Dear readers, tonight with us is a concert violinist from Sydney, Australia. She’s here to speak to us about getting the solo performance of a life time — and her relationship with the long-dead composer who wrote it.

Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?

Out west, near Parramatta. Summers so hot the footpath goes soft and the cicadas drown out the traffic. People in the eastern suburbs think anything past Strathfield is the outback, and in January they have a point.

Both my parents were musicians – Mum on violin, Dad on cello – and Dad later ran a small music school, so there were always students in the front room murdering scales. I thought every family kept a metronome on the kitchen bench.

Now I live in a Victorian terrace in Stanmore, with crooked floors and pipes that groan whenever the neighbour flushes. I bought it at twenty-six because I thought owning a house would make me an adult. Mostly it made me chase the mortgage.

Did you have any favourite toys as a child? Any cherished memories?

I don’t remember learning the violin, any more than I remember learning to talk. Mum put one in my hands before I could read music: her old student instrument, which she’d outgrown years before and kept, just in case. It had a scratch on the back and a peg that slipped when it was humid. I took it everywhere, including, once, the beach. I guess for my parents that was normal.

When I was eight, Dad arranged a folk song for the two of us. Him at the piano, me on that violin. I botched the bridge five times in a row, and every time he said, Again, Lily, from the top, you’ll get it, as if there was no question.

Mum got sick when I was twelve. After she died the house went quiet, Dad crawled into himself, we stopped talking about anything that mattered. Music was the only language we had left in common, and some years we barely managed that. He died when I was twenty-two.

What do you do now?

I play second violin with the Belmont Theatre Orchestra in Surry Hills. Third desk, inner chair, which is orchestra-speak for “you’d never pick me out of a line-up”. Four years now. We show up, we play, we go home. Passion is for soloists, and people without a mortgage.

The Belmont is the best part. It was built in 1897 by someone with money and an over-compensation complex: gilt, burgundy velvet, cherubs across the ceiling. It hasn’t staged a play in decades, but there are still brass stars on the dressing-room doors and a fly gallery full of ropes nobody’s touched since the seventies.

I auditioned for a principal chair once. It didn’t go my way, and afterwards I got very good at telling myself reliable was enough. Then our conductor handed me a solo, which freaked me out, but set strange things in motion.

What can you tell us about your latest adventure?

The Ashworth Foundation – old money, big in Sydney classical music – was holding an anniversary gala, and Steinberg, our conductor, gave me the violin solo in the Ashworth Variations. You know it even if you think you don’t: films, ads, half the weddings in the country. It always goes to the concertmaster. He gave it to the third desk, and told me not to thank him yet.

So I stayed late at the Belmont to practise. Alone, in a very old building with a ghost story attached.

The piano started playing by itself. Then it played the Variations, but wrong. Different notes. Better ones. That led me to Viktor Novák, a Hungarian pianist who vanished from the Belmont in 1934 and, as it turns out, never left.

I can’t say more without someone’s lawyer calling. But if you’ve ever hummed that melody at a wedding, you were humming a dead man’s music, and the name on it isn’t his.

What did you first think when you first heard the piano play by itself?

I was in practice room three, working the same phrase for the fortieth time, when the piano behind me played a note. One note. Plink. The lid was closed, and there was nobody else in the room.

My first thought was rats. Old building, old piano, and a musical rat living in the woodwork. I checked. Nothing. I picked up my bow, and the piano played again: the same key, twice.

I was packing up when it started properly. The opening of the Variations, keys going down one after another with nobody at the bench. And it was wrong. The ornaments were different, the phrases longer.

I stood there, mesmerised, and listened until it stopped.

I ran down the stairs in the dark, through a patch of air in the corridor as cold as a freezer, and didn’t look back. Out on the street, hands shaking, I swear I could still hear it playing.

What was the scariest thing in your adventures?

Strangely, not the ghost. He was frightening for about a week, and after that mostly opinionated.

The living were worse. Nobody raised their voice. It was all very civil: a phone call, a meeting upstairs, a woman in a grey suit who never seemed to blink, a reminder of how much funding the orchestra gets each year. Polite people, making it clear they knew exactly who I was, where I sat, and where I lived. Ghosts go boo, but it’s people with money that can really ruin your life.

What is the worst thing about working with a ghost?

The cold. I’ve rehearsed in a scarf in a Sydney summer.

The opinions. About my bowing, my tempo, modern pianos, modern coffee. For a while he could only talk through music, and a man can be extremely critical in E minor.

The lying. You can’t tell your boyfriend you’re late because a pianist who died in 1934 wanted to run the cadenza one more time. I’m a terrible liar, which doesn’t help.

And being the only one who can hear him. Everyone else at the Belmont hears an old building creaking. I hear a man who’s waited decades for someone to listen.

What is the best thing about it?

He listens. In a section, you’re one voice in sixteen, and the best compliment is that nobody noticed you. He hears everything – the wrong notes, and the moments I’m holding back or playing it safe. And he tells me. Nobody’s listened to me play like that since I was a kid.

He’s also a genius, which is irritating. Watching him work out a phrase is like hearing someone think in a language I half speak, and I come away each night speaking a bit more of it. Don’t tell Steinberg. He’ll take the credit.

Tell us a little about your friends.

Priya Sharma, my stand partner of three years. Twenty-six, ambitious, zero respect for authority; she mutters things at the conductor that are definitely not in German. She’s also the only one in the orchestra who notices when I’m somewhere else. I’d never tell her how much I like her. She’d be unbearable.

Then there’s Ben’s crowd. Ben drums for an indie rock band called The Architects; I thought the name was pretentious until I heard them build a song from the foundations up. His bandmates treat me like an exotic bird who knows a lot about Brahms.

And the orchestra. Steinberg, our conductor: German, sixty-three, eyebrows that could conduct on their own. Vincent, the concertmaster, who carries his violin under his arm like a small, expensive dog. I’m told I keep people at arm’s length. I prefer to think of it as a very long arm.

Any romantic involvement?

I have a boyfriend. Ben. Nearly three years, and he lives with me in the terrace. He cooks pasta sauces that take three hours. He remembers things. We have a lemon tree that’s never produced a single lemon, and he still waters it like it might. He deserves someone who’s paying attention. Lately, that hasn’t been me.

As for the rest… I can see your face, and no. Besides, how can it be cheating if he’s been dead since before I was born? Asking for a friend.

Whom (or what) do you really hate?

A certain celebrated musical benefactor. I won’t name him. There’s a foundation, a prize, and a reputation built on him, and I’ve seen how hard people work to keep them polished. The ones who think he wasn’t all that good look away because the cheques are good. I know how bad he really was.

Then there’s the grey woman. Grey suit, grey hair, grey expression. I don’t hate her. She frightens me, and I resent that.

And the green room coffee pot, which I’m sure is haunted by malevolent spirits of caffeine past. Of the two hauntings in that building, it’s the one I’d like gone.

What’s your favourite drink, colour, and relaxing pastime?

A flat white in the morning, something red and South Australian at night.

Black, because it’s the orchestra uniform and after a few years you forget other colours exist. If pushed, burgundy: the Belmont’s walls, worn to rose where a century of audiences brushed past.

A crime novel and a long bath, phone in another room. I keep meaning to use the foam roller on my bow shoulder, and never do. And I water the lemon tree when Ben’s not looking, even though it’s never going to give us a lemon.

What does the future hold for you?

The gala first. I’m meant to stand in front of every donor, board member and critic in Sydney and play the most famous violin solo in the country. Whether I play it the way it’s printed or the way it was written has cost me a lot of sleep.

After that, I’d like to still have a job, and a boyfriend. I’d like to find out what Viktor needs to move on, and whether I’m brave enough to help him go. I’m not sure all of that fits together.

Can you share a secret with us, which you’ve never told anyone else?

My mum’s violin is in a storage unit in Silverwater, and I haven’t seen it in ten years.

When Dad died, his sister – Aunt Poppy – packed up everything: his music, his notebooks, Mum’s violin. I couldn’t. Every Christmas since, she’s told me she has the key whenever I’m ready.

I’ve never asked for it. Dad and I weren’t on good terms at the end. He called a lot in those last weeks, and I didn’t always pick up. I haven’t told Viktor, which is odd, because he hears everything else.

Isla works in cyber-security, where it’s bad enough being a woman let alone one that writes “silly romances.” She has therefore chosen to use a pen name, so as not to confuse her professional contracts with her multi-faceted talents. She lives in Sydney, Australia, and has done so for most of her life (outside of a couple of years searching for life’s meaning). She likes her cats, dogs, husband, and her computer room, in no particular order. You can find her novels on Amazon, but, as you might have guessed from the cybersec and nom de plume, you won’t find her on social media.

You can find Lily on the pages of The Stolen Sonata and its sequels in the Phantom of the Opera House completed series.

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