But the course of true love never did run smooth, and this love story is not without its complications. For Concerto begins with another story: young, handsome virtuoso Umberto meets teenage opera singer Catriona, and after a brief flirtation, they share a night of passion – only for Umberto to leave the next morning.

Umberto is really quite taken with Catriona. But after their lovemaking, he learns that he has the chance to go on tour in the US, leaving straight away. This, for him, is ‘a golden opportunity’, something he’s been wanting for a very long time. He tells Catriona:

‘It’s not fair to ask you to wait. I respect you too much to be anything but honest with you. You’re young, you’ve got your life, your studies, your future glittering career that you’ve worked so hard for ahead of you. When I come back to Nice again, then who knows? I’ll know where to find you. But for now, let’s just keep this as a perfect memory. It’s better that way, trust me.’

Umberto is not cold to Catriona – she hears a note of regret in his tone – but he is crushing her nonetheless. He is proud and ambitious and full of the impetuousness and arrogance of youth: to think that Catriona will treasure this as a ‘perfect’ memory; to think that when he returns to Nice someday she may be waiting; to be so sure it is better this way.

When he leaves her, Catriona watches him walk away:

As she closed the gates behind her she saw his tall, imposing figure stride back to his house. Catriona willed him to look back at her just once, but he did not. The journey to America was his present – his future – and she was already in the past, one adventure in an ever-continuing chain. She stared after him, yearning and misery crashing together inside her as she realized that she would never see him again.

Of course, she does see Umberto again – though he does not ‘see’ her, for following a harrowing car accident, he has lost his sight. Pride comes before a fall, and Umberto has learnt through terrible hardship that he was wrong to think so much of his talent and his career. Now he has neither in his life, and he is alone and in despair – until Catriona walks back into his life.

But the history between Umberto and Catriona is so painful for her, and so raw, that she does not have the courage to tell him who she is – or how it is that she came to be a single mother. Had she met Umberto for the first time at the Lake Como villa, her feelings for him would be straightforward; but as it is, because of their history she is conflicted and confused. Umberto left her; he rejected her. She built a life without him, and she is reluctant to want him now – to love him.

Can Umberto redeem himself for the mistakes he made in his youth? Can he forgive himself for hurting Catriona and letting her go? And can Catriona forgive him for his rejection, and open her heart enough to tell Umberto who she is and the huge secret she is carrying? For as Bryant H. McGill put it, ‘There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.’