As the lights came up at the end of the concert the audience stood to applaud and cheer and right up at the front, standing tall, was Alice Walker, also in town as part of the festival. As the clapping continued, Walker raised her fist in a black power salute and Simone signalled that she had seen the salute – a private show of strength between two formidable women. Next to Walker, her head lowered as if in prayer, was Thora.

When I saw Thora later I asked her what it had been like sitting next to Alice Walker all evening. I didn’t imagine that she would have asked for Walker’s autograph, but I thought she might have acknowledged the writer during the moments before the house lights dimmed. After all, Thora was a huge fan.

‘I said “Hello”,’ said Thora, ‘but I don’t think she heard me.’

Not long afterwards I blended a perfume for Thora. In my head and on paper I had it all figured out. I would take the concept of thunder and lightning from Thora’s name and link it to Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, one of her favourite books. In short, it would be the scent of a night garden following a storm. I decided to build the perfume around boronia. I’d only recently discovered the plant, having spotted the reddish-brown flowering bush in the botanic gardens one Sunday afternoon. The smell was sticky sweet like aged raspberry jam but with a tart, dusty base. It was the latter that gave the scent its edge. It seemed a perfect fit for Thora with her white-streaked black hair and slash of red lipstick.

Because I wanted to keep the perfume simple I added carrot seed oil for its smell of damp dug-over earth, ambrette for a hint of spicy sweetness and frankincense because I had a large unopened bottle handy and I thought it would add a nice incense-like smokiness to the drydown. The component that eluded me was petrichor, the mineral, flinty smell associated with rain falling on warm, bone-dry earth.

The perfume oil I made wasn’t a bad scent – in fact it was nice – but I was disappointed that it had failed to capture my intention. It would never cause the wearer to breathe deeply and smile with pleasure or wonder. I needed something to lift it out of the ordinary, but nothing I tried worked. For some reason it remained a tad murky, like a pot of soup reheated once too often.