Mostly, Jack remembered being hungry at the orphanage. Breakfast – after two hours of morning prayer – was bread and coffee. On Sundays, you were allowed butter, but this slight advantage was more than made up for by the tedious church services you had to attend on that day. Dinner was boiled rice and a grey sliver of boiled meat. Supper was bread and dripping.

There were dreary lessons to go with the deadening food, and as they began to take hold, he started to decipher his mother's letters.

As it turned out, they weren't even from her. They were replies to letters that she must have written while pregnant with him, so Jack could only get glimpses of her character between the lines. Although her situation was plain enough. The letters were full of sympathy. What they were devoid of was any kind of useful help.

She must have wanted to keep her baby, but not marry William. She needed money, or some kind of employment that she could carry out while her child was sleeping. The letters were full of platitudes like 'we deeply regret your situation', or vague but sickening hints that the situation might be different if something were to happen to the child.

'Please understand,' said one of them, 'that our organization cannot be seen to employ an unmarried mother. An unmarried woman – perhaps one who had recently suffered a bereavement – might be different.'

Some of them even wondered what made her think she was qualified to bring up a child. How was she supposed to instill it with a sense of virtue when she had failed so miserably at upholding her own virtue?

Jack had crumpled up this particular letter and thrown it across the dormitory in disgust. A young child did not want a sense of virtue. It wanted its mother.

But then he very carefully retrieved the letter and smoothed it out, studied the signature and return address. Some Philanthropic Society in Ealing. He would deal with them first, when he was out.

Anyway, it seemed that Elizabeth Barrett had been determined not to be parted from her child. If the only way for them to be together was for her to marry the devil, she would do it. The date on her marriage certificate was three days after the last refusal of help.

It was from reading these letters that Jack acquired his cheerful contempt for the world. In truth, he sympathized with the letter-writers, and didn't really understand where his mother's optimism had come from. But just because he didn't understand it, that didn't mean he didn't long for it. Ever since that dark curtain of hair had fallen across his face, he had known there was goodness in the world. He didn't understand what it was, or how it worked, but he knew he wanted it.

And, at the same time, he had to protect it from people like him, who would – perfectly reasonably – try to take advantage of it.

His next task was to distinguish himself somehow. The way to avenge his mother and find the dark-haired girl was to get out of the orphanage, and the way to get out of the orphanage was to get noticed.

He learned from the letters that Elizabeth Barrett had been a piano-teacher, which gave him some small, shaky idea where to start. There was a piano at the orphanage. It was old and out of tune, and had been crammed into the pantry to save space.

At first, it had seemed like a huge, horrible instrument of torture. Jack had opened up the top and looked in at the tight threads and little hammers, and could only think about how awful it would be to be trapped in there while someone was playing.

Even as an adult, he would still have nightmares about that: strings pressed against his throat, hammers thumping on his shins, and, through it all, the din – the discordant sound of a concerto eating a little boy alive.

Only Mr Doyle could play – and, since the pantry with its out-of-tune piano was his only sanctuary from the students, he was reluctant to let them come down there and get their grimy fingerprints all over the keys.

But Jack found him another sanctuary: the oblivion of booze. He traded William's crate of whisky for piano lessons – one bottle per month. There were only twelve bottles in the crate, so he knew he had to learn fast.

He used to sneak down to the pantry in the middle of the night and move his fingers silently over the keys: keeping time, hearing the notes in his head, miming everything – including the pressing of the pedals – in case some errant creak should draw one of the masters downstairs, and exile him from the piano forever.

And he became very good. The masters even loaned him out to the local community to play concerts in draughty church halls. Money exchanged hands for these appearances, but Jack never saw a penny of it. It didn't matter. His reputation was the real nest-egg. And, slowly but surely, his reputation grew.

There was something satisfying and disturbing about seeing a little orphan-boy – blonde-haired and blue-eyed as a cherub – playing the piano with such confidence. He didn't speak much, to be sure, but he was certainly not the ideal of a child who could be seen and not heard. And the way he looked at his audience – the mocking, bright-eyed way he received their applause, as though he didn't doubt for a moment that he deserved it – was unsettling.

He played at various civic functions: endless inaugurations and formal dinners, which were only made bearable by the thought that someone might give him some roast chicken to take home afterwards. They would ruffle his hair and tell him not to eat it all at once, with an endearing ignorance of what it was like to live in a place where bread was considered a main course.

But he wouldn't have got much further without outside interference. He was talented, but he was still an urchin. You could find plenty of talented people who weren't urchins. Probably nothing would have happened at all if he hadn't come to the attention of Henry and Baby Jane.

It was his eleventh birthday – which he supposed was his mother's eleventh death-day – when Mr Doyle summoned him, not to the office where he was accustomed to administering all his canings, but to the little pantry where the piano was kept. When Jack got there, he found Mr Doyle and two strangers crammed into makeshift seats beside the instrument. They were nursing cups of tea awkwardly on their laps.

Jack's eyes were immediately drawn to the woman, because he didn't see women much. She must have been in her late twenties, but she seemed at pains to appear younger. She was red-haired and a bit pouty. There were too many bows on her dress and in her hair. And when she smiled, her eyes became little slits, which transformed her expression into an amiable scowl.

She was smiling – or scowling amiably – at Jack as he entered the room, but she didn't say anything.

Mr Doyle stood up and said, "Jack, this lady and gentlemen are here to speak to you about your piano-playing. Please answer their questions honestly and politely, as I'm sure you can when you're in the mood. I will return for you in half an hour."

When he had left, the woman did most of the talking. The man beside her was a puzzle. He was upright and aristocratic, but also a little red-faced, with thick spectacles and quick, nervous motions. He didn't have the confidence of the woman, but there was a kind of solidity about him – and she glanced at him occasionally, as though he was the one who was really in charge.

"It's Jack, isn't it?" she started. "I'm Jane Tilney, and this is my brother Henry. When we were – oh, not much older than you, we had the good fortune to know your mother. She was our piano tutor at Langdale." She said the word 'Langdale' as though it needed no explanation, so Jack didn't ask where – or what – it was. In truth, it seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't work out when he'd heard it before.

"She taught us ever such a lot," said the woman, clasping her hands together and hooking them over her knees. "And we were very fond of her. It broke our hearts when-"

She stopped, because the man had cleared his throat meaningfully. She glanced at him, and then broke into another smiling scowl. "Well, in any case, your mother was very dear to us. For reasons that I daresay you'll understand when you're older, our father was obliged to terminate her employment, but we were inconsolable when we heard of her death."

Jack glanced at the man, who had winced when she'd said the word 'inconsolable', as though it was too shrill and artificial, and didn't do the situation justice.

"Many times after that we wished we could do something for you," said the woman. "But father expressly forbade it. It was only when Henry came into his inheritance last July that we were free to act as we saw fit. And then we thought perhaps you'd become settled here, and wouldn't want to be taken away from your friends." She paused, perhaps aware of how ridiculous this sounded. You didn't choose to starve to death in an orphan asylum simply because you were fond of the other inmates.

"But when we heard that you'd taken to playing the piano so beautifully – that you'd taken up your mother's mantle, even though you'd never had a chance to know her – it was..."

"It was as though she wasn't gone," the man interrupted. His voice was a strange, tight jumble of passion and nerves. "As though we hadn't lost her."

There was a short silence. If the woman was rolling her eyes, or sighing inwardly, she hid it very well.

"Anyway," she said, in her shrill, bright, babyish voice. "We'd like to pay for you to go to school." She glanced around at the peeling wallpaper and added, "A different school. Would you like that, Jack?"

Jack nodded wordlessly.

"And, at this school, you'll be able to play the piano as much as you like. If you work hard, perhaps someday you'll be playing concert halls, rather than church halls."

Another silence. Jack, remembering his manners, said, "Thank you very much, ma'am."

The woman glanced at the man as though asking him whether she'd forgotten anything. He leaned forward, and said kindly, "Is there anything you'd like to ask us? About this school? Or your mother?"

Jack just looked at him. He wanted to say: 'Hundreds of things – thousands of things. What was her voice like? How did she move? Was she very refined? Do you see any resemblance between us?'

But he had just remembered where he'd seen the word 'Langdale'. It had been part of an address at the head of a letter. He turned impulsively to the woman, and said, "Excuse me, ma'am - did my mother used to call you 'Baby Jane'?"

For a moment, she looked startled, but the amiable scowl was soon back in place. "Good heavens," she said, half-laughing. "How could you possibly know that?"

"My father told me," Jack lied. "He said she used to talk about her students all the time. She said wonderful things about you."

Actually, this might have been true. But, whatever she had said to William, he'd never seen fit to share it with his son. He knew Baby Jane from the last of his mother's letters – the one that was dated three days before the marriage certificate. She had clearly been Elizabeth Barrett's last hope.

He knew it off-by-heart. Sometimes, at night, when he was shivering under a threadbare blanket in the dormitories, he would recite it in his head, because anger always kept him warm.

Dear Elizabeth,

I'm so dreadfully sorry for your situation. And of course, of course Henry and I would like you to remain with us. But dear Lizzie, how can I ask my father to consider employing an unmarried mother in his household? Not just in his household, but actually teaching his children? It would be an unmitigated scandal.

My dear, nobody knows of your indiscretion. I haven't told Henry – he thinks so highly of you, he wouldn't be able to bear it – and I told father we simply weren't getting along. If you were to come back to us in a few months without a child, or any sign of having been pregnant, I'm sure I could persuade him to hire you again. I know a doctor in Harley Street who could take care of the whole thing for a few shillings. Please consider that any child of that brute William will no doubt be exactly like him – and a new-breed too, from what you tell me! How can you think of throwing away your reputation for a creature like that?

Dear Elizabeth, it isn't necessary to consign yourself to poverty and disgrace. Don't lower yourself by becoming an unmarried mother or a scoundrel's wife. I hope to see you very soon at father's house, having put this whole unpleasant business behind you.

Your friend always,

Baby Jane.