of suppressed panic. You await the explosion, never quite knowing what form it will take … Minor events all seem to take place in the shadow of the loaded gun we know must be about to go off, in “those vacuum-packed, suspended seconds” before the obscure but inevitable bang … The characters’ moral wranglings and the machinery of the plot spiral inexorably inwards, into the bedroom. It’s there that everything will eventually go bang’ Lidija Haas, Guardian
‘Lowdon has Evelyn Waugh’s willingness to inflict gruesome plot twists on her Bright Young Things’ Literary Review
‘A fresh and sharp-minded writer’ Blake Morrison, Observer
‘Razor-sharp satire of millennial Londoners and their pretentions in this promising debut’ Sunday Times
‘Lowdon deftly maps the tangled love life of failed concert pianist Tamsin Jarvis … She writes with an admirable honesty’ Claire Allfree, Metro
‘Deftly plotted and evocatively written. Left of the Bang’s characters are believable and their interactions ironically, wince-inducingly familiar’ Sasha Garwood, Marylebone Journal
For my grandmothers, D.E.M. and G.M.M.L.
Left of the bang: a military term for the build-up to an explosion. On a left–right time line, preparation and prevention are left of the bang; right of the bang refers to the aftermath.
Table of Contents
Her father’s arms around her. His voice vibrating through his chest and into hers.
‘I’m here, tinker. I’m here.’
Her bleeding toenail, open like a birthday card.
When Tamsin Jarvis was twelve, she saw her father kissing another woman.
The whole family was up in Manchester to hear him conduct a celebration of British music at the Bridgewater Hall. It was a treat, at the end of the concert, for Tamsin to go to his dressing room all by herself. Her mother had to put ten-year-old Serena to bed in the Jurys Inn Hotel across the road. ‘Tell Daddy not to hang around chatting, the restaurant’s booked for nine forty-five.’
Backstage, everything was hushed. All the doors had leather quilting. The carpet was very thick. A stagehand with his radio earpiece hooked round his neck pointed her towards the end of the corridor. Tamsin pushed her father’s door open, enjoying its weight and the smooth, silent swing of the hinges.
Three seconds later she closed it again, just as silently. The lovers had been kissing with their eyes shut. Neither of them knew they’d been seen.
The woman was Valery Fischer, the mezzo from the concert. Val and her husband Patrick were old friends of the Jarvises. Their only son, a stocky, sporty eleven-year-old called Alex, played viola in the same youth orchestra as Serena. Last summer, the two families had even spent a long weekend together in a rented cottage in Suffolk.
Tamsin walked slowly back up the corridor, seeing it all over again. Bertrand’s
