Every night, when I’d finished, I covered the work with a large sheet so that no one could see it, but at last, in mid-May, it was finished and ready to show. After much trial and error, I’d kept the colours simple. I knew that, as with creating a garden, if I used too many elements it would look fussy and overdone, but using a few well-chosen images, repeated here and there, and the effect would be more pleasing. As part of the backdrop, I’d made small patchwork pieces from grey and faded pink vintage fabrics, some of which were found on one of my many trips to the markets in Notting Hill. The tiny glass tiles in sepia and pink gave luminosity, and they were complemented by small mirror squares in grey and dark brown, placed to give some depth. The main focus, though, was on the jigsaw pieces I’d made from photos showing scenes from the defence of Calais; images of men at war, marching, on the field, but also streets back in the UK that had been bombed; others showing workers amongst the debris, two young women in aprons, standing near a pile of bricks, having a break and sipping mugs of tea. At intervals, I glued strips that I’d cut from the copies of the birth and death certificates and census records that showed Grace and Billy’s names and dates. I added words here and there in different fonts: soldier, dressmaker, Kentish Town, Fortis Green, Minty. When I’d finished, it was exactly as I had imagined it, the whole effect an abstract mosaic depiction of a scene from a time in history.

One morning, I invited Heather up to the office. ‘Ta-dah,’ I said as I whipped away the cloth.

‘Oh!’ she gasped then was silent as she studied it.

‘What do you think?’

She turned to me. ‘Bea, this is fabulous. Amazing. For Grace and Billy?’

‘It is. They really captured my imagination, and I wanted to make something in remembrance of them so that their story lives on. I’m going to make some more, though my next work will be from this century. I’ve already done rough sketches. I can’t stop thinking about what I want to do and seeing people in colour. I’m going to do Graham next, then you and Marcia and Pete.’

‘I think that’s a brilliant idea. Will you sell them?’

‘I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe. I thought I’d just make them for friends to start with.’

‘Oh Bea, you must make more. People would pay thousands to own one of these.’ She turned back to the mosaic. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’