She played with a lot of feeling, so her teacher said; a little more practice and she’d be very good. So sometimes Annie dreamed of fame and sometimes of love. Greg Sadler, her father, was a piano tuner. He made a fair living in those distant days, when all respectable homes had a piano. December, of course, was the busiest time of year for him, when Christmas crept into sight and families began to think of the sing-song they’d have – Good King Wenceslas and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Uncle George or Aunt Beatrice playing, wrong notes and all but so good for the spirit. He’d be working twelve hours a day sometimes in the weeks before Christmas, come home sick and tired of the sound of the darned instrument, to find his daughter playing away in the front room in the dark, always Chopin and with a wrapt expression on her face. ‘Lord,’ he’d say crossly, ‘what’s wrong with supper then, Annie?’ But he spared her no love. He’d brought her up on his own and in her he had vested a formless kind of hope.
