got recording contracts with Vienna and Hamburg. You don’t get rid of me that easily.”

Dominik still had his arm over her shoulder. He squeezed. It was almost a hug. Toks wasn’t quite sure what she thought of that.

“We don’t want to get rid of you at all,” Dominik said. “We want you as our chief conductor. Sir Reginald Boothby is pushing eighty. Tempos are getting slower and slower. How many times has our management team approached you now?”

Toks shrugged his arm off. She couldn’t help but notice the others watching her curiously, all interested in her answer. These days the Berlin Philharmonic begged her to work with them.

“Three,” she said and smirked.

“Four.” Sumi was back. She didn’t look up from her phone.

“So why not?”

Thatwas a new woman. Young, blond and pretty. Toks didn’t know her very well – she hadn’t been part of the orchestra the last time Toks collaborated with them. If the woman was new to the orchestra, she’d still be in her probation period – a time for both the musician and the band to decide whether they were a good fit for each other. She played the cor anglais.

Which would make her rather clever with her lips, Toks imagined.

Toks flicked an eyebrow and a smug smile at her.

“You can’t afford me.”

There was a loud and thoroughly disrespectful snort from Sumi. It made everyone laugh. The pay grade for rockstar conductors versus lowly musicians was always a bone of contention. But Toks didn’t mind spending her cash on mindless amusements with her friends.

Well, those people she saw often enough to become regular acquaintances, at least.

Lena decided she could have more fun with the servant rather than the master and shifted her chair closer to Sumi’s. That was an interesting tactic. Toks raised an eyebrow but didn’t dwell on it for long. There was a shy but knowing smile at the corner of the cor anglais player’s mouth.

“And the Sydney Symphony pays better than the Berlin Phil?” scoffed Lena.

“Oh, fuck no!” said Sumi, grinning. “This is duty. The maestro has to go home to look after her mother,” she crowed. “Back to the cow farm.”

Dominik sprayed beer.

“Get lost, Sumi,” Toks said, as mildly as she could.

“You grew up on a farm? In Australia?” Lena giggled. The woman was quite obnoxious when Toks thought about it.

The cor anglais player gave Toks a sympathetic smile. It made Lena roll her eyes. It made Toks reconsider her aim for the evening. It made Dominik back away with his hands in the air and a good-natured grin on his face.

Lena gave up entirely and dragged Sumi downstairs to dance.

Toks would be the chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for the next two years but she had no intentions of going back to the farm.

The property she’d spent the majority of her childhood growing up on and most of her adult life running away from was called 613 – a thoroughly dull and utilitarian name chosen by the property’s previous owners that reflected the farm’s elevation in metres on the escarpment. It had none of the charm of ‘Jerinja’ just next door.

Oleksiy Tokarycz had won the property in a card game and astonished the family when he’d informed them they’d be moving there within the week. They’d only just settled in a town house on the outskirts of Sydney and knew nothing about Australia, let alone cows. They’d been city folk back in Korovinja. The elite of Severin, actually. Members of a ruling class that hadn’t needed to bother with agriculture. Oleksiy had dreams of rural tranquillity. The rest of his family certainly understood how running from the terror of regime change could shape such gentle dreams, but they didn’t share them.

None of them wanted to be at 613.

When Toks met Polly Paterson, everything changed.

She wasn’t Toks then. Ksenia had been a common name back in Korovinja but the harsh judgement of her new Australian playground declared it too weird right from the start. Toks had been hiding in the toilets when the red headed kid who lived next door bunched up a fistful of toilet paper and gave it to her with a smile.

“Everyone calls me Polly, but my real name is Pearl,” she said.

Toks didn’t even know what a pearl was until later, when she found Polly’s real name in a picture dictionary. Then she thought it was beautiful.

After that, they did everything together. Polly taught Toks to ride, how to swing on the big rope over the dam and let go at just the right moment so she landed in the water and not the mud. At the beach, she taught Toks how to boogie board, and in the valley she shared the best places where the lilly pillies grew sweetest. She showed Toks how to hide under the verandah at school in a cool, dark spot deep under the building where the teachers couldn’t see – and the bullies couldn’t either.

And Toks taught Polly the names of all the notes on the piano and how to read music. She held Polly’s hand and led her up the stairs to her mother’s room when her parents were out and showed her Draga’s violin – the special, magical instrument that always made her mother cry. They drew the bow reverently across the strings and listened to that hushing sound, so full of mystery and potential, so loaded with Toks’ dreams, dreams that seemed so much more complex now she saw their matching reflection in Polly’s eyes.

Three.

She wanted to spend the rest of her life with Polly Paterson.

That was the third thing she wanted.

She’d thought that would be the easiest thing of all. But she hadn’t seen Polly Paterson in sixteen years and she was still furious at her, no matter how many times she told herself to let her go.

She still saw her out of the corner of her eye every time she glanced at the cello section of whatever orchestra she conducted – just like they’d dreamed.

It hadn’t occurred to her that that might only have been her dream.

The cor anglais player was named Adetta and she turned out to be utterly fantastic with her lips.

They headed downstairs to dance, shedding clothes as the temperature rose. The music was loud and rich with puzzlements and imperfections, strung out on a beat that allowed Toks to switch her mind off and let it travel. It had overtones that tugged at her curiosity – something that hinted at Dvo?ák, with pianos and electronica and something familiar, something that – bizarrely – made her think of the escarpment at home, something— but she didn’t pay it any attention. She was there to lose herself, not critique the music.

Adetta bent beautifully to Toks’ body when she wrapped herself around the woman. That knowing smile grew wider, more confident, still very pretty and her eyelids fluttered deliciously when Toks tugged her to a quiet corner and pressed her up against a pillar.

“They have dark rooms here. In the basement.” Adetta managed to shout it over the pulse of the music and sound inviting and demure at the same time. An impressive feat.

Toks shook her head, seized the girl’s wrist and pulled her into an uber to take her home. Adetta offered no resistance at all.

It was four in the morning when Adetta stumbled, giggling, through Toks’ apartment door.

“This is your place?” Adetta sounded surprised, but Toks was disinclined to hear it. She took her coat, tossed it over the apartment’s only armchair and guided her toward the bedroom. “Have you just moved in?”

Toks had one of Berlin’s most expensive apartments, with stunning views across Mitte. It was six floors up, light, bright and airy, and still furnished with the cardboard boxes from when she’d bought the place six years ago. There was a Steinway grand, a bookcase for her music scores and a bed. What else was needed?

She fucked Adetta with the same urgent desperation she fucked most women. She was hard and compelling, masterful and merciless. She wasn’t sure what she was chasing – her own pleasure, or the exquisite rapture of watching a gorgeous creature like Adetta submit and then succumb to her touch. She lived for the cries and moans she could draw from women like Lena, like Adetta. She died for the way they pleaded with her to let them come. She tried not to become addicted to the eagerness they all showed – their willingness to obey her every command, that youthful enthusiasm that felt suspiciously like worship. She tried— But it was just as easy to make them moan, make them beg, use them on their knees to wring her own grudging ecstasy from her bitterness and give in to those fleeting, blissful moments when nothing mattered, nothing at all. Not who she was, or where she was, or why— why she was doing this at all.

Adetta was very talented indeed.

She let the woman fall asleep in her bed once they’d exhausted each other. She was pretty enough.

There was more snow as dawn broke. It fell on the city and muted its noise, dulled its early morning bustle. Toks dug through her shelves until she found the music scores for the first concerts of the Sydney season and propped them up on the piano. She’d have someone deliver Adetta a coffee in an hour or so and then send her home.

She was pretty, but she wasn’t Polly Paterson.

With no small amount of self-contempt, Toks fucked Sumi on the flight to Sydney.

It was a private jet. Her cousin’s own plane. The attendant had converted the sofa to a fully flat queen-sized bed for the Dubai to Singapore leg, then drawn the curtain and left them alone.

Toks slapped Sumi’s bare arse when they were done and demanded she pour her another drink. Some of that plum liquor her cousin favoured and always left the plane amply stocked with.

“And there I was imagining that returning home might make you a tiny bit more humble,” Sumi said dryly, but she did as she was told. She knew better than to outright disobey. She was lippy, but she wasn’t stupid.

“What on earth gave you that idea?” Toks grinned when Sumi poked her tongue out.

Sumi, she supposed, was her truest friend. She was paid to be – and paid very well at that – but she’d been Toks’ assistant for five years now. It was somewhat of a record.

“I can’t imagine. The trappings of the billionaire lifestyle went to your head ages ago.” Sumi waved a hand at the plane with its cream leather seats and polished wooden finishes.

Toks shrugged. “So? It’s nice to have a billionaire in the family.” Nikoloz Konstantyn Tokarycz was from that branch of the family that hadn’t fled Korovinja like Toks’ father had. “Nice after living on a fucking cow farm at the arse end of the planet for my entire childhood.”

Sumi flopped back down on the bed and lay on her side with her head propped up on one hand. Toks admired the way her breasts pillowed so smoothly against the sheets. She traced the curve around her nipple with one lazy finger.

“You could afford to get around like this yourself, Maestro, without scrounging off your family – and don’t disrespect your home like that! I love your mum.”

“You’ve never met her.”

“No, but I talk to her all the time.” Sumi gave Toks a pointed stare. “Because you won’t.”

Toks tweaked her nipple.

“We’re not having this conversation again. On your back.”

Sumi rolled over, opened her thighs and wrapped them around Toks’ hips, but she still had a point to make.

“You’re going to go and see her, aren’t you?”

“My mother?”

“Hmm.” That came out as a groan as Toks pressed her knee against Sumi’s core.

“I wasn’t considering it. You have my apartment in Sydney sorted, don’t you?”

“Hmm.”

“With a view of the Harbour?”

“Luxury three-bedder on Circular Quay with the Opera House a three minute walk away and a stunning view of the Bridge.” Sumi was grinding against her, the real-estate details a breathy, beseeching plea.

“Then what reason would I have to drive two hours down the coast to a one horse town with more cows than people?” Toks asked.

Sumi didn’t answer.

Toks slipped her fingers between Sumi’s legs and watched her back arch.

There was no reason, Toks thought. Her mother wasn’t even at 613 anymore but instead slowly losing her marbles in a nursing home somewhere. There was no reason to go home at all.

Not even that Polly Paterson still lived next door.

Sumi felt her hesitation and gave her a look that said it all. Toks could shag her way through any number of women and never find one to spend her life with because her heart was still stuck on two of her three failed wishes.

Polly Paterson didn’t love her and maybe never had, and the life she’d wanted to live with her was slipping away without her.

On the other hand, Ksenia Tokarycz was widely considered one of the finest conductors of the generation and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra came to her with its knees bent and its cheque book open.

One out of three wasn’t bad.