Amsterdam

On a February afternoon, the composer Clive Linley and the newspaper editor Vernon Halliday stand outside a London crematorium chapel following the funeral of their mutual former lover, Molly Lane. Molly was a vibrant restaurant critic and photographer who died from a rapid, degenerative illness. Clive and Vernon discuss her decline, and Clive suggests that Molly would have preferred euthanasia to enduring the final, painful stages of her illness, when she lost control of both her physical and mental faculties.

When Molly’s husband, a wealthy publisher named George Lane, emerges from the chapel with her ashes in an alabaster urn, the two men walk away to avoid him as they both dislike him. When Molly first got sick, George decided which visitors he would permit, and he didn’t allow either Clive or Vernon to see her often. Julian Garmony, the current foreign secretary, is another of Molly’s former lovers, and George also prevented him from seeing Molly.

Vernon takes a brief phone call for work, and while he is gone, Clive conceives of a 10-note musical phrase for