"Looking back, I realise I'd always been waiting for the arrival of Noel Mewton-Wood. His entrance occurred with such ease that I began to believe he'd always been there ... I remember being warmed by this sense of expectancy, a knowledge that one day my life would be wonderfully different." London, November 1945: at a bohemian party, a young music student meets the charismatic concert pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. The two immediately become lovers, and the affair unleashes an overwhelming passion as grand and sublime as the music they both love. But can the realities of life -- and love -- ever match the emotion that music inspires? Ten years on, the student, now a successful writer, reflects on the affair, the forces that shaped him and the one he adored and the romantic obsession that ruled and almost ruined his life. This assured, beautifully written debut novel is inspired by the real-life Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. Sonia Orchard vividly evokes the artistic world of post-war London in a novel of striking illuminations about music and imagination that is also a compelling and deeply moving love story.