HOWZAT

“I used to use Maestro as a gauge for songs when I was writing,” she says. “If he didn’t like it, he’d go and sit on the other side of the room.” She shows me pictures of Maestro, a tuxedo cat. “He is handsome. I have two rules if you want to live with me: you need to be handsome and well behaved. He made the grade.”

She says she has a relationship, but she’s loath to use the word “boyfriend”. “There is somebody I would say I favour very deeply.”

Just what you would expect from someone who doesn’t think it’s right even to own books.

“I think books are for libraries. I read them four or five times and I give them to friends, because they are in my brain. But I do have three books that travel in my suitcase: a Voltaire, and Zen Mind, which is a Buddhist book, and a book of homeopathic recipes.” Her memories are like her possessions. A few are treasured, but many seem to have gone, been given away or lost. It’s unclear whether that is to do with the accident or a disposition that refuses to hang onto anything.

On the album, she sings Over the Rainbow. She grew up being looked after by her grandmother, who constantly played her The Wizard of Oz. She also had The Sound of Music, but her grandmother forbade her to watch it. “She loved that movie because she came from Vienna. It is rumoured that my great-grandfather was a conductor in Poland.” Why rumoured? Was he lost in the Holocaust? “Not that I know of. It’s just that that generation kept things secret; they would never talk about anything.” She too won’t be drawn.

“I think she just wanted to keep The Sound of Music very pure. She died very young, as did my grandfather: they didn’t survive past their late fifties. My mum was working heavily until I was seven or eight. You know what single mums are like — working, working, three jobs. So I was raised mostly by my grandmother.”

Her mother still lives in New Jersey, where she grew up. She is now a photographer. And what about your father, did you know him? “No, not at all.” The calm slips away momentarily. The only noise is the whir of the air conditioning. “I’d prefer not to go into it.” I’ve been told that she doesn’t even know who her father is, but she doesn’t confirm that. Instead she says: “My mum married and I had a stepfather for a little while.” He too seems to have evaporated.

“I prefer cats. They are independent. Mine would jump up and kiss me on the nose, and he would sleep with me or he wouldn’t. It was his choice.” Do you prefer your men the same way? “Yes, a lack of need is really attractive to me.

I don’t like needy. I don’t like to be needy, though I like to be taken care of. That’s important to me.”

So her boyfriend couldn’t be too needy? “I have to say it’s very difficult to do anything while I’m constantly touring, and I think monogamy is boring in a lot of ways. I think when you love somebody you love them openly. You cherish them for the time you are together. I don’t believe in one person for everything. I think you meet people for different reasons, whether you fall in love for a moment or you just love them. You pass through, learn from each other. You comfort each other at that time… Unless they are jerks.

“I’m a very independent person, and I don’t believe there’s much to be gained from putting my stability in another person’s hands. Maybe it’s because I was raised by a single mum and most of my experience has been around women who are strongly independent. You bring what you bring to the table, and if they have things to offer they offer them, but you don’t need them.”

Perhaps it has come from a place further away than that. Her upbringing seems very peripatetic, and she was unable to form attachments for long. “We lived like gypsies. I cannot tell you how many times my mum would come home and say, ‘Put everything you want into a bag — we’re going.’ ” Was that because she couldn’t pay the rent? “Maybe.” She gives me a gurgling laugh.

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