Read this original contemporary non-fiction extract.

I had imagined that choosing a violin would be a dignified business. I would play three or four careful notes, tilt my head as if listening to something beyond ordinary hearing, and make a calm decision. Instead, I stood in Mr Vale’s workshop with my coat dripping on the floor and six instruments watching me from their hooks.

He placed the first violin on the table without ceremony. Its varnish had faded unevenly, leaving the wood the colour of weak tea. A pale scar ran beneath the bridge, and the neck had been polished by so many hands that it shone more brightly than the body. I tried not to look disappointed. This was not the instrument I had pictured carrying on to the concert platform.

‘Play something you know well,’ Mr Vale said.

I began the opening of the piece I had practised all winter. The first note was low and rough-edged, but it did not die. It travelled into the corners of the workshop, stirred among the shelves and returned warmer. By the fourth bar, the violin seemed to be breathing ahead of me. I stopped worrying about my fingers. The difficult phrase, the one that usually felt like stepping over loose stones, opened into a clear path.

When I finished, my bow remained in the air. Somewhere behind me, a clock continued ticking, absurdly small and busy.

Mr Vale said nothing. He took the violin and brought out another case.

The second instrument lay inside blue velvet. Its varnish was a deep, even red, and the back curled with dark flames in the wood. The pegs turned smoothly. The silver winding on the bow was unmarked. It looked prepared for applause.

I played the same passage.

Every note arrived exactly where I placed it: bright, balanced and separate. Yet the sound seemed to stop at the edge of the music stand. I pressed harder. The violin answered by becoming louder, not nearer. During the difficult phrase, my shoulder climbed towards my ear and my left hand tightened. I completed the final bars correctly, which was not the same as playing them well.

‘That one has been admired by almost everyone who has tried it,’ Mr Vale said.

I looked again at the smooth red surface. It was the violin I would have chosen from a photograph. I wanted to admire it properly, but admiration had become another task to perform.

Mr Vale closed both cases and set them side by side. One was polished black; the other was brown, with a handle repaired in green thread.

‘Which instrument sounded best?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Which one made you forget I was in the room?’

Before I had formed an answer, my hand had already moved towards the case with the green thread.