Funeral Music Read Online Free PDF

since the post for which he had applied, following recent restructuring, would combine the duties of Director of Education for the first time with overall responsibility for the museums function. Oh, God.
    Cecily had got back only minutes before him. She had had Dave in tears for an hour and so had had no time to tidy up or change, and was not in quite the desired frame of mind for Derek’s lavish groping in the hall. Nor was she flattered to learn the real reason for his excitement, nor charmed at the prospect of driving straight back into Bath to have a quick look at the costume museum before it closed.
    ‘I’ve got to be completely prepared for this interview, Cec,’ Derek said. ‘Come with me. It won’t take long. I’ve got to sound as if I know what I’m talking about and I’ll have to get round all the museums, and I haven’t got long. The interview could be the week after next. We could do the others tomorrow. Look, Cec, if I get this job, everything’ll change. For us. It’s what you want.
Please
.’
    Derek so seldom said please.

CHAPTER 2
    SARA AND SUE left the savours of the Circus and walked down to the Assembly Rooms, which sat in stately amber splendour surrounded by the flat façades of Ben-nett Street. For a public building it was oddly discreet, with its main entrance at one side and nothing so obvious as posters of forthcoming events or intelligible signs as to its function. Suppose you were a stranger, or somehow just impermeable to the curious Bathonian intelligence that John Wood the Younger’s Assembly Rooms (completed 1771) were now open to visitors and available for functions? If you were just skulking round in ignorance, looking for a way in, you might imagine the building to be the head-quarters of some wealthy religious fringe, or perhaps a hugely upmarket private cinema. It was slightly irritating, Sara felt, as if you were just supposed to
know
that inside there was a fabulous costume museum as well as a suite of magnificent eighteenth-century salons.
    They went in together through the surprisingly unassuming pillared entrance and into a crowded vestibule. Sara began to feel silly. Perhaps she should have taken up James’s offer of a rest at his flat before the concert. The rehearsal had gone well, although it had not fooled either of them; she had managed to create some semblance of involvement with the music, but no more. They both knew she was cheating, but in the absence of the real thing there seemed to be nothing else she could do. The spark was no longer there. Technically, of course, she was superb, as good as ever, and that would satisfy most of the people listening tonight who would be local, well disposed and feeling charitable. It was an expensive invitation-only dinner and concert, a fund-raiser for the Bath Festival, so Sara expected that she would recognise about two-thirds of the people there. She would see the artistic director of course, impassioned and charming, as well as the festival’s chief executive, perpetually worried about funding, and most of the Festival Trust Board, a motley but well-intentioned crew. Prosperous Bath businesspeople with prosperous clients, strategically invited potential sponsors and festival patrons, as well as many other well-heeled and cultured Bathonians would be there. And the more active Friends of the Bath Festival, like Sue’s aunt, Olivia Passmore, and several others Sara could think of, would probably not miss the chance to hear what they might (wrongly) think was to be Sara Selkirk’s comeback concert. The thought that it was hardly a concert kept returning to her.
    People were milling about in the vestibule as Sue got her name checked off and was handed several sheets of recycled paper and the inevitable badge. She moved out of the mêlée and leaned against the wall further up the hall to read down the events programme. The words ‘workshop’, ‘sharing’ and ‘empowerment’ were cropping up rather a lot, even for