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bunched up in his fist and threw across the room.
    He rose from his knees, stood behind her. She was totally naked now.
    ‘Turn round,’ Dominik said.
    She was fully shaven, unusually plump, her opening cleanly delineated, a straight geometric line of opposing thin ridges of flesh.
    He extended a finger towards her crotch. Felt the heat radiating outwards. Insolently slipped a finger inside her. She was very wet.
    He looked up into her eyes, seeking the hunger.
    ‘Fuck me,’ Claudia said.
    ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
    The strains of a familiar melody reached him faintly as he allowed himself to march down the corridor that led to the Northern line platform, escorted by the rush-hour crowds like a prisoner under close guard.
    The sounds of a violin piercing the muted evening rumour of all the travellers filtered its way towards him, louder with every step forward, then a moment of recognition when Dominik realised someone in the distance was playing the second section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons , albeit just the lead violin part without the bustling business of the whole orchestra counterpointing the concerto. But the tone was so sharp it didn’t require the support of an orchestra. He hastened his pace, music flowing by his attentive ears.
    At the crossroads of four tunnels, in a larger open space, where a parallel set of elevators both swallowed streams of commuters and disgorged a set of counterparts into the depths of the transport system, stood a young woman playing her instrument with her eyes closed. Her flame hair cascaded across her shoulders, halo-like, electric.
    Dominik came to an uncomfortable halt, blocking other travellers until he stepped back into a corner where he wasn’t interrupting the rush-hour flow, and took a close look at the musician. No, she wasn’t plugged in. The richness of the sound was solely due to the area’s acoustics and the vigorous glissando of her bow against the strings.
    Damn, she is good, Dominik reflected.
    It had been a long time since he’d listened closely to anything classical. When he had been a kid, his mother had arranged for him to enjoy a season ticket for a series of concerts held on successive Saturday mornings at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, where his father had set up business and the family lived for a whole decade. Over six months, usually using the morning concerts as a rehearsal of sorts for the actual performances held in the evening for a proper adult audience, the orchestra and guest soloists afforded a wonderful introduction to the world and repertoire of classical music. Dominik had found it fascinating, and thereafter had spent most of his meagre pocket money on acquiring records – those were still the years of glorious vinyl: Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Berlioz and Prokofiev leading his personal pantheon – much to the bemusement of his father. It would be more than a decade later before he graduated to rock music when Bob Dylan went electric and Dominik also began to wear his hair a touch longer in response, always having been on the late side to ride musical and sociological trends. Still to this day he would invariably play classical music on the radio in his car when driving. It made for serenity, cleared the mind, banished the all-too-numerous calls of road rage that his impatience often summoned.
    The young woman’s eyes were closed as she swayed gently from foot to foot, as she melded with the melody. She wore a black, knee-length skirt and a whitish Victorian-collared blouse that shimmered slightly in the artificial subterranean light, the material swimming against the unknowable shape of her body. Dominik was immediately taken by the exquisite pallor of her neck and the fragile angle of her wrist as she moved the bow in white heat and gripped the neck of the violin.
    The violin itself seemed old, patched together in two separate places by tape, on its last legs, but the colour of its wood accorded perfectly