Putney

Zinovieff’s staggeringly shocking story is of composer Ralph, 25, who falls in love with Daphne, the nine-year-old daughter of music collaborator Edmund Greenslay. It is the ’70s in Putney, London, where the Greenslay family lead a bohemian existence. Ralph is trans xed by the sprite-like child and slips her a necklace – their rst collusion. He writes her poems and takes her sticky cakes. Two years later he marries and Daphne is envious. She feels awkward as to how to “move from the ordinary world to one of sex”, but they do when she is 13. Now adult, a voice of reason in Daphne’s best friend Jane urges her to report Ralph. “What if it was your daughter?” Jane asks Daphne. “I don’t know anyone who didn’t have some sort of inappropriate ing or grope [in those days],” Daphne replies. Says a dying Ralph: “We met as spirits. Our story had nothing to do with abuse.” But at 53, Daphne wants answers from 69-year-old Ralph.