Jimmy said he heard it in his dreams, this note. It was magic, he said. 'The hollowed-oot hairt o beauty.' Jimmy went mad to find this note in real life. Maybe that’s what divorce does to a man. Started with the obvious - instruments and that. Tried every bloody instrument he could find. Never mind beauty, it was a goddawful row, that’s what it was. Then he starts on railings. With spoons. I’m like, 'Jimmy, will ye no stop makin like ain o they Festival twats?' 'No,' says Jimmy. Just in his old blue anorak with his grey hair flapping up in the wind, his polyester trousers cheap and thin, but you’d take him for some kind of old-time king, the way that he’s standing. He turns round and starts on the railings again. 'Ah know it’s here simwhaur,' he says. I checked up on him in the evening. Bags of refuse piled up in the hallway and this lovely sound coming from the lounge. Jimmy’s head bent over a bowl that he’s running his finger round, sat at the table in the window. His finger is smearing this ice-clear note around the room. 'That’s beautiful,' I say. 'It’s no it,' says Jimmy, but he keeps on making the sound. 'Jimmy,' I say. The buzzer goes. Jimmy leaves me sitting on the settee, and when he comes back there’s this guy with him carrying an aluminium case. All quiet and business-like, ignores me completely. Opens his case on the table in such a way I can’t see over his shoulder. Lays out a set of tuning forks and shuts the case again. The man is making different notes and Jimmy in the chair is motioning with his hand, up or down or left or right. The notes circle closer round a missing point until the man nods. I think it’s more musical things that he’s getting out of his case now, the man. So why’s Jimmy unbuttoning his shirt? The man angles the light towards Jimmy. Leans over him. A whiff of anaesthetic. I stand up. The man has a wee surgical knife that he’s about to cut Jimmy with. 'Whit dae ye think ye’re dain?' I say at him. 'Wheesht, Moira,' says Jimmy. 'He’s a specialist.' What - a doctor? The man has a doctor-style manner, right enough, the way he can’t be bothered talking to you. Calm as clocks he snips Jimmy open, slips a piece of silvery thread around his bottom rib, makes it fast. Walks backwards with measured steps, winding the thread's other end out. Pulls it taut at a certain distance. Standing in the corner, he plucks it. The sound was like nothing you ever heard. A whole life shaking and shining inside it. I never heard anything so wonderful in all my puff - I swear, it almost stopped me breathing. Jimmy closed his eyes. I thought maybe he’d died. Closed my own eyes, and it was the note that died instead.