‘No, it’s fine. I already checked in the hope that you’d say yes.’

‘Sure. OK. I’m not doing anything.’

‘Fantastic. Give me Pete and Marcia’s address and I’ll come and get you. About eleven, that OK?’

‘Perfect. Oh … do I need a hat?’

‘No hat, but you got a party dress or something?’

I laughed. ‘No. All my clothes are packed and in storage. Don’t worry. I’ll find something.’

After the call, I made my way to Hampstead where I could get on with my mosaic in the room over the shop. As I laid out all my materials, I thought I hadn’t felt as happy or fired up about a piece of work for years. The portrait, if you could call it that, was taking shape in my mind and was to be a mix of elements – photos, glass, beads, and whatever else seemed appropriate. I had a series in mind, to portray all the people I knew, but I was going to start with one of Grace and Billy. Theirs was a love story from the war, one of the so many forgotten, unrecorded, lost in the mists of time. I wanted to honour their memory and I was going to do it through my art. I sent off for copies of their birth and death certificates. I printed copies from the censuses that showed a record of them. I scoured the Internet looking for photos and postcards from Calais in 1940. I looked for images of dressmakers and various pieces of fabric from the same time. I resolved to make a mosaic portrait of Graham, too. It would be in memory of him and a tribute to him. Apart from the evening in the lock-up, I’d barely been able to look at his photos since he’d disappeared from my life, but turning them into a work of art would be a positive thing to do and maybe help heal the wounds of loss.

When I had everything I needed, I pulled out fabrics I’d collected over the years – silks, satins and velvet in shades of pink, sepia and dove grey, as those felt like the right colours for them. As I worked, I had a flashback to when I was five, at my parents’ house, collecting bits of fabric in a biscuit tin. How had I forgotten that?