In the early nineties I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to a Nina Simone concert, which was part of the arts festival taking place in the city. I spent hours preparing for the event by playing my flatmate’s copy of ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’. I didn’t particularly like the song, but it had suddenly become a hit in the late eighties and had made its way into all my friends’ music collections. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the reason for its sudden revival. It had been featured in a commercial for Chanel No. 5 and, as a result, had climbed to the top of the charts in Britain and Europe. Anyway, the song was upbeat and helped get me in the mood for going out. To my disappointment, the concert was anything but upbeat. The atmosphere on stage struck me as tense, and it seemed to me that Simone would have preferred to be anywhere in the world but Wellington.

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.